Saturday, March 31, 2007

Nostalgia - 1990s

Hey guys

Was just going through some of the community pages on orkut when this topic came up…. All the reminences from the 1990s i.e. the time when we were in school/ college!

Nice mail to read through entirely … will be a stroll down memory lane. Do let me kow if it touches a chord with u….

- Raghu

You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Sunday to watch cartoons.

You took plastic cartoon lunch boxes to school.

You remember cassette players(boom boxes) and were saddened with the onset of CD players :(

You know the Macarena

You know the chicken dance(played infamously at birthday parties)

Mini pizzas, coke and wafers served on paper plates on EVERY single birthday party

Playing Monopoly, snake and ladders, ludo, and 100's of other board games

Nintendo! Especially Super Mario

Honey I shrunk the kids

Watching FULL cricket matches on hot sunday afternoons with the ENTIRE family

Everytime you got mad at a friend you broke ur friendship with "katti" and patched up with a "batti/buchchi"

All your mom’s shirts had big buttons and even bigger shoulder pads.

Small Wonder and wonder years on television

All you childhood cartoons on cartoon network(not the crap that they show now)...good stuff like scooby doo, flintstones, swat cats, centurions

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES!!! our only Gods

Thanks to Alisha, all girls wanted someone "Made in India"

Chacha Chaudhry

Tinkle

Champak

When ambassadors and fiat padminis(still prevalent as taxis) were getting outdated

Essel world excitement

Frooti and mangola

clowns at birthday parties, with moms organizing the entire thing and bringing other aunties and their children to help out

The rasna add

Peppy, uncle chips, potato shells and tazos in ruffles lays

Slap on bracelets

When the 1980's wasn't considered "classic"

Different strokes on HBO

When Star movies used to be fun

When Star Plus didn't exist!!! (NO EKTA KAPOOOOR!!)

When Star World kicked ass

"Hello Kitty" compass boxes were the bomb

Staedtles stationary, getting excited buying new pencils, "rubbers", sharpeners..

The Brown paper cover for textbooks

Scared of the first day of school after summer

Remembering the first crick match Kenya played on that Sunday and India whooping their ass

The Ganguly/Tendulkar opening pair was the greatest

People loved cricket more than football

When the word "dude" wasnt used as frequently though it had existed since the 40's

Wanting a Tree-house

Enid Blyton novels like Famous Five, Secret Seven, Noddy and the adventure series

Everyone wanted to be like the hardy boys

every girl wanted to be nancy drew

Class picnics

Decisions were made by "eeny meeny miny mo!"

When winning a nintendo game was greater than receiving a nobel prize

When Alladin was new(now its a classic)

Dabba Ice Spice

Thappa(something like hide and seek)

Chor Police

Irate neighbours shouting whenever u broke their glass or a ball fell into their balconies while you were playing cricket with your friends

Sitting and "hanging out" on irate building members' cars

When DADs were considered heroes

Before sex actually "sold" in the real sense

Internet was a privilige not a necessity

Computers were only accessible from your office

Video tapes were rented

When Aahat on Sony television gave you nightmares

Spice girls were popular (yes even among guys, don't deny it!)

Britney Spears was a new fad

Michael Jackson had the power to make girls faint just by touching them when he came to perform in India

Rajiv Gandhi was shot and you heard the news solemnly while you were either at school or returned home

You did not want to show off or have ego problems in front of friends

Where friendship actually had no "matlabi" reasons and people asked their friends for favors without actually feeling obligated

When your parents were still comparatively cooler before mid-life crisis and worries about their children made them mellow down

New years was spent with the family not in Goa

Lego

Crystal Maze on television with that taklu host...totally loved this show

Star Trek!!!

Lost in Space!!!

When hardly anyone cared for Star Wars

Goosebumps gave you frights

Pogo sticks

Ninja Turtles, G.I.Joe and Power Rangers action figures

Walkman(s), No discmans that time

When kite flying was actually taken seriously and lapet was almost a curse word on that particular day

Slinkies

Leapfrog in middle school

Catapults

Tazos

Those who remember Shemaroo book library and spending hours reading there

When mummies used to go shopping to breach candy

When Corn cobbs with chilli powder, lime and butter could be eaten at Marine Drive during monsoon watching the waves batter against the rocks before the stupid BMC banned them

Dinky Cars

Jumanji craze

When no-one imagined they would be in college in a few years

When you wanted to grow up and be considered an adult, and now that you are one, wishing you were a child again

Short Breaks(recess) for 10-15 mins in school

Lunch breaks where ppl got tiffins from dabbawalas and ate fast so they could spend the remainder of the time playing

Morning school assemblies

When we ran after the final bell as opposed to politely walking out of class now

When a kiss on a wound was enough to make you feel better

No one bothered about politics or world news

Excitement whenever relatives came down from US and expectations of the latest action figures

Racing with remote controlled cars

At the onset of computers, doom and wolf 3d were the only games you played

Mingling with girls was seen as panzyish

Laughing when you saw two couples kissing in public

1.) Hulk Hogan being a demi god
2.) WWF stickers
3.) those WWF tattoos you cud stick to your clothes
4.) Compasses with a mllion buttons
5.) Strikingly huge craze for imported chocolates
6.) A guitar made you a ladies man
7.) Salman Khan apparently had a good body and was again a ladies man despite being 19% fat (henceforth needing 13% decrease to be really lean)
8.) People knew who Karishma Kapoor was
9.) Smokers and drunkards were outcasts
10.) Swearing was reffered to as 'bad words'
11.) Salil was still black
12.) music composer Anu Malik n Sonu Nigam were considered great sngers
13.) Shaan's loveology
14.) GO! G. I. JOE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15.) HOT WHEELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
16.) Watching Uncle Scrooge, Alladin, Timon n Pumbo at 6pm on Disney Hour, though everyone hated the mermaid show
17.) English speakers had 50% more chance to patao a girl
18.) Amithab bachpan was still in age denial
19.) remember the game: stop palti?
20.) Martial arts were actually taught with direct effectivity n not memorizing attacks
21.) Shawn Michaels of the WWF was the guy every girl wanted followed by the Bret The Hitman Hart
22.) the very famed Double Dragon game for the nintendo
23.) Anyone who had a super nintendo system was instantly recognized as being very rich
24.) Anime consisted solely of Ninku, Grander Mushashi, Your under arrest, Flame of Recca, Fuushigi Yuuki and apparently were my inspiration to be a martial artist
25.) Grandparents were actually loved and: 'I wish this stupid old man drops dead' was not the thought in every child's mind
26.) Children carried 5 kgs of books since childhood instead of 10 kgs.
27.) A person with a girlfriend was 1 out of 100
28.) Parents would throw daughters out for having an affair as it would hamper their arrange marriage
29.) Shiv Seniks were not given the finger on face
30.) It was stupid but fun

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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Flaws

I came across this fable the other day, supposedly a Chinese folk tale, though the picture I found on the net to go with it looked suspiciously Indian. So maybe it’s a tale common to many regions. At any rate it seemed to throw much light on the nature of transformation so I thought I would share it with you here. The story goes like this:
A water bearer had two large pots which he carried from the stream to the house each day. Each pot hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. But the other pot was cracked. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For two years the bearer ended up delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house.
As with supposedly inanimate objects in all stories both pots were gifted with awareness and able to voice their thoughts. The pot which was perfect naturally felt proud of being able to fulfill the task for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of it’s own imperfection. And miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what seemed like a shameful failure, it said to the water bearer one day by the stream, “I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize.” As the water bearer listened it carried on. “I have been able to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts.”
The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the side of the other pot? That’s because I have always known about your flaw. So I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you’ve watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”
We often put so much emphasis on what we think of as perfection and yet, isn’t it sometimes our imperfections which bring a sense of freshness and joy to our lives? In today’s world we tend to use a person’s failure like a stick, to beat him with. This goes as much for parents as it does for teachers or eventually the people for whom we end up working. The only thing which this results in is a deep reluctance to own up to our mistakes which makes it all the more difficult for us to try out anything new. Finally it is awareness that helps us to redeem our own mistakes and failures rather than a rejection of our flaws.

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Sunday, March 04, 2007

Chinese goods

China will be a dominant force in the world of today and tomorrow. There is something there also which s lacking in India - national pride and almost a strong government. They do not spend tme in referandums or on 20 year old cases... justice is quick and steady

In china u can manufacture an item for any price. Whn u give the PO, you DO NOT ask them for a quote. You tell them this is what u want and at this price... they will match it.

The chinese govt develops infrastructure at a racy rate. I had been to shanghai and it wil put ANY western city to shame. They give entrepruners large tracts of land, 2% interest loans, fredom for labour laws....

and corruption is also a BIG problem but it only affects at the highest level. They do not have to bribe the cops nor the tax people for small amounts... its only the big shots.

"Chinese" qulity is a wrong term. Recently someone there manufactured a ROlls Royce Phantom clone and NOT EVEN the company people could distinguish between the original and duplicate!

We only talk while they act... but its scary to think what would happen like 10 years later!

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