This may just happen to you…

Found this ad while roaming in Valsad yesterday. While this is an ad for a ladies beauty parlor..the picture shows a different story.. Funny

I read this wonderful story on Reddit about people helping each other. Stories like these restore my faith in humanity..

This past year I have had 3 instances of car trouble. A blow out on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out of gas situation. All of them were while driving other people’s cars which, for some reason, makes it worse on an emotional level. It makes it worse on a practical level as well, what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my car, and know enough not to park, facing downhill, on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.

Anyway, each of these times this shit happened I was DISGUSTED with how people would not bother to help me. I spent hours on the side of the freeway waiting, watching roadside assistance vehicles blow past me, for AAA to show. The 4 gas stations I asked for a gas can at told me that they couldn’t loan them out “for my safety” but I could buy a really shitty 1-gallon one with no cap for $15. It was enough, each time, to make you say shit like “this country is going to hell in a handbasket.”

But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound affect on me.

He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blow out with his whole family of 6 in tow. I was on the side of the road for close to 4 hours. Big jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows of the car, big signs that said NEED A JACK and offered money. No dice. Right as I am about to give up and just hitch out there a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks english. He conveys through her that he has a jack but it is too small for the Jeep so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of a downed tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top, and bam, in business. I start taking the wheel off and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones and I wasn’t careful and I snapped the head I needed clean off. Fuck.

No worries, he runs to the van, gives it to his wife and she is gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She is back in 15 minutes, we finish the job with a little sweat and cussing (stupid log was starting to give), and I am a very happy man. We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man’s hand but he wouldn’t take it so I instead gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico. They are here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that they are going to pick cherries then go back home. She asks if I have had lunch and when I told her no she gave me a tamale from their cooler, the best fucking tamale I have ever had.

So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow…

But we aren’t done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My fucking $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won’t take it. All I can think to say is “Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor” with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English:

“Today you…. tomorrow me.”

Rolled up his window, drove away, his daughter waving to me in the rear view. I sat in my car eating the best fucking tamale of all time and I just cried. Like a little girl. It has been a rough year and nothing has broke my way. This was so out of left field I just couldn’t deal.

In the 5 months since I have changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and, once, went 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won’t accept money. Every time I tell them the same thing when we are through:

“Today you…. tomorrow me.”

As heard in the news today, petrol prices all over India have gone up by Rs. 7.5 per litre due to rupee becoming weak against the dollar. What is the common man supposed to do after such a massive increase in the prices? With this increase, expect the prices to go up for all things. Who do we people go and complain?

In Mumbai, catching a taxi or a rickshaw and getting the driver to take you to your destination is a task by itself. And if the distance to your destination is short, forget getting there via either a taxi or a rick. On top of it, the taxi and rickshaw guys will go on a strike on any given day demanding a hike in their fares causing inconvenience to thousands of commuters. In spite of countless complains, against overcharging, or not stopping for a fare – does the government even care? What do the people do?

There are many other things apart from the ones mentioned above which makes me feel that we are a handicapped generation. The leaders are only worried about their chairs and benefits they can derive out of it. Or they are busy raising non-issues like cartoons and arguing over it. Where a government needs to lead important reforms and ensure that grains lying in the storage and getting rot are given away to the poor, our leaders squabble over petty things. This just makes me feel that there is no support for common man. We are handicapped.

Saturday night was huge for a lot of Chelsea fans like me. Ever since I have started following English Premier League (EPL), I have been following Chelsea. This season has been a roller coaster ride for the football club. We got a new coach “AVB” and he didn’t get the results which were expected out of the team. The team was low on confidence, morale was down and generally it looked like we were down and out. But then the coach was sacked, a new “interim” coach comes into picture. The team starts by winning against Napoli in the Champions League and slowly and steadily gains confidence. After couple of good games against the English teams, Chelsea is faced with the one of the biggest challenges in the form of Barcelona, the best football club, in the world. A lot of people had counted Chelsea off, saying they would never be able to beat Barcelona. It is true that defeating Barcelona by playing Barca style football is next to impossible – just ask Arsenal. So they did what they had to do. They counter attacked when the opportunity arose, otherwise defended as if their lives depended on keeping a clean sheet.

After Chelsea won the first leg against Barca, people again said Barca will defeat Chelsea at Camp Nou. Chelsea used the same strategy which helped them win the first leg effectively. Even though they were down to 10 men, Barca just couldn’t score more than 2 goals. Chelsea could have just parked the bus and let Barca roll over them, but that wasnt to be me. After the 2nd goal, they counter attacked and found the net in the 1st half. The 2nd half was more or less the same, with Messi missing a penalty. I am not sure if Messi has ever scored against Chelsea in all the encounters they have had so far. He certainly gets some blues when he plays the Blues. The more Barca attacked, Chelsea dug in ever deeper and then finally in the extra time scored through Fernando Torres.

Chelsea lost their four front line players in the semi final which meant they would not be playing the finals – the biggest game of their careers. Again people said the same things – Bayern is playing at home, Chelsea wont be able to win, they don’t have players etc. However, in the finals it was Chelsea who won. Bayern attacked – wave after wave and each time they crashed against a rock solid defense, though, there were a few cracks but still they held on. The more they held on, more frustrated Bayern became. When the 90 mins ended, we could see Bayern players tired and resting on the ground, while on the Chelsea side you could the team members raring to go. Finally when no result was achieved in the extra time, it was time for the penalties and rest is history as we know it.

The above purely demonstrates the team spirit, the determination to succeed of a team which had faced a lot this season. This is the stuff legends are made up of. They could well make a Hollywood movie out of this one. For all the people who say Chelsea play ugly football, to them I would say winning is all it matters as long as no cheating is involved. It does not matter how much time you hold the possession or how many corner kicks you take; it is end result – the ball crossing the goal line – is what counts and unfortunately Barca and Bayern couldn’t do it when it mattered the most.

I read this Reddit and now am thinking can this be done??

• Treadmill with a laptop connected to it
• Internet on the laptop only works if you are walking on the treadmill
• It should stop working if you just standing on the sides
• You need to run to download something
• The faster you run, faster the download speed

There a few websites which I have bookmarked while I am at work. Times of India being one of them. I normally go straight to Cities/ Sports or Business section when the website opens up. While I was going through the website today, I feel the name of the website should be changed to Sleazy Times of India. Here is a website of one of the most reputed news papers in India and all we have articles on sex once you cross the webpage mid way. Here is a screen shot of today’s edition.

Hopefully ToI will grow up and put news which matters rather than all these articles.

Last Saturday, me along with a couple of my office colleagues decided to check out a few apartments in the Mira Rd area. I am looking to buy a house sometime next year in June-July and thought now would be a good time to commence searching. It will also give a good idea on the current market rates and what kind of deals to expect. We were initially looking at apartments which were in 8-10 year old buildings in anticipation that we would get a better deal, however, the places we saw were not really worth the price the owners were quoting. And the place which we did like, the amount of cash asked was too much. I had heard about the terms white and black payment while buying a house, this time experienced it first hand. This one place they were asking for INR 2 ,000,000 (20 lakhs) in cash, and I am thinking how is a salaried individual suppose to give this much amount straight upfront in cash. This very thought caused me a lot of discomfort.

After checking out apartments in old buildings, we checked out 2 upcoming constructions: Lodha Group and Man Opus. In Lodha, we checked out the Lodha Aqua which is a premium property and commands a premium rate. The 2 BHK apartment which we saw had split ACs fitted in all the rooms and everything from plumber, electrician etc. were just a phone call away.  The building had club house, swimming pool etc. all modern amenities. All of these only costing INR 10,800,000 (1 crore and 8 lakhs). Of course the apartment was huge approx. 1008 sq.ft., but still that’s quite a huge amount for a property in Mira Rd. which is on the outskirts of Mumbai. The next property which we checked out was Man Opus, which is under construction. The rates over there are also very high INR 6300 per sq.ft, so basically a 2 BHK will cost around INR 8,000,000 (80 lakhs) after taxes and everything. I did a quick math and realized to get one of these apartments I would have to get a loan of approx. INR 5,500,000 (55 lakhs) for like 30 years or something and pay approx. 55K as my monthly installment. After doing this math, I decided I am going to look further beyond Mumbai to identify a property which I can afford.

So at the end of a very productive day, I have decided to look at Thane Ghodbunder area to check out some properties and see if anything falls in budget. Lets see if something good comes up. 🙂