Babariman

Few of us stepped out to get coffee across the street. They serve pretty good Cafe Macchiato. The lady was like “oh you want what you ordered yesterday”, oh wow she remembers, that’s sweet.

It was a bit chilly outside. Lately it has been 32 F many days. A colleague was wrapping his jacket around him and then letting it fall and repeating the same action. I burst out laughing. I  told him that he should probably button his coat, as he started to look like the flasher in the movie “Observe and Report”. This colleague is an American-Korean. He started to laugh. He goes,

he: “Dude the correct work is babariman”
me: Now what the fuck is a babariman?
he: Well, long trench coats in KR are associated with the brand Burberry. In Korea Burberry is pronounced as babari, hence the guy in long trench coat babariman.
me: Dammmn! A luxury brand associated with a flasher. wow just wow. lol!

Noribang – The Song Room

We were celebrate a major success of our company. It started out as a dinner at a sit down (on the floor) Korean BBQ. This place served port and not beef and pork. it was a good dinner. Typical of a Korean BBQ, they had several side dishes that included, seaweed soaked in hot sauce, beans, kimchi, hot sauce, garlic pods, bean paste, onions etc. A colleague made mix drinks of Cass beer and Soju. It was pretty good. There were many toasts raised. There were many employees recently hired, so we ended up with 30 introductions! There was only one that I understood, mine.

From there we headed to a “pub” which more of a drinking place that served fried food. It is not a pub nor is it a restaurant, kind of a cross of both. Killed time for an hour, more beer flowed. I had none, sat there drinking cider soda (has no cider taste), spacing myself and saving it for later at Noribang!

A Noribang, aka Song Room, is a karaoke bar! Karaoke bars attract people of all age groups, seriously all age groups. The room was like a mini dance floor with disco lights but also had 2 tables and wall sofas that was all along the wall that would seat about 20 people or so. My first time at a karaoke bar, I was definitely surprised. It looked great. The evening started with a line of shot glasses filled with whiskey that stood on edges of a line of glasses filled with beer! I didn’t quite understand until the director of KR office gave the first shot glass a shove and that set off a domino effect where all the shot glasses tipped over into the beet glasses making a cocktail!  Now that’s a first! I later learnt it is called a Poktan Ju (Bomb drink)

The singing started. In Korea many things are prefixed with a K. So pop music is KPop music. A restaurant chain called K-Texas and more. Everybody was up and singing together to different songs. Some were of course drunk and that made it even better. Folks in the age group 20-40′s were all dancing to teeny bop to love songs and rock! Rock can’t be far away when I am around. I got up there to sing to the lyrics of “Its my life” by Bon Jovi and November Rain by Guns & Roses. The karaoke machine scored me at 96. Not bad, not bad at all. I don’t know why but I got a lot of hugs and “love you man” greetings. Every 5 mins a dude dancing gives me a hug but not to any their own Korean colleagues and later girls joined in for group hugs that I was getting saying “I love you”. What the fuck? Whatever, dude I figured people were drunk. I had a lot of fun.

Chicken Breast Sandwich

I was at a deli in a mall in Seoul. I was looking to get a sandwich for lunch. All the labels were in Korean making it difficult to pick one. I pointed to a sandwich and did universal shake of fist with thumbs up indicating “what is that?” What happened next was really really funny.

The lady behind the counter smiles, pauses and then say’s chicken with some difficulty and then taps at her chest, politely put. Chicken breast sandwich it is! I burst out laughing and she joined too. We laughed at what had just transpired for a good 5mins. Other ladies at the deli, started to smile and wondering what was going on. We did get some funny looks.

Now that is something I never expected. It very effective, unorthodox and surprising considering there were a lot of people around. The sandwich turned out to be very tasty making the whole experience a fun one.

Brain Damage

“You will get brain damage” said the bartender when my friend ordered shots of peach schnapps with baileys at a bar. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. She, the bartender went ahead and added grenadine to offset it. We laughed even more because we knew exactly what we were going to do next, order the same without the grenadine.

You can always count on me to dumb stuff just for fun! Don’t all kinds of alcohol cause brain damage? What is she talking about? We wanted peppermint schnapps but all she had was peach schnapps. We weren’t going to let that stop us. 2 rounds of that one with grenadine and one without! It was very good. The first time we let baileys sit in the drink for a minute, that makes baileys curdle a bit which many people probably wont like. I will post the video when I find it. It was a great evening. Quite a few Patrons tequila shots, shots of whiskey and this. I was still standing at the end of the night!

I am here, what now?

I am alive, therefore I live. Why am I alive, I don’t know. I think about it often. When you look around for possible explanations, you quickly runs into many camps and notable ones being the God and the “Scientific” one. “Scientific” has the same amount (not literally) of holes as the God one.

Any unbiased person can tell you that a large amount of scientific literature tends to get disproved or “advanced” every year or decade or every few decades if not centuries. Yet till date I have no idea why I am alive. Even though I don’t know why I am alive, I do like to live! I do like to do a lot of things. However in the macro scale nothing matters. It doesn’t make a difference. On the micro scale yes it does. The micro scale being the world and me. I am happy with what I am and where I am. The lingering thought of why I am here is always gnawing away at a subconscious level though. “Science” attempts to answer how we got here not why we got here. Should we even bother with the “Why”? I don’t think it is ever possible to answer the question why. We can theorize on how particles work at a nano level and how the universe supposedly behaves on a linear time scale, but the basic questions are still unanswered for me.

I fit into the society just fine. I care for my family, friends and the society. I volunteer my time. I donate. All the day-to-day stuff goes on just fine. It is almost like I am functioning like an automaton conditioned by societal rules. Maybe I will understand someday, maybe I won’t. On the macro scale nothing matters.

Infection of Pink!

I have over time developed a bit of a hate towards the color pink. I have written about it here. I met my cousin after a long time. We were talking and all of a sudden her cellphone caught my eye. The wallpaper of her phone was bands of pink and white. I lost it. I yelled at her. A bull goes nuts when it sees red and I react the same way when I see pink. Poor girl was stunned. Yeh, I can be a jackass at times. Fast forward 2 days and we were going somewhere in a car. She handed her phone to me to hold it while she juggled something else. A split second she realized that it was a big mistake and as she saw me already thumbing through the menus to change the wallpaper. She was all over me trying to grab her phone back and of course I wouldn’t give it to her right away but eventually did. Can’t be a douche to my cousin. I love her! She is getting married to a nice guy, soon. Fun times!

You look tired : Faux Pas

I learned something over the weekend. Apparently telling a girl she looks tired is a big NO NO !

Me : “Hey you look tired, like the whole world is weighing down on you, is everything alright?”
Girl: I am fine, thank you for asking. fyi it is not a nice thing to say to a girl.
Me : Oh ok. Will keep that in mind. Sorry. I didn’t know that. I was just expressing concern.
Girl: Its cool.

What the hell just happened? I expressed genuine concern and I am being told that is not a nice thing to say? Scratching my head. A WTF moment.

At work, the next day, I was talking to a bunch of girls and I brought this up. One of the girls told me that a VP also ran into the same thing few days ago. When he was told that it was faux pas, he conducted an impromptu poll of all the guys walking by. It turned out that every guy knew that it was a faux pas. Well most of the guys polled were married anyway. The debate started all over again with the VP, me and the bunch of girls as to why it was wrong and how it was very confusing. An impromptu poll started all over again. It struck me bizarre that an honest concern would get 2 different responses from men and women.

When you express such a concern to a guy, he would reply “yeh, dude been a long day with all the work” or something like “yeh, lots of work, hoping to rest this weekend”. Asking a girl, a serious NO-NO.

Later one of the girls, walked over to me and explained the reason behind it being a NO-NO. An average girl is always conscious about how she looks and is comparing herself to other girls. She is constantly watching out for any signs that would make her appear less than pretty and correct herself. A girl when is tired, she looks the worst and me asking that question, makes her feel worse! <

After that, I never expressed concern like that to a girl.

Converting Vegetarians

It was my first song that I heard of Infected Mushroom. This was years ago. It begins with scratchy and distorted sounds and then takes off! Cities of the future and Becoming Insane are two other great songs.

I almost died

God: Really??
Me: Alright alright, I could have been badly hurt.
God: So says every drama queen.
Me : Hits the ignore button on God.

Within a block distance I got run over by and almost hit by 2 cars. They were both driven by young women. I was crossing the road when it was a green for pedestrians. The girl tried to a make right turn. BAM! I had to do bit of escape dance to escape the car. I didn’t get hurt. The girl had a horrified look. Guess what she also had an earphone that looked just like an Apple Ipod/Iphone/Nano earphone bah!

A block later, same thing happens again!. WTF! WTF!!!!!!!!!! I didn’t yell at the girls, but I did show my displeasure. No, I did not show my middle finger.

The Counter

It is a burger chain. They pride themselves in serving custom burgers. I had a vegie burger with horseradish cheddar cheese,grilled pineapple,sprouts,dried cranberries and black olives on a multigrain bun. It was very tasty. I was very impressed.

Barstow

I stopped at Barstow on one of my random drives. It is a town that has seen better times. It is a town that has major rail traffic going through today. A waitress at Denny’s described it as a welfare town.

The main street has a lot of paintings on walls of buildings. These paintings depict the history of Barstow.

There are 3 museums that are worth visiting.

1) Historic route 66 museum.
2) Railroad museum.
3) Majove River Valley Museum.

The railroad museum was closed so I did not visit it. There are quite few hotels in this town. Highways 40 and 15 intersect here. I-40 begins/ends in Barstow. Route 66 has a lot of history to it. It starts in Santa Monica,CA and goes all the way to Chicago. It runs parallel to I-40. The drive on Route 66 is a bit bumpy as it is an abandoned highway. There are fibre cables buried along route 66. Route 66 was used for migration of people to the west during 1930′s. During World War II, route 66 was used for armed forces to transport troops. When a convoy was driving through all civilians were forced off-road to let the convoy pass. In the later years when the interstate system was established, the decline of Route 66 started.

The drive on I-40 was beautiful during sunset. I crossed into Bullhead, Arizona and turned around to have dinner at Jedro’s Wagon Wheel in Needles,CA. The food was very tasty! The exits along I-40 are quite distant between each other. There are quite a few off-roading opportunities in the Majove desert that is along I-40. High clearance and 4 wheel drive vehicles are recommended. While I doubt 4 wheel drive vehicles are an absolute necessity, I can see the need for high clearance vehicles. The soil when it is wet is very tricky to drive through.

The waitress at Denny’s shared a bit of trivia The strip bar set in which later half of the movie Dawn to Dusk unfolds was built in Dagget. It is a town few miles from Barstow.

V sign

While categorizing pics on my laptop and I noticed that in many pictures folks had their fingers in V sign form. I hadn’t paid attention to this before but it struck me it has become waaayyy too common to an extent it appears meaningless.

God: Sigh! here we go again, drama queen alert!
Me : Dude, you created this drama, so please , the door is that way.
God: I created that door, heh, heh
Me : Time for ignore button, see ya!

I wonder do people even know what they mean by holding up the sign V. You hold up a sign V at a bar when you are drinking with friends, what are you trying to say? Girls pout like fish or duck face in many pics. WTF happened to a smile? Arrrrggggghhhh!!!!! WTF!

If you catch me holding up a V sign without meaning it, slap me will ya!

God: take a take chill pill, you snobbish clown.

What am I doing?

I don’t know. It is a question that I have had for the longest of time. It is also a question that I cannot seem to answer. Every time I believe I have answered it, I immediately get thrown a curve ball and out goes the answer. The search begins again. While I am crystal clear on what I need to do as far my responsibilities and what I like to do to have fun, I still don’t know what I am doing. Maybe someday I will figure it out, maybe I won’t. Perhaps ignorance is bliss indeed.

Q and Revenge

Q and I met after a while and he told me this story. Two friends and he were going to a throw a party. Lets call his friends X and Y. As the day of the party came close, Q and X found out that Y was hosting a party on the same day and at the same time they all had agreed upon. Q and X were bloody furious at Y’s shenanigans. On the day of the party, Q and X went to Y’s party and started to hang out folks at the party and advertised their own party. They were sneaky in getting Y drunk quickly. With Y knocked out and no one being the host, Q and X hijacked the party. They took the alcohol and the girls to their own party!

Pwned!

The Wire

I borrowed the first season’s dvds from a friend. The first three episodes that I watched were interesting. My attention was undivided. The story was being built up really well, with a diverse set of characters and a lot of characters unlike Dexter or Breaking Bad were the main characters are just a handful. I probably finish the whole season this week.

Sunshine

It was a cloudy evening. I walked into a coffee shop with my friend and while we were ordering coffee, something caused me to turn my head towards the entrance and there she was. The sun had come out and the sunlight flooded the coffee house’s entrance and she walked in wearing a business style mini skirt and red shirt. Her walking in and the sunlight flooding the entrance happened at the same time and it all happened in a fraction of a second. It was a beautiful and a magical sight that brought a smile to my face. She was the center of my attention for a fraction of a second and not later. I paid for our coffee and moved on.

Comet hits Neptune

Yes one hit Neptune about 200 years ago. This summary explains it all. Herschel space observatory has an instrument called PACS (Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer). It detected a high levels of carbon monoxide. Based on recordings when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter sixteen years ago, a higher level of carbon monoxide indicates a comet hit in the absence of other possible reasons. It’s an interesting read. I attempted to read the original paper, oh well I gave up after the first page.

Kevin Costner and Oil

As usual either from reddit or digg I ended up on an article on IEEE’s site about Kevin Costner’s solution to the oil spin. Jokes on Kevin aside, his solution represents a serious investment of money. I am impressed. I am quite impressed with the thought that an actor decides to go invest money on a solution for oil cleanup. The article can be read here . I am looking forward to reading on how successul this solution was. Oil spills, sigh!

Road Signs – My wine glasses!

Now we are at the vineyard ( First read this postt ). It was a small winery. There was a free tour for in 20 mins and $15 for tasting 6 wines. Not bad, we decided to do that. We got on the tour. The guide was explaining how grapes were grown and what care had to be taken.. It was decently informative. We get to the middle of the tour and my attention was distracted to this couple. This couple of 45yrs+. The lady wanted a pic taken of her considering it was scenic. She calls out to her husband in an urgent whispers telling him to take her picture. Now Hector ignores her the first few times while trying to listen to the guide, with a sigh he gives up and takes her pic. The expression on his face was of ” I rather be struck by lighting than be here taking your pic”. It was funny.

Now her highness reviews the picture and she is not happy. She wants another picture. She gives him the camera and go stands again. Hector couldn’t be bothered less. He is more interested in the tour and asks the guide a question. She goes into a continuous chant “Hector , Hector, Hector” in trying to draw his attention. He ignores her and listens to the tour guide. While this is amusing I was beginning to tad annoyed by this inconsiderate lady. Luckly we had to move on to the next row wines and I lost track of her. I thought I had seen and heard the last of her.

Oh boy, I was sooooooooooooooo wrong.

The tour is done. We are back at the wine tasting area. The wines were alright. Nothing to write home about. The red was terrible. One of the 5 whites was enjoyable. When we are above to leave, the lady who was serving the wine told us we could the wine glasses home. Pleasantly surprised we were all smiles. Hector reappears with his friend, each carrying 3 glasses. They set them on the table. Hector turns to us and says you guys are welcome to take the wine glasses as we are going to fly to Columbia and we don’t want to carry this on the plane. Q and I were surprised and taken aback. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. We started to thanked him for it. I was like wow, this is turning out to be a great day of wins!

We were about to take those glasses and just then Mrs Hector appears out of the blue and moving in fast, puts her hands around the wine glasses. She then tells us in a gruff voice “These are our wine glasses”. Q and I are stunned and look at each other and start laughing. Hector’s friend’s wife appears on the scene and talks to her. It could be interpreted as “What the hell are you doing? You are not going to be abe to take those glasses with the amount of luggage we have”. The to and fro rapid conversation that Q and I heard made us laugh harder.

I guess I couldn’t get that lucky! Nevertheless it was a good afternoon. We later hit the beach and then had a great dinner by the port. With no sense of urgency, the evening was spent doing nothing noteworthy. It was spent just walking around and bumming out. We pulled more shenangins after the beach, but that is more fun told in person than blogging about it! Ask me and I will tell.

Road Signs – My win

Maps and road signs were all that we used on our travel on Saturday. Friday night ended up with watching the movie Inception at 11.40pm. Hit the bed at 3.00am and up by 10.00am. Q drove the car. He needs his practise remember? The general heading was south with a possibility of hitting few beaches in a town. Instead of following the gps’s direction we took a detour off the highway on to a local highway. Few miles on the highway we noticed a local mini fair. We pulled over.

There was live music, an inflated play thing for kids, few games and some local products up for tasting. There was also a bean bag toss game. You could play the game for free and you had 4 chances to get it right and you would win a prize if you did. I tried. 1 st attempt fail, 2nd attempt fail, 3rd attempt WIN!!!! , 4th fail! I was very happy. I don’t have a lot of luck in winning stuff. It was reusable grocery bag that you get for free if you buy 2 Kellogg cereal boxes. Nevertheless I was on top of the world! I won! LOL!

We got back on the road. We got to the first beach. They were charging 12 dollars for parking. Nice try. We got back on the road heading to the next beach. We saw signs for a vineyard and that became our next destination.