Zeitgeist

Zeit·geist
n.
The taste, outlook, and spirit characteristic of a period or generation.

The above was for people like me who have a poor vocabulary. Google comes out with Zeitgeist which contains the most popular queries sorted by many categories, one of them being geographies. Check out the adjacent image for popular queries from India in the month of August. I do not know what sureroute is. I clicked on it, but it was not too interesting to invest time in. The only results that do not surprise me are the search queries for Sania and Aishwarya. Equally surprising and interesting was the zeitgeist for my blog. I have subscribed to the w3counter that provides me with details of how people land onto my blog.

Searches that take you to neelarurkar.blogspot.com. This is top 10 sorted by no particular sort criteria.

1. Neel Arurkar(on google) : The most popular search :-) I did not know that people searched for me. Mukul does it once in a while to reach my blog when he does not want to type in the long url

2. Lasun Shev(on google) : First result is my blog.

3. Slap gif (on google) : I tried to google that and I did not find my blog in the results anywhere in the first few pages.

4. Arvind Mills (on msn and google) : Comments same as those for (3). Who looks through all the search results?

5. haircut(on google) : Damn. Again same comments as above. Now how does such a simple looking query lead to my page?

6. list of indira gandhi priyadarshini award 2005 winners (on google) : My blog is the first result. Now why would anybody search for that. If the pedha vendor is to be believed, you get this award for making good pedhas :-)

7. immoral in Ernakulam (on google) : Well, there is no immoral content on my blog. But the query does lead to my blog. I wonder what the person who searched it must be looking for. Any guesses?

8. udayan mukherjee (on google) : Now Udayan is the guy who presents many shows on CNBC, a business TV channel. If Udayan googles his name, he would be surprised to read what I have written about him.

9. piyush swain kaun banega crorepati 2 (on google) : Hmmm

10.how to buy dharwad pedha online (Google) : lol. Cant see the result now though :-(

A few other queries include dewdrop bangalore (dewdy you listening?), Neel Infosys( now who googles that?), Hindi Homophones, cutting all my hair off (wow!), squeaking shoes ( :-) ), udipi restaurant, Maharashtrian recipes and infoscion.

But this is the one that I like the most. Some one googled for KSRTC + Bangalore + Ernakulam and reached here . It is a different thing that on googling it now, you wont get it listed. Page rank at work? I did not want to write a Part III to "To God's Own Country", but just cannot resist. How can I let go the unprofessional behaviour of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) without leaving it open for searches on the web. I had written it long back and it feels good that it is mission accomplished for me. That reminds me I have to sms Pasha ;-)

The 3 In 1 Haircut

This time I had my haircut at Shahnaz Husain's Salon in my office campus. I never had taken an appointment for an haircut ever before, but this time, I had to. I reached for the haircut ten minutes prior to the scheduled time, as asked by them. There were no film magazines lying over there and I spent my time looking at the two barbers, one chipping through a guy's hair and the other colouring another guy's hair. When my turn came, I was asked to sit in what was the most comfortable barber chair I have sat in. Now my old barber gives me only two options, short and medium length, but to this guy, I asked what would suit me. "Spikes", he said without hesitation, happy at the prospect of finding a guinea pig for his experiment. Hesitantly, I asked him to go ahead with it. After all, I was there for something new. He had barely started spraying water on my hair, when the electricity went off. That's Deve Gowda's contribution to Karnataka. And he doesn't think twice before pointing a finger at Narayan Murthy. Never mind. We have generators that swing into action in a matter of few seconds and Vinod was cutting my hair again. He was cutting my hair so slowly that I am sure Saumil would have enjoyed it. "Kya ek ek baal mast se kat ta hai"(Love the way he cuts a single hair at a time), he would have said. When the haircut was finally approaching its end, I smiled at myself in the mirror and told Vinod that I was looking more stupid than I usually do. He assured me that I would look good when the 3 in 1 haircut was done. "3 in 1? Wats that? I thought you were going to spike my hair up or something", I asked him, wondering whether this was Vinod's last attempt to save the poor dying guinea pig. He assured me that the spike thing was very much there and it was one of the three hairstyles possible with the cut. He told me that the other hairstyle possible with my haircut was the Sachin Tendulkar style and this was the in haircut in town. After this I was whisked away to for hair wash and shampooing. I thought that this was included in the haircut, but it was only when I saw the bill that I realised that I was fooled into it. Anyway, it was a different experience(the shampooing part..not the fooling part) and I enjoyed it. Here is the bill for you :

Haircut : Rs 40
Hair Wash : Rs 25
10% Service Tax : Rs 6
--------------------------
Total : Rs 71

After getting out, I was a bit self conscious about the spiked hairstyle, but I was happy when I found no one was looking at me. On my way to my desk, I was thinking which hairstyle I should wear the next day, when I realised that the barber had not demoed the third hairstyle for me. I decided not to turn back and ask him, but nevertheless I was curious. I did not have to wait long. The next day when I was coming to office I combed my hair and looked in the mirror. I looked the same as I look everyday. This was the third hairstyle. My usual self.

Kaun Banega Crorepati ?

Modeled on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Kaun Banega Crorepati is its popular replica in Hindi. And the other day, I found out that they have a Tamil version too. The Tamil version is aired along with the Hindi version and there is perfect synchronization between the two. The prize money if you reach the top is Rs 2 crores or Rs 20 million or USD 444444.444. Damn! That is big money. And one such guy rumoured to bag that money, works in my company. After reading newspaper reports and before the episode was aired, I mailed him. Well, I did not know him, but nevertheless decided to congratulate him on this. I have deliberately censored all the contact details, so as some stupid person does not contact him for congratulating him(as I did) or ask for money. When the show was aired, I sat glued to television just because a fellow company-mate was playing the game show. There sure are better things to do than watch KBC. Piyush Swain answered questions systematically giving explanations to every question and eliminating the wrong options one by one. But then, he did not reach the 2 crore mark. He exited the game when he had won Rs 50 lakhs or Rs 5 million. But he looked happy and so did his wife who accompanied him to the show. And why not? 50 lakhs is not a small amount. Congrats rich boy!

Please See : Unrelated to the above. I have come across this great blog by Gaurav Sabnis. It is about his life after he linked to an article that talked about the fraud that is IIPM. Check this out. The posts of your interest should be I'm disconnecting my cable connection, An Update and The Silence. Make it a point to read bottom up and visit the links that Gaurav has in his posts.

Ten Things @ IDF

I did not come to office on Thursday and Friday. I was at the IDF. I am tempted to write down the 10 things that I did / saw over there.

1. At the coffee queue, I saw that people loved to stand at the counter where there was a long queue.
2. At the registration desk, I was handed over a name tag. I found people wearing name tags having different coloured bands. My name tag had a dark green coloured band. I asked the girl at the registration desk, what the green coloured band was for, to which she replied that it was for the Delegates. Later I noticed someone in some other coloured band, who to had delegate written in bold on his card.
3. Intel was giving away IDF dollars which could be redeemed against T shirts, bags, watches and other stuff like that. I got two hundred IDF Dollars for a stupid question that I asked.
4. It was not long before I realised that most other people were asking even more stupid questions just for the sake of getting those IDF Dollars. My colleague told me that he even found one man begging for more IDF dollars.
5. I was attending a product demo with hands on experience and there was this guy who came and started sharing the computer that I was using. He asked me what the product was and I gave him a brief introduction to which he kept nodding his head even though he did not understand anything that I was saying. I wonder if people realise the same about me, when I keep nodding my head.
6. When it was time to redeem the IDF Dollars, there was a long queue. I waited till it became shorter. Finally, when my turn was a few people away, a beautiful girl draped in a saree, barged into the queue, right in front of me. When the guy behind me protested, I told him that I allowed her to do so because she was beautiful. He smiled at me and kept quite.
7. When another guy tried to barge into the queue, possibly after seeing that I allowed the girl to break the queue, I told him that he cannot do so because he is not beautiful. He did not look at me and jumped into some different queue.
8. I found people walking away with tens of T shirts. There were many people doing this and there were many people laughing at such people. These must have been the people who were expert at asking stupid questions or begging for IDF Dollars. I carried home 2 T Shirts. One for me and one for Keyur. Keyur gets this for talking to me all the time over phone while I stood in the long(relatively) queue .
9. It was too chilly in the halls. The ACs that they had put up, freezed me to death. I listened to all the speakers, most of whom, I guess, had boring me to death as the sole purpose of their talk, with my hands folded in such a way that my fingers found warmth in the region just below my arm pits. Finally, when a feedback form arrived, I wrote this in the suggestion section : I would appreciate if you would make arrangements for some good rum the next time. It is too chilly in here :-)
10. I found that the event managers had employed underage kids who walked barefoot collecting trash on the carpets with their bare hands.

See That Guy

This happened on Saturday. I was walking back after dinner along with Nirmal, when this happened. A lady, about 60 years of age, with her grand daughter in her arms, streched out her arm and pointed straight to me and said, "See that guy". It took me a few seconds to find out that I was collinear with her eyes and a gai(pronounced as guy,cow in Hindi).