Funny Side (Hopefully) Up

In today's blog I wish to chronicle a phenomenon that I have christened the "Last Momo Effect". The Last Momo Effect refers to the fact that whenever kids or teenagers go out for a meal - or even if they're eating at home - the teenager will always get the last momo or the last slice of garlic bread or the last whatever else. I might as well have called it the "teenagers always get food" effect, but my dad challenged me to write a blog post called "The Last Momo" (hence the "Challenge Accepted"). I've always kind of wondered why that might be, because after all, it's only a bit of food. By the time you even GET to the last one, everyone's probably had two or three already, so it's far from likely that the kid is hungry. He/she/I don't need the momo in order to survive. But I still get the momo (I've always thought that this was perhaps a way of paying us for all the chores our parents make us do).  The lesson I...

I've been using taxis and autos quite a bit lately for my commuting and something I've noticed is a sudden proliferation of Ola autos. Every second or third auto on the streets seems to have an Ola-issue mobile phone and stand. Yesterday, I was in an Ola auto - I hadn't booked using the app or anything, the auto I climbed into just happened to work with Ola - and I started chatting with the driver. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to an Ola taxi guy about the company. Here's what I've pieced together/guessed about the Ola business model from these two conversations. The first thing I learned was that the cabbies and auto drivers have to pay to join the ranks of Ola drivers. This actually came as something of a surprise to me - I always figured Ola just had extremely deep pockets and hired lots of drivers. The driver pays Ola for the mobile phone, phone stand and a couple of additions to his auto/cab. All the Ola-branded cars you see going around must be paid for s...

A couple of days ago, my mother sent me an email containing numerous kid's blogging websites that she thought I ought to consider joining to "place my blogs before a wider audience". Seeing as how my life-controlling mother sent me the email, I figured I'd better do what she said and take a look at them. Here's what I thought of them. 1. kidbloggernetwork.com: The first thing that I saw when I visited this site were the big circles in bright colours on the top of the page. But hey, I'm the forgiving type. I figured I'd scroll on down and take a look at what exactly this site was about. One of the first posts I saw referred to something called a "Mommy Club". Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against a bunch of moms getting together. My problem is that that would make it seem like the only reason I'm writing this blog is because my parents are pushing me to. I'm not saying that isn't a major factor - on my own, I'm too ...

I've always had a sense of pride in being a Kannadiga (for all you north Indians out there, that means I'm from Karanataka - we're not all called Madrasis, you know!). It's not a sort of senseless pride - I actually have reasons. First off, from what I know, we're generally pretty nice people. Do note that I said generally - we've no shortage of chaps who pull on their baggy brown shorts and go about beating up people from other religions. In general, though, people from Karanataka are pretty nice. They'll make an effort to talk to you in English if they think you don't speak Kannada. They'll do their best to help you out if you ask for directions. They're polite. I, personally, think that's quite lovely. I also love how Kannadigas in general are quite talkative folk. It's lovely how you can sit in the back of a cab or auto rickshaw and have a conversation with the driver. For example, a couple of days ago I was going to a Google conf...

Do you know what I hate about being a teenager? I don't care if you do, I'm still going to tell you. I feel like a good, old-fashioned rant is in order in response to the "when I was your age, life was so much harder because Larry Page and Sergei Brin weren't around" thing. For starters, there's this idea that adults seem to have that the day you turn thirteen, you'll start behaving oddly and be seized by sudden desire to do drugs or drink. In my case, at least, that's not true. I quite enjoy being in full possession of my mental faculties, thank you very much (what limited part of them I possess, as it goes ;). I know there are teenagers out there - numerous ones - who are into drugs, but here's the thing: telling us repeatedly that we're highly likely to get into drugs because we're teenagers isn't going to decrease that likelihood. Another problem I have: unpaid labour. This isn't really a teenage problem, it's somethi...

I just finished doing a history project on the life of a girl child in the early 19th century. While the project wasn't an awful lot of fun (writing pages and pages does tend to become tedious), I did learn quite a bit. One of the things that I learned that I thought was pretty neat was the story of a woman named Rassundari Das. She was a Bengali woman who was born in 1809 and died sometime near the end of the 19th century. Her claim to fame is that she was the first Indian person to write an autobiography. Personally, I've always felt that autobiographies show extreme conceit - I mean, just how big-headed would you have to be to go out and write a book chronicling your own life? But I'm not here (much as I may wish I was) to discuss the pros and cons of autobiographies - I'm here to discuss Rassundari Das. She was born in Bengal (probably the great-great-grandmother of the chap who started K.C.Das Sweets, eh?) in a high-caste, low-income, conservative Hindu family. S...

A few weeks ago, my classmates began to use hashtags on WhatsApp. They served no purpose, because WhatsApp has no support for hashtags as of now, but they made me wonder about the origin of the hashtag. Why did it suddenly strike us that we should use a pound sign on social media? When did it originate? Why is there a hashtag symbol on our telephone dial pads? In my never-ending quest for knowledge (wink wink), I began to Google the hashtag and its origins. Surprisingly enough, the pound only took off in a big way in 1960 or so. Bell Labs and AT&T began to put it on their new touch-tone dialing systems to be used in those annoying automated telephone response things that all those customer helplines have (if I wanted a recorded voice repeating a sentence over and over, I'd have used Siri, not called customer service!). Back then, the pound symbol wasn't nearly as well known as it is today. All of a sudden, everyone who wanted the above annoying voice in their ear had to k...