To help you quit smoking

Since moving back to my lovely hometown of Bangalore, I’ve seen myself making several dozen trips to Hallimanne on a weekly basis for the legendary coffee they serve. Off late, we’ve (Anoop included) cut our coffee intake by half. So instead of buying a cup of coffee each, we just buy one and split it. Here’s the funny thing: the feel-good-factor (FGF) after half a cup is the same as that after one full cup. When I buy one full cup of coffee, the caffeine addiction part is satisfied in the first couple of sips, and then I’m just drinking the rest to finish it off.

If you’re a smoker, I’m sure the same analogy extends to you as well with respect to nicotine.  The first couple of drags sends in the buzz, and then you’re just finishing off what’s remaining, right?  If you think about it, cigarettes which are half the length as the ones currently available in the market would be good enough for the average smoker to satisfy his one time nicotine cravings. Hence, if you smoke 5 stubs a day, only about 2 to 2 and half of those are actually satisfying your urge while the remaining is merely accelerating the lung damage. 

So here’s something I’ve been thinking about. It’s called a Cigarette Snipper. The idea is that of a device which lets you snip off the ashes and the burning edge and retains the remaining un-burnt part. So, you may now smoke the same cigarette in two sittings (or standings or which ever way you like it).

Let’s say that the average smoker finishes a cigarette in about 10 drags. Using the cigarette snipper, he ‘cuts off’ the fire after 5 drags and saves the remaining for the next smoke.

About the device:

Look at the image here.

The device has three main parts: The Snipper compartment contains the snipper which could effectively be a small pair of scissors, or a set of blades aligned to face each other. The Cigarette Holder is where you store the remaining portion that you haven’t smoked. There’s provision for a lighter to make the whole deal seem complete.

You could even get a key ring fitted at one of the ends, and have cool colors and graphics on it so you’re convinced that as someone trying to quit to smoking, such a device will never embarrass you when you pull it out the next time you’re at a party. 

Send me e-mail to order your personalized patent-pending Cigarette Snipper today.

 

Rerun

Anyone that has ever written so much as a leave letter tends to go back and read what they've written.

You kept reminding me about a post that I put up in my first days of blogging in mid-2007. So I did go back and read it; and like anything old, this one too still smells fresh!

Here's Gooble-de-gook revisited:

You walk into this room. The windows are wide open. The door creaks as it sways back and forth. It’s a summer noon and it’s hot. You wish to ease those nerves. That can only mean one thing - Coldplay. Having en queued five of your favorite tracks, you put on those headphones. By now the door is shut and the curtains are drawn. Pleasant is always a few minutes away from a summer noon, if you know how to get it.

4 and a half minutes later, it’s Track 2. The first song has driven the anesthetic a little too far. When The Scientist is ‘go’, you are floating. Those aching calf muscles don’t seem to be around anymore. And it starts…

You see a little girl. She’s running in the open. It’s a vast field. And she is running. Draped in a brown skirt and checked uppers, she wears a cap to keep her hair in place. The wind is getting the better of her skirt though. She is 12, you might want to think. Why is she running? Where is she running to?

A hundred meters behind her, at a distance you can see two boys running towards the girl, who, by now you figure out, is running away from the boys. The three of them are happy to be running in the pursuit of whatever it might be. The boys are wearing shorts, btw. And one of them is blond. The other has a cap. A painter’s cap, you might say (not all painters like to wear them though.) They look 15 years apiece. And they are running, not real hard, but just enough to keep the girl at a flowing river’s width from them. She is finding this to be fun!

There’s a pond there and a towering windmill that stands by it. As she nears the pond, she looks to run harder. She goes inside. The windmill. The boys follow her.


… Could not speak as loud as my heart (faintly, at a distance).


She comes out, as you turn around in your bed. Remember, you are standing in the field. But only this time, she holds a round bottomed bottle in her hand. It has a straight neck at the top. And the cap is fastened tight. Or so you assume. Let’s see. There is scotch in the bottle, you might want to think. And she runs faster than her legs can carry her. And then you see. The girl is being chased by two rather grown up men. They must be 40 apiece. Who are these men? And what would they want from a little girl with a bottle in her hand. And then it strikes you.

Where did the two boys go? You cross the pond and go inside the windmill. It’s dark, except for the cone of sunlight that a small window at the top is permitting. You search around the cold place for the two boys. No, they aren’t there. You come out. The field is empty. There is no sign of the girl; or of the boys; or of the men. Something doesn’t seem right of the whole picture. You stop and wonder – “Did the boys become the men?” And before that question can be answered…

It’s Track 3 - Clocks.

Wikitheria

A couple of years ago, my good friend and namesake Arjun Shankar had coined the term wikitheria: a condition by which a person knows it all because he (she) has been spending too much time on wikipedia. This term sprung out of necessity since we had this particular someone in our hostel who knew all about guitar harmonics and how the C-chord synced in with the G-minor (or what ever) but had never held a guitar even once.

Most objects around us have a theoretical side to them as well as a practical side. It’s good to know all about the anti-oxidants and vitamins that an apple contains; still better to preach that one a day keeps the doctor away. Right, but how about actually DOING it? I mean, eating an apple a day continuously say for a whole month and realizing it’s benefits before barking theory.

In its pure sense, wikitheria is not a bad thing. It’s just what it is. I’m not opposed to being a walking encyclopedia. But the prophecy of preaching prophecies when one has no idea how it’s applied sure is turning off. I have been watching a fabulous video about legends from the sporting world: my daily dose of motivation. One of the featured champions is the Olympic Gold medal gymnast Nadia Comaneci, originator of the ‘perfect 10’. The video mentions that this girl put in 16 hours of practice and spent 4 hours learning theory each day.

How many people do we know who fit into the mould all f**t and no sh**? And how many of us are amongst them?

Time for a change. My apologies.

Searching within Confined Spaces

This is a guest blog from Shweta. I tried highlighting your name and attaching your blog's URL to it, but sadly you refuse to keep one! But for you're 25th b'day, this is the least i can do :-)

This one's called Searching within Confined Spaces

For sometime, I knew I had misplaced something. I didn’t exactly know how or when or what exactly I had misplaced. I was sure it wasn’t an old diary or a faded photo album either. All I knew that that it was somewhere waiting to be rediscovered in my room.

Take a quick peek into my room. This room will tell you nothing about me. Usual bare essentials of a table, chair, phone, lights, ceiling fan, an a/c, a clock, bed stacked with pillows, couple of open book racks and a closed wardrobe exists. Yet, everything in this room will tell you about me. I’m a modern day minimalist. I claim to be organized. To tell you the truth, in this tribe of 'minimalist', we are trained to shove all 'unwanted' things into lofts placed close to the ceiling. So, I thought that this confined space high above may get me to the stuff that I had misplaced.

Perched on a ladder and armed with a duster, I decided to examine this mysterious corner of my room. Out came the rightful occupants i.e. some sleepy and annoyed cockroaches. A little further, was a mass of odds and ends either waiting be disposed, sold, scrapped or just waiting for something. Yep… Dog-eared books, accounts ledger notebooks, School and College annual year books were all stacked. I'm sure I had good reason for retaining some question papers, rusted geometry boxes with cracked protractors and Reynolds pens with no refills. My erstwhile favorite 28 inch faded Lee jeans was sitting pretty in between this mess. I seem to have an amazing collection of R.D. Burman cassettes that I had wanted to convert into CDs. Oh, of course… school bags, college t-shirts, ties, belts, bags, cheap jewelry, friendship bands, key chains, study guides, old photo albums, some signed t-shirts, a tennis racquet, a dice…too many things…

My attention soon went toward a Philips music cardboard box. I opened that to find a box full of old greeting cards that I had received and treasured carefully over the last two decades without allowing my parents to throw it. The variety of shapes, sizes, and colors of greeting cards across occasions were amazing.

In that heady jumble, out came cards in no particular order. I found cards received on birthdays gone by, on getting my first period, on wishes for exams to be written, congratulatory cards on surviving exams written, becoming a teen, on completing my teen-hood, on recovery wishes for some sickness or the other. I even found couple of cards that was sent only because some one remembered me! In between card covers bearing foreign stamps, I found the first ever valentine card received by me. Out came a crumpled disjointed heart shaped piece of paper. It had the golden words “If roses are meant to be red, and violets are meant to be blue...' Now, the sad part is, the other part of the heart seems to have disappeared under the weight of time and other cards. I searched hard for the missing piece of paper. It was of no use. I tried hard remembering who the sender was...I'm sorry. I just couldn’t.

Yet, I smiled. I discovered what I was in search of… MEMORIES...amazing ones...In these greeting cards, I found trails of time celebrating some of the best and the worst moments gone by. Over the years, each card had some kind of personal note that acknowledged the trials and tribulations in my life time from various well wishers. In this confined space, did my search end...In these greeting cards, did I find what I craved for…Memories that made me realize that my 25th year of existence on planet Earth has not been all that uneventful… It’s been good…Damn good! Happy Birthday to me!

The biggest landmine in sports

Argentina just squeaked into the last flight leaving to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. Phew, what a relief!

The curse and blessing of the Argentinean team has been its coach, El Diego. A blessing for obvious reasons and a curse because it has now been laid out bare to the world that a good player need not always be a good coach. In fact, some the best coaches in the world in sports were seldom good players. Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger had forgettable football careers as players. Jean Todt peaked as co-driver in his racing days, never really achieving anything significant during his stint as a (co)driver. On the other side of the spectrum are cases of players-par-excellence turned coaches-par-nightmare: Kapil Dev, Alain Prost, and Diego Maradona until recently to name a few.

To succeed as a player requires a different skill set than it does to succeed as a coach. For long, I often wondered that if Sachin was the best batsman in the world, why was Anshuman Gaekwad his coach? I had never even heard of Gaekwad’s batting prowess. Or why did a Tiger Woods or a Roger Federer need a coach? Being a coach means bringing out the best in a player, or a team. That often involves placing belief, trust and transferring motivation and bringing about the discipline to develop the ‘balls’ to go out there and succeed. These things need a third party to be involved even with the best players on earth. The lack of understanding of this concept is probably the biggest landmine in all of sports.

Up on skimming through a couple of books recently, my friend noticed that baseball and basketball coaches in the US were well respected, often quoted and remembered even after their prime years. Similar was the case with European football coaches. Maybe in India, we should start doing the same too. Our coaches (only the deserving ones), in any sport, need to be recognized way beyond what they get in the deal now. And we may just have solved one of the problems in the eternal question: “Why can’t a nation of a billion bring home a few Olympic Golds.”

And then, you have these…

Here are two tales that I think you ought to know :-

How do you bring down the roof of a pub?

My friend was out with 5 other guys one evening in a pub in Mumbai. The evening was great with the music, the drinks and the crowd, until this lady walked in. She was extremely gorgeous, and carried the air around her that made many heads turn around. As she settled down on a stool at the bar, my friend and his pals couldn’t hold back from remarking to each other about the beautiful thing that had just walked in. One of them came up with the idea to pen some lines on a paper napkin and have it handed to this lady through the waiter.

The lines were well thought out and written out on a tissue. The waiter was called. The guys handed him the paper napkin, and along with a tip of Rs 30 asked the waiter to hand the message to the girl on the stool.

The waiter walked up to the girl. The guys held their breath eagerly at the table watching while the waiter approached the girl. He handed the paper to her while pointing that it came from the table ‘over there’. And then, he handed her the 30 rupees. He didn’t know it was his tip. He had assumed that the money was a part of the package.

I was told by my friend that the girl stormed to their table and yelled at them. It must have been loud, I guess.

How to make your way to the front of a concert crowd?

I think this idea, which comes from another friend, is pretty cool. This guy finds himself at the back of the crowd at an Iron Maiden concert. So how does he go to the front? He taught me a two step process that is worth sharing.

Firstly, as you start making your way through the initial rows from the back, there’s bound to be resistance from the people from letting you go forward. So, you say to them – “My girlfriend’s in the front”; and they let you move. But after a certain distance of advancing, the crowds become less forgiving and that line doesn’t work any longer. So here’s where step two comes in. You say to them - “My boyfriend’s in the front”; and they let you move.

He tells me they always oblige. Try it and tell me how it goes.

The world map

NASA’s Terra spacecraft has come out with a map showing the elevation of almost all the places on earth. Scientists believe that this is the most complete map of the world till date.

Check here.

There is something fascinating about the word map. We had a wall hanging of a giant world map at home when I was in primary and middle school. A world map on your wall is a great investment. Compared to a globe, the map is better in the sense that you get a single snapshot of the whole world in one view (unlike in a globe where you get to see only a portion)*.


Most of us have never been to a world map after we left school. I suggest you try it out: get out an atlas or google for a high resolution picture of the political map of the world and study it. It can be a very consuming activity.

*Footnote: List the differences between a map and a globe.