Small Victories of the Lone Mosquiteer

The lone Mosquiteer

If it is one of those days you think your life is meaningless, swatting mosquitoes is a wonderful way to reassure yourself of your place in the food chain. (Although, I would argue that mosquitoes ought to be above us in the food chain because they drink our blood and not the other way round)

It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that there are very few things in this world that give us the kind of satisfaction swatting a fat bloody mosquito gives. Now don’t cringe. Don’t say “Eww!” as if you've never done it. I know you killed mosquitoes and I know exactly how you felt after that. Yes, I am talking about that short adrenaline pumped euphoric high you get as you see the body of a dying mosquito moving it’s legs slowly one last time before drowning in a pool of your own blood. I know how much you enjoy that okay, so let’s be honest for a second here!

See, now that's a kill!

Now that we’re on the same page. Have you ever tried to trap and kill a flying mosquito using just your thumb and index finger? Have you ever managed to pull that off? I did it, just once. Wow, a fat bloody mosquito killed using just the thumb and the index finger in a snap! The feeling was one of pure awesomeness. I was on top of the world. For 30 seconds, I felt like a ninja!

I eagerly looked around to see if anyone was fortunate enough to witness the amazing display of phalangeal athleticism. Unfortunately, there were none. Well there was this one guy who found it gross but don’t believe him, he turned his head late. So all he saw was the blood on my fingers. He missed the real deal. If you walked into the last scene of a Quentin Tarantino movie without any context, you would find it gross too wouldn’t you? It is exactly like that.

Smell the Coffee and other things

Now if you’re sad and you live in a more privileged place where there are no mosquitoes. Don’t worry. All you have to do is drop something on the floor and pick it up with your toes without bending down. That should make you feel like a frickin’ gymnast! (spoiler alert: for 30 seconds only)

Easy isn’t it? Like the cliche goes, happiness is all around you. All you have to do is look at the roses, bask in the sunshine and “smell the coffee”. Speaking of Coffee, have you ever tried to transfer coffee from one coffee mug to another? It’s one of the hardest things to do! The coffee tends to drip along the outer surface and spill. Imagining transferring it without even spilling a drop. Those are the kind of #wins I am talking about!

Have you, in recent times, written a full paragraph on a piece of paper that is bigger than a sticky note? I mean with with your hands using a pen in legible handwriting? Just imagine the clarity of thought required to do that! Especially in these days where we press one backspace for every three characters we type in MS Word and still we need spell check! If you have managed to do that, you have another #winner my friend. 

Here are a few more tried and tested ways for small victories... feel free to add your own too

Take a piece of paper. Crumple it and sink a glorious three pointer into the corner waste basket #win

The most common one of them all

You’re late to the railway station and the train is also late #win

You’re late to the office and no one notices #win (or #fail depending on  how long you have been around)

You honk at a girl and she looks at you #win

You convinced a friend to buy dorky sunglasses by putting on a global warming argument #MediumSizedWin

The auto guy agrees to come by meter fare (not applicable for people living in Bombay)

The auto has a meter (for people in Chennai)

The number of birthday wishes you received is greater than the number of wishes you gave (note: Facebook wishes don’t count)

You get lower berth and no uncle requests you to exchange it for an upper berth because aunty can’t climb 

Guessed the right direction while driving in a strange place... just by looking at the north star

You manage to buy a tatkal train ticket online! (This is actually a #bigwin)

(edit: added from comments) "I once managed to score 52 runs in 2 overs in a 10 X 10 meters cricket ground playing with my 8 year old nephew and his friends in tiny shorts and vests. They sidelined Sachin and honored me by calling their favorite batsman #MyGreatestWin" -- Sourav Roy

(edit: Also Keerti had some to add)
Putting a thread through the eye of a needle

Taking your car/scooter from a cramped parking space (big winner feeling)

Sleeping through a Balakrishna movie (it would be so difficult with all the yelling and the shouting) = #SmallWin. Managing to stay awake through it is #BigWin

If someone is planning to commit suicide and they call you before doing so... share this with them. If they still end up killing themselves, you have only yourself to blame.

Counterproductive Technology

Not very long ago, I was at Kanjur Marg station in the queue to buy a local train ticket. I was not in a hurry but, I was feeling a little impatient standing in the same line with lot of people who are in a great hurry. And some 15 minutes later, it was my turn and as most people must have experienced, there is a 50 year old clerk (who is never in a hurry!), reacting as if he has seen the keyboard for the first time in his life and he has been reacting the same way since 1992!

It is the closest you can get to study how cavemen would have reacted had they found a yellow (formerly white) keyboard in a deserted cave. He types carefully searching for each alphabet on the keyboard and then presses the print command and then the loud dot matrix printer takes over. Sometime between the clerk pressing the print button and the printer printing my ticket, I decided to make a compilation of instances where installing/upgrading technology has made the process slower and inefficient. So here is the list.

1. Railway tickets: According to my rough estimate, manually giving out tickets in a local station clears the queue about two and a half times faster than the "computerized" ticket vending. In fact, many local stations open their manual ticket counter during rush hours. But I am sure that the computerized ticket vending helps in accounting and other back office processes.

2. The automatic semi-touch free dustbin I have seen in France: This is absolute oxymoron. First of all, how can anything be semi-touch? You either touch it or you don’t! Second of all who wants to semi-touch a dustbin? It has an automatic lid that opens automatically when you keep your hand over it. Good enough, but the moron part of it is that the lid does not close automatically! We have to stoop to press the “close” button on the dustbin once we are done. I wanted to see if there was some sort of a timeout mechanism after which the lid automatically closes, I waited for 2 minutes but it did not close.

3. Ultra slim TVs: What difference does it make whether the TV is one inch thick or one fourth of an inch thick when the TV hangs on a wall and we sit least five or six feet away from it?


4. Wireless keyboard and mouse for a desktop: The writing is pretty much on the wall that it is a waste. Not only do they run out of battery once in two weeks to piss the user off, there is a good chance that they will be misplaced or lost. I think the cluttering wires are easier to manage.

5. Texting with a touch phone: Texting just got crappier with the advent of iphones and other alleged “iPhone killers”


Things that need special mention
1. Widows Vista: old favorite
2. Any iPhone apps that give GPS directions: not a big thing in India yet
3. Google wave: email reinvented so that you cannot check it in a cyber café near you.
4. Laptop steering wheel desk: You can now tweet your way to hell.



This list is in no way comprehensive, please add stuff if you can think of something.