A conversational tool

Coffee conversation this morning, over the hissing of the steam machine.

"They have a prompt"
Somewhat hungrily, a touch of greed, "A plum? Who has a plum?"
"Plum? No, prompt, a prompt"
Definite grumpiness at the withdrawal of the possibility of a snack, "Who does?"
Impatience creeping in, "They do"
"Who? Oh they? They have a prompt!"

There is a lesson to be learned here. An important lesson about human communication.

The power of repetition. Don't knock it till you've tried it. The next time someone does not appear to comprehend some piece of wisdom that comes sailing out of your mouth, don't bother rephrasing, paraphrasing or explaining. Just repeat the same sentence. Again. And again. And yet again. You can try varying the volume if you get bored. Play around with the emphasis. On each repetition give a different syllable its day in the sun. Experiment with tone. Or pitch. The success rate of this tactic will surprise you.

I've given it some thought. Here's why this technique is successful:

a. Headphones. The noise associated with modern living. Ear wax. People hear less than they used to. Its not that they don't comprehend, they just did not hear. Give them a second chance.

b. People are lazy. It takes effort to actually listen. To pay attention. To analyze what someone has said, to rummage in the attic of your head for some forgotten context, to snap out of your pleasant daydream and be dragged kicking and screaming back to the hallway conversation. People try and make you do all the hard work, provide the frame of reference, perhaps throw in a little joke to make it more palatable, work on an analogy. The greedy ones will even expect a metaphor to be included in the package. Repetition is your defense. It forces your audience to do their share of the work.

c. People are not always smart. Sad, but undeniably true. It has to be said. If your audience belongs to this category, repetition might be the best tool in your arsenal. It requires little effort on your part (you can plan your grocery shopping list, recite poetry in your head, try to find a word that rhymes with retard - all while you say the same sentence out loud sixteen times). This gives the slower ones time to catch up with the conversation.

Try it. And remember to be appropriately grateful when it works.

Shiny happy people

Back home, I smiled when I was happy. And if not happy, at least marginally glad about something. This was not an anomaly, you understand. I was safely within the bounds of normal. Here though, I have to smile all the time. Every single person you pass by will grin maniacally at you and inquire after your health and well being. Strangely though, they are not particularly interested in your response. This is a good thing, because minutes tick by as I attempt to force my expression into submission and then threaten my throat with a licking it will never forget if it does not formulate an inane response in the next thirty seconds. By this time the grinner is usually fifty yards away and getting smaller by the second. Its exhausting, pretending to be a beam of sunshine the livelong day, especially if you don't have a naturally sunshiny disposition.
If I smile one more time today I swear my smile is going to turn on me and attempt to bite.

An embarassing start to the week

It was a lovely day until suddenly it wasn't. I was in the best of moods, an oddity given that it was Monday morning and I had not yet partaken of the morning cup of coffee. I breezed into a gas station (did you notice how localized I've become? I didn't even think petrol pump, I promise), leaped out of my car and started with 'gas dispensing process step one', also known as opening one's fuel tank. I then realized that I had left the engine running, so reverse darted to shut off said engine. Imagine, if you will, my chagrin, my horror, my dismay that knew no bounds when I discovered that I had locked myself out of the car. Lets recap, so that you can fully grasp the situation:
a. Car
b. Running engine
c. At the pump, preventing any other car from filling fuel
d. Locked
e. All windows up
f. Keys firmly in ignition
g. Me, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the village idiot
Oh, I called for help, and help duly arrived, forty minutes later. But those are forty minutes I would not want to relive in a hurry. First, there was blind panic. I am very good at blind panic. Headless chickens have nothing on me. Once I tired of this, I ran hither and tither from fabled pillar to well known post. Long phone conversations ensued - with automated voice systems, with a helpful person from my car rental company and finally with a representative of Chevrolet. The only happy moment was when the Chevy rep did her best to make me feel smart again. Having taken down all the details of my situation and my location, she asked, "So will you and the vehicle stay in this location until help arrives?". Ummmm....yes? While I waited for my saviour to make an appearance, I attempted to act nonchalant around my car. I leaned against the car and stared into the distance (pose sustainable for 40 seconds), cleaned my car windows (good for upto 4 minutes), walked around the gas station (excellent move - took me away from the waiting line giving me the evil eye, and ate up nearly 5 minutes), fiddled busily with phone (6 seconds) and gulped nervously like a fish (2 minutes). Having run out of ideas, I went back to what I was apparently best at - my retard impersonation.
Eons later, a perfectly nice man named Ed rescued me. The nightmares will last a lifetime.

Living with an uncomfortably full bladder

If I was to ask you, politely of course, to drop your pants in full view of random strangers, my guess is that you would politely decline and proceed to eye me askance for years to come. Strangely enough, this seems to be the norm in restrooms in California and as far as I can tell nobody is being given the good old askance look. In a public toilet in this sunny state, the cubicles are built with as little material as possible. They stop a good foot above the floor. They miss the ceiling by a multitude of feet. And then there are the doors. These doors refuse to have anything to do with the rest of the cubicle. Clearly superior, they stand aloof, making minimal contact with all that surrounds them. The end result is something like this:
1. Frame
2. Hinge
3. 1 to 1.5 inches of air, bridged by aforesaid lonely hinges.
4. Door
5. Repeat inches of air
6. Frame
On close observation one would notice that all the other doors in the state are on talking terms with their frames. They fit snugly. All is peace and harmony. In the restrooms however, door and frame are perpetually estranged. the interval of a movie at a theatre, for example, you could choose to empty your bladder. If you are so inclined, you could also observe any number of strangers indulging in this same act. You can bond and not feel lonely. You could slide notes to the person in the next cubicle, or even a cow, if you were willing to squeeze said cow just a tad.
Call me a prude, but I am carrying a full bladder around with me much more than I used to.

I miss Orkut

I used to be a happy member of a networking community called Orkut. I logged on once every week or so, bade friends hello, pointedly ignored any slimes who had oozed out of the woodwork and wished to 'make friendship' me, exchanged snippets of gossip and oohed over photos of wrinkly newborn babies. It was a nice, relaxed lifestyle. Then blew the winds of change. Friends and acquaintances alike starting dropping off the edge of Orkut. There even appeared to be an unprecedented dearth of slimes on the horizon. The mails started to make an appearance, first a trickle, then a deluge, rapidly swelling to an ocean - all requesting one to make oneself available on Facebook. The party had moved. Bother, I thought. How annoying. Annoying it may have been, but one tires of talking to oneself in cyberspace, even though one's company is rather scintillating. So off to Facebook-land I went. I may or may not have been tripping merrily along at this point, but that is neither here nor there.
All merriness soon went its merry way down the toilet. Facebook turned out to a bewildering and belligerent. It was the rave party response to Orkuts English high tea. I had been tagged in photos, I was informed. People were considering poking me, some of them who not above a week ago would have politely offered me a muffin. Someone had sent me a 'how kinky are you' request! I was not sure I wanted to explore what that meant. Did I wish to calculate my bmi? Would a grammar test interest me? A vampire had bitten me. I was encouraged to join someones entourage. Werewolves tempted me to join their pack. Someone threw a sheep at me. One sympathizes with the poor, woolly nitwit. At this point, I felt like its dumber cousin. Had I ever considered becoming a pirate? Did I wonder if friends and neighbours nursed secret, stalker style crushes? Now was the time to figure out my 'true name'. And my personality type (I already know the answer to this one - the type that prefers having their toenails pulled out rather than spend time in Facebook). And the kind of drink I am. Also the kind of dog I am. And would I like some flowers? Or a drink? Was I suddenly possessed by an urge to impersonate Santa Claus?
I fled. I sneak in, every couple of months, dodge the sheep and leave hurried and somewhat incoherent scribbles on people's Walls. I never go at night. The vampires scare me.

Dantes Inferno

I'm being very good about blogging now. You know that old saw - strike when the guilt is hot. Good wisdom, that.
I have decided that I am going to be very good from now on, angelic even. What brought on this determination to turn over a new leaf, nay an entire tree, you ask. I glimpsed hell. And I don't want to go back. Hell is a twenty two hour economy class flight replete with screeching babies and seats that stubbornly pretend that the concept of angles other than ninety degrees is alien to them. Hell is being infernally sleepy but unable to drop off because you might just miss your next meal and the good Lord knows when more food is to be had. Hell is dying to go to the rest room but feeling so terribly awkward about discussing this pressing, personal need with the sleeping stranger next to you who is playing the role of the boatman when your bladder is filled with the Styx. When you do finally battle your way to said restroom, you will be charmed to discover that it was designed for the Lilliputs and you, in fact, are Gulliver's cousin on steroids.
Abolish hard labour, I say. Just sentence those hardened criminals to a lifetime of coach travel. God help me, if I have to do this again anytime soon, I will turn into a hardened criminal with the blood of a smug business class traveler on my hands. And no, I will not feel guilty. There is just so much we can be called upon to bear and my middle name isn't Job.

All my bags are packed

Yes, I know. Its been months. I have a brilliant excuse though, this time around. I have been consumed by the logistics of moving from one country to another. You have to admit that thats a good one. Worth being consumed by.
Lets start at the very beginning, I've been told that thats a very good place to start. Visa stamped, it was time to get organized about the Big Move. I started by doing my world renowned headless chicken impersonation. The next step was to make a List. This started out well enough. When the list started to run longer than the begats in the Bible, I reverted to said headless chicken impersonation. This time around I went for the grander production - 6 headless chickens lashed together smashed out of their scrawny, spouting necks.
Eventually I calmed down enough to start to frantically do things - crack-addict-like I lived for my next hit, a nice, juicy tick mark on the List. Days sped by in a blur of happy ticks. Miraculously though, the list of things stubbornly unticked got no shorter. The only possible theory was that every time I turned my head the lascivious items on my list went at it like bunnies and produced millions of baby unchecked list items.
Oh and lets not forget the packing. It seemed simple enough. Pick up an item (or stare at, if said item is large and you are not unduly prejudiced towards hernias) and decide if parting with item will cause you cry a salty lake. If so, add to pile 'a'. If not, reject to unloved pile 'b'. An excellent formula. Right up until the time that I found this little black plastic rectangle encased in a little white plastic case. I had no idea what it was. It looked important. Smug, even. I created the I have no idea what to do with you pile (aka 'c') and moved on, rapidly discovering that his black smugness had brothers, sisters, second cousins and grouchy aunts.
So, my bags were packed (with pile 'a', now fondly called mountain 'a' and pile 'c', not so fondly called the what the f*** are you pile) and I was ready to go.
And so, following in the shoes of Marvin K Mooney, I went.