Something about Nothing

As is usual last week again found me at a bookstore. Although I tend to haunt Odyssey, this time I ventured to Crossword, just because I was in the City Center Mall. I have earlier had a laughable experience there regarding the categorization of books they have, but this time the experience was anything but laughable.

A group of girls was huddled in the front of the ‘Romance’ section, which unluckily was just a shelf away from ‘Indian Authors’ section that I was browsing. And then the cell phone of one of them rings. She lets the entire store know that they have been waiting for the past half an hour for the person on other end to come, and are just doing ‘time-pass at the bookshop’ (her exact words). And then their talks began in earnest. That one shelf of books was no match for the rising crescendo, and the incessant and the loud chatter emanating from the ‘Romance’ section battered my ears.

I came away with just one book - a rarity for me.

Advice to booklovers: Never visit Crossword Bookstore at City Center Mall, Hyderabad unless you know exactly the book you want to buy. The bored crowd of the Mall congregates there and makes simple book-browsing a very un-enjoyable task.

Technorati: Crossword, Hyderabad, Odyssey

The sudden heavy showers and the up-and-down roads of Hyderabad and the drive at that inopportune moment through Jubilee Hills and Banjara Hills makes me wish I had a canoe to transfer me and my bike to the other side of 20-feet long and 1-feet deep pond in the middle of the road.

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I must take inspiration from the half completed poem posted by Rama - two short stories have been languishing in the drafts folder since two months. I hit a short-story-writer’s-block and have been unable to finish them off. Maybe if I post it now, some kind soul would finish them properly for me.

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When the program you are running takes in excess of 2 hours to complete and you have your camera with you and your hands are itching to dabble into macro-photography, the result is office-art

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By the way I have added a random() link in the right column, has anyone tried it yet, or is it just using up the valuable space?

Once you enter the corporate world, call-center people discover you. How they unearth you, and your phone number could be a mystery befitting Sherlock Holmes. Anyways I am not trying to play Sherlock here, I am just playing the part of Dr. Watson - the narrator, and generally the silent witness.

So for the past two years almost daily I have been getting calls from all the banks that have established in the universe regarding a free-credit-card. You know the general routine “Sir, I am calling from XYZ.” Some are polite enough to enquire “Are you free for a few moments?” And then all calls read from the same printed script, “We are offering you a blah blah blah”, and all calls end on the same note at my end, “Not interested, thank you”.

Well it seems to me that the new mantra for people selling credit cards is brevity. Yesterday I received a call that went like -
Me: “Hello”
Call Center: “Sirrr…”
Me: “Yes?”
CC: “Sirrr, ICICI bank”
Me: “Yes?”
CC: “Sirrr, free credit card”
Me: *disconnected*

No other word was spoken.

Ahh! The 30 seconds I used to waste on these calls has now reduced to 3 seconds… I am all for brevity

When I started writing “Something about Nothing” I had no idea what an arduous task I was undertaking. Just look at this article…

1  There is vastly more nothing than something. Roughly 74 percent of the universe is “nothing,” or what physicists call dark energy; 22 percent is dark matter, particles we cannot see. Only 4 percent is baryonic matter, the stuff we call something.

2  And even something is mostly nothing. Atoms overwhelmingly consist of empty space. Matter’s solidity is an illusion caused by the electric fields created by subatomic particles.

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20  In other words, nothing could be the key to the theory of everything.

Damn! I should have set smaller goals first

On my recent trip to Sunderbans I clicked numerous photographs of birds. Although some of them came out well, but I was mostly dissatisfied with the end results. But having compromised on zoom & lens in favour of size, I cannot complain. And I had no idea I would be bit by the photography bug.

But even with a powerful zoom, bird photography is not easy. First of all you have to spot the bird, and given its size and excellent camouflage it is a mean task. Once you have spotted the bird, any sudden movements have to be avoided and forget about getting close (and by close I mean 30+ feet). And then taking the photograph of that tiny bird that would disappear in a second if you make any unwanted sound or movements. (It has happened with me, I just stooped to get a better angle and the bird flew off)

I am still trying to capture one good high-resolution photograph of any bird, and till now I have not tasted success. With my simple point-and-shoot camera, I doubt I would be able to get such a photograph, but I can always dream!

Technorati: Bird Photography, Peacock, Hyderabad