Sunday, September 13

'Were you?' or 'Was I?' - What would be your answer?

Someone somewhere must have said sometime that the best way to judge a person, if you are a judgmental bastard, is to observe their first reaction to things. People usually do not show who they really are. Their response to situations is different based on the audience observing their response. Such response requires some thinking and assessment of the situation at hand. How about instinctive reactions? Thats what I am talking about here.

Imagine you are at a train station at a not so busy hour on a weekend so there are not many people around. Trains don't come as often as they do on weekdays so you have to wait unusually long before you board the train. It is an underground metro station so you have very limited things to check out other than advertisements or umm well people. Imagine you are waiting at the left side entrance of the door and there is a super hot girl waiting at the right side entrance of the door. You are checking her out and she is checking you out and both of you are trying very hard to avoid being caught in this game. You are using the glass door to check her out. She is pretending to look at the indicator behind you and checking you out. The train finally arrives and both of you board the train choosing to walk in opposite direction after you entered to avoid giving the obvious impression. You still sit at a distance where you can check each other out.

The next day you are with a co worker and this girl whom you were checking out comes and starts talking to your co worker. They both catch up about how the weekend was. You feel ignored because you know both the lovely ladies. Well, almost know both of them. You are sort of vulnerable at this point and if you are asked anything at this point your reaction would be instinctive more than calculated. Imagine now that your co worker introduces her friend to you and your co worker's friend says "were you the same guy who was checking me out while I was checking you out at Bababa* train station yesterday?"

(Time to bring the judgmental bastard out who will review your first reaction and judge you)

If you react by saying "were you?" then you are a big predator flirt who is willing to attack the target anytime there is an opportunity irrespective of what people think of you, your act or your behavior. Meals are important to you and you leave home with a fishing pole ready to fish when you see one and eat it like there is no tomorrow.

If you react by saying "was I?" then you are the biggest moron on earth who was told by a girl that she was checking you out but all you wanted to defend was you were not checking her out when you actually were but you did not want her to know and according to the nervous you, it was important to defend this now so that you make a good impression and stand some chance with this chick in future but you are totally wrong because she probably knows that men don't listen but then she also know's that good men are big predator flirts and those who are not are not worth the effort.

There can be other 'first reactions' to this question but this is all I could think of before Kakaka* station arrived. Thats where she got off. It was a not so busy hour on a weekend so there are not many people around. I pumped up the volume on my ipod and started thinking about something else.

*PS: Station names used are imaginary although I would name stations Bababa and Kakaka if I were the 'station namer' in this city.
PSS: Kapil, I hope this is deep shit. If I dig deeper, you will stop stalking my blog because of the content. Hope you are now content since you are now part of the content of this blog.

Saturday, September 12

Almost home away from home

Singapore doesn't fail to amaze me. Apart from being super efficient, it has people from so many different cultures living and working together that there are a lot of people who are not Singaporeans but call it their home. I won't call it home because it has not been that awesome for me yet but then again it has just been 10ish months and as an optimist I expect everything to get awesome-er with time.

It is not home but it doesn't fail to remind me of home one way or the other. This other day I went for a meal with my friend and we wanted to eat Indian food. We went to Ananda Bhavan. It is the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Singapore and is very popular with the pure vegetarians who only eat veg food all the time. The place has great ambiance and even better food but there was something else that caught my eye.

Look at the bill below. It has the item description in English and surprisingly Tamil. I was really surprised, confused, overjoyed, homesick, proud and cheerful when I saw this. I am not a Tamilian but when you are away from home, anything remotely related catches your eye and brings back memories. It is these small things here and there that make Singapore an exciting place and close to home even when you are away from home.