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.