Kiran: So do you still train for the marathon that you are not going to complete?
me: yeah
Kiran: How is it coming?
me: Okay. But my calf muscles ache like hell
Kiran: Drink some cough syrup. That is what I do
28 November 2009
10 November 2009
Contraceptives for Climate Change
I suggested to Boston that we go Banger racing. This is after his wonderful idea that running around Hyde Park with our tongues lunging out like dogs will fetch us dates. Poochi fell for it and took a train all the way from Milton Keynes. All we managed to get was cold stares from old women as we entered the tube with our smelly sweatshirts.
For those of you who do not know Boston’s roots, he is from the Stone Age. When Marty from Back to the Future once drove to the Stone Age, Boston accidentally transported himself to our age and that is how he is here. Although he has made substantial progress in his lifestyle, including riding a bicycle, he is yet to fully assimilate into our culture; which is why he hates motorcars, thinks internet robs him of his life and runs for hours together at a stretch.
Anyway, the evil influences of the internet got hold of his unsuspecting soul and he now believes that driving cars is bad for humanity, depleting our non-renewable energy resources, raising sea levels through global warming and causing pollution. So have many other unsuspecting souls been led to believe; which is why I am going to clear all your minds and tell you it is not true.
All humans must become petrol heads - If not for himself/herself but for world peace. If you looked at all the wars that have been waged in the last few decades, they have invariably been for oil (in the pretext of bringing democracy to the war stricken communities). So if we finish off all the oil as quickly as we can, we can end these wars and save millions of lives. (Will this concept bring me Nobel Prize? or should I have to be the president of USA to get one?)
How many of us do work today which can be postponed to tomorrow. I am sure only the quotation writers will raise their hands. So long as we have oil, we will use it sparingly and make incremental improvements in hybrids and the likes. But if there is no oil, we will do something out of sheer necessity.
Even if we did not find an alternative, it is good for general world health. The millions and millions of human beings succumbed into their current unhealthy lifestyles will come out of it and walk to offices instead of driving their 2km journeys. Yet another Nobel for that!
I am not asking everyone to be selfish and use all the available petrol and rob the future generations of the pleasures of roaring an internal combustion engine. I am only asking everyone to help them indulge in it. You may wonder how that is possible if we finish off all the oil.
I have come up with a new theory that will illustrate that all the oil that is burnt is not actually lost but just waiting to be reused.
If you remembered your Deepavali days (The Deepavalis when you woke up at 4 AM and fired crackers till midnight and not the ones where you sat in front of television all day), you will remember that there certainly was a couple of hours of rain on the day. The carbon from all the rockets and 1000 walahs we fire gets caught in the rain clouds and comes back down bringing the rain with it. By the same principle, all the carbon emissions we send out will accumulate and eventually come down with rain and settle as sediments. These sediments after a few hundred years will solidify or liquefy to become coal and petrol again. So by not using petrol optimally, we are breaking this cycle of forming new crude.
I understand your concern that more rains will increase the already rising sea levels. But won’t the rains be filled in the empty oil rigs that we have dug in the last 100 years? By the same token, even if we didn’t use petrol cars and used hydrogen hybrids (which combine hydrogen with the oxygen we breathe to make water and energy) will the water from these cars not increase sea levels? Atleast by acting on my advice, we will have only increased water levels, but if we used hydrogen cars not only will we have increased water levels but also decreased the total breathable oxygen available in the atmosphere.
For all you know, global warming and the subsequent rise in sea level may not be our fault at all. If you happened to use Wikipedia as your primary source for worldly knowledge, you will know that the sun's output varies with time, which scientists refer to as the 11 year solar cycle -sometimes the sun emits more heat and sometimes less. The current period could just be a period where the sun is working overtime.
Whether global warming is the sun’s fault or not, I believe the whole thing could have been prevented if there was general awareness among the people of the 60s to use contraceptives. If only we had less people to use what is left, we would not make any fuzz about the whole thing but instead be Banger racing in Olympic Games.
For those of you who do not know Boston’s roots, he is from the Stone Age. When Marty from Back to the Future once drove to the Stone Age, Boston accidentally transported himself to our age and that is how he is here. Although he has made substantial progress in his lifestyle, including riding a bicycle, he is yet to fully assimilate into our culture; which is why he hates motorcars, thinks internet robs him of his life and runs for hours together at a stretch.
Anyway, the evil influences of the internet got hold of his unsuspecting soul and he now believes that driving cars is bad for humanity, depleting our non-renewable energy resources, raising sea levels through global warming and causing pollution. So have many other unsuspecting souls been led to believe; which is why I am going to clear all your minds and tell you it is not true.
All humans must become petrol heads - If not for himself/herself but for world peace. If you looked at all the wars that have been waged in the last few decades, they have invariably been for oil (in the pretext of bringing democracy to the war stricken communities). So if we finish off all the oil as quickly as we can, we can end these wars and save millions of lives. (Will this concept bring me Nobel Prize? or should I have to be the president of USA to get one?)
How many of us do work today which can be postponed to tomorrow. I am sure only the quotation writers will raise their hands. So long as we have oil, we will use it sparingly and make incremental improvements in hybrids and the likes. But if there is no oil, we will do something out of sheer necessity.
Even if we did not find an alternative, it is good for general world health. The millions and millions of human beings succumbed into their current unhealthy lifestyles will come out of it and walk to offices instead of driving their 2km journeys. Yet another Nobel for that!
I am not asking everyone to be selfish and use all the available petrol and rob the future generations of the pleasures of roaring an internal combustion engine. I am only asking everyone to help them indulge in it. You may wonder how that is possible if we finish off all the oil.
I have come up with a new theory that will illustrate that all the oil that is burnt is not actually lost but just waiting to be reused.
If you remembered your Deepavali days (The Deepavalis when you woke up at 4 AM and fired crackers till midnight and not the ones where you sat in front of television all day), you will remember that there certainly was a couple of hours of rain on the day. The carbon from all the rockets and 1000 walahs we fire gets caught in the rain clouds and comes back down bringing the rain with it. By the same principle, all the carbon emissions we send out will accumulate and eventually come down with rain and settle as sediments. These sediments after a few hundred years will solidify or liquefy to become coal and petrol again. So by not using petrol optimally, we are breaking this cycle of forming new crude.
I understand your concern that more rains will increase the already rising sea levels. But won’t the rains be filled in the empty oil rigs that we have dug in the last 100 years? By the same token, even if we didn’t use petrol cars and used hydrogen hybrids (which combine hydrogen with the oxygen we breathe to make water and energy) will the water from these cars not increase sea levels? Atleast by acting on my advice, we will have only increased water levels, but if we used hydrogen cars not only will we have increased water levels but also decreased the total breathable oxygen available in the atmosphere.
For all you know, global warming and the subsequent rise in sea level may not be our fault at all. If you happened to use Wikipedia as your primary source for worldly knowledge, you will know that the sun's output varies with time, which scientists refer to as the 11 year solar cycle -sometimes the sun emits more heat and sometimes less. The current period could just be a period where the sun is working overtime.
Whether global warming is the sun’s fault or not, I believe the whole thing could have been prevented if there was general awareness among the people of the 60s to use contraceptives. If only we had less people to use what is left, we would not make any fuzz about the whole thing but instead be Banger racing in Olympic Games.
1 November 2009
Making sense of it
For the last few weeks I have been looking out for internal job openings within the company I work for. I am looking for a job with a title that says anything but an analyst. After 4 years of being an analyst, I have given up on trying to explain to people what an analyst does or more preciously what I do.
At this point I would like to state that rumours spread by people like Boston that all I do for a living is to go to office 3 days a week, pretend to work for 5 hours, get drunk by lunch and write blogs. This is unfounded and completely untrue. Boston is just jealous that he can not work at my efficiency levels.
Anyway, trying to explain what I do for a living is just as hard as it was trying to explain a shop keeper close to our house in Madurai why I went to study in Pilani.
Shop-keeper: So, I heard you have got into college. Where do you study now?
Me: Pilani
Shop-keeper: Oh Palani
Me: No, Pilani is in Rajasthan
Shop-keeper: That is a long way from here. Why? Didn't you have enough marks to get admission in one of the colleges in Madurai?
For the next 15 minutes I tried to explain to him that only kids who unexpectedly and accidentally score exceptionally high marks in the final school exams get to go to that far-off college. But he was convinced I could not get an admission in one of the local colleges.
Shop-keeper: So what do you study?
Me: M.Sc
Shop-keeper: So you couldn't even get engineering?
To cut the long story short, trying to explain my analyst role has only resulted in several agonising and confidence denting incidents.
And as I look out for openings, as a precaution, I have made a mental note not to go for jobs with female managers. Imagine the manager calling for a meeting with me and I say 'Should we get a room?'
At this point I would like to state that rumours spread by people like Boston that all I do for a living is to go to office 3 days a week, pretend to work for 5 hours, get drunk by lunch and write blogs. This is unfounded and completely untrue. Boston is just jealous that he can not work at my efficiency levels.
Anyway, trying to explain what I do for a living is just as hard as it was trying to explain a shop keeper close to our house in Madurai why I went to study in Pilani.
Shop-keeper: So, I heard you have got into college. Where do you study now?
Me: Pilani
Shop-keeper: Oh Palani
Me: No, Pilani is in Rajasthan
Shop-keeper: That is a long way from here. Why? Didn't you have enough marks to get admission in one of the colleges in Madurai?
For the next 15 minutes I tried to explain to him that only kids who unexpectedly and accidentally score exceptionally high marks in the final school exams get to go to that far-off college. But he was convinced I could not get an admission in one of the local colleges.
Shop-keeper: So what do you study?
Me: M.Sc
Shop-keeper: So you couldn't even get engineering?
To cut the long story short, trying to explain my analyst role has only resulted in several agonising and confidence denting incidents.
And as I look out for openings, as a precaution, I have made a mental note not to go for jobs with female managers. Imagine the manager calling for a meeting with me and I say 'Should we get a room?'
After the 12 JDs
I met someone at the bar now - not at the court of law, because I am single and have nothing to do with in-laws. Anyway she asked me for my birthday, I said the 23rd of May.
She: 'You can't be serious. I was just gonna say that. I swear. I had this hunch. You know my parents got married on the 23rd of May and my sister was born of the 23rd of May!!'
Me: I have a hunch too. Your sister's name must be Mary.
You know how the conversation proceeded from there...
She: 'You can't be serious. I was just gonna say that. I swear. I had this hunch. You know my parents got married on the 23rd of May and my sister was born of the 23rd of May!!'
Me: I have a hunch too. Your sister's name must be Mary.
You know how the conversation proceeded from there...
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