Once in 783 years - so I was told.....

When the weekend began, I got this SMS from a few of my friends, it went something like:

"This is the only month (May 2009) where we have 5 Saturdays and Sundays. This happens once in 783 years. So friends, do enjoy yourselves cos you are fortunate to get this extra weekend in your lifetime. Gudnite"

This got me thinking in terms of "Davy Jones could spend one day ashore for every ten years on the high seas" (Pirates' fans may pick up the reference). So how did I spend the extra weekend that I was so fortunate to receive? Well, I slept at about 4am on Saturday morning and got up around 11.30am. Had to change a few hard drives, fix a PC. Then ran off to our very own MCG (no not that one, I meant the Manthope Colony Ground ;-) ), for 2-3 hours of cricket with a bunch of friends. Had got myself a new bat (after my old one was broken by a friend), which incidentally proved rather useful - sixes and fours flew all over the ground and my buddies were wondering - "What's up with him? Is he drunk? He doesn't bat this well."

The New bat above and the old one below (yes I'm a BDManiac)


Came back around 6.30 with a friend on his bike (fearing for my life, the way he rides). Thankful to reach home with all limbs attached, I threw my shirt off washed myself, dried and fell asleep on the couch only to have my Mum wake me up at 9pm. Had dinner, followed by the usual round of "What use are you around the house?" talks by the good doctor, my most honourable Dad. Downloaded a few comics and got back up to date on Batman, the Transformers, War Machine, Thor, Iron Man and what not. Yes, I'm a bit of a comic buff, but I only follow certain series.

Coming to Day 2 of my most wonderful EXTRA weekend, the day started off with Mr. Cactus waking me at 7am. Thought "what the hell?" and went right back to bed. Woken up again by Mum at 9am, she told me to get ready quick, apparently we were going out. So I did.

Went over to Apollo Hospitals first and waited for my Dad to complete his rounds. Meanwhile I saw the Chairman arrive in his most awesome car - a Bentley Continental model. Certainly a car that I can never afford in my life, with the car being priced at merely (for some people) Rs 2 crore. Oh well, I'll stick with my BMW M3 quest.....

Coming back to the issue at hand, left Apollo and went to a relative's place. After an hour there we split and had lunch at the Radha Regent, formerly Radha Park Inn. They have a nice buffet spread for the price (Rs. 4xx per person, not sure about the xx) though it doesn't match the Park Sheraton's buffet at The Residence, or Taj Coromandel's Matchpoint (now Anise), and I make the most of the dessert section each time I visit :D.

Post-lunch, we went over to a pet store to get two big 10kg bags of Pedigree (Chicken and Milk, and Meat and Rice flavours) Dog Food for Mr. Cactus. He was most delighted at what he found inside the car when we got back. Mum gave him a fistful of the food and he was content (momentarily) before he went back into the kitchen and sniffed around the place where the bags are usually stationed.




Following this, I browsed through the news on a few different sites, went over my usual ton of RSS feeds, listened to Linkin Park's "New Divide" and hopped into an online game of Team Fortress 2 (I bought the Orange Box back when it released). The game went on till dinner and after some time spent filling out a few forms for some application or other I got back to playing TF2. And now here I sit writing this article at 2.30a.m.

Check out this funny little video. You'll get the humour in it if you're a TF2 player or you know the various classes in the game.



Most wonderful way to waste my time even when I knew that this was in a way an extra day wouldn't you think?? Nope, wrong.

Cos it isn't anything special at all. The idiots who passed on the message never looked up the facts and most people I later informed of an error never realised it. The fact is that when it comes to 5 weekends in one month, atleast one month in every year has such a combination. Pick up the calendar and take a look at August 2009, January 2010, May 2010 etc. It happens more than once each year, not once in every 783 years.

People really should check the accuracy of the crap they forward, atleast for the sake of NOT looking like idiots. I bet a number of people who passed on the above forward will be doing this once they realise that they've been royally had!! -

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Texting - a boon or a bane

SMS (or texting as it is commonly known) would be the bane of many a parent who has got their kids a cell phone. You can't turn left or right at a mall these days and not find a group of youngsters sitting and texting. And when people at the cinema SMS sitting right next to me, it gets my blood boiling. Earlier, text messages used to be sent when one couldn't call for some reason or the other. But that changed with the fall in SMS rates and many packages coming with a fixed number of SMSes free with the connection. For many it became the primary function of having a cell phone. Colleges and schools struggled to keep the students from constantly texting with their phones hidden under their benches. So much so that cell phones had to be banned in several educational institutions.

But SMS provides an easy way out from having to talk with someone and explain something. Imagine - you won't be able to make it for a friend's birthday bash because you want to do something else then. But calling him up and giving an excuse is really hard as we all know. Instead, we just text saying "Car brk dwn. Cant make it. Srry. :-(". That way we avoid having to speak with him directly. It provides a comfortable buffer that you can use to measure your words. In a way it is an invisible wall that we hide behind. Any reply to his message would be carefully thought out.

That aspect of SMS eliminates the spontaneity in communication that makes human interaction so unique. While I still prefer to talk over the phone (not that I have the money to do so all the time), I can firmly say that the vast majority would disagree with me.