Friday Fun: Fact/Fiction (also, Fpoor Fpuns)

What you didn't know that you always wanted to know about me. Or some funny line like that.
(Warning: This may or may not be true)
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A die-hard King Kong fan, I signed up immediately when asked if I wanted to train at a secret ninja school*. I left within a week though out of disillusion - I hadn't realised they were experts in guerrila warfare.



* If you're interested, I could tell you where it is, but then I'd have....you know the rest.

Quote of the Day: "I'm 26 years old. What the hell else am I going to do with myself?"

- Andy Roddick; when asked after his quarterfinal match at the Australian Open as to what kept him motivated in trying to win a Major five years after he won his only one (in which period he has been repeatedly rebuffed by a certain genius from the land of Lindt), as he's considered to be too old to seriously compete against players who're too young to even legally drink alcohol.

I've never been a fan of Roddick's power game, which was why The Rise of Federer was particularly delightful, but I've always enjoyed his (many) post-match one-liners* and admired his impressive dignity and good naturedness in dealing with the fact that just one man could deny him so much.

I don't have yearly wish-lists, but if I did, I'd want Federer to win the French and Roddick to win at least one more Major (preferably this year).


Banner of the Day - "Shh. Quiet. Genius at work" (during the Federer qf).

Statistic of the Day - Federer reaches his 19th consecutive semi-final at a Major. That's almost five years that he's made it to that round of each of the four Majors. The next-best in all tennis history? Ivan Lendl....with 10 in a row.

He is that good.


* Remember his interview after the Wimbledon final ("I threw the bathroom sink at him, but he got the bathtub and threw it right back")? Brilliant.

Friday Fun: Fpoor Fpuns

Q: Why was the little Indian boy expecting his phoren-return cousins to be sprouting real wings?
A: Because everyone kept referring to them as Par-desis.


Thank you, thank you. Please contact my agent for all bookings.

Greyness has cut large swathes through his hair. He smiles a lot and maintains a constant banter, but his eyes look out the world beneath a furrowed brow with weary resignation and some fear. He tries to sell me something else - anything else - besides the one little item that I'm buying only to get some change to pay off the cybercafe next door, rattling off a list of all that he stocks in an ever-quickening desperation as he sees yet another chance to make some much-needed money slip away.

I wait him out patiently, smiling a bit to ease the pain of rejection, even as I remember all those times past when a young me waited (im)patiently, shouting out a list of much-needed items (blue sequins! gold ribbons! gluestick! glazed paper!) for some school project, while he bustled about, promising to serve you in one minute, just one minute before blatantly moving on to another young brat, keeping the lot of us entranced like a magician, giving us just enough of what we wanted to keep us waiting, but never giving us so much attention that a newcomer might be put off and leave.

His spiel comes to a reluctant close, and as he fiddles in an empty-sounding drawer, I look around and try to remember where each of those then-so-important items were stored. And I realise then that this shop, whose dusty interiors I then took as a sign of forgotten treasures, now just inspires a desire to give it a good cleaning and make it less dingy. I know then that he's not the only one who's become older. Jaded. Weary.

I leave him then, sitting with the ghosts of clamouring throngs, back into a world that's advanced into graphic presentations and virtual presences and global diaries. Back onto pavements that have been upgraded, past new shops that tempt you into moving into a new age of comfort and functionality. Into a world where he and his shop have quickly morphed into dinosaurs, and as quickly, are going extinct.

...I should have bought some sequins.

Contentment

Wada-pav - Check.
Brun pav - Check
Chikoos - Check.
Guavas with chilli and salt - Check.
Home-made idlis - Check.
Home-made filter coffee - Check.
Dahi sev batata puri - Check.
Puranpoli with amti - Check.
Parsi-style omelettes - Check.
...eaten with Maggi Hot-and-Sweet Tomato Chilli Sauce (It's Different) - Check.
Greasy biryani - Check.
Tandoori paneer pizza - Check.
Ever-filling Gujarati thali - Check.
Indian-Chinese hakka noodles - Check.
Shrikhand with hot puris - Check.
Walnut chocolate fudge - Check.
Sitaphal ice-cream - Check.
Fresh jalebis - Check.
Rasmalai - Check.
Kheer - Check.

Lost weight despite all the gorging - Check.

....ah well, we can't have it all.

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Hello poppets. Normal service is being resumed - once I get through the 500-odd posts that are waiting with ill-concealed irritation to be acknowledged.

Manual of Life - Alternative Definitions

Set-up
n.,
Being shifted from a centre-row seat (which you didn't want) to a window seat (which you did) five minutes before you board

....only to discover that the four rows next to your new seat have six kids (between the ages of seven months to two years) straddling them, all of whom fall asleep only in the last half-hour of a nine-hour flight after having cackled, wailed, screeched, bounced, and romped about the entire time, while being almost entirely disregarded by the people who birthed them.


Related:
* Iron-willed self-restraint
* Himalayan headache
* Mandatory parenthood suitability tests
* Oi, smug lazy jerk, why don't you at least try to amuse/distract/soothe your kid who's cranky and bewildered because of being cooped up in a stuffy, high-pressured tube?

The news channels have five lines of pointless text, relegating the actual visual to a corner of the screen. The Sunday papers are down to 28 pages, with a quarter of them just full of ads. Those working at the Souk and the Shamiana are are universally grateful, with nary a sneer in sight. The buildings get taller and taller. Some dividers now have plants in them. And several old haunts are now merely extinct.

But....the crowds on trains are still a seething mass of elbows, sweaty shirts and chameli tel-seeped hair. The traffic is still the real-life equivalent of dodgem cars. The sun is still bloody hot this side of the world. The hawkers still rend the mid-afternoon peace with drawn out promises of a plentiful bounty. The old neighbours still spend their evenings in quiet contemplation while staring at the passing world. And the crows still haven't forgotten how to wake you up at 4am with their daily chorus.

The little things, baby. They're still the same.

PS. Travelling back home means three things - family, friends, food. Posts will be infrequent, comments rarer. The backlog of unread posts is a task best left for newer times.

When Indians think of Zoroastrians, we think of many things immediately.

We think of the Taj, and Jamshedpur, and Godrej steel cupboards, and meat-orgies in the guise of wedding dinners, and little Irani cafes, and those mysterious fire-temples, and Duke's Lemonade, and generous educational charities, and little enclaves in prime Mumbai localities, and how they pronounce 'द' as 'ड' (ask one to pronounce dahi. Guaranteed hilarity).

We think higher education, and hot girls whose parents let them wear a lot more less than most other parents do, and boys with a fascination for Yezdi and Bullet bikes, and white-collar jobs, and large numbers of unmarried old cranks, and dark woodern furniture, and depressing Canada-based writers, and beautiful embroidered sarees, and a higher-than-average level of eccentricity.

We think of them as a community that is better off as a whole, than most others in the country.

Which is why people get suprised when they find out that there are poor Zoroastrians too, and that they also exist in rural areas, as this article highlights.

A related video can be found here (warning: It's in Gujarati), while the actual film is linked to in the last update below.

Not quite the image that first comes to mind, huh?

Related pics and info here.


Update: And a look at those Zoroastrians still living surviving in the land where the religion was founded.

Update 2: An earlier post of mine about the community.

Late, late Update: The article's actually written by Kaevan, who has a couple of interesting blogs on Parsis. He was also kind enough to provide the link to the actual film.

BRING BACK FRAGGLE ROCK !

......
sorry. Random nostalgic outburst over.

(A belated) Friday Fun: Fpoor Fpun

Q. Why does Bill Gates love it when people now talk of the 'winter holidays' rather than the 'Christmas holidays'?
A. Because it's more PC, less Mac.

Umm.

I'm certain there's a word that describes an instinctive reaction in some people to avoid for as long as possible any new thing that is glowingly praised by everybody else. And I'm sure we've all experienced it.

My best example of this phenomenon was refusing to read GoST for about three years after it had been published. I was certain I would hate it, that it was pretentious, and was only being promoted by people who refused to accept anything but novels as 'literature' (I really must do that post on defending SF&F).

Of course, I ended up loving it.

Now, in all fairness, I've only read it the once, making it one of those few books in my collection that I haven't re-read, and one of a very small number that I claim to like but haven't re-read. So, if I read it today, eight years after I first did, I possibly might hate it. Who knows?

What I do know is that the woman herself - and all her other writing - evoke mixed feelings in me. Strong mixed feelings. I mean, I know she's an idealistic nutjob, and she waffles - oh how she waffles - but she does occasionally come up with some really relevant questions and opinions.

Anyway, the point of all that intro, was to point you to her latest article. So much waffling, and so many random tangents, but some very valid issues too. Especially that bit about one particularly self-important news anchor.


And yes, posts will probably be infrequent for the near future, and the ones that do occur will probably only be related to this topic.

Ugh.

I'm tempted to rip apart this 'defense' given by That Annoying Reporter, but I can't be bothered. I'm just not going to give her - or her channel - any more of my time.


I even had to create a whole new label because of her.