Tag: samit sharma

Samit Sharma

Published September 30, 2016

 Hola!

Two super awesome dogs greet you today, for this is the 80th edition of the WEB.            

It’s also the last day of September. It’ll be October tomorrow. Halloween month. Boo. It’ll also be terminal exams month, Oktoberfest month,October heat month, the ultra festive Diwali month and the last month before US Presidential elections month. Month. I’ve said month so many times it doesn’t make sense to me anymore.            

I saw the Presidential debate on Monday. Woke up at 6 in the morning to stream it live on Twitter. It was fine. From what I saw, Clinton’s gonna win the the election and be America’s first Woman President. And Trump, well I feel bad for him. He’s stupid, but I never pegged him to be a loser. The first Debate was his last shot at being seen as a legitimate politician, but he blew it. Big time.            

Speaking of big things, Elon Musk announced his Mars Colonization plan on Wednesday. 

He wants to send a 100 people to Mars by 2022. On a massive spaceship.

SpaceX wants to launch that ship to Mars, send 6 more payloads with fuel for the 80 day journey to Mars. It should technically take at least 6 months, but that’s what billionaire Mr Musk said his company will do it in. He wants to use Methane as fuel, land on Mars, offload the people, convert Mars’ carbon dioxide to Methane and get the ship back to earth to get more people to Mars.          

It’s a massive feat, that will initially cost roughly 10 billion dollars a person. Eventually though, Musk says SpaceX can get a million people to inhabit Mars in a hundred years. And then maybe go to other places in the Solar System, like Enceladus, Saturn’s moon. You should really go see SpaceX’s Mars Colonization video on YouTube.

It sounds pretty outlandish to me. The closest analogy I can make is living in Antarctica. There’s hundreds of people living in Antarctica, most of them for science, but you don’t wanna raise a family over there. It’s cold and it’s barren. Like Mars. It’s a great planet to visit, but you wanna get back home after a while.         

But if I ever get a chance, I’m in. Even if I gotta live there forever. I’ll do it for science. I wanna be a Martian. This planet is meh.         

Tis, mate, was the Weekly Email Blast, email 80. Happy weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published September 23, 2016

Good Morning, mates.

That’s a dog whose name escapes me. But he’s sleepy, and I just woke up from a nap so I’m gonna have a rapid fire sort of email this week and rattle off whatever I have on my sleep deprived brain.         

Sleep deprived because I woke up early today for the valedictory of my International Relations course. For which, I ordered 50 Veg And 40 Chicken Burger King Crispy Combos for the History Association of Jai Hind college. Here’s the beautiful 6 feet 4 inches bill that came with it.

Pictured alongside my parents’ book wardrobe, which is 7.5 feet till that beam that’s jutting out. Glorious, simply glorious. That bill just made this email blast legendary.           

Speaking of blasts, I wanna warn you against using Samsung’s Note 7 phones. A hundred odd Note 7s exploded over the last few weeks, and Samsung issued a recall of all 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s it sold. That’s what happens when you stretch a lithium ion battery to its limits. Just don’t buy a Note 7, which is a pity because it seemed like a great phone. Too bad its battery explodes spontaneously.           

Also, this week I updated my phone and iPad to iOS 10. Notifications are better,  but more importantly, you can send stickers and gifs via iMessage. Or send handwritten texts or send regular texts with a tonne of bells and whistles. It’s fun. I’ve started enjoying replying to texts now.             

Yesterday was the Autumnal equinox, meaning autumn’s here. Not in Bombay, obviously, but in temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. Autumn’s called Fall in the US, because ‘leaf fall’, apparently.  Never mind that. My favourite TV shows return this fall. Modern Family’s eighth season started yesterday, but I couldn’t see it on Star World Première for some reason. I hope I can see The Simpsons’ 28th season and the now crumbling Big Bang Theory’s tenth and hopefully final season. They both start next week.               

So, enjoy your Autumn, even though it’s raining pretty bad right now. Good thing you can stay home and watch TV.               

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 79. Happy weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published September 16, 2016

Hey fella!

That’s Bolt the Super Dog, when he was little, apathetic to that chew toy carrot. But aww. Just aww.          

All four of my projects are due this Tuesday, so I can feel the deadline breathing fire down my neck. And these are projects for the HSC State Tests, so they’re important. I’m done with my history project, but that’s all I’ve done. I gotta produce three more 15 page projects in three days. Yeah, it is getting uncomfortably toasty. That doesn’t make sense, a lot like why I kept delaying it. Maybe I shouldn’t have delayed the work. Na, who am I kidding. Deadlines are fun.         

Enough with all the meh talk. Yesterday was the last day of the Ganesh festival. I can’t think of what it’s actually called. So all those Ganesh idols that people cared for and worshipped over the last ten days, were mercilessly drowned without a second thought. We also saw Mumbai Rains, who most people had written of go ‘But wait, there’s more!‘. I’m glad it rained yesterday, because that ruined people’s plans for fireworks. Or ‘crackers’, like we call them in broken English.           

My history project on Genghis Khan turned out pretty good, so mail back if you fancy reading a draft. I apologize for my yawnful language.           

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 78. Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published September 9, 2016

 Yoo hoo again !

That’s still Loren Grush’s dog. Now wearing a bandana. I’d like to add here, dogs are the only ones that can pull off bandanas. And no one else.            

And now I’m gonna talk about the new iPhone. Of course I am. It wouldn’t be a complete email blast without me going on about the new iPhone. 

There you have it. The iPhone 7. Successor to iPhone 6s. It doesn’t have a headphone jack. That’s okay. No big deal. It takes ‘courage’, as Phil Schiller put it. It also takes stupidity to kill something that is the single most popular tech accessory in the world. But never mind that, the Jet Black iPhone has the prettiest color I’ve ever seen on a phone. Jet Black. Even saying it makes you cooler. Before this I’d seen Jet Black Super Cars. Like the Koenigsegg CCX. 

 The new iPhone also has a great camera, with great zoom, two lenses on the 7 plus and more importantly, Bokeh. Bokeh is when the background behind a potrait subject has soft blur. I don’t think it is particularly useful for most people, but it sounds fun. Bokeh. Bokeh !          There were also those things. 

 ‘AirPods’. They’re like the EarPods I’m currently using as I write this email but without the wires. There also was the Apple Watch series 2. The new Apple Watch is for fitness. Ergo, it’s not for me. Both the AirPods and the new Apple Watch need to be charged, which is unacceptable. My watch has a ten year battery, not day long battery. Nobody want more things to charge. And lastly, Apple also announced Super Mario on the App Store, which is swell. Apple might put Nintendo’s DS out of business with that game, but again, that’s not a lot of business Nintendo’s gonna lose either.           

And that’ll be all in this week’s edition of ‘Great, another long email’.             

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 77. Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published September 2, 2016

Yoo-hoo!

That’s Loren Grush’s dog. 

I figured including at least one dog in each email blast would make it way better. This one’s ten times better than it would be without that picture, and you’re not even done reading it yet. I’m wondering if writing anything beyond this point is worth doing so, ’cause I know it’s moot compared to that great picture of that glorious dog.         

I could just end this email here and hit send, and it probably would be one of the best emails ever. Yet I continue writing. It’s a long weekend for most of us because of Ganesh Chaturthi and or Teacher’s day this Monday. It’s a double whammy. Good double whammy. I don’t have college till Tuesday. It’s glorious. I say glorious a lot lately. Glory be.           

I do have some projects to complete but I figured I’m gonna do that just before the submission date. I feel like I’ve accomplished more that way. ‘Do it right before the deadline’, that’s my motto.           

September’s here, it comes with a lot of festivals, and more importantly, a lot of holidays. Too many holidays, if you ask me, but Yay holidays. Yay.           

So yeah, that’s it, enjoy the festive weekend.           

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 76. Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published August 26, 2016

Thunderstruck !             

That’s what you’ve been after reading three quarters of a century’s worth of email blast.  You see, I was caught in the middle of a railroad track (the WEB). 

I looked round. I knew there was no turning back. (In for the inning, in for the game). 

My mind raced (and so did my fingers). 

And I thought what could I do, I knew there was no help, no help from you.

Sound of the drums,

Beating in my heart,

The thunder of guns

Tore me apart.

You’ve been, Thunderstruck.           

AC/DC lyrics sit perfectly at the top of WEB 75. The Rhenium jubilee. (Re, Z=75) Thunderstruck is my favorite AC/DC song. Not Highway to Hell, not Back in Black. Thunderstruck.           

And they make sense, too, because I started the Weekly Email Blast, and I’m not turning back. There’s great weeks and there’s boring weeks, but there always is a Blast. Don’t need reason, don’t need rhyme. Ain’t nothin’ that I’d rather do. Maybe I am on the Highway to Hell.     

Risin’ up, Back on the street. Did my time, took my chances. Went the distance, now I’m still on my feet. Just a man and his will to survive. It’s the Eye of the Tiger.

Full of lyrics of rock and metal songs. Never mind, rhenium is a transition metal anyway.

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 75. Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published August 19, 2016

Olà. For the last time.       

Promise. I won’t bother you in Portuguese ever again. Maybe.       

I’m tired and bored of writing deadass emails. Oh yeah, I said deadass. Now I just need to find out what deadass means. I was exhausted from writing boring emails for the last couple of weeks.

This one puts an end to that deadassery. I’m stretching out of my repetitive email comfort zone here. I’ve been waiting to drop an F bomb in an email blast for 74 weeks now. So here it is.

‘Donald Trump is a FLIPPING moron!’         

 That’s the only F word I’m willing to send out in the WEB. I still haven’t graduated Cuss word college yet. I love cussing, swearing, cursing, using profanities, obscenities, expletives or whatever the hell you wanna call ’em. But only verbally, occasionally and when it’s not distasteful. And I find it’s almost impossible to write them, or more specifically, type them. But I always have them ready, in my quiver of words that tend to piss people off.           

And about the Donald Trump thing, l didn’t really mean that. Trump is probably the best businessman I’ve read. I read ‘The Art of the Deal’ last week, and unlike most people, I liked it. It is all about Trump and his vain, boastful self. If you ever decide to start a business, one that is profit driven, wants to make a ton of money, and wants to monopolize the market it enters, Trump is the guy to read. He is in no way an writer, but if I trusted one person to turn a million dollars into a billion dollars, it’d be Trump. Would I trust him to lead the biggest, most powerful country on this planet? Absolutely not. Is Donald Trump a moron? Hell no. Trump is a devious, shifty politician but one heck of a businessman.             

And finally, India has one Olympic medal at Rio this year. Olà! It’s a bronze, but it’s great. Sakshi Malik ended the medal drought with an amazing win in her Freestyle Amateur Wrestling match. Which, FYI is kinda boring to watch, and even though it’s called freestyle wrestling, you can’t pick a steel chair and go to town with it. Hail professional wrestling if you wanna watch that.           

At 7:30 tonight, PV Sindhu faces Spain’s best badminton player, Carolina Marin for Olympic gold. We’re all cheering for India tonight. Hail!           

Tis, mate, was the Weekly Email Blast, email 74. The tungsten jubilee (W, Z=74) Happy Weekend !!!

Samit Sharma

Published August 12, 2016

Olá. Again.       

This is gonna be a thing for a while now. At least till the 21st of August, when the Rio Olympics end. Portuguese is here to stay. For two more weeks. It doesn’t matter if it sucks. When watching Rio Olympics, you do as the Rionians(?) do.        

The Games have been a bummer for anyone rooting for India. Good thing I’m side-rooting for the USA. It’s not something to be proud of, but they’re good at every freakin’ sport. After running through roughly half the contingent, India has produced a total of 0 medals. And except for Abhinav Bindra who lost the Bronze medal by .5 points, we were never even close. Team USA is number one on the medals tally. With 38 medals, of which sixteen are Gold. Oh they’re winning at everything. And it doesn’t look like they’re gonna stop.         

Anyone who says participation is more important than winning is clearly a loser. Qualifying for the World’s biggest sports competition is a massive feat, something that athletes spend their lives preparing for. Losing at the grandest stage of them all has gotta sting, but when you’re defeated in a way that it looked like you never stood a chance, you’re a loser.            And for god’s sake, why are equestrian events even a part of the Olympics. The horses are doing most of the stuff, not the humans.            

Half of all news right now is about the Olympics, and half of that is about another Indian losing.           

If you feel like asking ‘how does writing about that help?’, you should know: it doesn’t. Nothing helps. It’ll be a huge surprise for everyone if India’s total medal tally is in double digits.            

I hate writing these rant-like emails more than you hate reading them, so deal with it. Sorry.   

Tis, mate, was the Weekly Email Blast, email 73. Happy Weekend !!!

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 !!!