To all the Metal Fans!!

What an insult to all the metal fans!! ... its really funny though :P

Zest like that!

Till date its been 10 years I have driven two-wheelers of all sorts.
What started as a mere curiosity turned into a passion over a period of time.
I drove almost ALL the two wheelers on the Indian roads and also some beasts like the Yamaha R1 .... But, I never had a drivers license!

So today I finally went to a broker who apparently gets you a license 'just-like-that'!

It was somewhat impressive, funny and finally sad to see how the tasks were done.

Impressed by the way the agent does things by waving his hand and saluting to people, whom you wouldn't even spot. The documents verification, computerized photo session, and the fee payment was all done in just 5 vanishing minutes!

After that I was escorted into a room which had some black color HCL desktops, black from all the dirt, where the 20 questions computer based test is to be taken. The broker gave me instructions, before entering the room, to just sit infront of the desktop, hold the mouse ... and not do ANYTHING. Literally!

Well, then I sat infront of the desktop, when a junior police officer (or whatever designation he holds in the hierarchy) came to my desk, logged into the test and then gave me instructions.
This is where it got real funny. The officer held the mouse and said, "This is how you hold a mouse" and then, clicking on the right answer for the 1st question, he continued, " ... and this is how you click the mouse to select the correct answer". He then went on with 'how-to-click & use-the-mouse' class by answering the next 13 questions. And then said, "Ok, now you can continue with the test". At this point I thought, he might have played around with some sample questions, considering the speed at which he clicked. But then I noticed that he answered the first 14 questions of the ACTUAL test and left the next 6 for me. I browsed back and saw that he answered 10 of them right and 4 (intentionally) wrong, which incidentally is the cut-off to pass the test. Then it made sense, why I had to 'just hold the mouse and not do ANYTHING'. I couldn't help laughing at the way the officer took the class of 'Mouse basics 101' ... And after 10 minutes, another officer 'congratulated' me for having cleared the test (phew, I was tired!;) and handed me a print out.

... and this is how I got my learner's license JUST-LIKE-THAT!



P.S. - I noticed the broker feeding the officer with half the amount I paid him. I wonder what the actual fee is?!
It is really sad that it had be done this way. I mean, to answer mere common traffic sense questions (that too you have to get only half of them right!), you have to bribe your way through so many people.

Hyd, Watering hole & the African humping bird

The day was no-fuckin-where remotely close to being occupied, forget about being busy/productive. My client's bible of hierarchy needs that some 4 people put their autograph on a small paper before I even get access to their stupid network on my laptop. I just spent the whole day flipping through some magazines & open/close some excel files.

I had to hit some watering hole by evening - Thanks to my colleague who flew down from Mumbai for some work with the same client. After a lot of discussion (we should have first figured that this is Hyd and we are a bunch of stags, so we don't have much of a choice, duh!), we hit a place called Serengeti - It is actually a National park in Africa, the actual Serengeti, I mean. - This pub also tried to get the same theme in here. And actually it was well done to look like a forest, though there were definitely some irritating things, of course! Like, the music, which sort of sounded like ghazals. I never knew that African forests have ghazals playing in the background. Duh!
And there was some stupid bird which, time-to-time, keeps humping a tree for some 30 seconds straight making not-so-lustful sounds! I would have surely killed it, if only it was alive!

The service sucked, as is expected - We are talking about Hyderabad and hospitality!
The orders came in late. The waiters were not accomodating. And let's not even talk about the bill - 8000 bucks for 4 people and that too for staying sober??!! For that big a hole in the pocket, I would have got pissed drunk and roamed around on the streets of Bangalore.

Miles to go before Hyd catches up ...


P.S. - It was a different experience watching the IPL match in a forest-like place, though!