F.R.I.E.N.D.S frenzy ... !!

I have been thinking of posting this for some time now. During the month of March, my wife and I happened to experience all 10 seasons of the iconic Friends series. I had seen it quite a few times but it never gets boring. For my wife, it was the first time so she was in splits 25 hours every day. Watching Friends is extremely addictive. You just cant stop. Weekends were consumed finishing off atleast 20 episodes. By the end of it, it felt miserable especially the last episode when the entire apartment is empty.

Anyway, I have posted this for some of my most favorite hilarious dialogues ... here they come ...

"You are 18 and she is 44 ... when you are 36, she will be 88" - Joey to Frank (Phoebe's brother) (Frank replies with - "You think I dont know that?")

When Ross is playing the bagpipe horribly ... "Why is your family Scottish" - Monica to Chandler. Chandler replies with ... "Why is your family Ross?" (since Ross is Monica's brother)

During Ross and Emily's wedding, this is how Emily's Dad introduces Ross's parents to his wife ... "Darling, meet the Gellers ... this is one and this is the other one" (Ross's surname is Geller)

"Its OK Pheebs" - Phoebe to Rachel. Rachel says ... "Pheebs is your nickname". Phoebe says ... "Oh, is it? I thought thats what we all call each other lovingly"

"Ducks is heads and Clowns is tails" - Joey to Chandler when they lose little Ben and start finding him. They get 2 babies and cant decide which one is Ben. One of the babies in wearing a shirt with Ducks and the other baby is wearing one with Clowns. So they decide to flip a coin and choose which one is Ben. Chandler asks "Why heads for Ducks?" ... Joey replies ... "Coz Ducks have heads" ...

When Frank brings his 44 year old teacher cum girlfriend to the Cafe and they start kissing in front of everyone ... Chandler says ... "If that doesnt keep kids in school then what will?"

When Phoebe enrolls for a job for a telephone operator to sell something called Toner, the person in charge explains everything to her about how to speak, how to market Toner, etc and finally she asks Phoebe ... "Ok ... all fine?" ... Phoebe replies ... "Yes, but just one thing ... what is Toner?"

Joey to Chandler ... "Imagine if our Duck and Chick have a kid, what will we name them ... Chuck" ... Chandler replies ... "or ... Dick"

Chandler is watching Yasmeen Blith on Baywatch and his Chick is making some noise ... he starts talking to the Chick ... "You both are chicks (Chick and Yasmeen Blith) ... I love you both ... but in very different ways"

Monica is a cleanliness freak and she doesnt like anyone tinkering with the arrangement of her apartment. Chandler plans to surprise her by changing the arrangement. Ross walks in and tells Chandler that Monica will freak out. Chandler gets worried and suddenly Monica knocks on the door. Chandler goes upto the door and says ... "You cant come in because Ross in naked" ... then he goes upto Ross and tries to explain ... "Ross, I had to take your name coz Monica has seen me naked millions of time" ... Ross asks ... "Why does anyone has to be naked?"

Joey to Ross - "If they homo-sapiens were indeed HOMO sapiens, is it the reason why they are extinct?"

I am sure there are many more but these are the ones at the top of my head. I think the best lines have been given to the guys ... Chandler and Joey pull off every dialogue remarkably.

It doesn't annoy me seeing any episode of Friends any number of times ...

Cheers ... !!

Do favors exist in RELATIONSHIPS ... !!

Do they?

Parents often hide the intricacies of how they raised their kids just to keep their kids aloof from stress or the struggle they went through. This is true for poor or rich, just that the level of struggle varies. But does that mean its a favor for their kids? I know there are bucketful of cases where parents harass their kids (to the extent of murder, prostitution, etc) no end but I am talking about the not-so-horrible parents.

Is there anything like a favor in a relationship and even if the answer is YES (for me, the answer is NO), does it give the favorer (the person doing the favour) the right to commit atrocities on the favoree. I don't think so. Does it give a person the bragging rights to always remind someone that their existence is only because of them.

If a person falls sick and someone in the immediate relationship takes care of him/her, how can you use that as a favor? I mean, if there are kids, parents will have to take care of them. If there is a younger sibling, the elder one has to take care. Why is it so difficult to understand? How can you term it as a favor? In any case, even if you consider this as a favor, how can you undo all that by committing hedious crimes on someone who isn't even objecting to anything. This may be sounding a bit abstract.

For parents, how does it matter if some offspring of theirs earns more/less than the other or why one of them should get less/more if the other one already has more/less of something. If it is such a big favor so as to kill your offspring of mental torture, then they shouldn't have done a favor in the first place. What joy can parents get by initiating hatred between their off springs? Why is there such a lot of difference between a daughter and a daughter-in-law? Or for that matter, mother and mother-in-law or any set of parallel relationship. Why is every concern of yours weighed in terms of money? Why is your concern for anyone termed as an effort to gain monetary advantage of that person?

I know I will never get these answers. The reason being, people are so entrenched into thinking about you in certain way that they cant possibly think about the real you. And finally, if you have ever done a favor on your child/sibling/parent, please get that spirit back because for the person being favored, that was Love and not a favor.

Relationships have gone off flavor for me ... !!

Less of BAD is GOOD ... !!

I didn't hope to stumble upon the practical instance of this phrase so soon. During the bull run of the Indian stock market in the last 4 to 5 quarters, the Technology stocks have been the only laggards with Infosys, Satyam, Wipro and TCS leading this bunch. The weakening dollar, credit concerns in the US (since most of their clients are financial companies based in the US) and the global economic meltdown are some of the catalysts responsible for the downward growth graph for these blue chip companies. The sentiment has been so pessimistic on Technology that the time has come that even a straw of good news is being lapped up as potentially positive news.

Infosys came out with their yearly results yesterday. Growth was about 9% (slowest in history) and they upped their EPS guidance to Rs. 93 (the market expected something less - I guess it was 90). Interesting to note that the growth in itself isn't very substantial but because it beats market expectations, it becomes good news. Funny.
Adding on, Infosys declared a dividend of 145% (Rs. 7.25 per share) which is great comparing it to the dividends it dished out the last 3 times. But the SAY IT ALOUD fact is that it declared a special dividend of 400% (Rs. 20 per share). So the total dividend comes out to Rs. 27.25. Now, how do you explain that as a correlation to economic slowdown.

The global markets collapsed on Monday and traded with a negative bias on Tuesday. We were closed on Monday. So we were expecting our markets to collapse yesterday. And so we did. We opened with a 200 point gap down. But then Infosys declared its numbers and BANG ... no looking back. Infy closed around 80 rupees up for the day and the markets boomed 350 points. All this on the basis of just beating market expectations (which were abysmally low).

So there will be talk of economic slowdown (Infy themselves admitted it), but all it needs for the market to sustain its march ahead is some low expectations. There is something much more to this market than what the common man knows.

For now, its pomp time for me. I hold 96 shares of Infosys.

Cheers ... !!

No new games ... !!

Since my last post was about 2 games, I have started wondering why there is a dearth of new games. You always hear or read about some path breaking innovation in some Eks Wie Zee walk of life but personally speaking, its been a while that I have heard about a new game being originated. Just imagine some people spending time to come up with a game. The thought itself is hard to digest. Games we know, seem so natural like they were ought to be that way but if you keep everything aside to think of a new game, it will take a lot more out of you than the so called WORK PRESSURE at your job. The thing that will kill you is that you know it is not something you will hate doing but still you will struggle to make a game of your own.

I am game about not creating a new game ... Cheers ... !!

Remembering Persistent ... !!

Yeah, its been a long time since I blogged. I am not going to quote any cliches for doing so ... :)

After spending 3 years at AirTight, I finally experienced a means of leisure in the form of a Table Tennis table (quite a word that ... ;)). Thoughts raced back to mid 2004 when I joined Persistent Systems Private Limited (Private is struck off now I guess). 2 games that had caught my fancy then were Carrom and Table Tennis. Though I tried my hand at both, I could never graduate past "below average" in TT, though I managed something better in Carrom. But I am relieved to be playing better TT than what I used to play in PSPL. Now, I need to pester our HR to get a Carrom board.

Till then, I guess I need to hone my skills on the TT table (I hate using this term ... reminds me of terms like 'FC college' and 'short nap').

I also hope I can get back to blogging ... till then ... Cheers ... !!