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I flew business class from Chennai to Muscat. Riches, Power, Fame. I had it all for a few hours. If I wanted to go somewhere instead, they would reroute the plane for me. If I didn't like an airhostess, they would cover her face in a mask and apologise for her ugliness. You really have to fly business class to understand what I mean.

But the best moment in any business class traveller's life is that split second when he looks back at the economy class passengers and happens to catch one of them looking hungrily at his business class seat. It happened to me. I looked back and, there it was. It was looking at me. With hunger and revulsion. I tell you. I almost melted in my seat from the warm glow of my own ego. He averted his eyes, in the manner befitting his status.

Anyway. I got off at Muscat, Oman. Now, no one ever knows where Oman is. Sometimes I cry about it at night. Oman is right here:

If you still have no clue where Oman is, maybe this isn't your planet.

Anyway. I got off there and it's really different from Dubai you know. The people here are very cordial and nice and lazy. I mean it. If an Omani did their laundry and washed the dishes in a single day, they'd be completely tired out.

So anyway, I've gotten off the plane and I walk towards immigration. There's a line there that says Business and First class passengers only. Puffing my chest out, I walk towards it with a slow, aristocratic gait. Some professional looking guy looks at me and says, this line bizness only. I look at him and professionally say, Yes. You are bizness? Yes. He almost let me through I think until he looked down at my shirt. There was chicken curry down my front and I'd not even noticed because I ate so fast on the flight. In his opinion, no one who could afford a bizness could have chicken curry on their t-shirt. I had to show him my bizness.

There was one counter for the whole line, which had 4 people. Each of the 4 people was attended to by a different official. One would take 15 minutes for a person and then walk away, presumably to drink gatorade. Then another would take his place and take another 15 minutes, expending the last of his energy and so on.

I may complete this post. For now, this is all I allow you to read.

Actually, no one forced me to write this post

"Oh my god. Is that really him! YES IT IS. Give me your autograph! Please can I take a picture with you? Can I touch you? PLEASE MARRY ME."

I bet everyone thinks I'm going to crack some stupid joke about those being my fans. You're wrong. All of you. OK except you, everyone else.

(By the way, that girl who asked me to give her my autograph is now in jail. No one talks to me like that.)

I am quite an important person. You will have seen me in the papers and on the internet but don't believe everything they tell you; no one can be THAT handsome. I cannot give you my real name and as far as you are concerned, my name is Max. I am brilliant and yet humble. Everything you see around you is a consequence of my being. You are alive today because of my grace. I cause hurricanes in my spare time and.. well you get it.

Actually, I'm only writing this post because my mum and my brother wrote posts on their respective blogs. They will pay.

OKOK sorry. No more dumb jokes. Anyway, er.. how is everyone? The weather's nice here. 31 celsius, 66% humidity, N wind at 10 km/h. Let's see... OK I'm going to write about. um.. poker. Yes. Poker. My new fascination. A card game of skill and luck. I'll admit that's all I ever talk about nowadays. But for the benefit of my few readers who don't know about it, here goes.

Webster's dictionary defines poker as a 'Fire iron consisting of a metal rod with a handle; used to stir a fire.'

So in poker, everyone is dealt two metal rods, face down, and five fires are placed face up on the table. Handle... stirring... webster... um. humidity?

Sorry I think I have to go. I'm confused,

Someone had to say it.

You're more likely to hear "You're ugly" than "You look beautiful" from me. I mean, don't get me wrong: when you look beautiful, I'll let you know. But until then, assume that you're ugly.

I know you think I'm proud of my stuckupness. That making me so in-your-face is cool. Er... I don't really know if I am, actually. On the one hand, I know I'm not doing anyone injustice. But then again, many people don't take very kindly to being called fat (Why not though? Fat people are cool, yes Sahil?) (kewl*). Oh by the way, I don't think I go around telling people they're ugly. But faced with a direct question, does this look good? I'll say what I think of it. I mean, why ask if you want to be told a polite lie? Of course, Singapore has this strange power to make people extend polite lies to enthusiastic perjury. "How does this look?" "OH MY GOD, you look SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO........ pretty."

* She can't pull that off. But hey, I think she likes me. She Better. *

Of course, I'm guilty of it very often. But only with people I know. When I meet a new person, I don't say Hey, have you showered since morning? OK, except maybe One person. But anyway, my point is, why do we do this? Perhaps there's the inner need to please everyone around us just to feel accepted? Or maybe we sympathize that if we were on the receiving end, we'd feel really bad, whether or not there was any truth in it? I have a third theory, but it has something to do with aliens and space-guns and I don't think people will understand. Anyway, I think it's a combination of all three. But eventually, here's the thing: Everyone knows you're lying. Even You know when you're being lied to. You don't think much of it, because you're just glad someone reaffirmed your thoughts or beliefs. Apparently we can settle for that.

I put forth to you, just for tomorrow, not to hold Anything back. Tell a person exactly what you think. I'm not saying you should make it a character trait. I'm saying you should try it for a day, just to see what happens. Do people like you any less? Do they think you're more of a bitch? Or do they think you're a more genuine person?

There. I've posted. It's pathetic. I hope you're happy.

Nothing to write about...

As usual, I give my reasons for posting on my blog... The honest truth is that blogspot.com issued me a notice saying that they don't care how important a person I am, and how far I've gone in life, nor how many international awards I've won, I will still have to post in my blog. (what? it's still a better excuse than those involving buffaloes and cyanide)

I recently came to a revelation. Here is my thought process.

I am a man.
Nandan is my best friend.
Nandan is a man's best friend.

... the rest is legend.

what is my purpose for writing this post? I have no idea. Damn. should have thought this through...
well, I was watching Spiderman 2 yesterday. Stop what?!-ing and dude-that's-so-primary-school - ing me. I've seen people watch worse. Grown men and women playing fighting games on their Playstations. Adults. I'm NOT kidding. Pathetic I say.

anyway, I just realized that the dialogues in that movie were SO cheesy. Even more than McDonald's Double Cheeseburger. I was just telling my brother yesterday... What's happened to creativity nowadays? It's a really important concern in this world, but I don't care.

well i've posted something on my blog. I really don't know what else to do, so i'll just stop writing and wasting your, and what is infinitely worse, my time. (I know... a beautiful mind, John Nash)

cheers.

In Memoriam

OK guys, I can't be bothered to complete the previous post. Actually, I've said everything there is to say.
Hmm... let's think of a topic to write about now...
(Obviously I have nothing to write about but one guy recently set fire to himself because he said he didn't want to live in such a cruel world. He said he could accept poverty, misery, people dying, but not that my blog didn't have updates. Oh yeah, and I'm a bit bored)

Ah yes. got it. Here goes.

Two years. Singapore. Sidharth Krishnan.
you can tell this is going to be a long post.

Let's start from the beginning shall we?

I still remember when it all started. I had woken up, and my mom had come running to me happily, saying I'd got through the first round of scholarship. That was the period of time when I thought Ankur Jain was God, and FIITJEE was heaven. (yeah i know. but i'm not that big a nerd now. i swear) I didn't care. Honestly... I mean these things happen to me all the time; winning competitions, getting recognition. But when I went to school, there were two other guys who had got through the first round, just like me. JUST LIKE ME! as EQUALS! well well, NOW, it was different. this was war. Clash of the Titans. well, actually, I was the only Titan. I eclipse most other competitors anyway. But. My point is. From then on, I stopped studying, started using all my powers of laziness, and hoped to everything that I got the scholarship. Well, anyway, the scholarship officers obviously know quality when they see its maths and english paper, so I went to Singapore to work as a student for a small salary.

My first day was disastrous. Born to Unni and Savitha Krishnan, I was morally obliged to finish my first Singaporean breakfast. Finish it. One supremely foul bowl of yesterday's bean-curd. You have no idea. No idea.
Anyway, after that, the days go on pretty fast, you know. I mean, after that first bowl of vulgarity, everything seems bearable. But I didn't come here to reminisce about my days. No, I actually came here to tell you what I learnt. Not chemistry and math; I'm not qualified enough to tell you what I learnt there. But more about how Singapore's changed me.

I must lie when I say that I've improved because improvement indicates that I was once not as brilliant as I am now, but social protocol dictates that I must. Well anyway... where were we. Ah yes, my brilliance. er... no. my improvements. For one, I've become more sociable. I don't know if it was in God's plan or what. But I can now talk to almost anyone and not feel awkward at the end. (As a side-note, doesn't the word awkward actually look awkward?) Except AF and DC. They're nightmares. They're such babies. Babies with nightmares if I may. And I've also grown to know my family living here more than I knew in 16 years with them. Oh, not because family is of great importance in Singapore, but because family ranks so low on the hierarchy of importance that given the choice between saving his family or his job, a man would probably choose the latter. And anyway, you never miss the water until it's gone.

Oh, and I've also made friends. Excellent friends - No, Nandan, you're still my best man, but these guys are great. Ian Leong and his philandering, but funny nature. He's funny. Yes he is. He's smart, charming, talkative and he wants to do God's work - sigh. Anil Sebastian - ah, you'll take time to get used to him. What with his appetite... A hippopotamus can eat a whole crocodile. Anil can eat the hippo. But he's a great guy. Taught me politics, economics, and the art of shutting up when not spoken to. Ian and Anil are probably the only two guys I know with whom I can speak and others sitting around me won't understand a word, even though we speak in English. There was a notable incident with Anil where we spoke for about half an hour about someone (who happened to be sitting on the same table as us) and half an hour later that someone asks us what the fugde was going on. Sahil (what do I say) Samdish (cranky-boy-with-silver-spoon-up-his-rearside) and a whole lot of others.

Pranks. I hope the day never comes when I'm too old for pranks. There's just too much fun in doing things just for the sheer pleasure of it. Like when you wait for your friend to walk back and hear you from a distance telling the garbage man that the friend's schoolbag is to be thrown in with the rest of the trash. That look on his face! MasterCard. Or when you put a handwritten note on some random guy's expensive Listerine bottle, "This Listerine has been poisoned with cyanide. Please gargle well."

There are, of course, so many other things. I found my passion in physics and classical music here. I found that "Do you think that quantization of space-time would be valid in events just after a Big-Bang-like singularity?" evokes a response of "Dude, screw off. Please."

It's actually very difficult to condense Singapore life into this post. Singapore's gained so much by me living in it that... i mean, I've gained so much by living in Singapore that I believe it's where I truly learnt something useful, unlike the list of facts schools try to stuff into us in the name of education. I know, I know. Education has a bigger purpose than that. Education prepares us for life, for entering the real world, but honestly, I think if that's really the purpose of education, scholarships to foreign countries should be made a required part of the syllabus. Or else we need a new education system. I can't believe that this is the best system of teaching a child what life is... There's a better way out there and every day that we don't find it is another failure of humankind.

OK, that was a bit too high-sounding. But this is My blog. So I will talk and you will listen.

Well, I guess that's about it. I wasn't planning on posting this until I got back to India, but I decided to do it now. Anyway, my posts on Singapore are far from over. I understand that some authorities are actually stalking my blog and I can't write anything "illegal" here. If I do, they'll come and imprison me. Well, anyway, I don't plan on writing anything "illegal" but I'll give my readers my opinion sooner or later...

Till then, Au Revoir, A bientot.


Disclaimer: My self-appraisal in this post is not exaggeration. It's actually not even fully describing me, but then, as everyone knows, my modesty has always been my strength.

Notes for an autobiography, Part 1

I realize my previous post was way too introspective to have any humor in it. This post, too is going to be one of those ah-i-see-life-much-clearer-now posts. At least this way I can talk freely; I can be a wiseacre whenever I want. Of course, you understand that I've not lost my funny bone yet. I guess it's just that every person goes through this phase one time or another in life. There's just that One thing you think or care about. Everything else seems so insignificant. You could say I'm there. To most people, of course, the One thing is a girlfriend. That's not me. (Stop smirking everyone). Mine is music. It's amazing how much (now wasted) time I had in Chennai to love music. But I didn't, couldn't, or wouldn't. I think it is that I couldn't. My parents would compel us to practice, attend classes, and give concerts. Here in Singapore, away from every compulsion, I have come to love music so much it feels wrong to not have my earphones in my head. Is it because I got my iPod? Did I grow up? Maybe BECAUSE there is no pressure to sing whatsoever? I'll never know. All I know is that it's become a part of me.

There was once a time when I thought it was really fuddy-duddy for anyone to like classical music. As a matter of fact, I still think so. But this time, with pride. Not frustration. Carnatic and Western classical music are now my lifelines. Of course, everyone here still thinks it's fuddy-duddy. But why should I care? How can I ever tell them what the music means to me? In fact, I feel a surprising amount of pity for all those swept by the tide of ever-changing, aesthetically simplistic, and musically vacuous songs under the EuroTechno trash genre. Pity that Beethoven and Chopin are not understood by the large majority of people. Maybe one day they will learn. I know I sound swellheaded but I truly believe now that music is not what people think it is. And me? I learn the piano. I sing in my room. And my internet searches are all about music. I know that in all probability, my career will not be in music. In fact, people here make it a point to remind me of the fact. But I finally think I understand why Amma asked me why I care what other people think. I don't. It should come as no surprise to hear that I'm taking up music when I go back to India. And, I'm also minoring in music in university, along with my physics major. To those who know me, the choice may seem uncharacteristic. I know I've always seemed the nerd, interested in nothing but science, but oh well. I've decided to become the Renaissance man. Arts and Sciences.

P.S. This post is not yet finished. I'll complete it later. I only submitted it because one of my fans threatened to go on a 6-state shooting spree if I didn't post anything within the day. I got scared because Singapore doesn't have 6 states.

Tears from Heaven

The English language has its failings.

Sometimes, it is just impossible to express a thought, a feeling, an emotion in terms of something so mundane as language. I've been there, I know it. It is impossible even to describe what it was that I felt. Certainly i cannot call it raw emotion. Thought can never manifest itself with such intensity. This is truly something not described by any dictionary for it is something that has to be experienced to be comprehended. To put the reader in perspective, i must concede that its closest definition is "feeling alive". At the risk of not being able to convey to the reader what i mean, i will describe what happened.

Sunday, the 5th of April. I spent the whole morning studying for... whatever it is that students in Singapore study for. And around 11 o'clock, Sahil calls me saying he's gonna play tennis for a while. I decided i would play for some time, until lunch, and be back at my table after that. After we played a few games, the sky darkened. The bright, sunny day was cast into darkness, and almost immediately, it started drizzling. The view from the tennis courts at Oldham Hall is a fairytale . The architecture of the Hall is of the early 19th century mixed with a modern style that gave the building a rather anachronistic appearance. I have seen Oldham Hall about a hundred times, but i have never really looked at it. For the first time, i saw the countless people who had passed through those corridors and lived in those rooms. All those people, just like me, living away from home. As i watched, it rained. Harder and harder, and yet, i did not want to move. There was something about the whole scene that made me remember my childhood. I do not know why. It could be that I had last stood in the rain, savouring this same feeling, in my grandmother's yard, near an ancient, but lovely house, and looked at it through the eyes of a carefree pre-teenager. Or it could be that I had never really realized how different living away from home is and the rain, which I always associated with the Indian monsoon, reminded me of home. But these were thoughts that lingered for only an instant, and then they were just memories.
Standing in the rain, drenched to my skin, I did something i have never before dared do in a thunderstorm. I lay down on the wet ground, and closed my eyes. There, the rain, falling softly down on my face, was telling me so many stories, giving me fleeting glimpses of my childhood, people i'd grown up with, people whom i loved. There was something intensely provocative about that rain, like for those few minutes I lay there under it, God was telling me to reach back into my memory and look at my life straight on. Impartially and categorically. I felt I could have lain there in that introspection forever. And the memories just poured down on me. I don't know how long I lay there, lost in my reverie, but when I opened my eyes again, it was still raining as hard as before. And yet, the moment had passed. The magic had gone. The rain was ever just a rain, but for that moment, for the first time since I had entered Singapore, I truly felt alive again.

Behind me, Sahil is shouting, "DUDE, What the **** are you doing out there? Wake up man!"

Just another day.....?

August the 12th. 7:30 a.m. That blasted alarm again. Open eyes, totter a few minutes, brush teeth, change clothes, take a shower, do a whole lot of other things, curse under breath, run back and switch off the bloody alarm, go down for breakfast.
This is where my day begins to differ from the hundreds of other faceless students, bureaucrats, and indeed, Japanese cafe owners (?) in Singapore.
There was nothing obviously portentous about the clouds looming over my head as i walked to school on that day. I remember my friend asking me, "Hey do you want this toast? I don't want it". I accepted. To this day, I firmly believe that that was the single most important decision of my life. So I eat the toast.

I'm at school now and the vague sense that I haven't finished something seems to overpower me. It also feels something like deja vu. Then the penny drops. I haven't finished my chemistry homework. Again. (most people have conjectured a causal link between this indolence and my pitiful performance in the exams.... i suppose i can only agree.) Very obviously, i'm in deep shit. I decide to change myself into a human nuclear missile with some fancy pants and a metal head. Oh dang. That happened in the movie i was watching last night. Ironman. (this useless fellow, a captive of deranged terrorists, escapes from the mountains of Afghanistan by flying in a red metal suit)

now that my plan is foiled, i have but one alternative. Intense, torturous and worthy of the President's award for bravery. I act sick. Its a simple matter of redecorating the toilet bowl with the all-important bread i ate in the morning. At any rate, it works and i'm out of class. I now have a free one hour-odd in which to do nothing. So I go to the Don Japanese cafe in our college. (ah... remember the japanese cafe owners part? i'm coming to it.)

The guy who owns the bar, when i first saw him had a huge knife in his hand. Nowadays, whenever i look at him, this is what comes to mind. Anyway, knife man is serving a timid looking girl. Now, I'm not a cynical person by principle, but this guy was flirting. So I tell knife man, "er... can i take my order?" Knife man reluctantly gives the girl her change and she goes her way. At this point, a rugby player enters the cafe and stands in front of me in the queue with this look that says clearly, "So? What you gonna do about it?"

Interlude:

Rugby players by dint of the rigors of their game are extremely huge, muscular and rather pea-brained. But in our college, the rugby players also have one more admirable quality. They have the filthiest tongues in the sufficiently long history of filthy tongues. Being a soccer player myself and having learnt some really good swear words from there, i knew that rugby players would have an even better vocabulary than me. (i am currently researching this subject and have almost proved a theory which claims that the tougher your sport, the filthier your tongue. explains completely the WWF's repertoire of common words)

End of interlude.


"So what you gonna do about it?", he wordlessly asks. Equally tacitly, i reply "Nah i'm not gonna do anything. go on, get what you want... i'll just wait for you to finish". I looked at him. He looked at me. I got scared but decided to try my luck anyway. Amazed at my courage, I say eloquently, "I was here first". I knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it left me. With the force of a sonic boom.... "DO I LOOK LIKE A DICK-FACE TO YOU???" i was sure that if i answered that question truthfully, Big Boy would get really depressed. So i decided not to push it. "Ok ok fine you get your drink... I've got time."

Once Big Boy had gone back to playing his favourite game, i get in front of the counter, and ask knife man for a 'Kway Teow Mee'. Now, I am already quite shamed by the encounter with Big Boy and in a pretty bad temper. This guy tells me sweetly, "Of course. Shall I add an egg?" Already ready to burst out, i shout "For the love of Shinzo Abe! just get me the sainted kway teow. No egg." Knife man takes out his knife and keeps it on the table just to show who's boss.

Ten minutes later, i emerge from the Don Japanese cafe with an inexplicable hatred for everything from rugby to Don Japanese cafes to even Shinzo Abe and that timid girl at the beginning of the queue.

The climax of the day was when i met my classmates who all have attended the chemistry class and purportedly gained more knowledge of the world than i have. That's when they tell me that the homework wasn't to be submitted that day and was, in fact, due the next day.

Somewhere under my numb disbelief, that old feeling of not having done something resurfaces. That's when i realise. Next period is maths and I haven't completed the homework.

(to quote Mahatma Gandhi's dying words)

HEY RAM.

The return.

I know... all this time i haven't been posting in my blog... My fans have been chewing off their nails, fingers, hands in sheer anticipation. Girls have been fainting. Fellow bloggers have taken advantage of this hiatus to try Their luck at this art. But now... the time has come.

I am extremely grateful to my friends for being there for me, my parents, for their unstinting support, and everyone who has helped me along the way. This is a proud day for me that I have come back into the limelight, that everyone has understood....

HEY!!! who the (beep) mixed up my blog post script with my Nobel Prize acceptance speech? HE'S FIRED!

Breathe in... breathe out... breathe in... breathe out...

Ok. now that i've calmed down. Onto business. I am back again with my sense of humour... not entirely because i have nothing to do all day but crack jokes, but also because i have not spent a better time in singapore... no studies; just go play soccer at school, look for some new word for my SAT prep.... the best part is that i don't have a teacher breathing down my neck, telling me how important studies are.

Yesterday, i went to the mall. With a Girl. Again. (please see post "how to tie your shoelaces")
This time, though, there was no pandemonium, no apparitions, no overpowering urge to commit suicide. This time, i went WHAM!
allow me the liberty of an explanation.

im walking. In front of me is said girl. I make the error of looking behind me for one second, and WHAM! I've walked into the girl in front of me... why? because she saw something interesting and decided to look at it... by the same token, she almost defies physical laws, coming to rest from a state of motion in a time span commensurate to Planck's time... (for the uninitiated, this is equal to about 6.63 x 10^(-34) seconds)

Most would have thought that given my complete evolution from an ape, i might remember not to WHAM! into her again. Sadly though, you are mistaken. I went WHAM! at least 5 times there until i had the dubious sense to walk a metre behind her. HA. This gave me a few more seconds of time in which to exercise my skidding, slipping, and falling down skills. that's that for yesterday's life skill of the day...

this is by no means my next post. this is merely the bridge, the gateway, the Way to the best posts of Sidharth's life... (that's saying something huh?)

until then my cheery fans, friends, enemies, blog hoppers, and whoever else is reading this,

alvida

My flight back to India

I'm in the mood to exploit funny incidents around me and to bring some comic relief into my life... and such thoughts have led me inexorably towards one of my flight journeys back to India... sit back and enjoy...

"This is your captain, Mr. *&(*#$ speaking... Thank you for joining us on ----- Airways. We are glad to serve you."

ACT 1 Scene 1

These were the words that greeted my brother and I as we entered the dingy aircraft that had been assigned to ship us from Singapore to India in the June of this year. After waiting at the budget terminal for about 50 minutes at Changi airport, we walked down the departure lounge and near the boarding gate... this is not really cause it was time for the flight... the pandemonium reigning at the terminal, though not overtly chaotic to the trained eye, was causing me some irritation... and so in order not to have to witness this painful sight more than anything else, we walked away from there... Any hopes of catching a few winks on the flight were easily crushed on sighting the people standing, waiting, waiting, for the same thing as we were at the boarding gate.... There couldn't have been a more desi crowd even in Bombay's streets. And my compatriots would know that any crowd with more than 4 babies is certainly not one conducive for sleeping...

anyway, this is the sorry plight of two indian guys, who just wanted to get home in one piece...

ACT 1 Scene 2

Enter mother with three kids and three bags... this is really weird cause the kids are not carrying any item of luggage... if you're wondering how it was humanly possible to manage three pieces of luggage and three kids, take comfort in the knowledge that the mother was Indian... Indians can do anything... well anyway, this mother asks us if we can help her with her luggage... we gladly oblige, being the model citizens that we are and not wishing the poor woman to suffer any more than she already was...

and thus it happens that 6 people and 5 luggage pieces enter the aircraft (which incidentally is not connected to the boarding gate... we had to walk out of the gate in the rain some 50 yards to reach a staircase and thereby, into the aircraft)

ACT 2 Scene 1

(inside the aircraft)

if you are not above 60 years of age, you can hardly have forgotten the first words that the captain spake unto us... i look around me and i seriously doubt whether or not he really did want to serve us... i vaguely remember a similar aircraft which i almost puked in after 2 hours... well anyway....

i doubt that they really wants to serve us...

i really don't want to recount my experience walking to my seat which happened to be at the end of the craft.... oh the horrible things i saw in that aircraft... the people, the noises.... aargh...

Act 2 Scene 2

(sitting in my seat with my brother alongside me)

for whatever funny reason, i suppose its murphy's law, i haven't gotten the window seat. but for an even funnier reason, which i still don't know (i suppose its human madness) the guy there had not yet come and there were 5 mins to take off... well Indian as i am, i felt it my bounden duty to occupy that seat; so bag and all, we shifted to the next seat... this had taken 3 mins... so there was about 2 mins to take off. i think i had sat at the place for 7 seconds, when the rightful owner arrived... i was spellbound to say the least... so time reversed as I shifted back to where i was originally, disturbing nothing in the great clockwork of the universe...

I had declined to talk about my trip to the back of the craft, but at this juncture, i must make a slight description of it... as i was walking, i noticed a certain group of grandmothers (certainly they were above 60) wearing eccentric clothes... naturally i discarded this thought, with the idea that they must be going for some picnic... (oh how foolish i was!)

Imagine, if you will, then, my horror, upon seeing one of these sprightly clad sexagenarians standing where the airhostess usually stands to give the usual pre-flight pep talk... I was sure i was dreaming... these COULDN'T be airhostesses... it was a joke... some TV joke show... i turned to my brother and asked him to pinch me (rather taken aback by this sudden masochism, my brother gladly obliged)... big mistake. i wasn't dreaming. well well well...

So the grandmo - i mean, the airhostess comes around asking us to switch off any electronic devices as they may interfere with aircraft reception... and... (suspend your disbelief for a few seconds please) this guy in front says of his handphone... "its ok ma'am.... its in silent".

What a douchebag.

Epilogue

the remainder of the journey was uneventful in comparison to the above if you overlook the 3 year old standing up just before take off, his parent not caring in the least, and the grandmo- AARGH - airhostess sick and screaming... i have not mentioned the name of the airlines for obvious reasons... well that's all people... keep smiling....