Chinaversary

Contrary to what you might think the title indicates, this has nothing to with celebrating the Chinese New Year or any other general-the-country-China related holiday. Neither is it a rant about things from China that I am averse to. It is about the silverware. Well, not much silver involved in it either, at least, not in the literal sense. The crux of the story here is we were celebrating an anniversary a few days ago. A big one too. It happened to be the 10^th anniversary of when we bought a 96-piece fancy dinnerware. Well, truth be told, the actual items arrived by FedEx a few days later (that would be tomorrow 10 years ago), but we decided to stick with online ordering date as “the date”. Now to some, I admit, all this cutlery talk is enough for your eyes to glaze over, but the ceramic enthusiasts amongst you, you are all fired up about this, aren’t you? Well, if I ever had bad news for dinnerware fanatics, it is this… brace yourselves, you are about to be disappointed.

 The evening started with me reaching home unusually late.

“Where were you? I have been waiting for Haiti minutes!” she exclaimed.

“I’m sorry that I’m late. I’ve Benin a meeting for the last 2 hours.” I said.

“And here I was thinking, nothing Congo wrong and you had to be late on our anniversary.”

“I apologize. As soon as I got out, Iran so fast that I wore out the Seoul-s on my shoes.”

“You know, I don’t Bolivia, you are nothing Budapest.”

In the way of offering some lame proof, I said, “It’s true. My Thais are killing me right now.”

“Whatever. Can we go now? I’m Hungary.” She said.

“Me too. I’m Prague-tically starving! Here’s an idea though that will save us time. How about we stay at home, Greece up Japan and fry stuff up?”

“Oh really! The ever Prauge-matic… aren’t you? But, I’m Ghana pretend you dint say that because there is Norway I’m going to stay at home and cook today.”

“What do you want to eat? I feel I could do with some Chile. Or, we could go to a Delhi and grab a Turkey sandwich.”

“What the hell, Jamaican me really angry. It is our anniversary. I don’t want to go to a Delhi.”

“All right, all right! Don’t Crimea river. Let’s go to a fancy place. Kenya think of a good place Togo?”

“Yes! There is this Peruvian place that I want to try out.”

“Let get going then.”

---

As we stepped out, we saw that it had started Sudan-ly pouring.

“Bah!rain! Call a cab then?” I asked.

“Yes and please make it quick. I hope this Laos-y rain! doesn’t mess up my hair” she said.

---

Later, at the restaurant, which we had finally made it to.

“Are you Havana’ good time?” she asked

“This is such a nice place. Good choice!”

“I know. Iraq!”

“Sheesh!”

“Anyway, do you want Samoa these remaining Lima beans with the Korea-nder sauce?” she asked

“Oman! No. I ate so much. My Belize so full.”

“I am going to get me a cup of Java and Sweden it, with my usual 2 sugar Cubas! How about you? Are you getting something?” she asked

“I guess I will have this Chocolate Malta.” I said. “Hey, If Ukraine your neck, can you see if it has stopped raining?”

She said, “Hold on. Yep it has. Now we can go Rome-ing the streets.”

And now that I knew that the skies were clear, I couldn’t wait. And this was not lost on her.

“What’s the matter? Syria-sly, stop Fiji-ting!” she said.

“Don’t want to Russia, but Finnish quickly or we will miss our movie.”

“You are right! Let’s ask the waiter for the Czech.”

Turned out to be one memorable evening.

Rainmakers

As all good stories start, this one too starts... Once upon a time, long, long ago... about 120 years ago... A small kingdom in Africa had been hit by severe droughts. The rains had failed over and over again for many years and the kingdom was on the verge of a catastrophic famine. The kingdom’s benevolent king had bankrupted the state treasury in an effort to save his people. He had tried new methods of irrigation, water conservation techniques and bought water in from outside. But without the rains, all his efforts were only delaying the inevitable He had even consulted local witch doctors and shamans who had had promised, falsely, to “make” rains. No rain came. When all hope seemed to be lost, one of his ambassadors to a faraway land came back with a report of a group of people who had the uncanny ability to bring water pouring down from the heavens with their apparently inane rituals. Intrigued, and as a final throw of the dice, the king made arrangements for these people to be brought to his country. They arrived to much fanfare, and, on a fine sunny day, without a cloud in sight, took to a field with their wooden implements. The group spread out on the open field and a couple of them started marking the ground with their wooden sticks. Another one, with a smallish orb in his hand ran in and threw the orb at one of the person standing with the stick… and sure enough, 10 minutes later, the match was abandoned due to heavy rain. True story.

I have a bone to pick today. It is about Lagaan, the Bollywood movie. Common consensus is that the ending would have been tragic if Captain Russel had caught the last ball within the boundary ropes. I disagree. In fact, not only would it have been more tragic and but also more realistic, if the rain had arrived not after the match, but started about 30 minutes prior to the end and turned into such a heavy downpour that the match was abandoned without the final over being bowled. The way it turned out, to put it mildly, it is the equivalent of Inzamam-ul-Haq beating Usain Bolt in the 100 m dash at the Olympics. Unrealism dripping out of every seam. But then, Lagaan is product of the Bollywood industry and you make your peace with it. On most days, anyways.

The reason for this grumpy post is not hard to fathom. Our cricket match over the weekend was cancelled due to rain, despite the weather forecast being sunny right up until the evening before. If I had a nickel for every time foul weather has had a hand in curtailing my cricket matches… no, I would not be a millionaire, but I would, nonetheless, have $2.43. Now, the mathematically astute amongst you might be going, “Wait a second, if I have learned anything at all from the knuckle raps I received at the hands of my primary school math teacher, it is the firm knowledge that $2.43 is in no way perfectly divisible by $0.05.” And you are absolutely right! The amount is pro-rated to include reduction in overs due rain delays.

But then, onward we look to the next weekend. Hope springs eternal.

Celestial conjunction

First of all, a heads up: this post is going to be about two thousand, and some, words long.

Now, over the last couple of weeks I have been obsessed with the planetary conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. Every time I stepped out after dusk, my eyes would tilt upwards and towards west seeking out two bright non-twinkling objects hanging out in apparent close proximity. I have also been searching online for spectacular pictures of the event and making resolve after resolve to snap one myself. I eventually did, not spectacular by any means, but my ever-handy camera phone did not let me down.

Talking of Jupiter, here is some food for thought. If Earth was the size of a pea, then Jupiter would be approximately the size of a tennis ball while the Sun would be the size of a basketball. Think about it for a minute. No, seriously, do.  Then look at the picture below. Maybe that will give you a better idea. (Click on the picture for enhanced readability)

 

This however is only part of the story. A tiny, miniscule part when it comes to the grand scale of the Cosmos. Instead of rehashing what is out there I encourage you to read this Nova article and check out an all-time favorite picture of mine, the Hubble Deep Field. You could also Google, in completely non-egotistical manner, “How big are we”, and snoop around a little bit. May the force be with you!

Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics

What are Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics? This is what I was asked at a recent social gathering, after my profession had been forced out of me. Not that I am generally unwilling to talk about what I do to make ends meet, but this was past midnight on a Saturday around the poker table when I was just beginning to get into my element. I felt disinclined to answer the question as it seemed to purely be a sledging tactic, just to get ahead in the game, rather than a genuine interest in my knowledge repertoire. Nevertheless, I might have plain-and-simple answered it had I known what the Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics were. I felt I was in Russell Peters kind of situation, where he had been bullied into admitting buying a jar of family jewels from Costco. This is what followed:

‘Umm… Newton had nothing to do with the Laws of Thermodynamics’

‘Ok. What then is the first law of thermodynamics?’

I look around the table to see if anyone comes to my rescue. Not a chance. Oh well… for what it is worth…

‘The first law of thermodynamics is that the change in internal energy of a system equals to…’

‘What is the second law of thermodynamics?’

‘What?’

‘Tell me. What is the second law of thermodynamics?’

‘But I haven’t even finished what the first…’

‘It is me. I am the second law of thermodynamics. This is how I feel’

I think, “That does not make sense, logically to say the very least. But if you mean your entropy is increasing, I see that”.

But I say, ‘Good for you. Can we play now?’

That was that. We moved on to other things. I actually commend the person for stringing Newton, laws and thermodynamics in the same sentence, not only given the state of his inebriation, but also given his background. As far away from mine as it could be without him having to be a cobbler, a cricketer or an entertainer. All this banter reminded me of my high school Physics teacher and his innovative way of teaching the kids Newton’s laws of motion. A definite way to get through to the mind of kids. As this was a long time ago I don’t remember it verbatim, but the lesson is not forgotten. I paraphrase his words:

Newton’s first law of motion: People will keep talking unless acted upon by an external force, i.e., the palm of my hand on their faces.

Newton’s second law of motion: The force of my slap on your face will be equal to product of the mass of my hand and the acceleration with which it hits you.

Newton’s third law of motion: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For e.g. If I talk you will shut up and listen. On the other hand if you talk, I will make you shut up and listen.

Newton himself could not have put it better. And I may have been one of the very few in this world who learned both the theory and had a personal demonstration of Newton’s laws of motion. No wonder it is hard to forget.

BTW, are you are dying to know? I lost the poker game.