What to do in the 'Red Light' area...

It's been 2 years to me traveling 12 Kms to office and back home everyday and whereas it was hectic in the beginning, I accepted it in due course of time. That was when I started observing other people on my way. And by now, thanks to the observer in me, I have about half a dozen trends on my book.

Whereas a few of them are disturbing, the most recent one is the funniest. So, if you feel bored waiting on traffic signals, this funny one would help you enjoy your time on the red lights. Oh yes, you would be able to observe it only on two conditions. One, you are in one of those tier 2 cities like NOIDA that have started to have some organized traffic but still don't have proper traffic law enforcement system. Two, you yourself wait for the traffic light to turn green before you cross the signal. Of course, we both know that you do. I just mentioned the second point for the sake of completeness.

And let's not forget that the people in such cities are mostly middle class educated ones, true ambassadors of Indian culture. This poor creature's observation is about the behaviour of those ambassadors on traffic signals in such places. It's frighteningly simple to observe and is, somewhere, a menifestation of a child in all of us.

When the signal is red and the timer beside it shows more than about 40 seconds, you may easily notice even the slow ones hesitantly seeing both ways and jumping it as if it doesn't exist. 'Well, what the hell, if I wait for it I'll be late for my daughter's tuition classes. And anyway the road is not very busy at the moment', is perhaps what goes on in their minds.
On the contrary, when it shows less than about 15 seconds, even the speediest of those responsible dad's would screech the brakes obediently. You might find them even respecting the zebra crossing at such instances. Needless to say, a sense of self righteousness or may be a contentment with fulfillment of their duties as a citizen of the country is what inflates them with self-pride at such moments.

I tried to observe the behaviour for between 15 and 40 seconds too but couldn't make out any specific trend. If you can, please don't forget to put me a comment here. Will you !

Sodium's Self Realization...

There are only two types of IITians :

Those who have brains...
...I belong to the other ones !

The sky is falling....

Things happen. They happen with everybody. The world is not trying to zero in on me. That's what I keep assuring me these days. Why, sample my days.

I am in Gym in the morning. Get to see Rohit after quite a few days there. So does he. I am doing my set so can't say hi. He comes to me and
"Hi"
"Hey hi" I say with effort because I am towards the end of my set.
"Say buddy! What's going"
"Biceps and Triceps dude" I say putting the barbell down.
"I was asking as in life you loser ! Do you tell everyone such replies when they ask you what's up" he snaps taking out his shirt.
He sometimes makes you feel as if you are the biggest of them all...idiots, of course.

And just the next day I am doing Pullovers in Chest. Rohit enters again.
"Hey. Whoa so heavy ! So ! It's legs today?"
I drop the weight midway, without finishing my set. It's more a shock than surprise.
Now now, if someone can call such an obvious chest exercise as a pullover a leg exercise then where in hell did he have any right to call me a loser the previous day !

A few hours later, I am in office. The bachelor party is discussing the grave subject of singles vs committed. The conclusion after about half an hour of debate, more serious than any project meeting I have ever attended there, was that girls like committed guys because they must have something in them which attracted somebody enough to commit herself to them.

I am a quick learner. People have always told me that. Now what would you expect from such a person after this debate. I come and change my relationship status on my profile on the social networking site to 'Committed'.
And guess what. This girl I met at a party a few days back and had been trying to flirt with for sometime now, writes to me
"Hey what's the surprise? You got someone at last ! Who is the lucky girl? So now I have nothing to fear from you and we can keep in touch. You won't mind me calling you a bhaiya ! Hai na !"
I celebrated a black day that day.

'Original Sodium'...

I hold product designers and campaigners in high regard because their mind works 24x7 for new ideas and most of the good ones play with human psychology. But this one has been perplexing me for some time recently.

Here is one new-comer to my gym whose jacket always brandishes the label of 'Original Nike'. One big mouth in my office also sports something which displays another 'Original' attached to its name. This is not very uncommon in branded apparels these days. Perhaps you have guessed by now that what catches this poor observer's eye is this word - 'Original'.
It's been attached to the actual brand name as if the fake ones would have ethics enough not to attach this to their own stickers or tags. And in that light, I wonder how this benefits any of the two, the manufacturer and the customer.

Similar is the case with holograms. I see so many books having a fancy line written on their cover page to the effect of warning the customer not to purchase the product if it doesn't have such and such hologram. Now what use is this? Are the publishers assuming here that the fake ones are stupid enough to print this kind of line on their fake copies of the same book and still not attach an almost similar hologram ! Who, anyway, ever 'wastes' his effort in looking at the hologram from 3 different angles to see if it indeed shows up that publishing house name in 3-D. And in the end, after all, it should not be too difficult for the fakes to get the hologram copied as well.

I would be obliged if any of you product designers or amateur observers could find some time to enlighten this poor observer on this, if you yourself happen to be more fortunate than me to have its answer.