What the Duck!!!

Looks like i have my "D"s and "F"s mixed up.... cool huh, anyway i ripped that idea off a fellow blogger. Have you ever been through situations that made you think "What the Duck!!"... Well this post is all about those "What the Duck" moments i have been through recently.

1. Now this is the situation everybody is aware of, the global economy melt-down. It is happening everywhere and is a very hot topic. So when everybody is worried and depressed about how the economies around the world are falling apart and wondering Why did this happen, i thought.. Wait a minute. There are numerous prestigious organizations around the world and they train Creme De La Creme on various management and administration courses and even before the Creme have finished their trainings, they are absorbed into various managerial /administrative positions in all the prestigious corporates and organizations with obscene paychecks. Now with all this Creme in charge of large corporates/administrative bodies, how did the situation got so screwed up. Is this not the kind of situation they are supposed to avoid, isn't that why they are paid such obscene salaries. What the Duck were these Creme thinking/doing while the economy was going to dogs. If they couldn't avert this situation, maybe they don't deserve to be in their respective positions, maybe they don't deserve the paychecks that are being given to them. With all these going through my mind, i couldn't help saying What the Duck!!!!

2. The latest mantra of India's favourite bank ICICI is "Go Green", save paper , save environment. They say "An average tree absorbs 4.5 kg of air pollutants every year", now i will not deny that. They print that on the envelope of the credit card statement they send every month and request the customers to unsubscribe the paper statement. Now i seriously appreciate this effort. I opened the envelop and what i see is my statement just occupies half of one side of a page and the rest is advertisements. There are four fully printed papers showing several offers and discounts that the customer would get if they used the credit card. Then there are 2 papers advertising their several credit cards / insurance schemes/ loan facilities provided by the bank. Now this moment calls for a collective "What -- The -- Duck!!". Maybe more than anybody else they need to know what "Go Green" means.

3. I had another one of those moments as soon as i published this post, so i thought i would update it too. I was checking out the news paper and looks like our useful Bhajarang Dal and ABVP were busy pelting stones at the movie theaters as they were showing a movie named "Vinayakudu", because naming the movie after a God has hurt their ducked up emotions and sentiments while the entire India has its attention towards what is happening in Mumbai. For those of you who are not aware of it, terrorists have attacked several places and held people hostage and the commandos are trying to free the hostages. So while entire India is watching this in horror, these people were bothered by a movie named after a God. E-x-a-c-t-l-y What the DUCK!!!!. These are the same people who appointed themselves guardians of Indian heritage and culture and started beating up young lovers for celebrating Valentine's Day. Now they protest and attack because someone named a movie after the name of a God. How come their sentiments are not hurt when names of Gods are used for Liquor Stores or Bars. No No we can't be hurt by that because liquor is a gift from God and those places are equivalent to temples , aren't they you spineless, swiney DastarBs. Where are these people when there were blasts all over India, when terrorists have been attacking Mumbai.
Oh no! no! no!, we can't be bothered by these, we are trying to bring a greater good to the society by attacking helpless people going against our culture, because those people don't pose a threat to us. Finding or Facing terrorists, or lending a helping hand to the victims, that's not our job it is up to the Police and Military and they have completely failed to protect us. Well do i have to say What - The - Bloofy - Duck !!!

Adventure !! Thy name is MKan

If everything in your life is going smooth then you are not having enough fun. That is my principle in/on life or rather one of the many principles.
It happened like this that my dad's very close friend is hospitalized and his daughter who happens to be a very close friend of mine is leaving for US. So i decided to go visit them. Now the place where i was at that moment say V was about 180 KM from the place i am supposed to go say R. Both the places fall on the Golden Quadrilateral which means that the stretch is a beautiful 4 Lane Express Way. People advised me to take a bus or train (I know, people around me are boring and dull). Me being the energetic and adventurous guy decided to take my FIL's car. I could have taken Rocky II (That's my SUV), but it got involved in an accident a while ago and is getting a face lift in the accident care center.
So one might say what is so adventurous about going by car on an express way for 180 KM and if you are the one saying that.... hold it, you have not seen my FIL's car. To give you a perspective, if my Rocky was around i would not even look at that car, i would not even treat it as a car. Well it is a compact car and was manufactured in the days when there was no Internet, and the manufacturer even moved out of the country.
Now coming to the condition of the car, A/C doesn't work, tape recorder (yeah i mentioned that it was manufactured when there was no Internet, didn't i!) with a cassette stuck in it, doors rattling, steering that reminded me of driving an ambassador, the tilting driver seat, i was fine with all these but the part that scared me was the gear rod which had to be held in a particular position for the car to get into second gear and even a minor deviation would result in the car going to neutral. Then there were other features that i didn't realize until it got dark poor head lights and the worn out windshield. At least the brakes were fine. So equipped with all these advanced features i started my journey in the afternoon hoping to return before it is late in the night and thinking "What could go wrong".
I started slowly not exceeding 70KMPH but the road ahead was so wide and empty, and so inviting that i gradually increased the speed in steps to check whether the car would survive. To my pleasant surprise that little bugger actually did well even at the speed of 110KMPH. SO making sure not to push it too hard i maintained the speed between 80 and 100. Except for a small road block that lasted for about 20 minutes there were no other surprises. By the time i was approaching R it started getting dark and that was when i have realized the importance of a good windshield, but without much problem i entered R and from there it was just finding the place, meeting my friend, having dinner, visiting my dad's friend who happens to be my friend's dad. Then i looked at the time and its 9PM, i was hoping to go back to V by 10PM.
Saying Goodbye to my friend and her dad, as i walked towards the car my first thoughts were, some water and a news paper. No it's not for that... its for cleaning the windshield but you can use them for that too. If you already didn't know you should always wipe your windshield with news paper after cleaning it with cloth and water.
It makes the windshield much cleaner and the visibility improves, but it did not happen in that particular case. That's when i told myself "Dude! we are going to have some fun". So now i had to get to V faster and then i recollected somebody saying that there is a Bypass road which reduces the distance by 40KM and while i was trying to find my friend's place earlier i saw a sign board which i thought would lead me to that road. I checked it with a Traffic constable and he confirmed what i have heard, so admiring myself for the presence of mind i have used, i headed in that direction. V was only 136KM from that point and that meant i could reach my destination quicker.

As i continued my journey on the Bypass i have realized couple of things.

1. No separate lanes for vehicles travelling in opposite directions.

2. Everyone called it a Bypass is because most of the passenger vehicles bypassed it, they used the express way. The only vehicles on that road were trucks, big huge trucks that scared me out of the road.

3. The road was full of potholes and the reason was, nobody cared because none of the regular commuters except for trucks used that road. Which also meant that i had to get back to the second gear so often that i thought the gear rod would break at any moment.

4. Road was being built/repaired at most of the places, which meant that dust settled more on the windshield which made my ordeal a bit more difficult.

5. Whenever i drove on a bad stretch of road the car made so much noise that i was sure it is going to fall apart at any time. I was not sure if the worn out tyres would stand the ordeal.

6. It was getting late in the night and there was no sign of civilization which meant if something happened to the car there was no way i could get someone to even look at it.

7. The windshield was so worn out that it totally blinded me whenever a vehicle passed by and i had to pull the vehicle off the road and stop whenever that happened.

8. If i had even the least amount of intelligence in me i would have turned around after the first 10 minutes into the journey and took the express way.

Then again like i said if everything is going smooth, you are not having fun. So i regained my spirit of adventure partly because i stopped someone and found out that i will be joining the express way near lets say E which is about 86KM from R and i was already about 30KM into the journey, so i had to suffer for only 56KM more. I thought i could use some music but the tape recorder was stuck, so i had to turn on the music player in my mobile.

I continued my journey enjoying the music and after 5 or 6 songs it occurred to me that my mobile is the only way to contact outside world if something happened and if i drain out the battery listening to music... I switched the music off as soon as that thought occurred to me. Believe me, given the situation i was in, it was a very scary thought, scarier than any scary movie i have watched.

Finally at around 11 PM after all that excitement, thrill and fun i entered the express way thanking God for watching out. i was never more happier to see so much of traffic. From then onwards i stepped on the accelerator confidently and reached my destination in an hour. I stepped out of the car, patted it, gave it an admiring second glance and entered the house thinking, I will not repeat that again