Humour
The random things tag
Madhu, a good friend, tagged me on Facebook. Since more people read my blog than my notes, and my notes are imported into Facebook anyway, I decided to do this on my blog. So, here we go. The rules are simple. Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.
Here we go!
- I am short-tempered and hyper-sensitive. But, I can keep my cool very long while teaching.
- I love bike rides. When the weather is cool, the road empty, and someone else is driving that is.
- One thing I hate doing is washing the dishes. I can cook, clean, mop, rinse. But dishes make me cry. 🙁
- I can’t resisting blogging about things that I find especially provocative.
- I am a compulsive debater, much to the chagrin of my close friends. This is because they find that they can never talk sense into me without me disagreeing.
- I love spinach. Of any kind and in any form.
- I am vegetarian, although the roasted chicken in the oven of my neighbourhood butcher in Paris looked delicious. 😛
- I find it difficult to talk to idiots, and to those who refuse to recognise they are idiots.
- People can make friends with me if they just spoke to me intelligently.
- When I get too angry, I start crying. So, people don’t know if I am sad or angry.
- I love to sing, even if others don’t like listening to me.
- I hate dancing. I have been resisting all attempts to make me dance.
- I cannot stand physical activity. It bores me, and tires me out.
- I like kids only if they don’t cry.
- I am greatly affected by personal insults and name-calling, even if I ignore it sometimes. That explains my decision to delete some of the comments to my previous posts.
- I find it difficult to think so much about myself.
- I sometimes wish I had a better sense of humour when I write. My friends accuse me of being too serious on my blog.
- In real life, I am rarely confrontational. I avoid conflict situations and try to maintain a balance in life.
- When someone says something nasty to me, I am incapable of coming up with a suitable comeback. It only strikes me 5 hours later.
- I am a punctuality freak. I get paranoid if I am not at least 15 minutes early to office.
- I would never forgive someone who bitched about me behind my back.
- Sometimes I wish people would shut up and let me concentrate on my work.
- I love talking. I was in fact labelled Ms. Talkative at work. 🙂
- I like dressing up sometimes. But most of the time, I don’t even use powder or cream.
- And finally, I quite organised. I can make to-do lists and cross them off periodically.
There! Now, I simply refuse to bug 25 other people to do this. Anyone is free to pick this up. But, I would greatly appreciate it if Cris could do it, since she seems to be the only one around to have not done it yet. Anyway, here we go! And also IHM, Imp’s Mom, Dinesh and Nimmy. 🙂
I have a dream…
I have a dream. Of stepping out one day to find that people only use the horn when they really need to. But, I have no hope that the dream will actually come true. We Indians have a highly contagious disease. That of honking. My Scooty Pep’s horn stopped functioning about 10 days ago. was too lazy to get it repaired. So, I tried managing without. Trust me, it’s not that difficult. Yesterday, I finally managed to get it repaired. And I found that I honked when just the previous day, I got by perfectly well without it. I realised I honked impatiently, and absolutely unnecessarily, at least 4 time in the day.
I am no exception. In fact, I belong to the minuscule section of the Indian population who hates to honk. If I misused the horn so much, imagine what a honking addict would do. My grandmother’s house is in a residential area off Nelson Manickam Road that’s relatively quiet. I was sitting there yesterday when a great big Tata Sumo starts honking incessantly and insistently just before the house. It gave me a headache. Wonder why he found the need to honk so loudly in a perfectly calm residential area.
While I am on this topic, I also have a few suggestions for those of you who drive.
- If you are at a traffic signal, WAIT!!!! Neither you, nor the guy in front of you can move until the light turns green. If you so desperately want to jump the signal, you are free to do so, but you have no business abusing the poor, law-abiding motorist in front of you.
- When you come on the wrong side of the road, you are breaking a law. Your incessant honking or flashing headlights makes NO difference whatsoever to the motorist coming on the right side, nor does it exonerate you from the offence you commit.
- While on the question of headlights, DO NOT flash those lights in high-beam on a dark road in the middle of the road. It makes it impossible for the other motorists to drive.
- If you are a female driver, and are scared of going beyond 20 kilometres an hour on an empty road, please drive on the extreme left. Do NOT force other motorists to follow you car/bike at that miserable speed. This also applies to senior citizens who insist on driving despite the fact that they can neither see properly nor hear properly.
- If you are driving a share auto (one of those monstrosities that you see on Chennai roads), please stop at the SIDE of the road to pick up a passenger. Do NOT stop in the fast lane and then curse loudly when the poor motorcyclist behind you hits your bumper. Also applies for normal autos.
- Finally, if you want to take a left turn, please DO NOT overtake a vehicle going straight, on the right and then swerve left. Not only is it dangerous, but also inspires the motorist you just overtook to stop you and practise his/her karate on you.
So there! I can’t think of any more right away. But, your contributions are most welcome.
Of bride (bridegroom) hunting…
Just saw a series of absolutely hilarious posts on bride hunting. The Fool recounts how he "saw" prospective brides, 7 in all, and came out unscathed, still a bachelor (I think.) Read them here, here, here and here. I envy this guy. How can anyone write so well?? Sigh! Thankfully, I have never been at any end of this ridiculous concept. I have a boyfriend. So, no bridegroom hunting for me. Yippee!!!!
Music?? Really?
One day, a few weeks ago, my zealous neighbours decided that their children must learn Carnatic music. A commendable desire I must say. So, they set out to find someone who would teach the kids Carnatic music. True to form, they found someone to teach the said kids, how to sing. Or, so they said. When I first heard Mrs. Paattu Teacher, I assumed she was just having a bad day that stopped her from singing well. I decided I should give her the benefit of doubt.
It has been 3 weeks since that fateful day. She somehow always turned up for classes when I was out doing something else. Call it her luck or mine, the fact remained that I never got to hear her sing since Day 1. Then suddenly, all that changed drastically last evening. I was at home, trying to watch TV, but without much success. I kept getting distracted by mum’s talking. Suddenly, I heard someone shout. Startled out of my wits, I decided to investigate. I stepped out of my cosy flat no. 24, only to realise that the noise was coming from No. 27. I stepped closer cautiously, not wanting to interrupt some kind of fight. I had a rather nasty surprise when I realised that the shouts I had heard were actually Mrs. Paattu Teacher’s feeble attempts at teaching the poor kids music.
Imagine my consternation when I figured out that the said Pattu Teacher could not hold a tune for the life of her. My neighbours, in their enthusiasm to teach their kids music, forgot to verify if the Paattu Teacher actually knew any paattu at all. My attempts at convincing them of the futility of teaching the kids music by appointing someone who barely knows the difference between noise and music have, by far been entirely in vain. I am hoping that they see sense and get the woman to actually teach music and not some vague song she likes to label as keerthanai. Heaven help anyone who actually tries learning anything from her!
PS: For my non Tamil-speaking readers: Paattu means song and keerthanai is a musical composition. Please leave a comment for any further clarifications, or contact your nearest Carnatic music teacher, who will probably explain better than me. 🙂
Mon cher Monoprix!
Doing some last minute grocery shopping at 9 15 pm in France can sometimes be an amusing experience. I decided to pick up some food from Monoprix because I needed oil and milk. I figured it would not hurt to pick up some rice and vegetables too. I had nearly finished my shopping when Ana came up and asked where she could find eggs. That reminded me that I needed milk as the 4 weeks-old bottle I had at home had gone bad last night. I noticed a banner telling us that the eggs had been shifted to the shelves near the milk. But pray, where do you find the milk? There it was, in tiny lettering, telling us to follow the markings on the floor to get to the milk. Frankly, I felt like a bloody fool following little blue arrows on the floor in the quest of milk. After walking for about 30 seconds, Ana and I actually found the shelves.
But horror of horrors! My favourite brand of whole cream milk was nowhere to be found. I found myself wondering if I should just go to Champion the next day to pick it up. But, being the lazy girl I am, I decided to look for alternatives. I found this cute bottle with a pink lid. Now, the lid of the bottle of whole cream milk is red. I simply assumed that the colour code had changed and picked up the bottle rather confidently. And what do I find? Marked in bold letters on the bottle are the words, “Lait spécial croissance. Conseillé pour des 10 mois à 3 ans.”
Trust me, I was torn between embarrassment, amusement and frustration. Ana cast this amused look at me and said, “Sorry sweetheart! But you are a wee bit older than that.” At which my embarrassment and frustration gave way to simple amusement. Why on earth would I want to buy “lait spécial croissance” at the ripe old age of 24? I certainly don’t need any help to grow any more. At 5 feet and 9 inches, I tower over most Indian women…and men. The last thing I need is special milk to contribute to any more bone growth.
Anyway, this incident was good distraction after a long, hard day of tests and more tests. Maybe I should think of going to Monoprix more often to amuse myself. After all, laughter is the best medicine!