Author: realsamsharma

Samit Sharma

Published August 5, 2016

Olá!

Welcome to quadrennial summer Olympics Weekly Email Blast!         

The world’s foremost sporting marvel has brought us to Rio, Brazil. Home of Christ the Redeemer, the Maracanã stadium, thousands of Favelas and the Zika virus.           

Say what you want, the Olympics are the bona fide, certified biggest competition in the world. It’s where sportspeople from 206 nations compete for Olympic glory and the medals that come with it. This year, Rio is riosponsible (hehe) for hosting this massive extravaganza that will see over 11 thousand athletes competing and half a million tourists attending the Olympic Games.             

Rio has been under serious criticism for its unpreparedness for the Games, for everything from the Stadia, the Arenas to the Olympic village and the transport system that connects them all. Rio spent more than 11 billion Dollars over seven years preparing for the games, and only finished most of the work earlier this week. The city’s waterways are still terribly polluted, and the Zika virus has been ‘looming’ over the whole event. Out of the 175,000 Zika cases in Brazil, a quarter are from Rio.             

So, things aren’t exactly in Rio’s favor, but it was the same before FIFA in 2014 and everything worked out fine. The Olympics are almost too big to be beaten by crowded streets and mosquitoes.             

Like most years, USA might top the medals tally, probably because they also have the biggest, 756 player strong contingent to qualify for the games. India has a 120 member contingent for Rio, and should probably bring more Olympic glory to India than ever before.             

The Olympic Games kick off at 4:30 am tomorrow morning with the opening ceremony at the Maracanã Stadium. Should be epic. The next time there’s gonna be a summer Olympics special WEB is gonna be around WEB 280, and in Tokyo, and I don’t even know if the internet is gonna survive till then. Let’s make Rio Olympics count.

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 72. Happy Olympic Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published July 29, 2016

Сайн уу!       

(Pronounced ‘sain-uu’) is Mongolian for Hello. Language of the badasses called Mongols and of the country, Mongolia.         

I started off in Mongolian because the topic for my history project is Genghis Khan, the conqueror of the biggest stretch of earth by any person in a lifetime. He and his army also killed over 20 million people while conquering said stretch of land, between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Japan. 

Genghis Khan and Mongols in general have been ignored by textbook history for as long as public education has existed. In the country I rule, the history textbook’s gonna have a separate chapter for Mongols. Sure, they were ultra violent, gory barbarians that could put Hitler to shame, but they had a big giant patch of this planet they could claim is theirs. They killed off 11% of the earth’s population at that time, (~12th/13th centuries C.E.) The Mongols basically conquered all of Asia except India in a period of a few decades. How’s that for a résumé?         

In college, I’m free to pick any topic I want, which a) allows me to be excited about my project and b) lets me bother other people about my topics like a pesky kid.         

I am actually excited about my projects this year. For psychology, my project is gonna be about Prejudice, which is fantastic for anyone who is very opinionated and loves pointing out what’s wrong with society.          

For economics I picked The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which sounds boring and actually kind of is, until you learn that the bank has an underground vault that holds about 11% of the world’s gold reserves.          

I don’t like my Political Science project topic so I’m not even gonna talk about it.         

I couldn’t think of anything to talk about, and hence you had to read through that hodgepodge of borderline boredom. I can, however write about American Presidential Elections, but citing that you’re so bored after reading the former half of the email, I won’t annoy you.           Read ya next week. (Sorry)           

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 71. Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published July 22, 2016

Happy Pi Day!       

It’s the 22nd of July. 22/7. Jog yer memory. Pi day isn’t a big deal in most colleges. But schools, my school particularly, loves Pi day. Pi day at school still is an all out blast, all about this Greek letter which is, you know, ‘important’.

 Pi, the infinite little bugger.         

Another little bugger that has been bugging millions of smartphones for over a week now is Pokémon Go. Bloody Pokémon. They’re all over the place. And as a person who doesn’t care a lot about those animé monsters, it hasn’t been an easy week.

You can’t even get it in India yet. To get it, I’d have to change my App Store to the American App Store and I just don’t wanna do that. However, there are PokéMorons all around my college (and the world) who keep bumping into each other and just won’t Pokémon Go Away. Nerds. I wasn’t excited about Go at all. Firstly, it requires me to walk around and go places, which ain’t happening. And secondly, I’m not a big fan of Japanese animé.           

When I was little I didn’t really watch Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z and Beyblade. I watched a little Pokémon, never saw a single episode of Dragon Ball Z only played with actual physical Beyblades. Sure, pikachu and evee are cute, but I never was really into the rest of the stuff.

And that’ll be all. Puh- Pi!           

‘Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 70. Happy weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published July 15, 2016

Stop giggling.         

No seriously, stop. WEB 69 will not be full of barely there sexual innuendos. I don’t know any. I have no clue why the number incites unnecessary unfunny references to sex. But ha ha ha, I wrote Weekly Email Blast 69.        

Cela a été une mauvaise semaine pour la France.First, they lost the Euro final to friggin’ Portugal of all countries. And then late yesterday, the 14th of July, their Fête Nationale, a truck full of ammunition slammed into the people at celebrating Promenade des Anglais in Nice. The truck literally ploughed through hundreds of people, killing 84. The idiot driver was shot dead but clearly, the world has gotten used to it. Heck, even my emails have this informal ‘this week in humanity sucks‘ section that I absolutely hate writing.            

I’ll bicker about it for a week, the media will bicker about it for a week, and then before the week ends there’ll be something new and horrible we can bicker about. It’ll go on like this forever, until some kind alien species kill us all. Pesky apes running around on a beautiful planet they clearly don’t deserve.         

There’s nothing you can do to prevent bad things from happening. There’s no way anyone could’ve known what the idiot driver driving his truck into and over people was upto. What’ll the authorities do? Ban trucks? Enforce ‘sanity tests’ on all drivers? You don’t have guns to blame here, so anti-arms activists don’t have much to do here.           

Only people kill people. Not guns, not knives, not trucks. People. Getting rid of guns will help a little, getting rid of morons with guns will help a lot.         

‘Then what if we don’t give morons guns in the first place?’ Well the moron will kill you with something else. We’re hopeless. Some idiot with a gun could kill anyone of us and we couldn’t do squat about it. There’ll be people on the streets, making more traffic with stupid arguments like ‘guns kill people’. They simply don’t. People kill people.

And while we’re at it, ‘Spoons make people fat’, and ‘pens get spellings wrong’. Let’s ban spoons and pens!They both have nothing to do with people getting killed, and neither do guns.           

Cheerio.           

‘Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 69. Happy weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published July 8, 2016

OLÉ !     

 I’m deep into football territory. I wanted a France vs Germany final, I got that as a semifinal, and boy it was a good semifinal. France had the home advantage, they won and Germany lost to an Allied Power yet again.       

Italy lost to Wales in the quarters last week, but they made up for that when they unveiled the convertible LaFerrari this week.This magnificent drop top beauty.

Isn’t she pretty.  

 I am in no way a petrolhead, but I know a good car when I see one. The LaFerrari has 50 shy of a thousand horsepower, and can accelerate from naught to a hundred kmph before you’re done reading this sentence. 2.4 seconds to be exact. And keep accelerating till it hits 350 kmph. But all that simply doesn’t matter when the car looks this stunning.         

Ferrari sold the 100 LaFerraris they made to select Ferrari owners. So to sum up, the new LaFerrari is stupid fast, uber cool, and you can’t get one. At least till October.             

And finally, if you’re interested, you can wake up early this Sunday morning to catch UFC 200. And stay up after midnight to catch the France v Portugal Euro final.              

Ciao for now.
             

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 68. Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published July 1, 2016

Hail !       

( I’ll leave you hanging with that one )

(Sorry)             

Independence Day is one of my favorite movies.I’ve seen it multiple times, never once disappointed or bored ’cause it simply is an amazing movie. It has angry aliens, rad fighter jets, a kickass cast and a badass poster.

And there was Independence Day: Resurgence. Good lord that movie was sappy. See, nostalgia cannot be the plot of a movie. No one told that to the people scripting this movie. At some points, it almost resembled a Bollywood movie, which is a kick in the nuts to the whole franchise.         

The anti gravity helicopters hovering(?) over the White House, the floating virtual existence extra terrestrial robot orb (did they literally have Siri do the lines?) and every sentence that came out of Dr Okun’s mouth were all sappy as hell. Plus, the movie reinforced our silly idea of what aliens must be like. Trust me, they won’t be like ET and they definitely don’t wanna deal with us. They know what I know, that humans are simply not worth the trouble.            

Maybe I was disappointed because I saw it right after Finding Dory. Or maybe, Independence Day 2 really did suck. Yeah it sucked. More than new TopGear.           

And on that bombshell, it’s time to end.         

 Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 67. Happy 4th of July Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published June 24, 2016

By Tlaloc !       

It is pouring, and Tlaloc is the Aztec God of Rain. Tlaloc was known as a rather wrathful god, presiding over the supernatural ministries of rain, thunder and also fertility. He was held responsible for floods and droughts and everything in between. I just hope the phrase ‘By Tlaloc’ catches on.

There’s a lot of explanation involved, but just try exclaiming ‘By Tlaloc!’ if it rains heavily.              I got a half day off from college owing to the rain and thunder clouds have continued to hammer at Bombay since noon.            

As of 5:15, it has stopped raining so joke’s on them.           

Speaking of jokes, Britain just voted to leave the European Union. In a referendum that took place yesterday, in which over 46 million Brits voted, 51.9 % voted to leave the EU while 48.1 % voted to remain. And Sensex crashed by a 1000 points, the Pound lost a tenth of its forex value and David Cameron resigned. It’ll take more than two years for Britain to totally leave the $13.6 Trillion European Union so it’s gonna stay in the newsfor a long time. There’s so much economics involved with the entire thing I’ll just leave it there.

 That’ll be all.           

‘Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 66. Happy weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published June 17, 2016

Heave!       

No. It doesn’t take a lot to write an email, unless you decide to go ballistic and write one to a lot of people every week. Since I’ve decided to go ballistic, I gotta sit myself down to produce a can of email whoop-ass every Friday.         

It’s not like I have a room full of monkey content writers to do my bidding.

I can’t do that. I’m not the Indian Television industry.          

I do wish I could summon creativity like I can summon productivity. One deadline and I’m productive all along. Productive only right before the deadline, but productive nevertheless. It’s not the same when creating stuff. Every week when I gotta write the WEB, I check Twitter for relevant stuff, and check my Notes for gems like this one.

Hey, sometimes they work.         

But most of the times I start and elaborate on pretty much anything that is on my mind at that point of time. Sometimes the thought I’m elaborating, it clicks and I’m done writing the email in 20 minutes flat.           

And other times like this one, I can’t think of anything and I write about how I write emails. Maybe next time I’ll write about how I wrote about how I write emails. Just don’t bank on it. It’ll most likely be mind numbingly boring.             

That, mate is how you write an email when you’ve got a movie to catch, which reminds me to remind you to go watch Finding Dory. Go watch Finding Dory. I am, and you should too.             

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 65. Happy weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published June 10, 2016

‘Back to school you go!’         

Does not apply to me anymore. ‘Back to college’ has simply no ring to it. And as you may remember, I am simply out of ways to start email. So you get what you get, which is a title-full of annoyance.          

Remind me to stop whining about how I start emails.          

My brother made it to sixth grade this year, and it was his first day yesterday. 10 of the 14 teachers he has were my teachers in school at some point. I was very surprised by the stat, and  pleased to know that the simple education machinery I was a part of is still intact. Colleges are very inefficient at what they do. Hell, they can’t even manage to get obnoxious teens to attend classes. I don’t think colleges are even necessary. It should go from schools to universities. (Almost) Systematic education to systematic higher education. No need for those super crowded junior college classes.           

I also wanna leave this with you.

Barack Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton for the next president yesterday. So it’s gonna be Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump fighting to become the most powerful person on Earth. I don’t want either of them to win. I’m still rooting for Bernie Sanders. I know he won’t win, I just don’t like the other two.                 

UEFA Euro 2016 starts at half past midnight tonight. Sure, it’s no FIFA but should be fun to watch. I’m waiting for a France versus Germany final exactly a month from today. They’ve always had great fights.                    

This weekend concludes summer holidays 2016. I’ll end emails with Happy weekend. Again.                   

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 64. Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published June 3, 2016

It’s still hot.         

That’s the first thing I said when I stepped out of Bombay airport this Wednesday evening (minus the cuss verb between still and hot). It was 9 o’clock but it was 33 degrees out with 80 percent humidity. After ten days of vacation in cool temperate lower Himalayas, my home town greeted me with a hot sticky slap to the face.         

Humid weather always feels like a low blow. It’s not hot, it’s not cool. It’s just sweaty and annoying. Bombay doesn’t have the greatest of climates, and except the 30 odd cool winter days we get, we’re steamed momos. Of course, all resident Mumbaikars have gotten used to the weather. No harm in obsessively writing about it either.           

You got a week or so before the monsoon winds unleash their wet fury. That week is the best time of the years to buy and eat fruits. You can stock up on mangoes before inferior varieties take over. You have litchis and cherries and plums from north India (that I personally saw being harvested a few days ago) along peaches which I personally find meh.            

Also meh is Snap chat and any news that comes off of Snap chat. See, Snap chat is stupid. In fact, anything that that happens because of Snap chat is absolutely, positively pointless and deserves no further arguments.            

You have a good day.

 Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 63. Happy holidays !!!