The Collection

During one of our team meeting we had the usual ‘tell about urself’ rounds. Everyone said the oft repeated ‘I love Music, Movie, reading, cricket, traveling’ when they spoke of their hobbies. So I said ‘I collect things’ the whole group started laughing … I have absolutely no clue why.

So what all do I collect? I decided to make a list of things I Used to/Still collect over the years

Note book Name Labels – all kinds of name labels, I think I never actually used any on my notebooks!! They are still lying in some drawer at home.

Match box labels – threw them away

Cigarette box - Threw them away

Match box and Cigarette labels were used as some sort of playing cards … I don’t remember what the game used to be though.

Stickers – Still in my drawer at home

Stamp – Still have a couple of albums lying in one of my drawers at home, many of them were stolen from mom’s collection… and most probably it will be handed over to the next generation!

Coins – gave them to my brother for his collection. I once found a real OLD one from the gravel that was bought home for some construction… and that started the coin collection era ;)

Currency – Spend it all :D

Butterfly – This was an interesting one , even used to chase butterflies with a net for some time, after some futile attempts to preserves them, gave it up. Killing beautiful butterflies aint all that fun either!

Feather – Ended up collecting too many chicken feathers,threw them out

Leaves – gave it up after I figured that I didn’t know the names of the plants.
‘Aaah, this is the plant with long leaf, and this is from the one with the round leaf!!’ … u get the picture

Hot Wheel (Toy car) – Still have 60 odd cars

G I Joe Figures – Have more than 45 of ‘em, Quite a good collection, I also have a good collection of G.I Joe vehicles, and artillery. Even managed to make barracks and bridges for them, I even mixed and matched some of the guys …arms of Gung-Ho ,body of Shipwreck and head of Scrap Iron … made a whole new generation of Joes and Cobra’s

Hot wheels and G I Joes are safe inside a Cupboard with glass pane, with the keys conveniently “Missing” to keep away kids :D

Sea Shells – this is something I bring back home EACH time I go to the beach… but if never stays for more than 2 days …but still I ‘Collect’ them each time I go to the beach!

Mobile Recharge Cards – recharge cards of Mobile phones, is a recent one.

Ceramic Figurines – gave them to mom’s collection because there is no place to display them at my room, and it is difficult to keep them dusted! I love the cute small figurines; still buy them for mom whenever I find good ones.

The Weird one

Skulls - :D yep that’s right,itz a Very small one only a couple of em till now .. started off with the skull of a crane, then a rat, then the usual Chicken and a few other birds… cant keep it inside the house … mom will break my skull then. So kept them hidden in a big pot,on the terrace outside my room back home… last time I checked , I found a rat's skull with a beak! I really wanted a snake skull… will find one someday…. It would be easy to start a good collection … but truth is I am scared of living in a house with skulls stored in one room :D so I think that is one “Dead” collection.

The Current Craze

Comics – Superhero comics , collect Batman, Xmen, Spiderman ( most of their series) but not a big collector of other superheroes. Calvin & Hobbes is one comic strip I used to take printouts and collect , but a new collection called ‘The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” has come out, it haseach and every one of the Strips drawn by the cartoonist in the 10 year when Calvin & Hobbes were around… …. By the looks of it I’ll be kissing good bye to half a month’s salary in Dec!!

Future Plans

Miniature bottle – Plan to collect miniature bottles soon, as I find place to keep them

Crystal Figurine – As soon as I Start Earning enuff to Start a collection

CD/DVD – Once I buy a good Home Theater and move into a bigger place.

I might have missed out a few ... will be adding them when i remember :D

Just curious .... what do you collect?

Gifts

I was watching the serial ‘According to Bex’ yesterday. It is Bex’s birthday and the guys in the series want to buy her a gift, and each of them comes to her and asks her what she wants, and like a Typical Female, she wouldn’t tell … and wants the guy to ‘Put some thought into it’ ….

They showed a scene where Bex is anchoring a discussion on ‘Why men are crap at buying gifts’

Is that true?

Guys have a tendency to think

‘I’ll give a cheque /voucher which he/she can use to buy something he/she likes, instead of me buying something that he/she might not like’

Guys, this works well if u are buying the gift for a guy ,BUT it is the biggest mistake we can make when it is for a girl, buy them something … buy them something absolutely useless … they will like it better than the cheque. Actually it turns out to be cheaper too ;) buy them a bunch of flowers, or chocolate and you got yourself a very happy girl.

Girls on the other hand usually spend too much time in the shop, checking out things and invariably end up buying some mushy message wall hanging, or something that can be kept on your desk.. C’mon girls … have you seen a guy’s desk? Where do you think he will find space to keep it? I’m NOT telling not to buy us gifts :) buy us something useful…

My friend bought me a ‘Scrabble’ I still haven’t opened it, I am waiting for my next birthday, she has promised to buy me a dictionary and come play scrabble wit me. I don’t think she will keep the promise since she won’t be in town for my next birthday. But then that is one gift I wont forget :).

The best dialogue in the episode of ‘According to Bex’ was that of a guy who goes

‘364 days of the Year, you tell us that we don’t understand you, and on this one day you expect us to be Mind readers!’

Girls IT IS TRUE… we are crap at buying gifts … so help us, tell us what you want.

Till that happens I will be on the safer side , Bunch of Flowers & a Box of chocolate it is.

PS: Make sure you dont tell all the guys you want the same thing.I remember once i told i wanted a Nail Cutter and ended up getting 4 of em!

Will figure this out?

One day I was having coffee with my friend, talking about everything in general and the guy she had a crush on in particular ;)

“I don’t mind if he flirts with other girls.”

“Then?”

“I’d have a problem if is close to another girl.”

“Close as in Close friend?”

“Yep, I’d have a problem with that. Any girl will have a problem with that”

“You gotta be kidding me”

I know more than a couple of girls whom I consider very close friends, INCLUDING the one I was talking to! So I set out to prove that she was just an exception. After all why would a girl have a problem with the guy having a close female friend, when she knows that they are just friends, but not have problems with him flirting with other girls?

I went to other friend

“Imagine you are my gf, I have another female friend whom I am close to, and I flirt with other girls. Who would you consider to be a threat to you?”

“It would be Your Close friend”

DAMN!! These girls think alike .I need to find someone else to ask this to, so I find another one.

“Imagine you are my gf, I have another female friend whom I am close to, and then there is this Real HOT Chick whom I am flirting with. Who would you consider a threat to you?”

“This is a tough one, but I’d be more concerned about the friend”

“WAT??? What about the hot chick? Why don’t you ask a few of your friends who ACTUALLY have a boyfriend and tell me”

This cant be happening!! How could I be 3-0 down?? There must be at least who think other wise.

She messages after sometime

“I asked a couple of them and they all said the same thing”

I gave up.

Next day I asked my roomie

“Dai, Imagine you are my gf, I have this HOT female friend, my Very Close friend, and there is this ok looking girl that I am flirting with. Who would you consider a threat to you?”

“HAH, I know the answer to this!

It is the Chick you are flirting with.”

Give it up buddy. We’ll never understand them!

Patience is a Virtue

Patience is a virtue. And I think I am a very patient person. I was not born patient. It takes a lot of help to become patient. I must thank the computer in my room for helping me become a patient person. My comp is a 64 mb, 633 MHz P3. Be it playing new games or trying out software, my comp taught me that Patience is the Key. I never knew that NFS was so much fun in slow-motion.

After a while my computer decided that I have graduated from my ‘Basic’ Patience training and needed to be on the ‘Intermediate’ level. It got together with the keyboard and started my training; the space bar, the ‘a’ and the ‘i’ key decided to stop working. Now this was a bit tougher than the Basic level, but I managed to clear that too.Other keys were introduced gradually to this list, and it helped My patience was growing.

All was not well with my computer and the keyboard. There was major communication gap between them, the keyboard decided when it wanted to work and when it didn’t, when I type something, the keyboard decided to tell the comp a completely different thing. To overcome this test of patience, I typed in all the characters and Numbers and started using the mouse to copy paste them to write what I wanted. Now the keyboard has decided that it wanted to Quit. It doesn’t work for my comp anymore. But with the mouse and the full character set on a notepad + my now ‘Expert’ level Patience I work very well on my comp.

Now, that my computer has finished teaching me patience. It is going to help me relieve stress. I read somewhere that smashing stuff helps in relieve stress.Oh, How I love my computer.

It is times like this, when you are waiting for someone to come back online half an hour after they said 1 sec that you realize that Patience is really your virtue.

Eight Legged Monsters

I sure would love to meet Spiderman, but the spiders … No Thanks. Arachnophobia, Is it hereditary?.. It sure seems to run in my family. We are a family of 5 (now it is 7 including bro-in-law and niece), and 4 out of the 5 are shit scared of spiders. Dad being the only exception. And it is pretty much the same story in every family on mom’s side. All of mom’s sisters and brother, and most of the kids are scared of spiders. Maybe it is a genetic problem passed on to us from mom’s ancestors!!

This is the usual scenario at home, evening we will be in the living room watching TV, one of us decides to have a bath and heads of towards the bathroom, then the bloodcurdling scream

“MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

Mom springs into action, within seconds she appears with a broom in her hand, ready to take on the monster. Mom is scared of spiders too, but more than 28 years of experience saving her kids from them sure seems to have given her new courage.

My house is surrounded by trees, mainly mango trees and whoever planted the trees around the house had made sure that there was at least one tree whose branch in next to the bathroom ventilator or window. During the winter time, it is Spider season, not that there is any shortage of spiders in the house during the other times, but winter seems to be their favorite. And this is the time when you get to see the senior members of the spider family walking the walls for our bathrooms. The average size of the spider is surely 5 inches from tip of one leg to the opposite leg (it might be bigger that that, but I aint particularly interested in going and taking exact measurements) and the Monsters have this particular knack to hide behind something till you are completely undressed, locked the bathroom door, and started your bath before making their appearance, usually on the towel or the lock of the door. In case the spider in on the door then the “MAAAAA” waits till it is a safe distance away from the handle, or else run out, wrap yourself in something and Scream.

My cousins had come up with a coupe of neat ideas to fight them , we made wax pellets for our air guns… but after a couple of broken light bulbs later we gave that up, then came the Vacuum cleaner with its long pipe, but how do we get it out once it gets sucked in? so that idea also got dropped. It is back to the brooms now. Over the past few years I have tried my best to overcome the fear, and have managed to kill a few spiders on my own, now I know what a soldier in a battle field might be feeling, KILL OR BE KILLED.

I have been in Bangalore for more than 4 years now; my friends who know about my phobia tease me about it. I have often wondered why the guys here are not scared of the Eight Legged Monsters. I have found the reason for that now, It is Lack Of Experience … In the 4 years in Bangalore I have not come across a single spider that is at least a quarter of the size of the spiders ( the medium sized ones) from back home. How will you get scared of spiders when the biggest spider you see around here is just a centimeter long? And most of u big shots are afraid of lizards or cockroaches and I aint … so don’t mess with me :-P there are lot more lizards and roaches here than spiders.

Learning it the hard way

Monday afternoon, sitting at home, jobless, after all I am on vacation, No TV, dad, mom, niece, aunt all asleep. Sis comes up.

“Do you have any work in Ernakulam?”

“No, why?”

“Can you take me to the Beauty parlor near St:Theresa's ? I need to do Henna, will take only 30 mins”

I am getting bored anyway, so what the hell, will take her there, after all, this place is just behind St: Theresa’s college ;).

“Sure”

4:00 Pm we leave, haven’t driven the car for a long time now, Open road, beautiful view of the ‘Goshree Road’ from Vypin to Ernakulam.. I feel the need… The need for speed: D

4:15 … reached Ernakulam and the Beauty parlor just behind St: Theresa’s. Sis goes up.

“I’ll give you a call when I’m done here”

“Ok, I’ll b around” * grin *
Found a place to park the car. Now time to get back and check out what Ernakulam has to offer.
4:16 am in position.

4:30 no chicks in sight.

4:40 *getting frustrated* … no chick, am I late? Naw … cant be.

4:45 suddenly it struck me … DAMN,it is Diwali, that is the first reason I am at Home!! So much for the STC Chicks!! At least 30 mins needed for my sister’s henna is up.

5:00 No call from sis. And no one answers the phone either.

5:15 Enough of waiting, shall walk to MG road, called up Shreyas.. and gets the usual
“I’m off to see a client, will call u up later” I know him too well for that.

5:25 MG road … hmm the place has changed, Meets Shani, she is in a hurry, promised her that I’ll visit her on Friday. (she must be thinking ‘Yeah rite … I know him too well for tat ‘ ) Still no news about my sister.

6:00 reaches back, goes to Archies, It is dad’s Bday, checked out for some cards. Nothing good here! But finds a cute looking cup wit the words ‘Dad ur the best’ the cup is all of 1 inch tall. But then I like small things, Sure it is dad’s Bday…. But I am the one buying the gift :-P

6:15 waiting outside the parlor… no call …. Yeah rite 30 min henna job, have been here for more than 2 hrs. It starts drizzling. Runs into the nearest shopping center.

6:20 people eying me suspiciously, some giving me the ‘Poor dude must be waiting for his girlfriend behind her college’ look and some giving me the ‘ Son, all the girls have gone home, cant you go home at least now? ‘look!!

6:45 Finally she calls …

“Sorry I am late, had a haircut before the henna”

“2 ‘n a half hours for tat? “

“Had to shape my eye brows too”

“Yeah rite, BTW why did you cut your hair?”

“ Ohh … they charge for the henna job based on length of your hair”

*confused* “And so you cut your hair?”

“Yeah”

“Hey next time you ask me to take you to the beauty parlor, can we time it so that I can watch a movie while I wait.”

“Did you get bored waiting?”

Hell no, I learned one more thing about women (Mothers, sisters, girlfriends, Friends Included) the hard way. DO NOT Wait while they are in the Beauty parlor.