City Boy » thrill

Siamese Cups

Amortya Ray — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:34:25 +0000

For those of you who feel enslaved by the rigors of corporate life day in and day out, I present to you ‘Fun Things To Do At Work”. This is a series of posts include suggestions that can be used to liven the atmosphere of the workplace and at the same time improve one’s creativity with simple and yet fun to do activities. This list, by no means, is exhaustive. In addition, I cannot and will not take credit for many of the items. Credit must be given to my coworkers who come up with the coolest of ways to get past that coma inducing period every white collar worker experiences right after lunch.

Molten Plastic Cup Sculptures

This one, I’m proud to admit, is my baby. Partially inspired by Frank Buffay Junior’s penchant for melting stuff, one fine afternoon, I came across the magical properties of hot water in a plastic cup. It tickled my imagination when I realized while absent-mindedly filling my cup with scalding hot water, that it lead to a peculiar deformation of the cup. And then there was simply no looking back. On the next coffee break, I demonstrate this phenomenon to my slacker-extraordinaire buddies and watch their jaws drop as they witness the awesomeness of the moment!

What do you get when you put a group of creative, underutilized, idle minds together in a pantry with access to a plethora of plastic cups and an infinite supply of hot water? Ladies and gents, I give you the “Siamese Cups”. My chemistry professor would have teared up with genuine joy at this sight.

Plastic cups heated, melted, deformed, fused together at the base, and cooled beneath a tap of running cold water.

Soon to come, an excerpt on the techniques used by professionals to deduce the least optimal route to take to and from the pantry to the desk, so as to maximize the time spent away from the aforementioned desk.

Cheap Thrills

Amortya Ray — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:59:10 +0000

One of the few quirky (and possibly dumb) things that makes me super happy happened a few days ago.

My closet-sized studio is on the 19th floor of my 34 story apartment building. Statistically, approximately half the people getting into the elevator with me should hit a button less than 19. The other half should hit 19 or a higher floor. Now, it irks me to no end when I find people taking the elevator to go to the 1st floor or taking the elevator down or up 1 storey instead of hauling their lazy asses to the up/down 1 flight of stairs. Don’t get me wrong- this irritation is only reserved for people who aren’t 80 or don’t have a broken leg.

Coming back to my point, the other day, I get back from my run and hop into the elevator along with a motley crew of other punks who live in my building. I hit 19 and moved to the back of the elevator. And one by one, the others start punching in their floor buttons. 23. 34. “Woah!”, screamed my mind and promptly jumped out of its lethargic stupor. There were 4 (5, if you count the little girl accompanying her mommy) more people who needed to push their floor buttons. “Nah, I can”t be that lucky!”, I wondered. Next up, two dudes, one of whom wasn’t aware that deodorants were in existence for over a 100 years. Smelly-dude hits floor 30. Not-so-smelly-dude checks out all the buttons for a good 10 seconds. After a brief look of confusion on his face, it dawns on him that 23 was already lit up. Phew! The mommy-daughter pair didn’t waste much time. They entered the car, mommy hits 34 and picks up daughter to make place in the elevator.

Finally, the moment of truth. A tall, blonde, sharply dressed pyt steps into the elevator. She raises her slender arm towards the buttons, I can’t decide whether to admire her gorgeous hair or watch her manicured index finger as it inches towards the button that could possibly end my dream run. My heart was pounding in anticipation of what I hoped would be my glorious victory over the elevator cynics. My eyeballs oscillated from her finger to the partial of her face that was visible to me. Face. Finger. Finger. Face. Face. Finger. Finger Face. Drumroll. 27. Woohooo! My brain started to do the bhangra and my face wore a massive smile. My fellow occupants in the elevator were starting to get creeped out. But I didn’t care. As the elevator screeched to halt on 19, I could hear the others groan as they shuffled to make place for me to exit the car. Hah! Sweet vengeance!

Cheap thrills I tell you. Sigh!

Joy

Amortya Ray — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:34:30 +0000

I went skydiving last summer. Naturally, I pretty much crapped my pants right up to the point me and my tandem instructor jumped off the plane, but once I was in the air, plummeting 20,000 feet to the ground, with the wind distorting my face, making it look like I was struck by a vicious flesh eating disease, I realized the awesomeness of the moment. That 3 minute drop gave me biggest rush of my life, a high no drink can match. Even the El Toro pales miserably in comparison to this ride. Knowing that it can very well be the last thing I ever do, so might as well go in style, I took a massive leap-of-faith and ended up with an experience of a lifetime.

Morty & skydiver dude trying to be all cool for the camera

Mum once told me that to travel one needs to get 3 things right: the right age, the financial resources, and most importantly, the will to travel. So here’s a couple of things I believe I should definitely attempt before I get too old, go broke, or become too chicken for adventure.

Some day, perhaps!

I’ve always considered myself to be a water baby. Hence, its not surprising that topping my bucket list are a host of water based activities. Scuba diving, surfing, snorkeling, diving with sharks are some of the things I’d love to try. The last one in particular. Considering that I’m not much of an animal lover and detest sea food (yes, a kalank on all of them Bongs out there), I think it would be interesting to live through the Jaws experience first hand. Step one for the aforementioned goal is already in the works. A trip to V’s Caribbean homeland, experimenting with T&T cuisine (which, I gather, is very much like Desi food, so I should feel just at home) and lazing on the beach, sipping on a Mojito, is step two. Step three: **gulp** stepping into a steel cage, descending down the clear blue waters, with sharks circling around me, and being terrified of being eaten alive by the very thing I came to see!

Sweet Lord, thats one gorgeous view!

Moving onto less dangerous, but equally incredible things to do! People who know me would agree that physically strenuous activities are really not my thing, but a man can dream, can’t he? I think that climbing to the top of the Pyramid of Giza would be super cool and would certainly make for interesting conversation on a date. Hot date: So Morty, what did you do last weekend? Me: Well, I was in Egypt and I climbed to top of the Great Pyramid of Giza with my buddies and had a beer. Hot date: **too stunned to say anything** I’ve always thought that Egypt is a country much like India. Steeped in mythology and culture and a fabulous destination for tourists. I really want to visit the place someday. Ever since Lucky Ali crooned O Sanam to that gorgeous woman in his video, I was convinced that Cairo/Egypt is one place I must go to. Standing on the top of the pyramid, would be one of the most breathtaking moments of my life.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the carnival at Rio, the touristy spots in Italy/Rome, the gondola’s in Venice, Kerala backwaters, Rajasthan, Ladakh, and of course the millions of places I could visit in the US itself. My list could go on and on. The world is huge and we have so little time. A single lifetime simply isn’t enough to enjoy the beauty of this planet. Makes you realize how insignificant a part you are of this huge ass planet.