The man and the ATM

I was standing in the line for the ATM machine over the weekend. Manav's first corollary on the working of ATM machines was working in full flow. "If at any time an ATM vestibule has n machines n-1 of them will non operational." In this particular case the vestibule had 2 machines one of which was non operational. "

There were about ten people who had queued up behind the single operating machine. However within a minute I was blessed with an appearance of an individual who i will now refer to as the Supreme One. Dressed in denim jacket and jeans with sunglasses over his head, ,He looks around the vestibule with a condescending look and absorbs the scene. He then proceeds to the non working machine and puts his card in. After typing his pin he is shocked that the machine spews an error message. He then wildly looks around at the ten of us and proceeds sheepishly to the back of the line.

As I am not one of the people who possess the inner eye i can just gauge what he could have thought on the basis of his actions. As he walked in , he would have spotted an empty ATM machine and ten people standing behind another one. He then would have reasoned as he was the only one in the world who had been blessed with common sense, it is possible that not even one of the people in the line has managed to spot the empty machine. Offering a silent thank you to God for being the chosen one he would have proceeded to make his way to the empty machine. Of course the rest as they say is history.

On the off chance that this supreme being is reading this blog , I would like to congratulate that person as he has been given the Manav award for being the chosen one. It is good to know that such people do exist and give the rest of us a purpose for existence

36 China Town

I saw 36 china town yesterday. Well the movie is not a total wash out. However the problem with it is that it takes itself too seriously. It tries to be a thriller when it is anything but the same. The premise of the movie is your standard hindi movie fare. A rich heiress gets murdered and there are a host of people who could have been responsible.

The rich lady is wonderfully played by Isha Kopikar. The directors having recognized the unlimited potential exhibited by her have used her in a role where she has 6 scenes , 5 of which are her playing a corpse.Better use of Ms. Kopikar i have not seen for a really long time. The movie also stars Shahid Kapur who jumps excitedly from frame to frame without any real sense of purpose. Giving him company jumping from screen to screen is his lady love Kareena Kapoor who continues from where she left on in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum. In other words she is still loud over made up and remarkably irritating. Besides the people above 36 China town also marks the debut of Upen Patel.

Now i will plead ignorance. I did not know who Mr patel was but the lady next to me started screaming wildly and waving her hands going EEEEEE its Upen. That was not very educating and did not explain who Mr. Patel was but i assume he is someone who is considered "Hot". His debut reminds me of the great debut of one Deepak Malhotra many years ago. I do remember seeing his debut in Lamhe. However unlike the plush multiplex where i was watching 36 China Town.I had seen lamhe in the front stall of a shady Calcutta hall. On Deepak Malhotra's debut, there were no one who was wildly screaming EEEEEE its Deepak. In fact if anything the dude next to me(dressed very well in a torn vest and a dirty lungi) commented loudly s**** yeh Ch******** kaun hai ? Anyways Mr. Patel plays a cool playboy in Goa. He calls himself Rocky and has single handedly provided more cheesy lines in this movie than i could have thought of. A sample of this would be " Aapke pitaji terrorist hai kya Aisa bomb aur kaun bana sakta hai"

The movie also stars Akshaye Khanna. I was pleasantly surprised with his performance. As the cop who has been entrusted the task of solving this case he does a very good job. In fact the movie sort of picks up when he is around. The music of the movie is also pretty decent. However i do not understand why Himesh Reshammiya has decided to sing his songs. The music is decent but i do think the voice takes away a lot from the song. Of course thankfully we are spared the sight of the bearded and capped Mr. Reshammiya hollering into a mike with a hand stuck in one pocket of his jeans.

Pick up line ?

I was watching television last night when i saw this really cheesy program on a really cheesy channel. It had Mr. YUPY (young urban punjabi youth ) Vicky Singh trying to entice an equally yuppy punju girl with his amazing charm. To understand the situation you have to really understand how Vicky was dressed. He was one of your comb in the back pocket , goggles in the eye socket type of fellows. Dressed in a t shirt which could only be worn by someone under 1.5 foot and tight jeans, he also had decided to wear dark sunglasses. This of course is a nice thing when the sun is shining hard on your eyes. However if you are in a party in an indoor hotel and it is after 10 PM, do u really need to be wearing the sunglasses. He then proceeds to the lady in pink ( I swear i have not seen so much of pink in my life - not even in Archies on the 14th of Feb) and then dips his leather glove covered hand into a glass and pulls out the ice and crushes it with his boots ( these are boots which would give mountain trekkers a complex). This is followed by the pickup line of the century. " Now that i have broken the ice , can you tell me your name". If that was not revolting enough Pinky decides that this indeed does deserve an exclamation of glee. She promptly says I am Raveena and breaks into hysterical giggles.

Is it just me or is the image shown here a bit disturbing. I understand i am not what one would define as the cool dude but still do women actually like these dialogues? Hmm no wonder my strike rate in this particular department is a big 0. However i would definietly want to improve my succes ratio. As Vicky seems to be the example of a successful ladies man, I shall be following in his foot steps. Let me list down some of the lines which i may be using. (PS - if you are a lady and you are reading this , i beg of you , please run as soon as you see me )

(After bouncing a tennis ball ) - Now that the ball is in your court , would you consider going out with me ?
I need a map as i am getting lost in your eyes
Is there an airport nearby, or is my heart taking off !!
How was heaven when you left it to come down to earth?
Your dad must have been a thief, and stolen stars to put in your eyes !!

Please do let me know your opinion on these. I would have to say that all the last few lines had come from an article on the web. I could not have created them. Am just not that good.

What is it with the new soft drink ads. I think the real competition is to decided which one is trying to come up with the worse advertisement for their products.
First we had the ad with Aishwarya Rai and the "thande ka tadka". Is this what they spent tons of money and hours of creative effort on? So one has to whistle with a coke bottle in their hand and then they will not be rude "dude" . Ye Gods what is wrong with the creative team that came up with this ad. More importantly , maybe i dont understand marketing or get it , but somehow i really do not think this is it.

If this was not bad enough, Pepsi came up with a worse ad. The ads started with teasers saying "Pepsi TV" is coming and is worth watching. I even remember seeing certain articles in the newspaper which said that they saw Pepsi in conversation with Ekta Kapoor. Of course that would lead to "Kyonki Pepsi Bhi Soft Drink Hai". However after loads of teasers, we were treated to an ad that insulted all possible senses. Apparently after months of exhaustive research Pepsi has discovered that one of the main things that people do when they sit at home is watch tv. Thus they came up with this commercial which preaches that drinking pepsi will make the channels more exciting. Now i do not watch a lot of what comes on tv but i defy anyone to make one of the norml 9 - 11 family soaps more bubbly - No it does not happen not even with a crate of Pepsi.
The Thums Up ad on the other hand has a wild banshee looking Akshay kumar standing on top of a lighthouse and playing the drums. While i would seriously advocate such behaviour if you were an inmate of the Ranchi madhouse but for all othe normal people , this is definitely a no no.
Having said that , I really like the Limca ad. It does get its point across. We should have more of those. I really like that jingle. It is amazing.