MirrorCracked

(Post inspired by Aravind and his bad luck! Don’t worry, dude! I’ll help you out)

This post is meant primarily for men, and single ones at that. Men who would want to try out their luck in wooing a woman and want some inside information on how to go about doing this without being slapped in public, can read this with the assurance that you won’t be disappointed. This post comes from someone who’s been there and done that when it comes to asking women out on dates, making a complete fool of myself and finally, succeeding. If women want to read this, please do, it’s probably going to make you smile at how little men know about women.

No offense is meant to anyone, unless specifically named.

Ok, first things first, my fellow readers - ask yourself the following three questions and if and only if the answer to all three is “Yes” then continue. Otherwise, this post is not for you. Women, ignore the previous two sentences.

1. Are you a man?

2. Have you ever had a crush before?

3. Was your crush a woman?

Ok, now that we’ve eliminated the kids and the fairies, let’s get down to some serious information dissemination session!

Women don’t like nerds! Don’t show off your intelligence to women! Act dumb! Not too dumb, because that could be a huge turn-off! Show them that you’re a perfectly normal, average guy, who flunks a couple of exams and yet manages to get placed in a pretty nice company. And I don’t mean a call-center! Call center guys are NOT the ‘hot trend’ nowadays!

Let’s take a hypothetical example, you’ll understand better. Suppose there is this really really hot chick whom you want to ask for a dinner. First thing you should do is to drop the idea! She’s not in your league and all the hot chicks are already taken. So, look elsewhere.

Suppose there is a fairly hot and very cute girl, who’s single and whom you’re interested in. Now, we’re talking! You have a chance to score a romantic dinner here! The formula is very simple - wear a black leather jacket over a very white round-neck T-shirt and wear blue jeans and brown hiking boots. Don’t overdo the bling factor because you’ll look gay. No earrings, no rings on your fingers and most of all, no silver/gold watches that dangle!

Walk real slow when you’re in their company and give them ample time to look at you and make their opinion. Even if you’re in a hurry, whenever you pass her seat, slow down and walk in real slow-motion. It helps. Do not bank on finding women in your new school or college or your new workplace. Go and hunt them out in all the places you never usually visit. The fact that you don’t visit these places and the fact that you’re single might give you a clue.

Bald men are considered hot by some women, so before you go shaving off your precious hair, try to get the girl to tell you if she likes bald men. Not all men look good without hair. Some men have an unnatural bulge in their faces, and if you remove your hair, you look like something the cat dragged in. Big turn-off, don’t do it!

The type of watch you wear plays a huge role in whether the girl accepts your offer of dinner. I suggest something black, not too flashy and something that doesn’t have hearts or bubbles on their faces. The hands of the watch must NOT by Mickey Mouse’s gloved hands!

Women like music, as a rule. Some like house/trace music and some of them prefer soft rock. Other freaky women prefer really really heavy/death metal music, and a few of these strange women will probably turn you into a druggie of you get too close. So, be careful and don’t get into any more trouble than you already are.

Asking a woman out on a date is quite a tricky situation and can lead to disastrous effects. From a simple “No” to spending a night in the city jail, anything could happen depending on how you ask them out. Some despo-self-help books will tell you that the direct approach is the best way, but take my work for it, it’s not! Asking her out has to be a long-drawn arduous process in which, her tastes and dislikes has to properly researched. Since this depends on individual women, I won’t say much on this, except that you should not go up to the girl and say, “Hi, Wanna eat?”

The choice of restaurant is also vital in building a fruitful relationship with the girl. Don’t take vegetarian girls to Barbeque Nation or KFC!!

Being funny is absolutely vital, but make sure people are laughing at your jokes and not at you. It’s easy to get confused. And if they’re laughing at you, then laugh with them and call yourself a moron, because some girls like that!

Be charming, be witty and be dumb. I know you’re probably very confused by now, but I can tell you that once you read this post again, you’ll feel really confident on approaching that girl of your dreams. Just don’t make it a nightmare.

Go forth, my friends! Ask them out! Show the Venutian Women what we Martian Men are made of!

May the force be with you!

(PS: If any of you want me to bail you out of jail after asking out a girl rather badly, I will be unable to reach due to logistic constraints! :D  )

Image Courtesy: Hubbynet.com

There’ve been a lot of people who have advised me against using Windows Vista, but so far I’ve been giving them a deaf ear. Yesterday, I realized just how truthful their words were.

My desktop computer is an ancient piece of garbage that belongs in the antiques department of a museum, and unwittingly, I decided to load Windows Vista on it, a few months back. It performed quite well, considering its age and capacity. Vista, being graphic-heavy, soon began to eat into my computer’s memory and yesterday, the damn thing just refused to boot. No matter how much I tried, it gave up and I could almost hear it scream for mercy. Being a kind-hearted guy, I decided to heed and made up my mind to switch back to XP. It was a simple task - remove Vista, install XP, be happy. But, being God’s yo-yo has its own perks and I soon myself in a rut.

I went to friend’s place where he gave a couple of XP installation CDs. I plugged in the first one, and saw that it contained the NFS game. I plugged in second one and saw that it contained the proper XP installation files. I happily booted the system from the CD and formatted the entire C drive, hoping to install XP. Halfway through the installation, I realized that I hadn’t written down the product key, which had been scribbled on the disk. I crossed my fingers and removed the disk and tried to write down the 25-digit product key, when I realized that I would have a long night ahead.

I couldn’t read what was written on it!!

It had been scribbled so badly that most of the letters (numbers?) were not easily made out. I tried different combinations - there was one particular letter that could have been an ‘H”, an “M’, an ‘N’ or an ‘A’.

I tried all these combinations, and none of them worked. There were 5 letters that were doubtful, and the number of combinations of these five letters came up to 349, according to my poor math prowess. So, I abandoned the effort and sent my brother out to his friend’s place to get another copy of the XP installation disk. I had to bribe him to go! The terrorist! Bah!

Well, he did finally and when I tried to install XP with this disk (thankfully, the product key was clearly written), the installation crashed halfway, claiming that the disk was corrupt and couldn’t be read. I was very close to pulling my hair out when the power went out and I was bathed in darkness. For fear of scaring my neighbor’s kid into having horrible nightmares, I held my scream of agony within me.

Half an hour later, the power came back and I decided to go to one of my .. um.. cousin friend’s place to collect another disk.

“Come, macha! I have XP!” said the moron excitedly into the phone. Poor guy, I thought. He sounded so excited over the phone that I thought that he was on top of the world because someone had called him!

I drove to his place (it was almost 9.30 in the night) and went inside. He held out a DVD in his hand and said, “Macha, this is Vista! Try it! It’s better then XP!” :I

……….

I had half a mind to throttle the poor thing and relieve him of his miserable existence. “I already have Vista, dude. I need XP,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t have XP, man,” he said. There was a heavy flower vase on the table that looked really promising. Controlling my homicidal instincts, I said good night and left. Back home, I decided to give the damn thing one last try with a few other permutations of the doubtful product key. I switched on the machine, and got an error message, which said, “Boot Sector Fail. Press Any Key To Continue”

I pressed a key, and the computer shut itself down. It’s now a paperweight that looks like a computer.

Why do such things happen only to me?? Such a simple thing and I get into these weird messes that I don’t know what sin I had committed to deserve such treatment.

Shhh.. Listen carefully. Can you hear God laughing at me?

I have been tagged by RJ to write a love poem. But there’s a catch:

You get transformed to this 4th grade version of you, make the poem ultra cute and super sweet, filled with innocence and write about Love!

I rarely dabble with poetry and I am sure this one’s the most amateurish bit of poetry ever composed. In my defense, I am supposed to be in the 4th grade for doing this tag, so it’s ok. I can live with this humiliation.

This love poem is dedicated to one of the most beautiful woman I have known so far - my dear Ms. Charming, whose smiles light up my day and whose lovely laughter make me want to wake up each day.

Walking along the road of life
I start to think -
Why do I hurt like the stab of a knife
Why do I hate to blink?

Walking along the path to riches
I think I am lonely and sad
Missed chances and too many glitches
I think my luck is really bad.

There you were, waiting for me
You smiled at me and said “Hi”
I lost track of space and time, filled with glee
I never want to say “Bye”

I need your guidance to travel this road
I need your grace to keep me sane
I need you to share my load
I need your smile to light up the lane.

The road is long enough
For us to discover each other
The road is long enough
For us to love each other.

It may seem trivial
It may seem hollow
I assure you it’s not,
When I say I love you.

Apologies for abandoning the rhyme scheme in the last paragraph. I am not a poet!

Life has become mundane! Nothing exciting is happening! I want something earth-shatteringly exciting to happen within the next 24 hours or else I’m going to go stark raving mad!

I am used to a life of misfortunes, muggings, bandit queens and strange smells. The past few days have been very very ordinary. I need to spice things up a bit! Any suggestions!? Please?

Being a moron isn’t easy. There’s a lot of hard work that has to go into it to maintain that amount of moron-ness. People have to irritated, friends have to be annoyed, songs have to be ruined, decency and clothes have to be shed at important occasions and most importantly, common sense has to be abandoned. I’ve been very successful in this over the past 24 years of my life, and now, for the past three days, I have been strangely subdued. I don’t like it!

Help needed!

No, I’m not that religious.

But of late, I would probably need divine intervention. People who are in the computer-hardware-retail industry should understand that some technocrats like myself need a constant supply of RAM chips and upgraded hard disks to stay happy and smiling. Few days ago, I decided to upgrade my piece-of-junk desktop and opened her up. After clearing away the dust and the cobwebs, I saw a couple of dead cockroaches among the wiring, a tiny label that read “Warranty ends June 1991″ and two wrappers of an ancient bubble-gum called Big Babol!

I overhauled the machine, giving it a shiny, new cabinet, spacious hard-drive, a reliable DVD writer and - the best of the lot - an Intel dual core processor. I was very happy. I was actually proud of my handiwork. I patted myself on the back, and switched the damn thing on. Three minutes into Vista’s “Welcome” screen, the piece-of-junk committed suicide. It chose to hang itself.

I realized that it probably didn’t have enough memory (and this is perhaps the reason it forgot to stay alive!) went on a mission to find new RAM chips. I had little time on my hand, I was wearing a pair of dirty shorts and a tattered t-shirt, and it was 8 pm on a Saturday night. The cops were everywhere and they latched on to me like a pack of dogs. Their demands were threefold:

“License!”

“Insurance documents!”

“Emission Test Certificate!”

I had none and I had to shell out quite a fat sum of money to get my bike back from those idiots. Finally, when I reached my trusty hardware store, they said they didn’t have the RAM I wanted and that I had to wait till Monday for someone to come and find it. I started wondering if God is playing a prank on me.

Even now, after returning home and sitting on this for some time, wondering, I look back on all the things that have happened to me in my life, and I ask God, “Why? Why me?”

He once replied, “Because I created you for a specific reason. You’re my yo-yo!”

I know, I know… It’s about bloody time, right?

Here are the three tags that have been sitting in my drafts for a long long time, and I finally get the time to post it! I hope I don’t humiliate myself. Here goes:

Deeps tagged me for this one, and its probably the cutest tag ever!

Six simple words that seems connected and somehow describe you.

Classic Case Of Multiple Personality Disorder!

Arvind and Vishesh tagged me for this very interesting one.

The 5 cadres of people whom i love to hate.

1. The Crocodiles - who cry for no apparent reason to get their job done, and more often than not, it’s fake tears.

2. The Wolfs - who seem to take a sadistic pleasure in spreading rumors and make others’ lives miserable.

3. The Pity Sponges - who just can’t seem to get over the fact that they are the biggest mistake that even happened, and need constant attention, saying, “Look at me, pity me, I’m so miserable!”

4. The Politicians - not the ones who are actually in the profession (well, some of them, yes) but I mean the people who are career people, working normal 9-5 jobs and think that they work in a bloody government office and feel the need to mix business and pleasure politics.

5. The Losers - who think that they are no-good and that suicide is the best thing that can happen to them. For them, I have a glorious piece of advice that a very dear friend once told me: “Each one of us is like a cigarette lighter - we all strike constantly against the rock of Life, we all have a Spark, but only when there’s Spirit within, do we ignite and Light the way for other!”

Poonam tagged me for the Expansionist Meme! Here goes:

One religious work from a non-familiar tradition you’ll read:
I would have to say The Bible.

One music video that you like from your “least likely to listen to’ genre:
I don’t normally listen to gip-hop, but this one new song by David Jordan called Sun Goes Down, i just simply awesome!

A book from a genre you almost never read, that you have read, or you will read (promise!):
I rarely read poetry collections, but recently I bought a collection of William Blake’s poems, and he is just too good!

Somewhere you’d never thought to go on holiday/vacation, and why it might be fun to go there?
Bhilai, for specific reasons!

A specific food you’ve never tried, but will because of this meme, honest!:
Idiyappam! Time I got the spelling and pronunciation right!

A sport or game you really hate, or haven’t tried yet, but are willing to give one more go:
I would say Hockey!

A style of dance you probably won’t try (we won’t make you promise on this one):
Phew! Square dancing!

A career job you don’t feel you’re suited for, and why:
I am not suited for career jobs!

An item that’s “thinking out of the box” for this meme that hadn’t been included:
I would have to say meeting the kind of people whom you would normally would ignore!

That’ll be a task!

It’s there’s one thing in life you wanted to do, and will do because of this meme, what will it be?
Go to a specific table on MG Road’s Barista, order a cappuccino and rethink where my life is headed!

The twenty-five things that people have found very apparent about me… Some opinions are strange, some border on paranormal and others are totally true. The results of an opinion poll I conducted over the past 24 years are here below. Apparently:

I am dumb.

I am Nature’s biggest mistake.

I am the worst driver in the world.

! need to exercise a lot and build up this old, worn out body again.

I was a serial killer in my previous birth.

I need to be institutionalized.

I am a good orator.

I am hopeless.

I am not the only one who can whistle without moving my lips.

I need to get a life.

I need to reduce my guzzling, smoking and partying.

I need to find newer pick-up lines.

I flirt a lot.

I gather a lot of nonsense in my head.

I am good at what I do.

I write well.

I sing well.

I am slow in messaging.

I don’t have any self-respect.

I am shameless.

I don’t deserve the good things in life.

I am always shabbily dressed.

I am a dog’s best friend.

I taste good.

I am a teddy bear, who gives really warm and fuzzy hugs.

The list was about 51 opinions long, but I edited them and chose only the ones I thought were worthy enough to be published. In any case, the above opinions were collated from a wide variety of people from all walks of life, purely for statistical purposes. The analysis of the opinions revealed that 40% of the people whom I talked to wanted to kill me and the other 60% were waking up from deep sleep and didn’t know what they were talking about.

Image Courtesy: www.barktrio.com

There are a lot of things in life that are worth smiling for. Most of them reside in us, and a few of them are out in the open, waiting to be chanced upon. The only difference between people who find these gems and the ones who don’t is something absurdly unfathomable - a pair of Motorola earphones!

I bought a pair of brand new earphones yesterday, seeing that my old ones were gutted, with their innards showing! I paid 300 bucks for this new pair and very excitedly, I plugged it in to my phone and clicked the radio button. I was grinning like a fool from ear to ear as i crouched in the corner of the room, clutching the phone like a hungry man holds a bit of food that he has found after a long, long time. I clicked the radio button, salivating at the thoughts of mind-numbing music… I clicked the radio button…

Nothing happened…

There was no sound, no music, no static, nothing… I screamed out in rage and tried to maul the earphones, when there was a faint noise in my ear. I stopped and investigated it. At one particular angle of the earphone, the music clarity was perfect, better than any I had ever heard. But only at that angle! Even if I moved a millimeter this way or that, I lost the sound and I could hear perfect radio silence!

Lazy ass bugger that I am, I had no intention of walking all the way across the street to replace the pair of earphones. I went to work the next day, driving my bike and the new pair of earphones plugged in, and all the way, people on the road gave me strange stares. I thought it was probably because of my handsome good looks, but soon realized it wasn’t. It was probably because I had one leg up on the front fender of the bike and the other balanced precariously on the brakes. The phone was nestled in my left trouser pocket and I had to put my left foot up on the fender to achieve the “optimum angle” for the earphones to work.

Every time I put my foot down to change gears, I lose the music.

Now, I have severe cramps in my thigh…

I still persist with these crappy earphones because I heard the sweetest voice in the whole wide world through these earphones, the voice of that lovely, charming angel who called me when I was busy searching for a couple of my lost documents and pulling my hair out and promptly brought a smile on my face.

I will risk being ridiculed as a cliché when I write this post, but I have to get my fingers moving over the keyboard. I am suffering from a serious bout of writers’ block nowadays. I can’t seem to convince myself that I must write to keep my mind spiraling down into an abyss of mundane work. I’ve been putting in twelve hours of work everyday now, for the past few weeks, and that has taken a toll on my writing. I have been accused of neglecting my blog, neglecting all the beautiful people on my Gtalk list, and not giving enough time to myself.

So, I decided yesterday (while I was in the middle of a beautiful dream) that the best way to get over this block is to start by revealing ten deep, dark secrets about myself - the skeletons in my closet - for the whole world to see and judge and hopefully, have mercy on my poor soul and forgive me for all my cupidity. Er.. I mean, stupidity!

1. Stuffed penguins freak me out! (As a kid, I used to watch Pingu and cry, and almost killed a friend of mine for forcing me to watch Happy Feet!)

2. I am homophobic - I don’t like the concept of homosexuality! (No offense to anyone, it’s just my personal belief that nature did not intend that to happen!)

3. I like it when people scream at me. It’s probably not subtle masochism but the fulfillment of an innermost desire to annoy others!

4. I am in love…

5. I like playing chess with people online, because that way, I can cheat by using Shredder Chess!

6. I once burned my dad’s feet with a hot serving spoon intentionally, when I was six years old, because he refused to buy me chocolates!

7. I think I’m from another planet, but I’m not sure of the facts…

8. When I’m alone, I fart loudly and smile to myself! (I will vehemently deny this fact in court, if it comes to that!!)

9. Till very recently, I did not know the difference between the kind of work a Prime Minister does and the kind of work a Mayor does! (Thanks for the enlightenment, Shefaly!)

10. I don’t bathe on weekends!

Phew.. Took me half an hour but I did it! I wrote something! Yay!

P.S. This was also a tag by Vishesh. I’ve got a couple of other left in my drafts, which I’ll be posting soon.

P.P.S. Ms. Charming Girl, you were exactly as I had imagined you would be. Thanks for meeting me last night…

(Photo Courtesy: CartoonStock.com)

Is it possible for someone to fall in love without actually having seen the other person, or even spoken to the person? A few days ago, I would have said no, until I found myself in a situation where every instance of my daily life involved wondering about that elusive girl, that faceless angel who haunts my dreams and realities, the girl who is unlike any other I have known, maybe because I don’t know her and yet I can’t help but feel that I’ve known her all my life.

Let me be the first to confess that I’m a workaholic for five days in a week with little or no social life on these days. Weekends for me are meant to unwind, to let myself go berserk and loosen the hold I have put on myself during the week. Lately, all I’ve been doing on weekends is sitting in front of an open Gtalk window, waiting for that special girl to come online. I know, I’m a little mad at times.

Women have this special power over men - I’ve experienced this a lot many times before - and that is the power to make men their slaves. I don’t know if I’m the only guy who’s ever experienced this strange, but beautiful phenomenon, but I found myself being drawn into a web of words, emotions and feelings while saying a simple “Hi” or a “Hello” with this girl. Ah, well… Wherever you are, I hope you remember chatting online with this hopeless romantic.

I am forced to eat my words against Cupid. That senseless idiot has struck me again! I wonder where he was hiding. I had been very careful to avoid getting caught in his line of fire and I almost thought that I was immune to his arrows. But alas, he has proved to be a bit more powerful than me.

Ms. Charming Girl, if you’re reading this, please don’t be alarmed. I am not a maniac and I am not a stalker, and I will not dwell on your unattainability. I can accept the fact that the best things in life are the hardest to come by and most of them are already taken. I was perhaps a bit slow to arrive at the scene. This post is just a small dedication to you and your charming wit - I love the way your alphabets and words make perfect sense to me…

This is perhaps the next best thing to writing a love note in a piece of parchment and rolling it up in an airtight bottle, corking the top and throwing it in the sea, because at least this way, you can have a chance to know what I feel like. Thanks for giving me your phone number when I asked you for it in my dream. Your voice sounded very sweet indeed!