Manas Garg Speaks

Has everything that could be invented been invented? Definitely not. There are so many things (or the lack of them) that bother me:

1. I hate batteries

Everything uses batteries - the laptop, the cell phone, the mouse, the electric shaver, the iPod, the wall clock, the remote, the UPS, the camera, cordless earphones… and something is always running out of battery. All the time. Not like batteries are good for the environment. We need a replacement. Now!

2. I hate battery chargers too

Why the heck do all chargers end up in a different shape at the end? No standard followed. 15 brand of cell phones have 15 different end connectors. Why do I need to own 7 different kind of chargers for different kind of devices? There should be one charger for all devices I own.

3. I wear glasses. So I can’t wear sunglasses?

Right. Photo-chromatic lenses make me look like I’m blind or something. And I’m not patient enough to maintain contact lenses. So I cannot wear swanky Ray Bans. Why don’t those swanky Ray Bans come with vision correction too?

Have more things that bother you? Feel free to comment!

I was talking to my little niece today, and asked her how was she spending her vacations.

Little Niece: “I’m taking a computer basics course and also Bharatnatyam classes”.

Obviously not interested in Bharatnatyam, I asked her what is it that she was learning in the computer class.

Little Niece: “Windows, Paint and all”.

Aha! Windows, Paint and all! Thats my Microsoft! 

Me: “You know, I work with Microsoft”

Little Niece: “Hmmm.. Microsoft? So what? Even I work with Microsoft Word!”

That shut me up.

Yesterday was a helluva busy day! I was just seeing my sent email, and was amazed to see what I’ll show you. These are the timestamps of all the emails that I sent yesterday. If you examine carefully, you can make out from what time till what time I slept, and what time I went home from office :)

Wed 11:55 PM
Wed 11:40 PM
Wed 11:37 PM
Wed 11:31 PM
Wed 11:10 PM
Wed 10:58 PM
Wed 10:54 PM
Wed 10:37 PM
Wed 10:26 PM
Wed 10:08 PM
Wed 9:51 PM
Wed 9:38 PM
Wed 9:34 PM
Wed 9:32 PM
Wed 7:52 PM
Wed 7:05 PM
Wed 6:49 PM
Wed 6:48 PM
Wed 5:55 PM
Wed 5:09 PM
Wed 4:48 PM
Wed 3:56 PM
Wed 3:11 PM
Wed 3:01 PM
Wed 2:49 PM
Wed 2:49 PM
Wed 2:34 PM
Wed 2:27 PM
Wed 2:25 PM
Wed 2:22 PM
Wed 1:54 PM
Wed 1:26 PM
Wed 1:15 PM
Wed 1:09 PM
Wed 12:37 PM
Wed 11:04 AM
Wed 10:53 AM
Wed 10:52 AM
Wed 10:32 AM
Wed 10:32 AM
Wed 10:25 AM
Wed 10:18 AM
Wed 8:21 AM
Wed 1:28 AM
Wed 1:26 AM
Wed 1:18 AM
Wed 1:16 AM
Wed 1:16 AM
Wed 1:15 AM
Wed 1:11 AM
Wed 1:06 AM
Wed 1:04 AM
Wed 12:53 AM
Wed 12:51 AM
Wed 12:48 AM
Wed 12:46 AM
Wed 12:41 AM
Wed 12:35 AM
Wed 12:32 AM
Wed 12:31 AM
Wed 12:28 AM
Wed 12:22 AM
Wed 12:21 AM

No wonder I don’t blog anymore!

STD-ISD-PCO. A small shop painted in bright yellow, with a couple of booths inside, where fans seldom worked, a table with a few displays and receipt printers. Throw in a couple of telephone instruments and a friendly operator and you have a PCO.

I still remember when the idea of PCOs came in - that was around 15 years back. They were an instant hit. By the way - do you know what does PCO mean? It stands for Public Call Office. ISD is International Subscriber Dialling and STD is Subscriber Trunk Dialling. Legacy terms, eh?

Anyways, those were the days when not having a telephone at your home was the default behavior, and neighbours or landlords calling you to receive a phone call was the norm. In fact, it was a given thing - one could always share their neighbours phone number with others and mark it as PP - I dunno what this PP meant.

When you had to make calls, it was a walk to the PCO around the corner, and wait for your turn - oh - I forgot the importance of timing. Calls after 9′o clock at night were half rate and after 11′o clock were quarter rate. By the way - peak hour call rates were as high as Rs 1.80 per 6 seconds (for distances > 500 km)! Sounds like a dream right? Talk about monopoly!

Anyway, the mobile phone came, the Telecom revolution happened, and everyone got a cell phone. Visits to the PCO became rarer. PCO owners switched to selling recharge coupons for mobile phones. Good riddance!

People have been asking me why have I suddenly disappeared from the blogging circle entirely. I actually have - my last post was something like 2 weeks back!

I’m quite busy in office these days, and have taken up a new schedule where I get up by 6.30 in the morning and am in office by 8.30 :) Which also implies no staying up till crazy hours in the night. I am working on an exciting new project, and am learning a lot. I’ll write a post on work culture in my company and the kind of work I do soon. 

I took up the Art of Living course last week, and it was simply amazing. The best part was that it was not as if they were forcing you to accept some particular belief or ‘Guru’. The yoga was great, and I feel so much better now. I would urge you to take this course up whenever you can - after you do it you’ll realize that you should have done it a long time ago, just like I did!

I went on a company picnic to coorg, and had a great time. The resort we stayed in was just awesome. I got to stay in a private villa that had a private pool (all for myself :), jacuzzi and lots of other stuff. Won’t say that coorg was amazing, but out resort (Orange county) definitely was. In addition, these picnics help one be better friends with people in your team :) However, the resort was expensive (I’m not even sure if just ‘expensive’ describes how expensive it was), so no point going there on your own. Wait till your company takes you there! 

My post, a must have internet explorer add-on is getting a LOT of spam comments - I get upto 10 everyday :( Guess I’ll just disable the comments for that particular post.

This is all that is going on in my life - well almost :) What about you?

Remember the time when coins were such a hard thing to find? No shopkeeper seemed to have coins, and everyone resorted to shelling out those toffees for 50p or 1 Re. (I bet the smart ones still do)

I’ve been facing the opposite problem for the last few months. I don’t carry coins in with me, because they damage my absurdly expensive wallet.

Every evening, I empty my pockets of all the coins I collect during the day, by virtue of buying things priced at sums that are not multiples of tens. I put them in my cupboard.

In the mornings, I never take coins with me. Reason already specified. Putting them and carrying them in pockets is also troublesome.

I now have more than a thousand rupees - all in coins. Dunno what to do with them. I think I’ll surprise the pizza delivery guy someday <evil grin>

Its hard to believe that these coins were not so long ago something hard to find - because the value of the metal in the coin was more than the coin’s value! Thus metal merchants actually melted the heavy one rupee and two rupee coins and extracted metal! That is the reason the new coins we see are so light and also the answer to where all the old coins suddenly disappeared :) Amazing, huh?