The joy rides

In the 1980s, cars in India were made of hardcore steel, no airconditioning and started cracking up after clocking 100km/h. But these are some classic cars that deserve tribute. One car still remains, the Ambassador, which I think is still sold in the UK as a "classic car".

Our first car was a Fiat, officially called Premier Padmini. which was conceived in 1962. It can still be seen as cabs only in Bombay, or with an old Parsi couple who still live in the 1970s. It provided some amazing value for money and can be bought for Rs. 40,000 on an online auction site.

Our second car was a Contessa, a pretty roomy gas guzzler. In our second Conty, an electronic window upper got busted in a few months, which ensured we didn't buy a third one. In Bollywood action movies the villain cars being destroyed are mainly Contys, and that may have been the fate to both of our cars -- which were bought by a dude named Dimple. Good purchases, failed by attempted tweaks.

In the middle, we reserved the Standard 2000, a mammoth gas guzzler. The queue behind it was so long, it frustrated us and we chopped the order. Current status? Only available in a picture on the Web. Read that article on the link too.

Then we started getting techno, and purchased the erratic Fiat Uno. It was derived from a ten-year old Fiat model, and was one of the first legit cars to have a diesel engine, after the Fiat 118NE. It was good, it was bad, it got towed. It just wasn't reliable enough. Soon somebody overpaid us for it, and probably had it destroyed without the help of a Bollywood movie. That model can be seen if you rent a car in Rajasthan.

(to be continued...)

How to depress a girl

After catching my aisle seat on the plane, I notice the neighbors. The woman, looking 19 and really 19, is sitting cold and quietly in the middle seat; the guy, 20, sitting on the window trying everything to catch a glimpse of the cute girl next door. Stuff we all did when we were 19 and 20. The icegirl noticed those attempts, I could tell.

You could just see a drama cooking, and yep indeed, it blew open as the flight went on.

When the plane was describing safety instructions, he made fun of the name "Ted Airlines."

"Who the hell is Ted?" he mentioned out of the blue to the girl, laughing hysterically. The young one probably hope this would break the ice(girl) and harvest a chuckle.

"Ted are the last three letters of United," she said coolly, stopping the dude's laughing in the tracks.

Quietness rules again.

I pretended to be asleep and hoped more melodrama would come.

After take off, the expected temperature of Phoenix was announced. 98 degrees, not bad. The dude took a chance on the woman again -- "Atleast its not the record 103."

Oh no, it's bad omen to start a conversation with weather talk, i thought.

But it attracted a smile from the girl, who then got back to her reading of Cosmopolitan, if I'm not mistaken.

Soon, he started asking questions and got one-word answers. She's from Fresno, is a freshman in college, and her exams had just ended.

Soon he asked, "so how were your exams?"

"They just ended so how will I know how I did?" she said

"And I don't want to talk about it," she said bluntly.

I loved her stubbornness. Be appealing, yet be a mysterious nut that a man has to work hard to crack open and discover.

Guy had to try something new. So he tried to respect her city of Fresno, saying it must be a wonderful town. We all know it is trailer trash.

"How do you know?" she asked.

Uh oh.

"I was just guessing."

"Oh. okay," and back to Cosmo the woman went.

Icegirl held on stubbornly like Star Wars fans who wait overnight in Phoenix for tickets only to realize the next day that the temperature is 110, and they just should have bought the ticket off the Web. (well that isn't stubborn, but I wanted to chalk this example in somehow).

If you can't do it mentally. do it physically. So the dude jumped out of his seat, over the woman, over a sleeping me, into the aisle, to go to the loo. He then looked at icegirl and smiled, hoping the Superman act would impress her or produce a chuckle, but he got a straight up cold response. Oh, what a person will do for puppy love.

The guy went to the loo, and icegirl took out his cell phone from his seat pocket. She switched it on, did some quick curling (perhaps trying to gather some info), and by the time the guy came back, the phone was back in the seat pocket. What disturbed me - she switched on the phone when the plane was flying, and second it wasn't her phone. But I didn't say anything -- I mean, what if they were brother sister and made this whole drama just to play some sort of weird prank on me?

Anyways, the guy came back, and continued his tirade to please the girl. At the flight's end, he realized he was blown away by this attractive woman, but atleast he kept trying. He was graceful enough not to ask for a phone number, recognizing he lost the battle.

Rethinking the incident - the personality of a stubborn woman is exactly the personality in a woman I am looking for. If a woman goes jibber-jabber from the word go, the mysterious element doesn't remain. I want to work hard to crack open a woman's personality - that is challenging.

But I won't do it the way the nitwit dude did it, and I certainly won't let the woman peek into my cellphone.

Pigeons

U.S. pigeons have a pretty fat attitude. So brave that its easy to walk over them. It's just hard to scare them. What scares pigeons in India so much?

Back on the road

After a long time I revisited my usual MUNI bus to work, which was a pleasant experience. The blond woman with a ponytail was there. So was the Chinese lady carrying trash in Chinese bags, occupying the back seats. The bros with the hip-hop playing on a motherload-sized radio. And people have problems carrying decent-sized laptops.

What was annoying was the dude who drew attention of pretty women by rapping out his life's sob stories. He did this and that, was born into a broken family, he ended becoming a cheerleader, and his girlfriend ran away from the altar. Whatever stories he cooked up, i've never seen those women back on the bus.

The Chinese lady would perhaps love to hear him, she's always looking for a chat.

The bus ride was unadventurous. Now to try a plane ride.

Cable, we miss you, come back

The cable guy finally caught up with us on Monday evening -- we lost our free cable. And every two minutes, Erin cried "mmmaan" while I just cussed Comcast with the baddest abuses known to the planet.

At the neighborhood store the same evening, a fellow shouted to someone: "Are you the cable guy?" He was joking, but with an angry streak attached to it.

So the cable guy has pissed off the whole community. Atleast our building has a few distraught people.

Later as I found out, a cable guy had come to disconnect the cable of residents who just sold their flat. In the process he disconnected all residents with free cable.

Next step? Pony up some cash for the boob tube. It's just impossible to open up that cable box.

Groundhog Day

For the third straight week, I saw Groundhog Day playing on Sunday night TV. What's happening, what's happening, why can't a different movie play.. it feels like the movie is repeating itself in real life..