Facebook, anyone?

So I was recently talking to a friend of mine, and he sent me the link of his blog, and he had written  about how, out of the 344 friends he had on Facebook, if he met them on the road, he'd just stop and talk to some 44 of them. This sort of analysis kinda stunned me. And I tried to figure out why the guy, who had become real good friends with not only me, but my mommy also, had become so anti social all of a sudden! Turns out, he hadn't! He just had done some research, and realized Facebook was a massive waste of time!
He spoke about how he limited his profile so not many people could see it. Yes, I've limited my profile too...but can you really blame me for not wanting to let people from work know about what I do outside work. It's just weird when they would come up to me and say "so, who's that guy you are with in that picture?" More often than not, it's my brother! And I am so tired of clarifying that, and they normally just give me that "yeah, right!" look.
He also spoke about how people now click pictures, only because of the excitement of being able to upload them on Facebook, tagging various people, receiving comments/likes and all that jazz. Well, I've always maintained that clicking pictures for Facebook is a dumb thing to do! But then again, I also realized that the pictures are a great way of keeping in touch! Like recently, I uploaded a picture of me in a sari. My friend called me up and told me about how I had changed in the last 10 years. And so, a conversation that started off because of that one lame picture, went on for hours...and that is something, considering the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in almost 5 years! I don't know what's more surprising though...the fact that I spoke to her after so many years, or the fact that I hadn't spoken to her in so many years to begin with, despite the fact that she was my closest friend in school!
Apparently, he did some fancy schmancy research about what kind of people use Facebook. The results showed that people of a higher income level or with a masters degree choose a different social media (if at all they do). I agree! But it doesn't change the fact that the lower income groups still choose Facebook! And not all your friends have to be hot shot hedge fund managers with a fancy master's degree from an Ivy league college! You may have friends, who are, well, normal mid level execs, for example! Won't you wanna stay in touch with them? This may be a good time to point out that, as per 2010 data, if Facebook was a physical nation, it would be the third most populous country in the world! Also, it is projected that by August this year, Facebook would have captured 14% of the world's population. That may not seem much, but let me point out that China houses about 19% of the population of the world, India 17% and USA just 4%!!
I maintain still, that Facebook has helped me catch up with some old friends. And recently, I also managed to catch up with an old teacher of mine, the person responsible for me being so good in maths! So, yeah, I guess everyone is entitled to have a different opinion!
I really don't know the point of this. But then again, there is seldom any point to my ranting. Also, just to clarify, I'm not writing this just to say the opposite of what my friend said! I just figured it would be nice to have another stance too! In retrospect, it was his statement about having only 44 real friends out of 344 on Facebook that really snowballed into this monologue! I eventually decided to see whether this was true in my case also. So, out of the 332 Facebook friends I have, I tried to calculate how many I would actually stop and talk to, in the event of me bumping into them on the streets! I got tired after looking at the first 100...out of those, I knew I would speak to at least 95 in "the real world". Much better statistics, don't you think? Well, turns out I'm more social!
Of course, if you you want some intelligent reading, do check out the actual statistics:
http://www.thinketc.com/internet/reasons-i-quit-facebook/

Think Etc

Maiden Escapades

Well, to understand this article, you will need to know a bit about me, and my family. I live in a nice big house, with a nice big family. A family obsessed with education and qualifications. To the point, that when I was a kid, my nanny’s daughter, who was probably 15 at that time, was forced to not stop her education after the tenth, but continue further. She’s a pretty successful nurse now, and has managed to stabilize her family, financially. Also, the head of my family, my grandmother, had to fight her entire family to get a decent education…and like they say, you come to value things more, if you’ve had to fight for it.
So, now, 22 years later, we’ve got a new maid, to handle the household. She’s a very sweet person, and really takes care of my grandmother well. She’s 17 and was forced to start working to support her family. Before the flame throwers begin, let me clarify that this isn’t child labor. Children over the age of 14 are allowed to work…yeah…we checked.
So yeah, 17 year old, working to support family and all that jazz...not something entirely out of the ordinary in India. Here’s the kicker…she wanted to study further! And I don’t know how, but my mother found out that she wanted to! And so we searched all over the place, to find a Marathi medium college that would accept her. She wanted to take up Arts and study psychology! We found one about ten minutes away, and after a lot of persuading and requesting, we managed to get her enrolled into that college.
Now, this girl barely knows her Hindi, let alone her English. I have to speak to her in Marathi…and let me tell you, I don’t exactly excel at it. I mix up Marathi with Gujarati and Hindi and eventually end up talking to her in sign language.
So getting such her girl to pass her HSC exam, where English in a 100 marks paper, did seem a little tough. And thus, we tried to use all the tricks that worked on us as kids when we were learning the language.
We gave her picture books and stuff, which would help her learn the language. And then, we encouraged her to start reading the newspapers and ask us if she didn’t understand anything.
Problem is, we didn’t fully think this bit over. You see, the newspaper that comes to our house has a supplement called Bombay Times. That supplement is a purely entertainment paper, where the front page is usually adorned by the perfectly made up face of some celebrity. And star struck as my maid is, it is the first thing she looks at.
So every single day, I will have the Bombay Times shoved under my nose, with a demand to explain the article of choice. Here are some of the craziest examples so far:

1. A few days back, there was a picture of Shahid Kapur with an actress on the cover. I think the actress was Priyanka Chopra, but I’m not too sure. She got the paper to me and asked me whether the article was trying to say that the two are getting married. It didn’t…the article was trying to say that they are appearing in a movie together.
2. There was an article about how Aishwarya Rai Bachan took her daughter to Dubai. This time, the question asked to me was whether they went by an airplane.
3. There’s a TV show called Balika Vadhu, whose actress had given an interview to the paper, listing out her favorite drink, shopping place and whatever. After I explained it to her, I was told that the woman was not a nice person, because she married Jagya, who was married to someone else earlier. And then she asked me whether the actress was married in real life.
4. This one takes the cake. It happened today. Her favorite TV show is Bade Ache Lagte Hai. The lead actress gave an interview to the newspaper saying how TV shows before this one also showed sequences which depicted sex, and so she didn’t see how her show was a big deal. My maid asked me what it meant. And this time, I really didn’t know what to say. So I randomly made up an interview…listing what I thought were the actress’ favorite drink and shopping destination. And then, I was asked another question. “Lagn Jhala aahe ticha?” (“Is she married?”)

So that’s it…I have officially shifted explanation responsibilities to my mother. Let her deal with this! I’ll be happily sipping on my orange juice while I watch mama trying to make up random explanations like this!

Two Pointy Things!

So yeah,
What do you get when you combine a rusted nail and a tetanus shot? A very grumpy me! And a day wasted due to the pain in my foot (blame the nail) and the pain in my arm (blame the injection). Throw in a sappy romantic movie and you'll have me crying in no time!
So this is how it goes...I have class early in the morning! 7am to 10 am! And it had to start all wrong! I reached   class at 7.45 am silently went and sat on the first bench. The teacher went on blabbering about derivative markets and theoretical pricing of futures. At the end of the lecture, which ended before time, I caught hold of one, very timid guy, snatched his book and copied down the part I had missed! I figured I could study it at home (unemployment does have its perquisites). Unfortunately, a friend of mine said she wanted to borrow my notebook to take a photo copy of some of the notes, and then conveniently decided that she would, quote, "find it easier to understand if she wrote it down herself" and promptly stuffed my notebook in her bag. I just stared blankly! I should have known that my bad luck had started and I needed to be careful! I wanted to eat a road side vada pav and that bullying friend (?) of mine ensured I didn't!!!
And so we merrily walked on...towards the station! Now, a special note for people living in Mumbai...be extra careful while walking at Andheri station...especially where the metro is being constructed. Here's why! There are nails strewn everywhere!! One of them went right through my (really thick soled) chappals!! My friend and I stopped and we realized that the nail had actually broken skin! The wound was bleeding like crazy! And at the same time, the rusted nail was lodged into my chappals so bad, we couldn't get it out! Fortunately, a guy we knew, who happened to be walking past us managed to remove the nail at least! Next stop...Mcdonalds (I was hungry!!! Remember how I couldn't eat the vada pav?) So we cleaned up the I wound with some water, and walked on. Me limping, with a dramatic flair.
And damn you Mcdonalds!!! They didn't open their takeaway counter till 11am!!! Yet another disappointment for me! Fortunately, we found a medical store and bought a band aid! We got into a train and I dressed my wound. My friend had a sandwich in her bag...and so we shared that, reducing my hunger, albeit, just a bit.
I reached home, hoping for something yummy made by my mother, but she wasn't home. I called her and told her about the rusted nail and she ordered me to get a tetanus shot. I called my aunt, who happens to be a doctor for a second opinion, and she said the same. So I went to the closest clinic for the dreaded tetanus shot.
And thus started the longest 2 hours of my life. The doctor was not there yet. So I had to wait...and wait...and wait some more. Normally, I never have to wait for doctors like this. Family full of doctors, proper appointments are just some of the reasons I've never had to wait. It was entertaining really...to see the other patients waiting for the doctor. You meet a lot of weird people like this!
The doctor arrived at 12, pompously! Looked around, saw me and said "Kya hua beta?." That's the benefit of going to a doctor who also happens to be your father's best friend. He took me in immediately, promptly ignoring the other patients. I told him about the damned nail, and he gave me a tetanus shot immediately.
That was the easy part! After going back home, my arm started hurting, along with my foot. Mama was home by then, and nicely, she said "tetanus injections do hurt for a few days! I should know...I got 3 when I had you!!"
To divert my mind from the pain, my sister decided to make me watch a movie. And brilliantly, she chose The Notebook! I was weeping like a baby towards the end, and mama was a little shocked, to say the least. And so she decided to make me laugh my trying to crack jokes like"Doesn't Lady Gaga look like Cruella De Vil?? And Roger Taylor looks like Vijay Mallaya."
This wasn't helping, and so I decided to call my best friend! and guess what she said?? "Oh yeah...I've had the tetanus shot recently. Hurts like a bitch for a couple of days." Yeah...I just love their methods of making me feel better!
So all in all, it has been a terrible day, all because of two pointy things!!! And now, all I wanted to do is pop in a pain killer, cuddle up to my large teddy bear (who's missing his nose) and go to sleep. I don't want to think about how I will write my notes tomorrow, considering my right arm is hurting like crazy and my notebook is with my friend!!!!