It’s good to be infamous

The verdict is out. It’s good to be bad and it’s bad to be good. No tongue in cheek intended here. All I’m trying to say is that naughty is in and nice is out. Look at Himesh Reshammiya, Mallika Sehrawat, Rakhi Sawant, Rahul Mahajan, Payal Rohatgi, Monika Bedi and the likes. All these people have made news for all the wrong reasons. Himesh Reshammiya’s nasal tones were mocked at while Rakhi and Mallika were despised for their bold clothing. Rahul Mahajan has had a tryst with drugs and Payal Rohatgi is infamous for her cheeky dance numbers. But what is astonishing is that each one of them have converted their negative strides into their publicity vehicles and marched towards success!

You can’t deny Reshammiya’s act in Karzz and Aap Ka Surroorrrrrr. And well… we can’t event stop ranting about Big Boss 2 and the gossips there in.

Some of the global stars follow the same league. Look at Britney Spears, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Kate Moss. Who remembers their jigs and jives? All we remember is that they were in news for doping, drug abuse, marrying out of turn etc etc.

The moral of the story is – It’s good to be infamous than be famous.

There’s a website dedicated to infamous people. It’s called - http://www.hallofinfamy.com/. This is a treatise to all these so called ‘infamous’ personalities from world over.

My questions still is – Is it good to be infamous? Share your answers in the ‘comments’ section.

Google Chrome feels much better

The verdict is out. Google’s new browser – christened Google Chrome - is a good experience. It is certainly a respite from the traditional IE which hangs very often and asks you foolishly to send an error report to Microsoft. If one guy has lost his broadband windows to some inactive page, I presume he’ll be frustrated. There is not much point in asking him to send an error report to Microsoft. All that guy needs is a new broadband window where his pages are retrieved. This happens in Mozilla and Google Chrome is one step ahead. It can import all the active broadband pages from the browser on to itself to prevent data loss.

Google Chrome was out on September 2. I, much like many other geeks downloaded it the same day, and made it the default browser. It was a good experience to open web pages in Chrome. The name is chick and so is its presentation. The tabs are rich blue in colour and the sites open faster without break. The logo is vibrant has a mix of daring red, green and yellow in it. The browser can –

• Predicts the possible urls while user is typing it on the browser. This makes it easier for user to hit at the right address
• Save all the pages and present it as the frequent pages visited by the user
• Store the last page (and even the sub-page) visited by the user for quick recall and reference. Of course one can change the setting and can get rid of this feature, but it will be useful when one needs to go to sub-links again and again say share brokerage sites, news sites etc
• Has a ‘+’ icon to add a tab instantly to the active window
• Downloading (documents/excels/presentations) happens in just seconds. The downloaded documents appears as an icon on the left-bottom corner of computer for easy recall and access

Over all there are mixed reviews about the product. People have liked its easy loading and recall but have mooted down its FAQs.

What’s your take about it? Have you downloaded or tried the Chrome? Are you excited about a new browser service?

Do post your opinions and reviews in the comments section.

Back to blogging

Am writing after a long-long hiatus. Six months to be precise. Have been working round the clock, finishing the assignments and then running home more often to catch up with parents. The last bit is very unusual for me as I am perceived as somebody who is happy go lucky and visits home once in six months. Actually somewhere I also agree with this perception. I was happy with mom-dad and bro coming down to Delhi often and me visiting them once in three or four months.

However, things have changed now. Something in me urges me to be home more often, to cook for mom more often, to drive down dad to his office more often. Have been going home every months for the last four months and still I don’t seem to have enough of that pace and mom-dad.

During this transformation I thought I would delete this blog. I have always guarded my privacy and don’t want people to peep in my life. Then wise notes said why delete the damn blog? Why not rejuvenate it. Give is a classy look and feel and update it more often with things that happen around me. So, this bog will now have less personal musings and more of my observational notes. So here goes the blog again.

And yes life certainly could not be better than this… :)

Seafood extravaganza

I'd had enough of this emotional crap from people around and wanted a change. And guess where I headed to? Holiday.... Himalayas....Home..... ???

Nah. It had to be food.... silly.

A dear friend has an exclusive membership with the Taj, which allows him a fancy discount on the buffet there. He invited all of us (4 devils) to the Taj (the one near Dhaula Kuan) for a lavish lunch. Without sparing a thought, me and J picked our best summer T-shirts and slim fit jeans and headed on for the culinary fair. Other two chaps were to join us at the venue itself.

Me and J believe that we have tasted most of the non-veg delicacies and well... we were in for some shock. We met up with the other two chaps in the hotel lobby and were pretty pleased by the ambience. That place had more foreigners than our desi crowd. And somewhere the moronic Indian in me swelled with pride. We chose a cushy corner near the swimming pool.

We headed for the starters. Other two chaps wasted their time in trying the soups, while me and J picked up the delicious tikkas. After all, chicken is more healthy than the vegetable stock... ain’t it? :-P

After gulping down at east 5-6 pieces of chicken and fish tikkas, we headed to the main course. Any satiated person would have not touched the main course .... but me and J are exceptions.
We walked around the buffet table to have a look at the offerings. They were serving chicken curry, smoked salmon, amritsari fish, squids and prawns. Hang on… did I say squids. Now that was one creature I hadn’t chewed. Me and J looked at each other and picked up four pieces of squids each. We weren’t too sure if we would like it, so we filled our plates with some portions of chicken stuff also.

One back to the table, we were wondering as to how to go about with this squidy thing. I had seen a squid earlier also in college. But, that time I was dissecting formalin soaked squid. This time I was chewing a baked squid.

For those who are not sure what a squid looks likes, let me explain about it. A squid is a quiet sea creature, white, of the size of a human fist, has a cylindrical body and has tentacles for its head.

I picked up the fork and knife and tried to cut into the squid. I tried gently, but it didn’t work. Then I was rather too hard with the culinary utensils and lo… the squid got dissected in to two. I picked up the first piece, it was hard to chew, rather very difficult to chew. It was tasteless, except the juicy sea weeds that had been baked in it and was is seemed like a plastic inside my mouth. Even after baking, the squid’s skin had not become soft. It was rather too tough to chew. I munched it for next five minutes but still couldn’t get to chew it probably. It seemed as if the squid was swimming in my mouth. I gulped it down my throat and drained it with a glass of water. I got to understand, seafood is not for me. I should rather stick to the red and white meat but not sea food. No more seafood adventures.

boulevard of broken dreams

Many a dreams shattered,
Many misconceptions cleared,
What remains is silence,
--- complete silene---
And aloofness,
For what we thought belonged to us,
Was a mirage of someboy's aspirations,
And now we stand alone,
Deserted, shunned and stunned...

Moments to remember...

My sweetie pal Aps sent across a sweet couplet. It goes -

When summer turns to winter,
And the present disappears,
The laughter we were glad to share
Will echo through the years.
Though other nights,
And other days,
May find us gone our separate ways,
We will have these moments to remember.

Nice one .... and is actually the summary of our lives. We meet lot of people, grow thick bonds and then head along in separate direction.

'G' left the workplace some days ago, my group has shrunk to just three. Me, Aps and Nidz - are the three musketeers braving the tides these days. Don't know what will happen in the days to come.....

Apna Koi Thikana Nahi

Well… this is just the last line from the pop-sufi song by Atif Aslam. He says that he is a vagabond and doesn’t know where he is headed to. I am really found of this song and can really empathize as to what must have prompted Atif to write this song. This song has been my G-mail tag line many times and now it is the heading of my blog. Cool… great going Yoj.

Almost everybody must have gone through tikes when they feel lot, left out and utterly confused ass to what will happen next. I’m going through this phase too… there’s work, there’s studies, parents, friends, office….. just too much happening at the same time. I got my exams in December. This is my last semester. I’ll be left with a project study after which my MBA will be over. Needless to say that I’m stuck with assignments, and lo there will be lot of smart asses from my class who will just ‘buy’ the assignments or will copy assignments form some seniors. And considering that I ain’t proficient in any of these skills, I am left with a ream of paper and Reynolds to finish the task.

Yes, kids buy assignment these days. I was totally unaware of this concept till some time ago. These things didn’t happen when I was graduating. Then, my dearest bro, introduced me to this concept. He had to finish couple of assignments on banking during his MBA days . So this dude went around seeking information, crunching it and putting it together while other from his class sort the services if ‘pappiji’. Im told pappiji is very popular with all the lads of Punjab University. One just has to explain his requirement (what project, which segment, which segment, which teacher) and pappiji will present a meticulously done assignment in 10 days flat. Lot of Arun’s classmates ‘bought’ the assignments and they got real good marks. My bro could only land up with average marks then since his assignment had lot of loopholes. I suppose it wasn’t done up as ‘professionally’ as pappiji had done the other assignment. So, for next semester Arun Sharma too sought the services of dear pappiji and was happy with the results.

He has promised that he’ll ‘arrange’ for my project too. So I’m little hopeful about it. Rest I don’t know how I’ll finish my assignments, especially when I’m going through maddening times at office.