Aroma

If you were a person in Asia with a habit of frequently catching cold, chances are that Axe oil is your great friend. Unless you are one of those who prefers the Vicks inhaler, that is. I belong to the former category. What was once a relief during cold, gradually morphed into something that I used to avoid motion sickness. Given that I travel over 2 hours every day, and Bengaluru’s roads have the habit of not being straight for more than a kilometer and a half inside the city, a vial of Axe oil stays inside my bag always. One fine day, I use it on the way to office and shove it into the side pouch where all last minute things and generally my earphones go(think of it as a low latency cache, #selfthoo).

Bengaluru’s weather is nice unanimously if you’re from a place that has both extremes of weather. But if you’re from a place like Chennai, where the seasons are Summer, more Summer and 11/10 Summer, Bengaluru’s winters will bear the curses that you hurl at it for making you shiver. Accompanying your shivering is the coconut oil bottle’s irritating habit of freezing up. That’s what happened to one of the roommates at the Madiwala house. Except that, roommate is insistent on oiling his hair that weekend day. Roommate goes to kitchen to heat the oil up, except that he holds the bottle too close to the stove :D 

The bottom of the bottle melts slightly with oil oozing out of the newly created deformation. Roommate grabs one of the unused measuring cups they give with Surf excel(the only other regularly bought provision other than coconut oil at the Madiwala house). 

Hacks being hacks, in this case, the bottle’s width being small enough to fit inside the cup, but the length tall enough to tip over the bottle and cup placed on the study table(Is it even morally justifiable to call it, that? Although it sounds better than “Temporary shoving open area” ). 

My earphones also being one of the occupants of the temporary shoving open area, becomes a candidate for an oil massage. I try to rub it off using paper and my own oil deprived hair, but the flavor on the oil(oh yes! Did I tell you it was flavored oil?) is too strong. Meh, I didn’t care as long as it was working. 

Fast forward to Monday morning, and as usual after I board the cab, I take out my vial of Axe oil, take a pinch drop of it, only for my nose to curse at the pungent nonsense that was the aroma of Axe oil’s eucalyptus, pudina and coconut oil’s fragrant flavor all mixed up. It surely didn’t help with the motion sickness, I can tell you that.

If you’ve read till this, you would've probably realized that there is no point to this post. I’ll just leave you with a moral- don’t fucking heat a plastic coconut oil bottle over a gas stove.

Something that was cool

So I came across this question on Quora, and wanted to write an answer for it. But the answer I had in mind, was neither far back to qualify as the past, nor did it answer the second part of the question (triviality). However nobody does it these days, or so I think.

This was in the summer of 2010 when I was learning C programming. It was a crash course and our lab had only Turbo C++ compilers. We used to have lectures where syntax was explained and we used to try them out in labs. To explain the concept of loops, we were explained with an example program which printed different triangles and quadrilaterals. Discussion after hours led to a clever combination of using clrscr(), setxy() and rand() function in combination with mod to create so called screensavers, in the form of marquees, shapes that appeared in a random fashion. It was cool then. For people who were just learning to program.

An unexpected visit for the second time

So this happened last December (2013) that I had to travel to Bangalore from Coimbatore. I had never travelled in a AC sleeper bus on an overnight trip. The scheduled arrival time for the bus was 5 am, so I promptly kept the alarm at 4 30 and slept off. The occasion was that Kurukshetra's Xceed was happening at Bangalore and I was going to help host a quiz.

But it so happened that, the bus ended up reaching half an hour earlier, and by the time the bus had gone past all the alighting points, past Majestic and to the shed, I was sound asleep. That being the last set of beds in the bus, the conductor didn't notice me as well. He was irate and gave me a good bunch of appreciative words as Suprabatham, waking me up at the shed. I got down and it was cold, very cold! I reached the main road at around 4 10 and took an auto to IIM-B. Never really managed to find out where that shed was or how long I had overshot Majestic.

A couple of days back, my cab driver took an alternate route and I found myself crossing a familiar temple to a road under a bridge. Then I remembered this incident. The area was Chamrajpet.

Fun times. If you never failed,  overslept, you never lived.

GoIbibo: broadcasting travel plans since God knows when!

I have GoIbibo app installed on my phone. Never having used it is another story, but today a notification on my locked screen alarmed me!

Who the fish is Rahul? I have had some problems in the recent past because of the previous owner of my current phone number not having updated his number at all online locations, but that was someone called Victor, Rahul was a new name. I was curious; so I went to the Account page and saw this.

Good, so nobody was signed in. Anyhow, let me just click on "My Bookings" anyway. And, to my shock and surprise, there are 2 bookings.

I click on one and I see this: an itinerary for 3 people.

Who these people are, I have no idea. Why is their account appearing on my phone also I have no idea. I think it is a problem with user bookings from Guest accounts on GoIbibo. Well done on privacy and security domains, *massive applause*.


If you are using this app, uninstall it. Who knows, which random person is seeing your flight details?

Counting Stars

It's been a while since I've written anything at all, so I thought I'd let me guilty feelings take a small break by writing a small piece today. We went to Hogenakkal for the weekend, since it was a 3 day weekend (Bless Republic Day for falling on a Monday).

It has been quite a few years since I had been to a falls and taken a bath at a natural waterfall (6-7 years? I don't even remember the last time, it was with Grandpa at Kutralam I think. Kishkintha doesn't qualify.) But the most enjoyable part of the trip was stargazing.

Chennai and Bangalore are too polluted to see anything in the sky at all, but the sky above the Forest Officers' guest house at Hogenakkal was crystal clear. So many stars visible that I almost cried. I am not a big fan of identifying constellations (in fact, I don't know if I am-- I haven't done it much during my childhood) but identifying Orion constellation was overjoying. The inner kid in me was awakened. I was also able to identify Canis Major with the help of an image that I was able to Google up which showed constellations in their relative positions. It isn't much, but it was fun. I should try picking this up as a hobby.

Also writing. Must write more often. That's all for now. 

New things every day!

I hate this platform. Blogger sucks these days. But it would be such a pity to let this blog die, so I thought I would write something here, now and then. Does anyone even read personal blogs these days? Medium is a wonderful platform, but one doesn't get the feeling of ownership there. Nothing like, "This is my space!".

So, it has been 2 full weeks since I have come to Bangalore. Yaay me. This exact time 14 days back, I was starting from home to the airport. Wow, time runs fast and slow at the same time. You know the thing about which people say? The one where they find money in their clothes and feel happy? Lol, at first I thought how does one even forget putting money in their own pockets. But after coming here, I realize it does happen. And, I also realize that that shit happens only when you wash and fold your own clothes. I found 20 rupees in my pocket today. And, believe me, its more of a relief feeling than a happy feeling. Every day is fun :D

A Short Story

Two little kids playing tug of war.
Much enthusiasm, much fun, unaware of the strength of the rope.
If it broke, both of them would fall.
If one let go, the other would fall.