The TV and the Drama

I remember one time (and I am unlikely to forget the incident ever) when a student (year 6) in my school in London asked me if I had seen some TV series on Amazon Prime and I responded that I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime and so I haven’t. They then asked me which platform I watch my TV on? Netflix maybe? I responded in negative saying that since I pay my TV license I stick to good old BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5 etc. for my entertainment. A few students who were listening in on the conversation looked at me in horror and this student commented that I live a very sad life. I burst out laughing and told them that I am happy with my free views and they are welcome to enjoy their various paid subscriptions (although is it a free view if I am paying for the TV license? that is a thought for another day…not that it makes any difference to me now mind…).

I knew that in India, it is not possible to watch any TV in prominent cities (at least it was 5/6 years ago) unless you get a DTH service and that is why when I was in Bangalore I had to subscribe to either Sun DTH or a local DTH provider based on what language programmes you are likely to watch more. Now it seems that Netflix, Amazon Prime, Airtel XStream, and Tata Sky are the key players (anyone else I missed?). My siblings have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and my nepotes are bored when they come to my home because we have so far refused to subscribe to any of these. I know that I don’t have much time left because just like paying for a TV license in the UK, I have to subscribe to one or more of these services to get my normal TV too, which is very sad indeed. But it is what it is. Now the problem is though, these providers are so smart that we can never find what we need in one of them. We end up subscribing to at least two or even more to switch between the stuff we might end up watching. In this day and age, that seems to be a smart business move but hurts the consumers badly and we are not up for it. I am forever trying to find ways to circumvent the problem. For now, we watch our news and other stuff through the free channels available from Roku (Al Jazeera, Sky News, Wion, Plex etc.)

When I finally decided that it is time to watch Ponniyin Selvan Part 1, it was already out of theatres. It took me a long time to even convince myself that it is ok if they mess up the book which is my absolute favourite one (the first name of my pseudonym is a strong female character from that book…) and just watch it as another grand movie. But it was now available only with Amazon Prime. I have to get a 30-day Free Trial to watch this movie. Whenever my siblings and their children come home, they strongly suggest that I get Netflix. We had already done a free trial of it while we were in the UK, but we didn’t find many programmes that we would watch and it was very American, which Mr M wasn’t very keen on 😀 If we are to get this free trial for Amazon Prime, it would help us check out its contents and see if we would watch any programmes in it at all apart from the odd movies now and then.

Oh! Why does it have to be this hard and so much drama (and money to shell) to watch some good TV heh?

some more rant on my name

Most of this week, I have been filling forms of one sort of the other and by today, Friday, I am officially tired of it. I don’t want to write my own name for a week in any paper. Grrrr!!! And if it is possible I don’t want to fill any forms, unless the ones I had filled does its purpose. I guess this is all part and parcel of moving to a new country and all…but I need a break! And when you have forms which have small space to write your name and that isn’t enough to fill your long name…another Grrrrr!!! moment. I think what my friend and his wife are doing is wise. They haven’t named their child (a boy) yet and he is already a couple of months short of his first birthday (auspicious times and all). By now he might as well name himself and that wouldn’t be a bad thing, even though I am not sure what name he would choose since he can hardly talk.

Not formal

I am not a “formal”  person.  I don’t do formal in conversations or in clothing.  After, I don’t know when was the last time, a very long time I had to dress up formally today for an event.  Turned out that it wasn’t a necessity 🙄 After going through the trouble of shopping,  trying out clothes,  wearing formal shoes etc etc etc  (you have no clue to the amount of whinging I did during the shopping. Mr. M should be applauded just for putting up with that)  I might as well be in my jeans and tops.  Formal clothes in India is different from formal clothing in the UK  and I now know that I am not good with either.  Give me casuals any day or my lounge wear.  

TGIF – not yet…

Today is one of those days when I needed a extra cup of ultra strong South Indian Filter Coffee to start my official day.

It is not a TGIF for me, at least not yet. After a lackluster night, the early morning cup of Indian Masala Chai didn’t wake me up. So I had to get my coffee fix in office while I am waiting for people to start the conference. I don’t like it when people schedule these demos and conference calls at the last minute, especially on a Friday. Don’t these people have a life? or know what it means to reach Friday after jogging through the whole week? I am just waiting for the day to get over. God, give me strength.

 

Oui

Warning: Gonna be a long post because of the incident during the flight

Every once in a while during my flight journey I end up having someone sitting next to me who would be so weird that I end up having some story to tell someone about it. The flight was already delayed by an hour because of a technical issue with the door. Thankfully it was properly fixed and not ‘patched’ by any intermediate fixes like we do in our software 😉 While waiting at the gate, I keep looking around for people and what they are doing, how they are reacting, who wants to be the first in the queue for boarding etc etc. There are always people who would go with their Economy tickets when the call was Business Class/ First Class and get turned back. There is not a single time I haven’t met at least ‘one’ of them. I wonder why they would do that! OK, let me get back to this weird guy. So this French guy was sitting 4 seats to my left and was trying to chat with an Indian (of course). Why was their conversation weird and why did I actually pay attention to it? Because the French guy spoke french and the Indian guy spoke English and neither of them were able to understand the other.  The French guy was trying to strike a conversation and the Indian guy didn’t know how to respond, so he was mostly smiling and shaking his head. Well, now you know why that caught my attention.

I think you know where this is heading, right? Well, as fate would have it, once I placed my bags in the cabin, I went to freshen up and when I was back I saw this French guy in my seat. Whoa!!! OK!!! I tell him that the aisle seat was mine (I endured the middle seat on the way to London, and made sure that I did not repeat my mistake) and he was looking at me like I was crazy. Then I had to show him my ticket and then he was like ‘oui oui’ and moved to the next one taking my headset with him. Some more of the hand gestures to get it back from him. And after that I opened my Kindle, as usual, and started with my book, wondering what is in store for me. The Indian guy on the other side tried to strike a conversation with the French guy and well, you know what happened. It was a repeat of the earlier performance. What I didn’t expect was that this French guy turned to me and started to speak in French and wasn’t even slow. Now, it was my turn to look at him like ‘he’ was crazy and told him ‘I don’t speak French’. For that he said ‘I speak French’ (the only English line he knew, I guess) I almost rolled my eyes and told him ‘OK! but I dont’ and added some hand gestures. He didn’t seem to be bothered and kept talking to me. How am I even supposed to respond to that? I smiled and asked him ‘You speak English?’ and he was like ‘English?’ and shook his head no. I said OK and went back to my book and didn’t respond to his lines after that. Why bother. The Indian guy on the other side tried to help him but again to no avail and finally found a representative of the BA who spoke French. After that, all was well and calm.

But not for too long. After the 5th hour or so, once I had my book finished I decided to take a nap and was doing well with it for almost an hour when I heard someone very close to my left ear talking (the French guy was to my right) I woke up only to find the senior official of the BA air hosting team asking the French guy if he was smoking in the toilet. The senior guy was flanked by the French speaking guy and another assistant. Little did the guy know that the French guy spoke only French. He told him that he could smell cigarettes on him and that another passenger recognized him coming out of the toilet followed by some smoke and that he would be warned this time but if he continued he would be arrested in India. He was so angry and he spoke without a pause even though he had a good control of his tone. The French guy, well, he listened to all of it, obviously not understanding a word of it. Then the French speaking assistant came to help and translated it word by word (I am just assuming it) and this guy was vehemently denying it even though he had cigarettes in his pocket. I was caught up in between and was watching them like a tennis match.

After that excitement and all, I couldn’t go back to sleep. But that guy didn’t have any such issues. After mumbling himself to sleep and drinking some of whatever he had in his cabin baggage, went back to sleep. I started on another book and before I could put it down after an hour, he got very comfortable and I almost thought he was going to keep his leg up on me, the way he moved around and laid on the guy on the other side. Now I was fully awake to make sure that he didn’t turn to my side. And in a few minutes, he removed his shirt too. Good Lord! I almost called the assistants but then he put it back on after a few minutes. Thank Goodness. And before we got down, he was talking to the other Indian guy in French telling him something about how he was scolded about smoking and was mimicking the old senior assistant who scolded him in English.

How is he even going to survive in India, without any English knowledge? Not many people know French here, let alone English (languages, I mean). When the other Indian guy was asking him if he had any friends here, he was wondering ‘friends? why?’ It looked like he got the first ticket he could get and just got on. Will he be able to survive here? He might be able to. But it is going to be some painful start and I hope that he is not ripped of whatever money he has. Since I can’t smell well, I couldn’t say anything about the smoking but if everyone else could smell the smoke on him, then he definitely did put everyone else on danger by doing a prohibited thing, in a flight nonetheless, which doesn’t earn him any points. And two guys on the left seat were having a huge discussion about this guy for almost half an hour after the smoking incident. Seriously, why do I end up being part of these kind of events.