Machina

A wonderful trip coming to an end, I thought I must blog about Beijing as a city and its culture. From the day I knew I was going to Beijing till now, I have not looked up a single web page about the city or "what to do" or "where to go". The idea did pay off with every day coming as a surprise.

Cliched style but..You know you're in Beijing if..

(a) you wonder what couples do after going home. They seem to 'finish' everything on roads

(b) all you see on TV are Botox and Cupping Ads. The 'before' and 'after' are outrageous. Like a corporate boss throwing away the papers brought by a woman cuz she you know..and after the botox application, the boss keeps aside the papers and says "yayyy". Wtf, I mean wtf :)

(c) you see street music being appreciated with utmost passion anywhere in the city.
Just anybody can set up speakers ANYWHERE and perform. Sure to get an audience. the variety of unique instruments will just blow you away.











(d) food is repulsive to look at and smells like shit. Most of the food tastes good though. The Chinese are known to order more than what can be eaten. Restaurant tables are full of left overs all the time and Chinese accept the fact themselves.

The worst thing I had(surprisingly) was the eye of a fish. the damned thing is sooo hard and you need to chew it slowly. Tastes bad and unless you're trying too hard not to, you will puke.




(e) you find the women beautiful(PERIOD)

(f) you see people who like they are in a loo. But thats the way they sit. In bus stands, while playing Mahjong in the night and a lot of places. Mahjong is a gambling game and old folks play all night long and beat their wives if they lose dough.

(g) you hear the word "Neyygaa" a hundred times(EASILY..no exaggeration). A normal conversation would sound like aaa vignesh neyggaa somerset shru oo neygggaa chan tho loaa shing neygaaaa tsinghuaa nammen??

Me:Neygaaa Xie Xie la neyggaa ;)

(h) you watch people commuting in weird ways.

(i) Piggyback rides for small cute girls is a sight to watch
(ii)Kids on rollerblades racing with cars in traffic is cool. They get a lot of
oooh aaa wow form the girls.
(iii)People walk backwards. I have not found out why yet. Its goddamn funny.

(i) Men walk on roads half topless. The shirt is tucked up to the chest and reveal their tummies and their hands go round and round on the stomach. Worst thing to see but I mentioned cuz you will not get this kind of information anywhere on the internet. Its a trend here and even guys who wear branded stuff like Nike or Kappa do it all the time.

(j) People are very very very friendly and welcoming. They will watch you butcher their language and yet deliver a smile and try to understand what you're trying to say. That has been the best part of my trip. Random walks with random people having conversations that lasted 10 12 mins without understanding a word of what each other said.

Classic example was a cabbie who kept saying "Indo Indo and swaying his arms like a peacock" . I took a snap of his ID card cuz I was freaking out.




After 2 mins I realized he was referring to Bollywood dance and that his kid watches on TV. Hand signs galore.

(k) you wake up cuz its too sunny and bright and go back to sleep cuz the time is still 4 30 am. Day begins at 4 15 sometimes and ends to 7 30 pm. The Chinese here have short nights. Nature's remedy for birth control? Which reminds me. The public here welcome the 1 kid only rule. I wish India adopts something similar.

(l) you realize look much better than you thought :p College girls come and ask you out for Coffee, American women smile at you and what not. In India, I am not guaranteed a second look @ first place leave alone coffee or smiles :)

My trip is kinda made I guess[winks]

Cheers

Don't give a rat's piam to this :)

The death toll continues to rise as I'm becoming braver by the day.

The casualty list is as follows:

a)Oysters

b)Clams(cooked alive)

c)Pork skin

d)Lamb skin

e)Duck's tongue (Imagine a serving tray gull of tongues!)

f)Rabbit's foot

g)Fried Eel

For (e) and (g) It felt just like how Karamchand felt , something moving, shouting, wriggling and dancing in my stomach :)

Since Domino's served a Chinese version of Pizza(Peee Saaaaan: jus kiddin :p ) I gave up hope on Western (customized) food.

I was expecting KFC grandpa assuming new avatars like





or probably some pirated version altogether like:






But KFC was a life saver :) With the exact same recipe and a Chinese girl announcing, much to my delight, that the bill is thatty fouuu fif tee(Exactly), I had nothing more to ask for :) Excepting that Russel needs to know I connect a lot to his jokes :p

Well, the title! Let me tell you something that requires reader discretion.

People in China have a strong belief that eating piams will enhance their sexual experience. What is a piam?

It literally translates to "animal's whip", whip being the slang for well...a penis.

Their logic goes this way. Wilder the animal, more precious is its piam and the better you feel while "doing it". They kill tigers and sell the piams, for it gets sold like hot pancakes. So domestic animals can feel safe :) Castration happens to "the wild" only! Complete removal, rather.

Talking on rats, there is another "game" sort of thing called the "3 screaming mice".
They put 3 new born rat babies(alive) on a plate with sauce. new born cuz they are considered to be cleaner.

The rat screams 1st when you poke it with a fork, 2nd time when dipped in sauce and 3rd when when you put in the mouth. Thats what they call 3 screaming mice. A delicacy! It should be 9 in all logically, but I was way too grossed out to ask for an explanation there.

A southern destination called GuanTong has their own way of having a feast. A live monkey is pushed from beneath a table with a small opening and suspended that way. The head is believed to give superficial powers. Boiling water is poured on their heads to clean the germs and a chisel/hammer is ued to break the head and its eaten alive while screaming.

No smart names for this. How about 1 sad-fucked-up-screaming monkey?

Shall update with another post on eating snakes and reptiles later. Sounded like a plan for the weekend :)

Ping pong and blogger's gone

They shut down blogger for Chinese IPs and my post disappeared when I tried continuing at home.Now back at office

I have a weird feeling that the Chinese think I'm either a eunuch or a girl.
Cuz everytime I play ping pong with Sun Wei and 2 others walk in, he asks them,

"Doo yoo want to plaaai mixadubbles?"

Me:(wtf?!) Dude you mean doubles right? (With a smile assuring him that I know he is just kidding and he aint a jackass)

Sun: Weer already plaaain dubbles. Lets plaai mixadubbles naaow

Me:blank

I gave up.

Lunch was a futile effort at me trying to prove I can be really Chinese by tasting all their food. I put in whatever my colleagues took in their plates.

I think I put some national geographic shows to shame. I had

(a) Steaks (forgot which animal)
(b) Pork with Rice
(c) Clams. This is the best part. The fish inside was cooked alive with the opened shell. So we take some shells on our plate, eat the gooey stuff inside(with chopsticks) and collect those shells for hobby(naaa)

I think this brave effort paid off as 2 of them wanted to try Indian food for dinner. Took them to Ganges, a restaurant which would have shut down had it opened in Hyderabad. Very mediocre food, but making a lot of business here.

One question I was asked by a lady in the office:

Why do Indians not touch their food with the left hand?

Answers anyone?

Being a man. Doing the right thing.

Grabbed a Chinese newspaper at the Bangalore airport to understand the country better and its current affairs.

The events, crimes, rules and happenings are just way too different. Just amazes me as how people, just few hundred miles from our borders can be so different in everything they do.

Irate husbands trying to kill their wives seems to be a trend here. NRIs are kinda weird too I think. A Tam bram mom was putting her baby to sleep by singing naaka mukka.(In an era where Johnny still sings laaa laa laa laaaaa laaaaaaaaa ley :p )

Other news:

A local Govt. in Fujian awards 10 extra marks to students whose parents purchased a land in a certain area. They needed to boost the local property market! With heavy criticism they are planning to remove it now.

25 people burn to death on the main road inside a public bus. The driver could not open the door and 25 inside charred to death! And no one knows the cause yet.

And David Carradine was found dead in his apartment (in Thailand) with a rope tied to the fan. Researchers later found it was not suicide but a sex act found wrong. He was declared dead due to masturbation gone wrong!

Anyways, the air hostess in DragonAir got her first request for alcohol from yours truly and announced she has only eeeeeeegal.

Me: Whiskey? Brandy? What is it?

She:er..I donno. Its called eeeegal.

Me: Okay one glass eeeegal.

I was like wtf I have had Monitor and it can't be worse.

She brings a bottle of Chivas Reagal and pours it in a glass full of rocks! They call it Reaaaaaagal without the R!

No English at all here. My driver kept talking to me in Mandarin/Cantonese/Some Chinese lingo/ pointing to buildings and smiling. I kept returning the lame "smile+xie xie".






In a quest to taste at least 70% of the fauna here, I started with Chicken and Oysters with Rice. No comments on the taste though.





For now zzz ing in the nice apartment I am put up at.

All in a day's work

My last day of work at Bye-Bye was going great guns with wishes from many employees. After all, they were happy for a person who had served his sentence and was getting released that day.

The HR lady smiled and signed my documents. Walking out, I was wondering who this woman was. It was time for the Admin department now which would close by 5 pm. They asked for my ID card which I gladly gave away.

All that remained was my status call at 10 pm(9 am USA time). After that, well..

I walked out of the office for a cig and I saw the HR lady drive away in a lancer. It set me thinking: Was I wrong to leave this company? An HR person looked after so well by this company?

Then my colleague said she was the Sun TV VJ whom we see everyday trying to predict our day with zodiac signs.

Walking back into the office, the security guards stopped me and asked me who I was. I did not have the ID card and they did not allow me in. In their opinion, an employee who just quit is of a potential threat than a complete stranger since I'd know where the server rooms are. Why would they always expect a leaving employee to be irate and revengeful?

Well that is Bye-Bye for you.

Anyways, my manager came running down and pleaded the security to allow me in. She wanted me for the client call.

Armed with a temporary card, I walked out again at 7 pm for the nearest TASMAC(Last day treat). Formal clad men with black executive shoes drinking old secret XXX in a shady little cottage is a sight to watch out for.

Client call went well with the American guy trying to test the new recruit if I transitioned well enough. I was obviously scribbling down a lot of answers for this guy and signaling this and that(it was a phone conference).

I left at 12 pm immediately after the call. I was done with 25 kilometres(/33) of my journey back on my good old Activa and this battery of Cops stopped to check me.

3 college kids were crying buckets sitting inside the police car. I asked them to calm down and behave like grown up boys. Then this cop asked me to blow. I obliged.

He shouts "D Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"(Drunken Driving they told me later) and another cop started beating me like a madman. He din't seem to stop. He was drunk as well. I was almost in tears when he shoved me in the same car. Finally the 3 students started laughing. You know why.

The 3 kids had to call their parents in spite of persistent appeals. I told the drunkard cop I will pay and parents don't get to know anything. With only 500 bucks in cash, the greedy cop wanted me to draw cash.

He drops me outside my apartment and I sneaked into my house slowly. Tip toeing, I took out my ATM card and began to lock the house when my dad woke up and asked me...

"Do you want to drink Bournvita?" Me: $#@%#$?!>!!

I told him my vehicle stopped and an auto guy towed me so I was gonna pay him now.

I went down and the cop was patiently waiting for me. I withdrew 3 grand at the ATM. The cop took it and drove away. I walked back to the station and took my vehicle.

Booze cost: 500 bucks
Fine:3000 bucks
Thought of having quit Bye-Bye and all is over now: Priceless
The idea of me blogging about all this: Shameless

(This is a very very old post which was stuck in my drafts..Anyways)

Thup Sum Bong

Day 1:

With a lenient attitude of changing my imaginative perception on Bong women as people with bright big dots on faces and "jataang" lipstick, I arrived here in the Bong land today.

I appreciate my imagination. I was "bong" on target. Every bong is easily recognizable with women sporting this traffic red signal sort of lipstick. Probably to say stop, don't ;) Okay that was rhoshisth (Read racist)

The airport is much the same as Chennai Central with fleas hovering over when you use the loo. (Not kidding). Kolkata airport sure needs an overhaul.

With my broken Hindi, I approach the Taxi Stand and convey I need to go to IIM, Joka. This smart ass comes with a sheet and shows me "Zoka: 800 Rs." and tries to convince me it is the same as Joka.

Jokas apart, I wanted to verify with the official counter and I see Joka: 600 Rs. and this guy says "Oh Joka? teek hai teek hai sorry" and goes away.


So I'm here at the IIM campus after a funny lunch with sugar in every dish I ordered.
The campus is beautiful: Lots of greenery, a nice lake and a bad weather. This place is a bird sanctuary and at around 6 pm, thousands of birds are right on top of your head dropping crap. To try some probability:

If you studied in IIMC for 2 years, you must've got hit at least once.

Enough crap. More later.

Thousand and 1 yens

Trust not in God,
fall not in love,
believe not in prayer.
Wish not, desire not,
dream not...

For what matters,
are dead presidents.
It's the dead static ones,
that speak for you,
for me,
for the living.

It's the dough,
that kneads us.
A yen without a yen,
as good as impotent men.

Inches of paper,
wrap the globe.
Spin spin spin,
like a woman on gin.

Lit candles,
bring no romance.
It's the bundles.
For beauty lies,
in the hands,
of the shareholder.

Crave till the grave.
Till death,
tears man apart.




*Title crypt: Thousand(M) and 1 (ONE) yens(Y)...Money
Yens=Y,Money,Desire/Longing