A hot topic

Every once in a while, a post on fitness and hotness makes an appearance on my blog. Such posts are mainly for me to motivate myself, and if aate-jaate kisi aur musafir ka bhala ho jaaye toh subhan allah. Putting it down in black and white (green and white in this instance) just makes sure I don't cheat on my resolution till the post is off the main page at least.

But this time I decided to be a little different. This time I decided to combine two of my passions - fitness and hot men who can sing. :D

A few days ago, I came across two videos on Youtube. Going by how many posts originate from my watching something on Youtube, if they ever close the site down, my blog may also have to shut down. *shudders*

Youtube ki jai ho! Watch this!

The after

Video courtesy Nishas810

*swoon & thud*

Ladies, you may want to replay the video from 02.22 to 02.20 for an added *swoon & thud* effect. For the benefit of the cutie-curious (curious about the cutie, duh!), this is Shekhar Ravjiani who has the ability to bring any Saregamapa cynic back into the game. For those of you who are wondering who the heck this chap is, well, he's Shekhar of Vishal-Shekhar, the hot music composer duo who are also mentor-judges on Saregamapa. I admit I do not watch the show as I still maintain that I have not heard one unique voice in such contests since Shreya Ghoshal's crystal one, but this, my friends, is one unique face (*swoon & thud again*) which I'm sure is more responsible for raising the TRPs of the show than the incredibly inane fights that Himesh 'main-tumhaare-ghar-aakar- roti-banaunga' Reshammiya gets into on the show. And also responsible for music-lovers like me you-tubing the show like mad in the weekends. Anyone who decides to jump and yell that he's married and has a kid and blah-blah will really get it from me – eye-candy is eye-candy. Eye-candy is never engaged/married/has-a-kid/blah-blah.

And now watch this...

The before

Video courtesy Megandiva

So after watching these videos (particularly the first one) a million times over, two 'How the heck' questions popped up in my mind.

1. Between the 'before' and the 'after', how the heck did this guy get so hot?

2. How the heck does this guy manage to look 10 years younger than he looked 10 years ago? (did you check out Sonu Nigam's clothes and hair in the second video? Those were the days, huh? ROFL!)

I started to list the changes that seemed to have gone into his amazing makeover. New haircut. Youthful clothes. A fitter body. And of course, the most important one - a brand new attitude encompassing that confident-naughty smile that reaches his eyes (ah, time to watch the video and pause at 02.22. Again!). The new and improved Shekhar (as opposed to that other Shekhar [Suman] fella) is amazingly easy on the eyes. Looking at the 'before', who would have thought he had so much potential? In the first video, he just looks like "random singer chap I couldn't be bothered about", but in the second, he's... errr.. "hunky and talented crush-material I can't stop obsessing about". The man has practically turned back time. He looks better now (I'm guessing he's in his 30s) than he did a decade ago, and I won't be amazed if he's still this sexy at 40.

And it set me thinking. Remember how we say, "She looks like an aunty!" and "He's like some 40-year-old pot-bellied uncle!"? Well, looks like there are no such generalisations anymore. Just because you're 40, you do not have the license to carry the 'aunty' or the 'pot-bellied uncle' look. The new 40-year-olds have arrived and they do not look like Rishi Kapoor in a pullover in the month of June. Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan are just two of this new breed that has redefined the age. Agreed, they are celebrities and they must look good to stay in the game, but when a 40-year-old gets himself a six-pack in three months for an inane song (of all the freakin' dards in the world, there's a dard-e-disco? Sheesh!), you know something has changed. And when music composers start looking so good, when they don't have to, and probably don't have the time for, you know something has drastically changed. Forget the celebrities, it is now trickling down to the common man's level. Phrases like "baby fat" and "I'm genetically fat, I can't help it" and "This is the prosperous look" and "I am what I am" and "why the obsession with youth?" and "I'm married. Who cares how I look?" and "I'm too old for all this" and "I'm too busy at work" and joking about one's own weight, denial ("I'm not fat. I'm just chubby.", etc.) are mere excuses for laziness. Being too much into one's looks may not be good, but being totally out of it isn't too good either. It is surely laziness, for who here does not want to look young, fit and pleasant? What really bugs the hell out of me is that fitness has no bad side effects. It's good for your health, and the only side effect is that we look and feel great! How much more of an incentive do we need?

Beauty may be skin-deep, but it does not mean we incorporate another layer of fat under our skin. Yes we may have flaws - everyone does - fat thighs, bad skin, a stubby nose, thinning hair, small stature, a paunch, but there is so much that can be done without resorting to plastic surgery. The right clothes, the right shoes, the right hairstyle, the right diet, the right workout regime, the right make-up, a genuine smile and the right attitude can more than make up for our flaws. Everybody has the right and ability to look good. Only if they want to. I consider myself a fairly fit person, and even I fall short of my own expectations. And joining me are my friends from all over the world who would like to lose some flab or get some abs or just get generally fitter. How many of us are going to get better-looking in our 30s than we are now? Do we really want to wait till we're 40 and then see how things look before we buck up?

I think our generation, particularly our age – is a unique one. We are well-read and aware and driven and energetic. We're sufficiently crazy to stay happy, yet mature enough to understand a little of this puzzle called life. We do the maddest things, laugh at the silliest things and behave in the most random of ways, but we still know the value of values. We're between the boring and the immature generations. We're young at heart and will probably stay so till we die. We just need to put in a little effort to make sure we look as young as we are. But the problem is - we're also the generation that likes to procrastinate. We've had an easy life and we're spoilt. We're the generation that follows a sinusoidal curve when it comes to fitness or any other form of discipline – one month we're all charged up, and the next few we're back to our old ways. We need spurts of inspiration every now and then to keep us going. Something that friends and family can't provide, because they're too damn exhausted. Especially when we're going downhill.

And then suddenly, the clouds part and the sun shines through. What seemed so difficult is suddenly deemed easy. One hot guy on TV is all it takes to bring in the much-needed spurt of inspiration. Not just any hot guy, but a not-so-hot-before-but-now-smokin'-hot guy. To inspire us to look a little better. Or at least to put in a little more effort into looking better.

Good looks may be over-rated, but looking good surely isn't.

Now that's what I call frand-sheep!

“Dude! Get on Facebook, man! Everybody’s there!” Viv got a message from his very excited friend.

It sounded like someone from the old days getting all excited about the Internet – the days when hotmail was cool, and email addresses like hotmale@hotmail.com and coolfriend4u@yahoo.com err… ‘ruled’. Viv coolly ignored it while I decided to do a little bit of exploring. After all, it was a message like this that had got me on blogger.com, and I can’t imagine my life if I had ignored that message. I still remember asking, “So like… what is this blogger thing? You just write stuff like an email? And who reads it? I mean… what’s the big deal?” Oh boy, what’s the big deal it seems.

Anyway, my inbox was also flooded with at least 16 invites to this Facebook thing. Not to mention messages like “Orkut’s so out man. Totally uncool. Facebook is the new ‘it’.” Err… o-kayyy. Thing is – I may crib about all the "hot and saxy guys wanting to make a frand shib with honest and lovely person" on Orkut, but it is a necessary evil for me as I found a lot of my friends there. For someone who had spent her childhood in seven different schools (before you think I was expelled multiple times I’d better clarify that it was because her Dad’s job entailed a lot of transfers), it was an achievement to have found everyone at one place – Orkut. I’m not that active on it, but I do find it a good one-stop-database of my friends from ye olde days. I still remember how I got started on Orkut – two of my blog friends were telling me how they were playing scrappy-scrappy on Orkut and I was curious to find out what the grown-up version of ghar-ghar and gudiya-gudiya was like. The rest, as they say, is history.

So I thought I’d give Facebook a chance and signed up. It was amazing how many more people I found – ex-colleagues, colleagues, cousins, nephews, what not, especially of the non-Indian variety. Facebook appeared to be quite non-sleazy, but then like Clueless says (and I completely agree) – give it time and everything will become sleazy. Anyway, Day 1 on Facebook felt like Day 1 in primary school. Everything was unfamiliar, and though there were people like me around, they all seemed to know their way around. So I fumbled and stumbled and finally made it. I was of course, bombarded with the millions of applications that you need to add to do anything on Facebook. And boy are they clever – they make your friends say good things about you, but you can’t read them till you add applications A to Z! Sheesh. And these applications then appear on your profile page all at once till you have to hire someone just to locate your profile picture on the page.

However, amongst all the applications that I had thrown at my face, and subsequently ignored, I found one really good one. Superpoke – throwing sheep in particular. So this application allows you to fling a virtual sheep above all the ducking heads all the way to the person you’re feeling affectionate (albeit in a strange way) towards. Now that's what I call frand-sheep! There is nothing quite like finding a friend who sat next to you in class twenty years ago, and flinging a sheep at him before saying “Hi, remember me?” I tell you - it’s the best. Of course, you can superpoke people in normal ways such as hugging them, sending them flowers or drinks, etc. but I think it's just too boring. One of my favourite actions is to especially stun the ones who're nice to me on Facebook. Someone sends you flowers or drinks – you hurl a sheep at them. Someone waves at you or hugs you, you hurl a sheep at them. It’s the most fun you can have without getting a rap from Maneka Gandhi.

Of course there are other things you can throw, such as a fish or a chicken. Oh, someone once threw a cow at me. Oh the audacity. But I can't explain to you the joy of prying yourself out from under the cow that was thrown on you, picking up a sheep and hurling it at the offender. You just have to sign up to experience it.

Of course, counting the number of outgoing sheep on my profile, anyone can tell I’m new. Usually, it's the new people on Facebook who are excitedly throwing sheep around like kids of four. I guess the more 'experienced' ones have run out of their share of sheep and are now too dignified to be hurling wolly mammals at their acquaintances.

But of course, the best things about Facebook are the alerts you get when you add someone or someone adds you – specifically the way the alerts are phrased. I cannot explain the feeling of relief-mixed-joy when you find a close friend XYZ with whom you had an ugly fallout almost a decade ago, and your Facebook page now says, “Sayesha and XYZ are now friends.” Now that is closure all right.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must get back to Facebook and throw some more sheep at people before it becomes uncool to do so.

The ultimate man vs. machine war

Baby Aish has reached the age where she has started saying things. Not like she did not say things before. There has been more than one occasion where Aishu has held the telephone and poured her heart out to me, narrating heart-wrenching stories of how her evil parents and grandmother are making her bathe every single day (oh the horror!), eat yucky mushy stuff, and wear stuff that is so not her style *coyly looks at nails*. Of course what I actually heard on the phone was something like what you would see on your screen if you accidentally fell asleep on your keyboard:

"Ksajkrhjkbnfjkdnflkajfoiuerohiflkhas
asjkhjkkaeruhblkhlkj
jafcfnlkjelkjareoprjnjfklds!!!!"

But a conversation it was, even though it was heavily intercepted by “beep beep beep” sounds, which was not Aishu using expletives, but her expressing fondness towards pressing the buttons on the phone, especially 'cancel' followed by 9-1-1, in that particular order. It was no wonder therefore that my sister decided to confiscate the phone. Aishu was not to go anywhere within 100 cm of the phone. And every time I’d ask for Aishu on the phone, my sister would decline.

I was devastated. If she did not hear her eklauti mausi’s voice, how would I become her best-friend-godmother-confidante?? So I bought a webcam. Forget hearing, now she could see me! So I asked my sister to point to me when I was online and say "M-A-U-S-I" ("aunt") as often as she could. Baby Aish was excited at the proceedings on the computer and the delightful proximity with another gadget she could destroy.

So last week, I asked my sister what baby Aish had learnt to say so far.

“Oh she says Papa, Mama, everything. And she can count to six. She drops the four, but she goes on to six. And we’re trying to get her to say the computer parts – we point to different parts and make her repeat it.”

Sheesh. What do you expect from two programmer parents?

“What about 'mausi'? Can she say 'mausi' yet?”

“Aishu, say 'mausi'?” I heard my sister say.

“Mauuuu…” Aishu said, in true Shakti Kapoor style.

I didn’t give up. Over the next few days, I tried and tried till she finally gave in one day.

"Mausss..." I heard her say.

"She almost said 'mausi', she almost said 'mausi', she almost said 'mausi'!" I said, jumping up and down.

Over the next few days, I heard her say it many many times, my heart exploding each time with utter joy and adoration.

“You know, I feel so happy when she says 'mausi'…” I was telling my sister once.

“Hehehe…” my sister laughed nervously.

“What? Why are you laughing like that?”

"Errr..." said my sister.

"What? What?? What???"

"Actually, she doesn’t actually say 'mausi'."

"Of course she does! I’ve heard her say it so many times!" I yelled.

“Errr… She didn’t actually say 'mausi'.”

"Well, what did she say then?"

"She said 'mouse'."

"Mouse?"

"Yeah."

"Mouse as in the rodent?"

"No! Not that!" my sister said emphatically, as if that was supposed to make me feel better. "The computer mouse!!!"

Ooh, the computer mouse. :/

Sheesh.

My niece thinks I am a computer mouse. Not the CPU, not the monitor, not even the keyboard, but the mouse – a part that is actually redundant in some computers.

“I don’t think she quite knows the difference between 'mouse' and 'mausi' yet. We point in the same general direction when we say either word, you see.” My sister explained.

:/

Chak de, India!

I am an Indian cricket fan.

I cheer at cricket matches.

I cry at cricket matches.

I yell at cricket matches.

I take leave for cricket matches.

I only watch India's matches.

I don't like test cricket.

After the last World Cup, I don't even like one-dayers.

I love T20.

I could do without the silly cheerleaders though. Get out of the way - there's people who paid good money to watch the match, not your asses! Well, most people anyway.

I glare at people who dismiss the T20 format. T20 is like watching match highlights - every moment is exciting.

As far as I am concerned, T20 is the real World Cup. Those who think T20 is not serious enough, of course it's serious - it's in fact more serious than the one-day World Cup. Mandira Bedi is not there, you see.

I am extremely illogical, irrational and inconsistent as a fan.

I hurl (civil) abuses at my team when they lose.

I write spoof poetry insulting them when they let the country down.

I call them morons.

I love the Indian players. Mostly for their cricket.

I love some of the Pakistani players too, but that's a different kind of love.

I love Brett Lee. And Shane Bond. And Afridi. Not for their cricket though. Ahem.

Every year, I go through a phase when I completely lose interest in it. And then I bounce back. Without fail.

I tell my Singaporean friends how complicated a game cricket is. I exclaim, "You know there are ten ways in which a batsman can get out?" and watch them yawn.

Erm, I don't think I can name all ten ways. Seven or eight maybe.

I prefer watching the match on TV to watching it in the stadium.

I like to see the expressions on the faces of the players.

I am extremely superstitious when it comes to cricket.

I lock myself in my room for five minutes because the last time I went inside my room, Yuvi hit a six.

When Yuvi hits six sixes in an over, I promptly change my facebook status to corny lines like "Sayesha is sending some Yuvi protection to the burnt England team."

I sms the score to people who can't watch the match.

I yell at people who say the matches are fixed.

I don't know everything about the game, but I live with a walking-talking-playing cricket encyclopaedia.

Even though cricket is not big here, I'm proud of Viv for being in the Singapore national team.

I save birthday balloons from Clueless' surprise birthday party "to burst them when India wins the World Cup".

I know India will win the World Cup even before they start playing.

I believe the Indian cricket team was the best entertainer in this series.

I buy two boxes of Danish butter cookies and leave them at the common area in the office with a note 'GO, INDIA!' and send an email to 50 people in the office that says:

Dear all,

Please help yourselves to the butter cookies placed on the shelf next to S’s cubicle – I’m celebrating India’s victory at the finals of the T20 Cricket World Cup last night! Since most of you couldn’t care less about cricket – this is a championship involving teams from Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Scotland, Zimbabwe and India’s arch rivals Pakistan (whom we pulped in the finals last night!). The last time India took the Cricket World Cup home was when I was 3, so you can understand my utterly insane elation.

Cheers!
Sayesha

I get replies to my email from colleagues that go something like this:

Hi Sayesha,

Nope... still don't understand the elation, but I'll take advantage of the butter cookies.

GO INDIA!

I sing corny songs in my head on the way to work.

Anhoni ko honi kar de, honi ko anhoni
Ek jagah jab jamaa ho teenon
Gambhir... Pathan... aur Dhoni!

India in the finals? Whoa. India in the finals against Pakistan? Double whoa.

What a match. What a dream. What a win.

Last night, after the match, after screaming ourselves silly, the two of us sighed. We wished we were in India. Amidst the celebrations on the streets. Amidst the firecrackers. Amidst the noise. Amidst the passionate discussions. Amidst our own people. People who know and understand what cricket truly means to us and others like us.

Twenty-four years. It has been a long wait.

We may not be home. But the Cup is.

Finally.

Jaane kya hoga Rama re

In the last nine years that I've lived in Singapore, I've heard all sorts of things, theories and explanations about India that I never even knew about. For example, a Singaporean I know recently remarked that "all south Indians are dark-skinned but north Indians are fair because they have some Caucasian blood." Sheesh. Some of the stories and theories are so random, unheard of and out-of-the-blue that I actually have to go and google them up to get my facts right before I get into the argument. And just when I think I've heard everything, someone tells me something else about India that I had no idea about.

Recently, I heard something quite odd, and I've been thinking about it since. Someone at my workplace said that Diwali is celebrated in South India a day earlier than in North India because Lord Rama travelled from Lanka through southern India to his kingdom Ayodhya in the north. I had never heard of that before. The next thing I know - there will be a new theory that Diwali is celebrated in Singapore (on yet another day!) because Lord Rama probably had a detour at Singapore - perhaps Sita wanted to pick up a few things from Orchard Road - and Lakshman wanted an ipod from Mustafa. Sheesh. But then, trying to keep an open mind, I decided to do some investigation into this.

It sounded quite strange to me because from all my Amar Chitra Katha memory, Diwali is celebrated for a number of reasons - two of which are that Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after killing the demon Ravana, and his subjects lighted lamps to welcome him back; and that Lord Krishna killed Narakasura on this day. I would assume that either the whole of India would celebrate it on the same day (the day the bad guy died) to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, or they would have their own reasons to celebrate it on different days, such as the ones listed above.

So if this theory was true - if the people of the south did indeed welcome Lord Rama the way the people of Ayodhya did their exiled king and called it Diwali, wouldn't every other state that he passed on his way, also welcome him? And if so, how many Diwalis are we talking about then? Confused, I turned to the only one who I always turn to when I face eternal questions about life and other dilemmas - the Internet.

But then, Ramayana is a story, and just like any other story, has so many versions floating on the net that it is impossible to verify what the actual one is, unless a very frustrated Valmiki finds a way to intervene and clarify. So I tried to reason it out - and almost went insane in the process.

The first question I started thinking was - what was the mode of transport? I'd forgotten about the Puspak Viman bit when my brain was processing this. So I'll just take you through the thoughts that ran across my mind. If the theory was true and Rama did indeed go to Ayodhya through south India, he must have actually walked from the southern tip of India all the way up to Ayodhya (somewhere in present-day Uttar Pradesh). I paused to wonder why he walked though. Why didn't Hanuman offer to drop him off at Ayodhya, and do away with the stopovers? But then again, Hanuman's propeller had caught fire - actually, he had lit his propeller to destroy Lanka - and he was probably not in the best flying condition. Or maybe it was because he only had two shoulders - one for Ram and the other for Lakshman - and now there was Sita, who probably preferred walking to the unbelted flying experience on the rather unusual vehicle.

I don't remember seeing any picture of Lord Rama on horseback. So it did look like he walked home. The walking theory also makes sense if you look at the big gap between Dussehra (when Ravana was actually killed) and Diwali, unless the trio decided to take up a good holiday package for a Lanka tour before going home. Anyway, say that he walked. So according to this theory, he was in south India on Day 1 where Diwali v.1 was celebrated, and he had reached Ayodhya by Day 2 for Diwali v.2? Erm, that was some fast walking, considering India's area. Even if he, being the divine one that he was, walked that fast, what about Sita and Lakshman? And as far as I know, everyone arrived in Ayodhya together. I still remember pictures in chapters on Diwali, showing the people of Ayodhya lighting lamps with Rama, Sita and Lakshman walking towards them.

Even if we were to assume that Hanuman did drop them off at the border (perhaps he had no landing rights in Ayodhya) and they walked to their palace from there, surely it wouldn't have taken Hanuman 2 days to fly from the south to the north?

The only way I can explain this would be to assume that Rama & co. reached Rameshwaram first where he got the first welcome-back-party (Diwali v.1), rested the night and then Hanuman flew them all to Ayodhya the next day for welcome-back-party part II (Diwali v.2) the next day. However, this raises another question - what about the regions between Rameshwaram and Ayodhya? Why did the ones close to Rameshwaram decide to go with v.1, while the ones nearer to Ayodhya with v.2? Surely there was no north-south divide in those days? Wasn't the north-south divide invented in 1947 when the Indian people suddenly realised, "Oh shit! The British have left. Whom do we fight now? Damn! Oh oh I know I know! Let's fight each other!" (If you read the Rediff movies website the way I do, you will know what I am talking about - every frickin' article, even it's about the de-enhancement of Rakhi Sawant's enhanced assets, will end with comments where north Indians and south Indians are mud-slinging each other. And suddenly a non-Indian will drop by, laugh at everyone, and the comments will subside, only to arise in the next irrelevant article.)

Update: Thanks to information from TMaYaD and Cinderella, my memory was jogged. Apparently the trio went home in the Puspak viman, arranged by Ravana's brother Vibheeshan. Holy cow! Doesn't this mean that they never even set foot in south India after the Lanka battle? I would assume that the PV took off from Lanka and it was a direct flight to Ayodhya? Sheesh. So this still doesn't explain the 'theory'.

The more I thought - the crazier I went. Our generation still had some good sources of information when we were growing up. We had stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata in our school books. We had Amar Chitra Katha (which I thought was the most brilliant concept ever!). We also had Ramanand Sagar and BR Chopra (I wonder how faithful they were to the text though.) Then came movies like Asoka which tore apart history and literature by getting Kareena Kapoor in a wet half-sari frolicking around the so-not-Asoka-Asoka SRK. Everything is already all mixing up in my head. I'm wondering what muddled version of the ancient epics will be known to the next few generations.

Jaane kya hoga Rama re...

A man of his words

Fans of Viv's unconventional pictionary skills will be pleased to know that he has been working on a new talent. I call it 'killing the lyrics'; he calls it art.

So he was ironing, when I heard him hum these words.

"Chhota sa mann hai...
Mann mein hiran hai."

"Oye! It's not hiran, it's sanam." I corrected him. I can't stand people singing wrong lyrics, especially of Hindi songs.

"No, this is different. This has its own meaning." He said seriously. "Do you know what it means?"

"No, Viv, I don't. What does it mean?" I asked innocently, suppressing my laughter. This was going to be fun.

"It means that all the thoughts in my mind are hopping about like a hiran (deer)."

"Err.. a deer doesn't exactly hop about. A rabbit does. You should then sing "Mann mein khargosh (rabbit) hai." I did the classic 'Viv-killjoy-thing'.

He gave me the classic 'Sayesha-dagger-look.'

"You won't understand. This is an art. Only someone like Javed Akhtar will know the deep meaning and deep pain in my lyrics."

"I don't know about deep meaning, but I'm surely experiencing deep pain right now." I said.

He ignored me.

A while later, I heard him sing again.

Humko sirf tumse pyaar hai...
Humko sirf tumse pyaar hai...
*long pause*

Humko sirf tumse pyaar hai...
Humko sirf tumse pyaar hai...
*long pause*

"Hahahahaha! Aage nahin aata?" I laughed.

He continued.

"Dhoondte rahein tumko raat bhar
Kho gayi thi meri zindagi se bekhabar
Soch raha tha pyaar hai magar
Mera pyaar tha tumpe be-asar."

"Dude!" I asked. "What the hell was that?? You just about changed the entire paragraph! Do you even know what the word 'bekhabar' means?"

"Yeah. It means "without khabar - without news". You see, she left him without any news."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. This is bascially the guy professing his love for someone who doesn't love him back, and left him without any news." He said with a serious face, while I clutched my tummy and laughed.

A little while later, it started again.

"Raat hamari toh...
*pause*
chand ke sahaare hai...
*pause*
andhera kyun hai aise..."
*pause*

"What's the last line?" he said. "Can you sing it for me?"

"Aayi woh akeli hai." I sang.

"Oh yeah." He said. A few seconds later, he sang, "Current toh gayeli hai".

"Erm?"

"This is about people protesting against the electricity board. That's why the raat is chand ke sahaare... no lights, you see." He explained.

"Ohhh, right." I said.

He continued to iron and sing away.

"Andheraaa... rootha hai... Sandesaaa... jhootha hai..."

"WHAT?!"

"Arre, the hidden meaning is that the fax machine stopped working half-way through. So the sandesa is not correct."

"Uh-huh."

He continued singing.

"Gumsum sa kone mein baitha hai..."

"And who's that?"

"The fax machine still. It is just sadly sitting there in the corner because there is no power."

"Masha allah! Go on." I encouraged.

"Kitne dinon ke baad aayegi paheli hai..." He rambled on.

"Dude! That doesn't even make sense." I said.

"That's because I haven't specified the punctuation."

"Oh right. The punctuation. Pray specify it."

"Kitne dinon ke baad aayegi dot-dot-dot paheli hai."

"Hainnn?"

"As in - no one knows when the power supply will be back. It's a riddle. Paheli." He grinned.

In my good books

Tagging an editor to blog about books is like asking a bartender at the end of a long hard day to go home and make a drink for himself/herself. However, Wendelin has 'booked' me so here I go!


The book that changed my life

Microelectronic Circuits
Authors - Sedra and Smith

Considered the bible of engineering students, this is one book that changed my life. When I was a student of engineering, the drawings of the various circuits, diodes vividly described in agonising detail in this book made me resolve that I shall not let my life be governed by the things shown in the book. And that is the story of how I left the world of engineering where everything makes annoyingly logical and mathematical sense, to the world of the arts where erm, nothing makes sense. But it is beautiful and I love it. And I have Sedra and Smith to thank for it.

Once I finished my degree, my first thought was - how do I get rid of this damning evidence of my utterly boring past? I put an ad on the university public folders to try and sell it to an unsuspecting junior. I got no responses. I lowered my asking price. No responses still. I buried it deep in the storeroom and forgot about it. Sometime last year, while packing to move into a new place, I discovered the book lying in a carton. Not wanting to lug the heavy book along, I advertised again, and this time I actually said I'll give it away free. I got one response. But the person never picked the book up. :

The books I've read more than once

The lost girl and the scallywags
Author - Demykina Galina

Jolly Family
Author - Nikolai Nosov

Ah. Two of my favourite childhood books. My sister and I read a lot of children's books by Russian authors and these were two of the best. Then we grew up and Dad locked all of the books up in what he calls "the bachpan box" for safekeeping for his grandchildren. Sheesh. I recently found the downloadable version of the second one here.

Book I would take to a deserted island

My sketchbook, of course!

Book that made me laugh

Dave Barry is not taking this sitting down
Author - Dave Barry

This is seriously the funniest book I've ever read. I remember chuckling out loud each time I read it. Barry is one serious funnyman.

Book that made me cry

Walk through cold fire
Author - Cin-Forshay Lunsford

I had just entered my teens and my friend lent me this 'trashy novel' - it was my first and only trashy novel - except that I did not find it so trashy. Ah the appeal of teenage rebellion to a teenager like me who was always "the good girl" both at school and at home. I loved the book to bits, but unfortunately for me, the friend had a good memory. Last year, I had a sudden craving to read it again, but the libraries and bookstores here did not have it. Amazon and E-bay were selling old copies but I wasn't sure I wanted it for a frickin' 69-bucks-plus-shipping.

Books I wish I had written

The Harry Potter series
Author - J.K. Rowling

No contest here. Not that I'm a fan of the HP books, or could have ever matched her writing in my dreams, but if I had written them I'd be rolling in the millions that Rowling is rolling in right now. Muahahaha! I may not possess the talent to write those books, but I certainly possess the talent of spending all that money! (any killjoy who attempts to point out that if I'd written the books, there wouldn't be the millions will really get it from my hypothetical rolled-up newspaper!) And with those millions and millions of dollars and pounds and other currencies, I'd have a bought a big house with a swimming pool and a big garden and a swing and... oh wait, that is a different tag!

Book I wish had never been written

Science PSLE Revision Guide
Authors - Three foolish editors who had great foresight for children but none for themselves

At my last company, where I was working as a children's book editor, a few years ago three of us editors conceptualised this amazing book for the PSLE (the PSLE is a scary examination that 12-year-olds in Singapore take that causes more anxiety attacks in Singaporean parents than any other cause.) The problem was that all the authors we approached freaked out at the deadlines and turned down the project. It was imperative that the book be out before the exam, so the three of us took a bold decision - to write it ourselves! Since the book was written by 'employees', we neither got royalties (only a small bonus), nor were we featured on the book cover (only on the title page). Since it was a new idea, we played safe and printed only 5000 copies in the first run. They were snapped up in no time, and reprints orders poured in two weeks after the book had released. The book sold 45000 copies in half a year and was declared the best-selling SM (Supplementary Material, a term used in the Singapore school books market) in Singapore of all time.

Damn I wish that book had never been written. :/

So that I could have written it now and pocketed the royalties. :D

Book I am currently reading

Second form at Malory Towers
Author - Enid Blyton

Even though she was born in 1897, Enid Blyton was like my Dad's third daughter. He had stocked up all her books when I was a kid, and my sister had I just couldn't seem to get enough of her books. Last year, I found the Malory Towers and St. Clares series going for a dollar each at Queensway. Needless to say, I snapped them up. I have been reading them again and again, and this morning, I was so engrossed in one that I almost forgot to bathe before going to work!

Book I've been meaning to read

SATC
Author - Candace Bushnell
I'm a big fan of the television series, and one of my bestest friends Starbreez even gifted me the book based on the series. But I am yet to read the book the series was based on! I've been scouring the libraries here and apparently all copies are lent out. People, will you return your books on time! :/

Book I have been meaning to finish

Atlas Shrugged
Author - Ayn Rand

My friend who's a big fan of Ayn Rand recommended the book to me, but when I took a look at his copy I refused to borrow it. I have a minimum font size requirement, you see. I refuse to read books that are set in a font size so tiny you wonder if the inside front cover had a magnifying glass stuck to it. So he gifted me the big font version of the book, which turned out to be so thick that I could not get past the first chapter. Someday when I have nothing to do, perhaps I will read it.

That's it, folks. And oh, I tag all my book editor friends. I shall not be the only bartender to go home and make her drink herself! :D

The hat-trick

Last week, I did what I thought only suspicious wives stoop to doing -- I went through Viv's contact list on his mobile phone while he was watching TV.

Furious scrolling later, bingo! I found the numbers I wanted. I quickly copied them over to my phone. The next evening, before Viv came home, I made a few calls, and sent a few sms messages about operation hat-trick.

"Hi, this is Sayesha, Viv's wife. It's his birthday on sunday and I wanted to surprise him with a cricket-themed party in the evening. Would you be available and also, could you spread the word amongst his cricket buddies? I don't know any of them."

Now I don't really know his cricket buddies so I was careful enough to save their numbers as pseudonyms, in case they called or messaged back when I wasn't near the phone, and Viv happened to see it. So Chandru was saved as Chan - a harmless Chinese surname, and Pramod was saved as Pram. I had a decent response from them, and the planning was going well. Chan helped me a lot in putting the guest-list together.

Viv had cricket practice on saturday and a match on sunday, giving me ample time to shop, plan, cook and execute (the plan, not the people). Suddenly Chan called and told me that the sunday match was cancelled. I panicked. I needed a way to keep Viv out of the house on sunday afternoon so I could cook. Chan said he will try to get him out, but our house agent wanted to see us on sunday evening. Holy cow. Confusion confusion. Somehow the meeting with the agent was pushed to the afternoon. Viv also said he wanted to donate blood and I encouraged him that it would be a virtuous deed to do on his birthday. In all the madness, somehow I managed to prepare the timetable for the day. The problem was - he was still going to be around in the late afternoon when I planned to cook. So I told him I was gonna cook him a nice dinner on his birthday - just the two of us. His sister asked me how I was gonna get away with cooking dinner for an army right under his nose, but I said I'll manage somehow.

To execute the surprise to perfection, I needed to plan a 'normal birthday celebration' so he wouldn't sniff a thing. So I decided to have a normal cake-cutting ceremony at midnight, and get another cake for the cricket-themed party. I went from cake shop to cake shop asking them if I could order a customised cake that resembled a cricket field, and all I got was blank looks. "Cree-kate field ah? What's that?" was what I got most of the time. I even drew it for them and explained, "I want the top to be green with a grassy texture, and a rectangular brown strip in the centre with three candles at each end to represent the wickets."

They just didn't get it.

"You want green cake, ah? Buy pandan cake what!"

"I don't want a pandan cake! I want a cricket pitch cake!"

"Sorry cannot. You want green cake, I can make pandan cake for you. Cree-kate field cannot ah!"

Sheesh.

So I decided - fine, if you can't do it, I will. :/

I set myself thinking. How could I make the top of the cake have a green grassy texture? If I used the green icing, it would have a flat, weird look. Mixing green colour with icing sugar would just make it clumpy. And that's when it struck me - I could mix green colour with sugar crystals, let the crystals dry and then grind them! That would give me dry edible green powder, which I could sprinkle on the cake using a tea-strainer, keeping a rectangular piece of paper in the centre to leave the pitch brown. Muahahaha! I was a genius. I told Shub my idea. She said I was a genius.

On Friday evening, I put together the menu in my head on the way back from office. I wanted to make matar paneer, but didn't have the courage to go to Mustafa on a Friday or Saturday by myself. So I decided to go to the Indian shop near my place that sometimes carries paneer. They didn't have it, so I decided to make rajma instead. I picked up a packet of rajma, and two packets of sev to make kheer. And that's when it happened. The packet of rajma slipped from my hands, and fell. Thousands of rajma beans exploded in all directions! For a minute, I just stared at it blankly, as if staring would take me back in time, and each rajma bean would slowly float up and go back to its initial position. The counter was manned by this person I refer to as 'large Indian lady who does not speak' (LILWDNS). The description is sufficient to justify why I stood there petrified. Then I noticed her helper guy looking at me. I looked back at him. He calmly took a broom and started sweeping. I wasn't even sure if they were going to charge me for the fallen rajma. They didn't, even though I was ready to plead guilty and accept the charges. So I paid for my stuff and went home, with a resolution to come back to the shop only when my hair had grown long so I wouldn't be recognised.

However, like what all foolish criminals do, the next day I returned to the scene of crime. That's how badly I wanted the paneer. And lo and behold - they had the paneer! What luck! I looked around furtively for the helper guy but he wasn't there. LILWDNS did not speak as usual. I paid for the paneer and came home.

Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. This happened in the afternoon. In the morning, Viv and I played badminton just like we do on any saturday morning, after which he went for cricket practice. I told him I was going to order some photos to be printed, but I actually went to pick up the cakes - the decoy one from a cake shop, and the actual one from the supermarket (a simple cheesecake which I was gonna transform into Lords). I was so surprised that the supermarket did not have the tiny birthday candles that come free with cakes at cake shops! What kinda supermarket does not carry birthday candles? How was I supposed to make the wickets without the candles? So I decided to lie at the cake shop about Viv’s age just so I could get some extra candles. "39" I said, and the lady gave me three big candles and nine small ones.

Oh wait, before buying the cakes (gosh this is all going in reverse, like the movie Memento), I went to this pedicure place and got him an appointment for a men's pedicure, which was supposed to be my real birthday gift to him. The decoy birthday gift was a pair of shoes I bought him sometime last week. I'd said, "Dude, it's very difficult to shop for a guy. Since you're gonna buy shoes anyway, let me pay for them. Birthday gift, okay?" He agreed. He usually agrees to stuff I say, as long as it's logical. The tough task was to get him to agree to a pedicure. Though I would not let anyone touch my nails with a barge pole, personally, I believe that all guys need to get a professional pedicure done at least once in their lives, just to see the before and after of the removal of years and years of grime and dead skin. Do you know that pedicurists charge extra for guys? That's how thick-skinned you people are. Literally and otherwise.

So I booked the pedicure appointment for 7 pm, and a table at Margaritas for his decoy birthday celebration with his sis and me. I'd booked the table for 8.30 pm but I told him it was for 7.30, so I could get him to the pedicure place first. He was supposed to get back from cricket practice around 6. I told him that we would pick up the photos at 7 and then go for dinner at 7.30. The pedicure place was on the way to the photo place.

Of course, the dhakkan did all he could, albeit unintentionally, to ruin my plans. Around 6.15, just as I had wrapped up making his birthday kheer and concealing it in the fridge, I got a call from him. “I’m in bus number 16, and it goes past the photo place. I’ll pick up your photos and we can go straight for dinner.”

Gulp. Pick up my photos? What photos? There were no photos to be picked up!

“No, you can’t pick them up.”

“Why not?”

“Erm, I have the receipt.”

“Tell me the receipt number.”

“Oh they don’t do that. You have to show them the receipt.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah yeah. I have tried it in the past. They don’t.”

“Hmmm… okay, I’ll come home then.”

So he got home, took a quick bath and then off we set “to collect the photos”. I’d told his sister about the whole plan and asked her to meet us at the pedicure place. He was utterly surprised to see her “on the way to the photo shop” when she was supposed to directly “meet us for the 7.30 dinner”. Anyway, when we passed by the pedicure place, I went inside. He’d gone ahead, and then turned and came back, thinking I was making an enquiry.

It was only when he heard me say, “We have a 7 pm appointment for a men’s pedicure.” that it dawned on him what the heck was going on. Fortunately, he did not make a big fuss and agreed to be pedicured. The pedicurist scrubbed his feet for a full 45 minutes and may I just say that the results were phenomenal. I was kicking myself for not taking a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ picture. Guys, seriously, get it done. Once at least. I know you wanna, I just hope that you find a girl who will “force” you into it. ;)

Dinner was at Margaritas, a Mexican restaurant we’d been wanting to go to for ages. The food was fab and so were the blue margaritas. We came home and watched ‘O brother, where art thou?’ till it was about midnight or so, and I produced the decoy cake. The usual make-wish, blow-candle, sing-song later, I passed him a card and birthday moolah that his dad had given me to pass to him. “Too bad the celebration was a day before your birthday, but I planned everything on Saturday because you were supposed to be in a match on Sunday!” I told him. He bought it. He was really happy with his “surprise gift”, “cake” and “celebration” because he couldn’t stop grinning.

The next morning, I was mentally preparing my timetable for the evening’s party. I was like a duck – appeared calm on the surface, but was furiously paddling underneath the water. When he went to return the DVDs, I made the jaljeera, boiled the potatoes and the chickpeas for the chaat, and boiled the baby potatoes for the dum aloo. All this in record time. When he came back, the kitchen and I looked totally innocent. I had bought tons of tomatoes to use as a ‘wall’ to hide the ‘evidence’. I actually balanced the tomatoes one on top of another on the fridge shelves, just so that if he accidentally opened the fridge, no part of the cakes or the kheer would peek out.

In the afternoon we went to meet the house agent. It took longer than I expected, and I was getting really annoyed because I was running late on my sabzi schedule. We got home around 5.30 pm. On weekends we clean the house, and so he took out the vacuum cleaner and started off, while I told him I was gonna start cooking our dinner-for-two. Although he kept fleeting in and out of the kitchen, I made sure he did not see any humongous quantities. I even put small decoy quantities of peas and the paneer on display to throw him off. Soon, the matar-paneer, the dum aloo, the rice, the raita and the chaat were done.

Just when he had settled down to watch the F1 race in his singlet and shorts, the doorbell rang. Ah, what a priceless expression when he saw people he’d never dreamt would turn up at his doorstep on his birthday. He had such a stunned look that they actually came in and asked me, “It is today, right?” Words can’t describe the awesomeness of that moment, really. And they’d bought materials and equipment for pina colada. Soon the whole bunch was there - a living room full of cricketers - and Viv was bobbing about like a happy little boy who’d just got a bicycle for his 6th birthday.

Then I brought forth the cake, and there was a gush of silence and a collective ‘WHOA!’ from his buddies when they saw the cricket pitch and the ‘flaming wickets’. Though I did get laughed at for placing one of the 'umpires' (the bigger candles on the sides) in an incorrect position. Sheesh. Who cared - the idea of the cricket-themed cake was such a hit, technicalities didn't matter. Besides, it is the little imperfections that make things beautiful. The food and drinks were a hit too. We had a great great great time.

After everyone left, he said, “Okay now tell me everything. I wanna hear everything. How did you do all this? HOW???”

And I told him. Told him everything, and as I told him, I realised how much I had enjoyed myself. So I decided to document it so that years later, if I ever start thinking of a birthday as “just another day”, I could come back here and disagree with myself.

So that was it. Operation hat-trick – the decoy surprise gift vs the real surprise gift, the decoy cake vs the real cake and the decoy celebration vs the real celebration - had been a success, a real success, and I was as delighted as Viv was. Well, almost as delighted.

Happy birthday, buddy!

Singin' in the pain

So a friend at work is learning Hindi. I suggested that she listen to slow old Hindi songs to pick up the correct pronunciation of words, and at the same time enjoy some great melodies. I knew because that's where I picked up most of my Hindi pronunciation. Dad got a transfer to Bihar when I was all of six without a clue or a single Hindi word in my head. I grew up in Bihar/Jharkhand, picked up Hindi and spent twelve years of my life there without letting the local dialects mess up my Hindi pronunciation. I learnt to speak Hindi and Urdu primarily through songs and ghazals. Perhaps that's where my obsession with Hindi music stems from. They were not just songs - they were my teachers. Today I am proud of my Hindi. I know my method was effective, and I was willing to share. My friend readily agreed, and I told her I’ll look through my collection and recommend some good ones.

So I was sorting through my 'Nostalgia' folder (a huge database which had made quite a name for itself on the shared drive when I was in university), when I made a beautiful discovery. Re-discovery, rather.

Pukarta chala hoon main
Gali gali bahaar mein
Bas ek chhaon zulf ki
Bas ik nigaah pyaar ki

Oh my. I hadn't heard this song in a long time. It was absolutely mind-blowing. I listened to it on loop a couple of times before going to sleep. The next morning I loaded my ipod with all the songs I wanted her to listen to, and set off for office. I intended to play all of them during my bus journey, but ended up playing this particular song on loop the entire time. When I got to work, I played it the whole day, and I played it in the bus on the way back too. I tend to do this with some of the newer songs but the obsession never lasts. This was different. I was really breathing in the fine details of the song. Each time I listened to it, there was something new, something different I’d absorb.

The beauty of the song is that it's all about Rafi's voice. The song is a very simple one, with simple beats, and simple lyrics - all broken into syllables – deceptively sounding like something anyone can sing. With perhaps four instruments at most, the one thing that rises above everything is Rafi’s voice and the way he sings it. Go on, play the song, and listen - really listen - especially to the part where he sings, "Yehi toh baat ho rahi hai kaam ki". He sounds so amazing in these lines that you would never believe that the guy who looked like a khadoos school teacher could sound so incredibly sexy singing a song which on some levels is basically a song that a roadside lafunga is singing in search of the chick who will be willing to daalo him some ghaas. To turn a song like that into a seductive number, that, I guess, is the mark of a true legend.

And I started to think about legends. Lata, Asha, Kishore, Rafi, and a handful more. That's it? That's it. Oh my goodness, that's it. Some of the singers of today are no doubt, very good -- Sonu Nigam who is perhaps the best (does the fact that he admits to being inspired by Rafi have anything to do with it?), Sunidhi, Shreya, Kay Kay and Shaan. I personally love all of them, and they have very distinct styles, but come to think of it, would you call any of them 'legends'? I wouldn't. I prefer to call them the 'middle band' whose songs will perhaps be listened to as classics a decade later. But anyone newer than this batch just doesn't cut it. The maestros of the past have set the standards so high that anyone who has heard them would never use the term 'legends' for the new breed – especially the ones newer than Sonu, Kay Kay, et al. It's the way they used to sing in the old says - the heart and soul that went into it. The new guys just don't do it the same way. They can barely keep in step with the new songs, and they want to tread on the old ones too. Evident from the example of Dil Vil Pyaar Vyaar where a bunch of the so-called very good singers systematically destroyed some beautiful old melodies.

And oh, don't even get me started on remixes, what with their 'Danny feat. Sophie' and what not. Who the heck are Danny and Sophie anyway? Who are these people who think that they’re making music by killing old songs and calling them 'Zubin feat. Zoya'? Who allows them to sing?

It is evident from the singing competitions on TV as well. The audience voting system has taken a toll on the discovery of real talent. Good-looking people make it to the top and even if the lack of talent can’t pull them through, technology makes them become famous singers. And the ones who can actually sing are deemed not pretty enough to make it. I was watching Indian Idol, and I noticed that almost every one of the so called 'awesome' singers falter at time and falter quite badly. And if someone like me who has no training at all in music can “spot the differences”, ah well. Real fans of the song know every bit, every high, every low of the song, and you can't fool us. Okay tell me - how many of the singers on Saregamapa and Indian Idol can you listen to and identify with your eyes closed? How many of them have that unique voice that touches you in a way that you go, "Ah, no one else can sing it this way!"?

And even if some new masterpieces do come about ('Tanhayee' from 'Dil Chahta Hai' would be one, and 'Tadap tadap' from 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam' would be another) why aren't they memorable? Why is it that I can sing along when I listen to songs that were created when my parents were babies, but I can't tell you the lyrics of this year's chartbusters three weeks down the lane? Why are the songs so short-term? Whatever happened to evergreen melodies? Did we have a limited pool that got consumed sometime in the 70s and all we can do now is recycle them and come up with utterly forgettable melodies? Why don't we crave good songs anymore? Why don't we demand purity of melodies anymore? Why are we so content with what we have as long as it sells? Whatever happened to music as a beautiful form of art? It's depressing, the way we all go ‘Kaindi ponnnnnnnn!!’ for three minutes and then forget it before moving on to the next song that we can tap our feet to.

Why is it that in the old days, the singers had nothing but their voices and they sounded nothing short of golden, and today, when they have so much digital help, they just sound like something is missing? But then, maybe it's all the technology that's to blame. It has reduced the gap between the great singers and the ordinary mortals. In the old days, the singers had nothing but their voices, and that was a good thing. Today it's not. I read that for 'Kya janoon sajan' (the original from the movie 'Baharon Ke Sapne'), RD Burman made Lata put on headphones and recorded her singing over her own song playing in the recording room, to add the double voice effect. (Those who are familiar with the song will know what I'm talking about.) I have no doubt it was much easier for Kavitha who sang the newer version in Dil Vil Pyaar Vyaar.

Looks like technology has made it a piece of cake - anyone can sing. And so everyone does. Annu Malik does. Himesh Reshammiya does. Mika does. Rakhi Sawant does. Oh. Let me say that again. Rakhi Sawant does.

Face it - the way we're headed, there is no stopping us. You and I will soon become great singers too.

God save the music.

Come, let's all bray together.

A cut above the rest

Finally I shrugged my shoulders and accepted it.

I will never have the haircut that Rani of VLCC gave me a couple of years ago. Flying back to Delhi for that haircut wasn't a very economical solution, and after a couple of very bad experiences, I had decided that Singapore stylists just can't cut my hair. At the end of a haircut that costs 45 dollars (yeah, I don't go for the 200-dollar cuts, though I am ashamed to say that I know people who do) at the minimum on a simple cut, if you come out looking like a scarecrow, something's wrong somewhere. It's not like I'm the only person in Singapore who has curly hair - and yet, somehow, the stylists here, perhaps used to the rod-straight typical Singaporean hair - just can't seem to do anything to get it under control. So about a year ago, I decided - no more cuts. I will let my hair grow wild and perhaps it will give up and sort itself out.

However, lately, it had been at its most adolescent behaviour, and I knew it was time to chop-chop. It was too long, too curly, and too damn irritating. To the point where I knew some of it had to go, and I did not care at whose hands they did. But I did know that I did not want to go back to Alan at Reds or any such place.

So I did the most daring thing that I've ever known any fashion-conscious girl to do.

I decided to get my hair cut by this Chinese guy who cuts Viv's hair.

I realised that after all my expensive misadventures at pretentious salons, I was ready for a cheap misadventure. At most, I would end up with an okay cut.

Before I could freak out and change my mind, I landed at the salon with Viv, where his haircut guy completely ignored me, thinking I was one of the girls who accompany their guys when they go for cuts.

"I'm the one." I said, in true matrix-y style.

"You want a haircut?" He asked, puzzled.

"Yeah."

So he sat me down on one of the seats, each of which had a personalised mini screen playing Mr. Bean the cartoon, without any sound.

"Trim?" He asked.

"No, cut. Cut short."

"Short. How short?"

"Very short."

"Until shoulders?" He asked.

"Shorter."

"Shorter than that?? Are you sure??"

This was a first. I have never had a stylist ask me if I was sure. They always seemed sure that they understood what I wanted. Sadly, they did not. And here was a guy who seemed as unsure about this whole deal as I was. Excellent. I felt right at home.

"I'm sure."

"But you will lose all the curls at the end... natural curls you know..." he said as if natural curls are a real rare species. But then, perhaps in Singapore they are.

"Don't worry, the ends will curl up again."

"Hmmm... how long you never cut your hair?" he said in typical Singlish.

"Cut or trim?"

"Cut."

"Errmm... I don't know... maybe a year?"

"One year you never cut your hair??" He seemed shocked.

I wanted to say, "Dude, I'm a girl. It's okay if we don't cut our hair for a year."

Anyway, he started. No muss. No fuss. No shampoo. No neck massage. No conditioner. No spritzing of water. No blow-drying. None of the nonsense that makes your hair look like a million dollars as you step out of the salon, but thirteen minutes later -- welcome to scarecrow central.

But this was real. What you see is what you get. I liked it.

And he started cutting. While cutting, he accidentally dropped the scissors. I watched him pick it up and put it in what I thought was a microwave oven, but found out that it was actually a steriliser. Whoa.

While I was getting my hair cut, another guy staggered in for a trim. The girl who was attending to him made him sit and asked, "Are you sure you want a haircut? You're drunk, right?"

How rude! I thought and turned to look at the guy's reaction at the accusation.

Holy cow. The guy really was drunk. Ahem. I gave Viv the "This is your haircut place?" look but he was deeply engrossed in the magazine which normally I'd find myself reading when he got his haircut.

"Yes." said drunk guy.

"Okay, how many fingers?" asked the girl. No cheekiness. She looked serious.

The drunk guy looked at her three raised fingers in the mirror and said, "Two."

"Okay, how many drinks did you have?" She asked.

"Three beers, one whiskey... one..." The guy mumbled something.

"Wow."

"Don't worry, we Filipinos can really drink." He said.

And then she started cutting his hair as if having a drunk customer on a saturday night was totally normal, while I gaped at my drunk co-customer.

"You boyfriend doesn't want cut?" I was distracted by my haircut guy.

"No, his isn't due yet."

"Haven't seen him in a while." He remarked.

"Don't worry, he'll be here soon. He always gets his hair cut by you. You always give him a great cut. Actually that's why I decided to come to you. I am sick of the fancy salons."

In the mirror in front of me, I saw the guy smile. I wondered if anyone ever complimented him on his haircut skills.

"So do girls ever come here for a cut?" I asked.

"Girls, ah?"

"Yeah. Not for a trim, but a cut?"

"Hmmm... some do... sometimes..." He said, and before I could go "Phew!" he added, "The little children."

I gulped. The little children??? I was the first female adult there?

Gulp. Well, there was no backing off now. I looked at the floor. My wild tresses that had once perched on my wild head were on the floor, and my head felt lighter. Ah well.

After he was done, he vacuumed my hair. Yes, he literally vacuumed out the little bits of hair from my hair and neck with a small vacuum cleaner attached to the wall.

"Okay!" He announced the end.

I gathered the courage to look at my hair. It looked fine. No wait, it looked good. Pretty darn good in fact. I was happy, and nothing else mattered.

And that's when it struck me how overrated girls' expensive haircut guys are and how way way underrated guys' cheap haircut guys are. I guess designer haircuts are like designer clothes. They may seem 'safe' just because of their atrocious pricetags or because everyone 'cool' has got one, but the hard truth is - they don't look good on everyone. The important thing is to find something that's your style, and not get too bothered about the price.

Even if it looks too cheap to be true.