Conversations and her

She is either very intelligent, or just loves to show off her arguing powers. One day, out of nowhere, she wanted to test me. Usually, I lose the argument, irrespective of the topic of the discussion. Here we go.

A chat transcript.

She: Did you see a soul-mate (past, present and future) when you first looked into my eyes?

I instantly knew that I cannot afford to be outright truthful here. Didn't reply for a long time, pondering over my course of action, and also anticipating the possible repercussions.

She: (Impatient) You didn't answer my question.
He: (Oh no.. Not again!!) Ummm, No.
She: No? You did not see a soul-mate in me? You are lying.
Me: (Trying to be funny, to divert her) Living life with you is enough. I don't want to linger around with you after we become ghosts.

She: You are saying that we were not together in our previous births?
Me: I don't remember. (Trying to remember harder as ever)
She: And you don't want to be with me in your next birth?
Me: Global warming, everything will be over soon. So, I am not thinking about my next birth. :)

She: Oh...
She: Okay ("Ok" would have been fine, but "Okay" is a sign of the approaching storm)
She: (She was reading a book just before we started this conversation) Then, I guess, I will read my book.
Me: Hahahahaha
She: Huh!!!

And after that, we had to continue this discussion over the phone and finally reach a conclusion, well, not exactly, but to a point where she can go back to reading her book normally, and me, well, telling myself, "A job well done" and gave myself a pat on my back. :D I won this time. Yay!!!

Ortel Communications: A review

You have probably not heard about this company if you are not from Bhubaneswar. I never wanted to write reviews for anything, other than, may be gadgets. But then, I had to mention about this company here. You will soon know why.

It's been more than a month that I have been using this broadband connection at home. When we got an internet connection (a broadband wired connection) at home, there were no other private providers here. Well, the BSNL guys told that a connection to our house wasn't possible at that point in time. Frankly speaking, we didn't have any choice whatsoever. Ortel Communication, had a monopoly everywhere in Orissa. Although, I was very reluctant to give my approval, we hooked onto their network.

Ok. To be frank, this is not a review, rather an outburst after all the torture and frustration I have gone through. So, I would only talk about their negatives here.

• At-least once a day, their modem goes offline. ("loses power"). <<----- That's what they say. And we have to call them every-time to let them know that the poor modem has lost power.
• I had plans of staying at home for sometime, and I would be also working from home for some time. So, I upgraded our connection to a 700kbps plan. I thought it would be enough for my needs. But then I realized that, although the download speed was almost close to 700kbps, the upload speed was pathetic at best (@100kbps). WHAT!!!!
• The day we upgraded our plan, I saw a weird problem. Almost all the pages I opened up, it had an annoying advertisement. I was frustrated, and tried to hunt down the problem. I re-installed my browsers, un-installed all my browser add-ons, but still the problem persisted. After a few more investigations, to my horror, I found that Ortel Communications was injecting this piece of advertisement on each and every page, by intercepting my requests.
• I started writing mails to them on the e-mail addresses provided on their website. Hahaha, I knew what would happen next. 2 out of the 3 recipients mail bounced back. And for the one recipient, I haven't heard back yet. I kept on doing this for 5 days, yet I haven't received even an acknowledgement.
• I did a Google search to find out if anyone else has this problem. Of course, Ortel has it's monopoly in Bhubaneswar.  I found almost everyone was having the same problem.

There is a thread here where you can find more people complaining. You would find a few interesting stories as well.  I had never thought that an ISP would do something like this. When I asked one of the customer care guys about this, they said that they do this because Ortel is providing internet connection in rural areas at a lower cost, and so they had to compensate for it by adopting this. WHAT!!!!! You are awesome Ortel communications. Great going.

By the way, here's the code that they injecting into every website that you visit.  They get their ads onto our webpages by using this script.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ui.streamride.net/ui.js"></script>

This is almost equal to cheating the customers. I don't really care if they are getting some extra revenue. It's just so annoying to see those ads all the time. Here is a sample of how those ads look like on your browsers. This is, in my view, breach of privacy and security and cheating.

The New Year Post

Ah!! this time I am late. Damn!! There were quite a few reasons. But, finally, this had to come.

Image source: Wikimedia commons

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you. :)

Not much happened when the year changed for me. I was at home, sitting idle, watching the TV. Everyone else at home was asleep. I was the only one at home, waiting for the new year. The date changed with no big bang. After that, I switched of the rooms lights, and got busy with the movie. At about half-past midnight, my phone rang.

"An unknown number". Must be someone from college, I thought. Without concentrating much on the caller, my eyes still focused on the TV, I answered the call while I lowered down the volume.

A girl answered.

She: "Hi, Happy New Year".... Come down, I am waiting for you.

She sounded very very familiar, and I almost instantaneously recognized her. She was Radhika, a friend from school. We weren't really great friends, and we probably hadn't talked for more than 10 years now. I wished her back, still trying to confirm if it was her.

Me: Hey, A very very Happy New Year to you. But, why are you here at this time?
She: Come down. I am shivering outside. We are going somewhere.

This was a mistake, I thought. It can never be her. Even if it were her, she wouldn't be here waiting for me in-front of my house. I got up from the chair, walked towards the window and looked down. I could see the shadow of a car below in the dark. I could also see a girl inside the car, although it was just her silhouette.

Me: Ummm. Wait. It's a mistake. Who is this by the way?
She: Come on. Be a sport. Let's go now. I am shivering.

Still confused, I thought of going down and getting a better view of the woman waiting inside the car. And then I heard a big loud horn. Startled, I almost trembled and closed my eyes.

The TV was still playing that movie, and I was on my chair. I had dozed off.

I never knew anyone called Radhika. Huh.... Just to be sure, I looked down from the window. The roads were empty, and even the car. This time, the street lights helped me look inside the car.

I wished if she were a bit more patient and not honked so loud.

Dreams. Our minds can be so imaginative. I am sure, if she wouldn't have honked, I would have celebrated the next year in my dreams as well. A whole year of thoughts, within a span of a few hours. That would have been fun.

Flower chor!! Flower chor!!

Ah!!! I thought things would have changed. It's been a long long time that I heard such tales from my Mom. Let's ponder over the background of the story.

Every Indian house does some form of Pooja, every morning, for which one of the most important ingredient is "Flowers". The flowers have to be fresh, i.e, freshly plucked. And the most important part is, the collected lot should at-least have 2 varieties of flowers (varying by color or species). The fun starts every morning. If you could fix a big camera over my colony, one could see people getting out of their houses just before the sunrise, with small bags, determined...

Their mission: Collect flowers for Pooja.

Target: Everyone else's garden.

We also have a few flowering plants inside our compound, and Mom recently noticed that everyday the number of flowers on our plants kept diminishing. And, on other days, she failed to find a single flower for our Pooja on our plants. It was obvious that someone was stealing our flowers. Although we somehow managed to get our share of flowers from other sources, Mom took up the responsibility to catch the erring neighbor and confront them, or may be teach them a lesson.

She needed a partner. And who else would be a better accomplish other than Auntie who was a close friend of Mom. She was on the ground floor, and Mom on the second floor. The plan was chalked out. Everyday, Auntie would try to wake up early in the morning, hoping that she would wake up before the THIEF reached our compound, watch the plants for a few minutes and alert Mom if she saw anything suspicious.

Everyday, Auntie and Mom used to wake up early in the morning, and kept an eye on our plants. Mom, from the terrace, and Auntie through the windows. For the first few days, the thief was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, he made his errands too early in the morning. After a few watchful days, the thief was finally caught. They were actually two (From the same house, Husband and Wife). To be sure enough before deciding on their punishments, Mom and Auntie wanted to be check that the culprits came and assaulted our plants daily. So, they continued for a few more days, and it was established that the THIEVES actually came everyday and robbed us of our flowers.

The plan: The next time when Mom would see them getting their hands dirty, they would be washed off by a bucket of cold water from the terrace.

But, the idea was finally dropped, considering...

• The culprits were from our own colony, and we knew them.
• It was winter time and Mom felt that the punishment would be a bit harsh.
• We also used to collect our flower lot for the Pooja from our neighbors few years back when we were not the proud owners of a few flowering plants.

What? What the heck!!!

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

People can be so stupid at times. Sometimes, we say or do stupid things, which would make even a donkey laugh out loud. However, there are certain situations where you tend to ignore them. For example, you would just ignore a stupid question from someone when you know that the person is perhaps sad about something, and not in the right state of mind.

But it's really irritating sometimes, when people ask stupid questions, whose answer they already know. The best example for this is when your phone rings, and the other person confirms first that it's actually you who answered. Of course, there are exceptions, but then, at times it's just so obvious that nobody else other than you could possibly answer the phone.

There was a guy, whose name I prefer not to mention. I had this habit of reading newspapers few years back. Whenever he walked into my room, and saw me reading the newspaper, we would go like this:

He: Hey, What are you doing?

Me: Reading newspaper (Obviously)

He: I can see that. Reading what in the newspaper.

Me: So and so article. (Guiding his vision towards that portion of the newspaper)

He: Hmm. What are you reading in that article?

Me: Well, you know, so and so happened. I was just reading that. (Should I read out loud)

What the heck!!! I don't have the habit anymore.

And it happened almost every time he saw me reading either the newspaper, a book or even listening to the radio. I mean, isn't this stupid? I could understand that he wanted to break the ice someway or the other, but didn't he have any another ice-breakers?

Perhaps this: "Oh, you are reading the newspaper! Did you see this article today?"

I would at-least not wonder if he was "BLIND".

There are other stupid questions as well. And the more frequently used one is:


Why do you like Ice cream so much? (Or anything else which I like/love)
It's not that I haven't tried explaining them. For example, a typical response to such a question would probably be something like: "Well, it's cold, it's sweet, and it comes in a variety of flavors".

But then, how do I respond to questions like: 
1. Why do you like cricket?
2. Why do you not like tennis?
3. Why do you have a Citibank credit card?
4. Why are you wearing a black shirt on such a warm day?
5. Wassup?

Ah!!! The last one is one of those, which I answer with a "NOTHING - Nothing at ALL".