Adieu, dear blog...for now!

For the next few months I shall not be seen or heard in Blogdom. Just when I was getting a teeny weeny more active on the blog front, I have to stop. I'm going to be on a study break for the next few months as I find my way through the jungle that is medicine and prepare for my entrance exams and manage to place myself in a Masters course of my choice!
Wish me luck my friends!
Adieu!

Omigosh!! Its a miracle!!

Reading the newspapers wouldn't be half as interesting without Paris and Lohans making the headlines. The other half of the interest is from reading news about a person marrying a dog, conducting tree marriages and the like...

Of late the papers are filled with stories of mass hysteria after someone noticed a picture of Jesus Christ 'bleeding' from the heart and in no time someone else declares that Sai Baba opened one eye!

Well, don't jump the gun yet, I strongly believe in miracles. Just last night I said, "Nope, it ain't gonna rain, and if it does I'll get wet... It rained and rained till I decided it was too late to wait and got wet". Somebody up there loves playing!

Ok...fine...now the purpose of this blogpost... 'Sai Baba'.
He opened one eye... Heres my question... "why not both?"
Its like he's playing hide and seek...opens one eye to wonder if his devotees are still there waiting to ask him for that one elusive promotion or to rid their inlaws so that they can lay their little grubby hands on all the moolah!

For what its worth... I've never seen a statue of Saibaba with his eyes closed... Go figure...Have you?

Cheers

Venkat's quote for the day...

There's a thin line of difference between a favour and exploitation...

-Venkatdeep, circa 2008

This is great!!

No humour here... :P

This is definitely a super feature to be included in gmail. Read here.

Cheers

Reality bites...

The latest fad on TV is to be a part of a reality show. Yep, getting locked in a glass cube with the world watching every move you make is as real as this gets. Remember your cue to fame is either to fall in love with your co-star and suffer rejection, or make a racist comment about them. That’s your one way ticket to fame! Indian co-stars are the best to make racist comments against…after all they’re the brown skinned %$#*^$ (insert word of choice here) who took away your jobs…no?!

Indian television takes reality shows to a new high. Since the total number of channels here is equal to the square of the total number of languages, add with that the number of dialects multiplied by ten, there’s never a dearth of an audience for anything. Hell, even the snake on a tree in Cubbon park hogged half an hour of limelight on TV!

Then there are always parents who love to say their kids were on TV… I mean in TV… I mean a television program… Here’s a typical conversation…

Proud parent: Hey, you know what; my kids got real talent…
Me: Yeah? That’s good…
PP: Yeah, a lot of talent…. A bundle of talent…
Me: Oh… okie
PP: Yeah…she’s made us real proud…
Me: (At this point slightly disinterested) Oh…
PP: Yeah, she was on TV…
Me: Oh… did it break?
PP: Arre…don’t do jokes yaar… She was in a TV program…
Me: Yeah...that’s great.
PP: She was selected in the thiry fourth elimination round of ‘voice of the underdog’ for hurling racist abuse and throwing her co-star literally out of the window. He didn’t survive the fall though.
Me: What’s voice of the underdog???
PP: You haven’t heard of it... It’s a reality show!!
Me: So is “America’s most wanted” dumbass!!

And the sheer number of reality shows are mind boggling…Here’s a sampler…
1. Voice of _________ (Insert place of choice… Bahamas, Afghanistan, Congo…You name it!)
2. Star of _________ (Again, insert place of choice.)
3. ___________ Idol (Cuban Idol….Chinese Idol….Bangla idol??)
4. Rising star of ________ (Kazakhstan?)
5. The great ___________ talent hunt! (Bermuda??)
6. Freakshow number One!

Some are just singing shows while others feature full fledged Britneys Pears… For your complete entertainment. Time for some trivia…. Did you know ‘Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi’ holds the record for the longest and most expensive reality show ever?!! As Scott Adams said….Who’d predict till American Idol came along that featuring bad singers would be a huge sensation?!?

And it seems that participants these days are always given extra credit for dramatization. Crying on TV is the best act that one can deliver. A list of emotions may be portrayed by that one single act of crying….
1. Damned judge! Screwed me over 2 notes! (Not currency my friends!)
2. If only I didn’t have a sore throat today I’d have made mashed potato out of my competitors!
3. Crappy audience…Didn’t vote for me because they never understood the pain of singing a B-flat note over 6 minutes!
4. Cheapo audience didn’t vote because it costs 3 bucks a SMS!
5. My imbecile three year old brother selected this song for me to sing at the finals!

If you’ve come this far and wondering what is the purpose of this post…. Nothing!
Thanks for letting me vent! :P

Go ahead… Honk!!

My deep dark world..

La Vida tagged me into this…wait.. I was afraid of tags… I was tricked!! :P
The perils of blogosphere! :(

I got to make a list of 10 of my darkest secrets…hmmm… With the memory of a fish and the intelligence of a chipmunk it’s difficult! Here’s an attempt…

1. I don’t like to watch much TV. I like watching movies, I detest soaps. I’d rather not see what Mr. X’s ex-wife’s son-in-laws step father’s grand daughter does to her neighbor’s dog. I’m probably the only one to have not watched even one episode of Friends…And probably the only Indian not to have watched DDLJ!

2. I’m a silent guy…and until someone speaks to me, I’d rather revel in my own silence. Probably a reason why I get abused by friends for not calling often!

3. I really can’t understand the nuances of a conversation. I only understand partly after the conversation is long over and I have also committed a major foot in mouth type crime! Another reason why people don’t bother telling me much…

4. I can’t flirt for nuts! (Told y’all I can’t talk…so how exactly would I be a good flirt!! :P)

5. Walking the ramp in 2nd year medicine was a terrifying experience!

6. I hate to reveal much about myself. I’d rather talk about the spider that died in Mt.Vesuvius!

7. I love to cook and I make wonderful coffee…but mom won’t let me into the kitchen! :(

8. I’d love to write more, but I’m too lazy!

9. Someday I hope to direct a movie in which I’d do a cameo appearance. And also write a book.

10. Finally!! I really haven’t mastered the art of saying ‘NO’!

Ok…maybe number 5 isn’t a deep dark secret…. I’ll add a bonus…

11. I’m a big time dreamer. I dream and dream and dream…. It’s what keeps me going.
As APJ Kalam says… ‘Dreams aren’t what you have when you sleep…they are the ones that keep you awake’!!

12. Between choosing to go out on a weekend to shop or dinner… I’d rather stay at home.

So, there you have it! I dunno whom I want to pass it on now…but I’ll add that in time…

Go ahead....Honk!

Update: I decided I'd tag Kalam and Baba for this... Sukla has already tagged Kalam...so Baba...its all yours!! :)

Goddamn pre-flash!!

Ok...This post would specifically be a technical rant for the photographically and technically inclined!!

Call it a photographers itch... I wanted to experiment with 'off-camera' flash so I could extend my photograpic creativity!! It so happens that the camera I own, a sony H5 is worthless for this since it does not have a hotshoe or pc port where I can hook up an external flash.
After sometime I realize there is a small solution... to use an optical trigger to flash the second flash.
For those who expect an explanation at this point...
An optical trigger is a small device that is connected to an external flash...and will trigger the external flash as soon as it detects another flash nearby.


The black figure is the subject...the grey is the photographer... The weird object between the subject and the camera is the flash with the optical trigger...

So... problem solved right! Apparently not yet!
Its just the beginning!!
It so happens that digital cameras use what is called 'ttl' i.e. through the lens. The camera fires a small flash before the actual flash.This pre-flash is not to be confused with the red eye reduction option that makes the flash go off thrice...
Its used to judge the exposure and exact flash power required.
It so happens that this 'pre-flash' doesn't get disabled even when the camera is switched to complete manual mode!
So, the optical trigger which fires the second flash actually fires on the pre-flash itself...thus rendering the image dark! And the only way to circumvent this problem and use an external flash is...
1. Buy a camera with hot shoe... which I'm hoping my dear blogger friends will gift me!! :P
2. Make a optical trigger which ignores this pre-flash by delaying the triggering...which again I shall rely on my dear readers to help me out of.... HEY!! Am a doctor...not an engineer!! :P

Now I feel much better!! :P

Cheers!

P.S. If you really dont understand what I've written, don't bother too much about it...

Long Long Ago....

The last day of school brings a lot of cheer and joy to all the students….After all who wanted to slog, get pulled up for not doing homework, not polishing shoes and going late! Of course, they would later crib about how they actually liked school…but that for later!

The last day of school always had a charm to it… We would all assemble in the field and the principal would go about making announcements and we would sing a few songs and then as they said “disperse” we would just run frantically wishing each other well for the holidays and disappear.

On the last day of school, after the assembly few friends hung around talking and chatting. Two of them decided they’d go watch a movie. The first problem was they had no clue which movies were running! They caught a rick and landed up at the most posh locality in town… ‘MG Road’! As they walked around aimlessly they finally landed in front of one of Bangalore’s landmark theatres ‘Plaza’. They are just in time to make it to the next show. The name of the movie was extremely deceiving. Here were two young students looking for a good, clean, fun movie like ‘American Pie’… The guy at the ticket counter didn’t give these two kids a second look and this didn’t warn them!! They assumed they looked like adults…Yeah, at 5foot 3 inches that’s difficult to manage …so shut the hell up!!!

As they proceeded into the dingy hall that from handed-down-gyan from seniors was well known to play “adult” movies, they made their way and found their respective seats. They looked around and saw lot more kids… This time their senses tickled …they knew something was wrong!But they thought it was just a fear that someone who knew them would sight them at Oh-My-God-Plaza!! They thought they still had time to run out and either tel ticket-counter-uncle to take back the tickets or sell it to someone else....

But, that was too late! The movie started. Credits rolled, and then they realized their folly… the movie wasn’t just ‘Babe’…. It was ‘Babe-Pig in the City’.

One of them I guess forgot….the other blogged about it 10 years later!!

Honk!! My dear Bloggers!! Honk!!

Embarrassment gastronomique…

There are times when some events make us feel like idiots….some small and some large!! Foot in mouth syndromes which take the fizz outta life…
And some embarrassing moments that make you quite unacceptable to society….. No not the time when a guy scratches his balls in public and is seen by his prospective love bird!
I tell you…doctors are a difficult bunch …female doctors even more so!
And I must tell you…they can be quite judgmental…..so….ahem!! Whack!! Back to topic!
One of those days when there’s a spring in my step, a twinkle in my eye and the morning I woke up and said… what a great day!! Nothing had gone wrong quite as yet!
I was sitting with a bunch of interns and PG’s in the hospital, talking my head off about how quickly internship went by!! (Of course I did skip the part of it when I actually cribbed about internship going too slowly and getting work dumped on by lazy co-workers! Hey good things did happen too ya know!!) Ah… well…back to topic… We were speaking about all topics under the sun….That fateful moment my phone rang with a rather obnoxious tune that remotely resembled “the good, the bad and the ugly”. For once it wasn’t anyone offering me a free credit card or life insurance. It was some violinist who happened to get my number from a common friend and was pestering me to build him an electric violin. I launched into a big lecture on the types of electric violins and features of an electric violin. I was explaining to him why I wouldn’t be able to make one for him… I was a beginner and he was pro… In the middle of the conversation, somewhere between steel strings and price I never realized a very important factor. I kept rattling on never realizing something was amiss. And, then the most unexplainable event happened…while I was still talking on the phone it rang…. Yes, you read right….My phone rang with the same pathetic sadly composed good, bad and ugly tune!
My heart skipped a beat…I was speechless for a moment… the room was silent… I had kept speaking on the phone never realized that my phone had quit on me and the connection was cut!! Oh… I had committed a major faux pas!
It certainly wasn’t something I could explain!
Nevertheless it did provide some blog fodder….

What was your most embarrassing moment? (Ha! Like your gonna tell me here! )

Go ahead and HONK!

Why ain’t I writing anything?!

The last time I wrote a post on the blog was sometime on Jan 19^th!
It certainly isn’t a lack of ideas that’s kept me from writing… (Just in case you wondered!)
There’s only one…one single word that explains why I haven’t written…. It’s called ‘LAZY’.
If you could read here about all the things that happen when I have an idea and there’s something that makes that article feel incomplete….this is the explanatory post….the part that’s incomplete in that post is the part that says “I’m just too lazy to write”!!
And, that’s exactly why I end up reading other blogs and wonder why on earth I didn’t finish that article before!!
Linked below is a post by a fellow blogger about a topic I had thought of writing about but never finished…I’d still write about it….hmmmm….but I’m too lazy!!

La Vida’s blog about the modern woman (Brilliant, I must say!)

How many bloggers feel the same way???

Go ahead and HONK!!

Cheers

Orkut Says!!

Today's fortune: You and your wife will be happy in your life together

WTF!!!
If you've sen Russell Peters show where he talks bout being Jamaican and says, "...you know singing reggae, and having kids you don't know about..."
Well, someone please point out that we indians may be having wives we dont know about!!!

Whats your fortune on orkut today??!!!?