Sentimental Measles

Life as a techie is very tough. You spend most of your adult life looking at numbers, you spend atleast 2 hours of your workday on ESPN.com (or CNNSI.com if you so prefer, both in my case), another hour or so reading forwards of stupid emails whilst chatting on MSN/AOL/Yahoo throughout the day, taking atleast 5 coffeee breaks and successfully and most efficiently completing the days work in 8 hours, which for all practical purposes you should have in 3.
You then stick around after 5.30pm pretending to work longer, when really you are just surfing the internet and chatting with fellow techies about women, sports, Movies, gadgets and sports again. Finally you leave the hallowed office premises and call the same ppl you’ve worked with or have been emailing all day.

It’s amazing what an idle yet creative mind can come up with if pushed by boredom. The creativity usually manifests itself in the geekiest of ways. On one such day, fighting the monotony that is RF, PP happened. PP, in short for Ping Pong. It started off with keeping note of the wins and losses of each ping pong match we play during the workday to stop all the trash talk and find out who really IS the best. Somewhere down the line things got reaaally competitive and arguments started about ranking, strength of opposition, bonus points and a challenge pass. Soon, our very own version of T-Mobile Fantasy Ping Pong came into existence.

This blog is dedicated to the diligent efforts of my fellow PP Council members and the hope that pretty soon our idea will spread to other offices and other cities and we can have our own online version of the Fantasy PP League. So geeks and all you techies, please, the next time your boss asks you what you want for your quarterly "meeting the numbers" incentive, you know what you ought to ask for.

                                            FANTASY P-P

Scoring
Each series win gets 1 point
Each game won gets 1/2 point
Series between bottom 3 players 0.5 point for each series win and 0.25 for each game won
For Doubles matches each player of the winning team gets 1/2 point for a win and 1/2 bonus point for series win

Bonus Points
Series Win against top 2 players wins 1 bonus point
Staying in the Top position for consecutive weeks earns 1 bonus point
Series loss against bottom 3 player costs 1 point

Rankings and Legacy Points
Rankings change on a weekly basis 5PM ET Friday
Last Friday of the month Top 2 players square off for 3 legacy points to be carried over to the next month
Loser of the Top 2 match gets 1.5 carry-over legacy points
Every other player starts the new month with 0 points

Degree of Opposition (DOP)
These are conditional points won only for a series win.
For each series won against player ranked one position above, you gain 0.1 point
For each series lost to a player ranked one position below you, you lose 0.05 point
Points won or lost increase in multiples of +0.1/-0.05 for each ranking.

Final Rankings - Weighted Total
0.2(DOP Points) + 0.2( Series Win %) + 0.6(Total Points)

SnL (Stakes and Ladders Challenge)
Any player is allowed ONE challenge ticket a month.
A challenge can be made to any player ranked higher than the challenger.
An SnL requires a 24 hr period to be exercised.
If challenger wins the SnL he asumes that ranking of the player he challenges.
No player can be challenged more than THREE times a month, even if his form sucks at the time and everyone has a chance to beat him.
Challenge cannot be used in last 5 days of the month.
Trash Talking, Bad mouthing and Sledging are officially allowed 24 hours before the SnL Series.

Challenger Wins:
Challenger gets: Defender’s Weighted Total
Defender Loses 5 points

Challenger Loses:
Challenger Loses: Difference in points/2
Defender wins 5 points
Constant Ridicule

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P.S. Since we are that nerdy, we’ve also created an excel spreadsheet with macros and functions to auto update and generate reports on a weekly basis. Interested parties feel free to contact us (Though I have a feeling no one will)

The atmosphere is festive, the Music - loud, the setting - office space and the people - at their unproductive best. I guess it must be Christmas.

That time of the year when just about anywhere you go for a Happy Hour, there almost certainly is an office party in progress. The office party —- where the usual suspects are seen at the bar ordering one round of shots after another, the married men leching at the cute girls around, suddenly breaking into a monologue about their past glory and fictional escapades from their days of leading the single life, a groups of obnoxious sales guys walking around tryin to make arbit conversation with strangers whilst making sure they mention the "I" word atleast 50 times, and then there are the Desis who bunch together and play pool in one corner of the room, oblivious to the concept of socializing.

Christmas is also the time you cannot possibly surf radio stations without having to sit through George Michael reminding us every 10 minutes, how it was just "Last Christmas" that he was straight and schmoozin the ladies. Ofcourse, this year, to save him from tears, he’ll give it to someone male and special.

This may be a couple of months past its time but does everyone remember the day Friendster introduced this cool feature called "Who viewed my profile"? I can safely bet that every single person reading this at that moment went ‘Shit, XXXX is going to know I’ve been e-stalking him/her a gazillion times a week! I literally reside on that profile I’ve bookmarked. Where is that damn ‘view profiles anonymously’ feature ?"

So apparently, SRK was at 30th St Station the other day shooting for some Karan Johar film. Amidst all the commotion and throngs of gushing fans (a 1000 women and my friend Sameer) it seems it never occured to ppl that Rani Mukherji was also part of the crew. We met her way back in 1999, when she was still an up and coming actress with one seriously radiant smile, one hit song, Khandala, and one hot yet ever-so-slightly bloating body. And here was my friend Cliffton, Cliffton Andrew Jones Syngkon, who goes up to her and innocently asks who the fuck this Rani Mukherji was, since he’d heard from the guy down the street she was pretty famous.
BRAIN FART !

You know what other recent Brain fart there has been? Bangalore changin its name to Bengaluru. Now I’m not exactly a non-Metropolitan-of-Bombay fan, but this is sad. It was bad enough that Bombay became Mumbai, Madras- Chennai and Calcutta changed to Kolkata, but giving us more ammo against B’loriites ? That’s just cruel. More names shall be changed and more jokes shall be made.

AS A RULE, I think Anu Malik should officially be banned from playback singing. I can’t even remember the last time I heard anyone as annoying, sing. He’s composed some music and made a whole lot of money. He’s stolen a whole lot of music and made even more money off of it. Anu, you’ve officially pissed me off. Just stick to composing or you’ll have to face the music. 

It’s been aeons since I’ve updated this blog but if I were doing this everyday, I wouldn’t actually be doing anything else substantive now would I ?

I’m going to use this space for some long overdue venting. Firstly, my heartiest congratulations to my namesake and fellow keeda Rohan Deshpande who, after years of fighting the good fight, has reached the end of his rope and has decided to tie the knot to hang on. Rohan, one of only two likeable, earthy and NORMAL alumni of an institution solely responsible for producing and inspiring an entire generation of fuck-ups, a bunch of self-absorbed, egotistical jerks with seemingly innate yet misguided delusions of adequacy. Yes I mean Bombay Snobbish … err.. Scottish.

I think someone should tell people who write these goody-goody testimonials like .. "she is the most warm and gentle person I’ve ever met in the whole wide world" or some shit like that, really how dumb it is to be reading ‘em. Firstly,there is a 77% likelihood that such testimonials end with "Guys, she is definitely a catch !" Just as there is an 83% probability that there would be atleast 6 exclamation marks, 2 "haha’s" or "lol’s" or 1 "jk (just kidding)" in there and furthermore a 98 % certainty that the person writing the testimonial has goofed up the spelling of ‘definitely’. Isn’t that what spell check is all about? Dressing up the grammatical nudity ? And oh, don’t even get me started with the kinds who spend the better part of their day using special characters to draw faces or flowers or spelling C.U.T.E. Please get a life.

Like someone told me the other day, I’m completely driven by and only by food. Kabobeesh, here I come.

P.S. I still love the women from Scottish. err.. sort of.

The end of an exhausting weekend and the next one isn’t till September. A far cry from days back home when we’d get holidays named after the whole world and its aunties. I thought I read somewhere a while back that Sri Lanka has close to 32 national holidays. And No, thats not counting weekends. Isn’t that sweet meLANKAly. The only solace here is atleast I get my birthday off as part of the Thanksgivin long weekend package. Like that really matters.

Noble intentions Bob Geldof. But you could atleast have had a better lineup for the Philly leg of the Live 8 Concert. Sure, considering Will Smith and Dave Matthews played, every single girl from the Northeast was sure to show up, but please, does anyone still listen to Bon Jovi ? Came home after 3 hours only to see my friend in London watch U2, The Who, Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd !! Depressing.

What was with this Bengali Convention in New York. I didn’t even know there were so many Bongs in the country. Every 7.4 seconds you come across one with a badge from the convention… Well, fact: Bong women are miiiiighty cute. And have shaaarp tongues. Me like.

Kudos to my buddy Rajas for finally getting out of Madison, the town of the vertically challenged. In fact, from the way he was FOBbing out looking at the skyline of New York, I’m pretty convinced that his 6ft 3inch frame definitely featured in the top 10 structures of Wisconsin. I’m a Philly boy through and through but nothing comes closer to Bombay than NY. Now if only someone would find me a techie job there. I’d drink, dine, make merry and regularly watch my fellow New Yorkers getting their asses beat and handed back to them by the Eagles. Besides, being in New York would mean I wouldn’t miss the seasonality of Philly. The four beloved seasons - Football, Basketball, Hockey and Baseball.

I think they should just scrap Mondays and Wednesdays completely. Mondays, well simply because its a damn Monday. And Wednesday, does it really serve any purpose? Your concentration levels are waning progressively from the start of the work week. By the time Wednesday rolls in you’re already thinking bout the coming weekend and another couple of evenings of binge drinking. Why spend 2/7th of your life on days you don’t care for anyway ?

Is there anything more frustrating and boring than shaving ? An average man grows close to 80 miles of beard in a lifetime. Another useless piece of information the Internet has to offer. I’ve decided I am going to cut down on this vice, before I get hooked on to it. So am going to stick with my twice a week plan. Besides, with the heridetary nature of such things I really ought to be more worried about about doing everything I can to maintain a full head of hair before the genes kick in. Like they say ‘A hair on the head is worth two in the brush’

I suffer from A.A.D. I’m convinced. It takes me all of 20 seconds to completely tune off if the person talking to me starts annoying. The tune-off time is even lower in a meeting. And almost always at that. Talking about tuning off, Birthday wishes to my favorite girl, the high priestess of tuning off, Suju. You’re silly and really stupid, but I ain’t got nothin but love for you.

S runs a counter in her head when she meets someone new.
(10: Say something interesting, dude
9: Say something funny
8, 7, 6…
4: You have got to be kidding me
3,2: Ok say something intelligent will ya
1,0: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEject.)

Ok here are my fav Suj Stories:

* She will frikkin never ever get the lyrics to a song right. EVER. I can’t believe all these years she thought R.E.S.P.E.C.T was actually ‘Harry come eve tease me !!!’ How did you ever hear Harry from R.E. ??? And Really ? Are there women out there wishing it’d happen to them ?

* She has this silly habit of generously throwing out Chinkuuuuuuu and Pinkuuuuu’s to all the ppl she is fond of. Rumor has it that she calls her favorite duvet Stinkuuuuuuuuuuuu. Go figure.

* Waking up at 8.14 for an 8.30 T.Aing assignment and running 8 blocks to teach class in those ugly red pjs. Alarm Clocks are a foreign concept for S. In fact technology is too. It took all of 4 full weeks to finally figure out how to check her voicemail on that ugly brick of a cell phone she owned.

It ain’t Philly without you. She can now be reached at 1-800-GUR GAON. Happy Birthday !

I might be one of a select few but I do happen to think Ben Stiller is a brilliant actor. I wondered why the hell he stopped making films considering his virgin attempt, ‘Reality Bites’ was a masterpiece. Well, more meaningful films atleast. Anyhow, watched Zoolander flash his Magnum and Blue Steel this evening and couldnt help but write about my patented look "The Howrat." Its the signature, grab your hands on anything FISHy and MEATy, doesnt-matter-how much-you’ve-just-stuffed-yourself, always-hungry look. Maybe I should create my own Photo Calendar chronicling the various stages I go through when I see good food. Indiscretion to Indigestion. Oh do I really need to mention Intoxication in there or is that just a given ? Coming Soon "The Bhukkad."

My Netflix popup assures me that ‘Dodgeball’ is on its way. Great ! Don’t we all want to grab life by the balls. Talking of balls, will someone please tell me what Beer Pong is ?? I was shunned by a couple of Americans the other day when I said we FOBs didn’t have Beer Pong in Bombay. In fact, forget Pong, there was no beer involved. I had to take the breathalyzer test if I walked home past 10pm ! Aah, Those 90’s.

Is it only me or does everyone else also have this one relative who has no other work other than spam your inbox with forwards of jokes and arbit shit approximately every 11.5 minutes ? Grrrr… Technology should be selectively made available.

So this thought crept into my thick head one fine day. I should do something productive with my evenings; I sooo need to get over this increasing fascination with working out, coming home, talking to and lookin myself in the mirror wondering when those skinny arms would get some definition. The year was 2003. It was just after my graduation. I was young and stupid. Unemployed but hopeful. Waiting for an absolution. Tom Petty played on my laptop : Free Fallin. It was all downhill from here on. I decided to start blogging. It was a noble thought. Somewhere between being really genuinely busy, reallly, really lazy and ridiculously pissed drunk, it got lost.

This virgin blog is the long overdue realization of that intention.