Tag: samit sharma

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 !!!

Samit Sharma

Published May 27, 2016

I’m here!                

Technically, I’m in front of those snow capped mountains. And a few kilometers away. That’s the view I wake up to in Manali, a hill station with only one vice, that being idiot tourists.               

I’m on day five of my vacation during my vacation, it’s cold here and I love it. The temperature is between 4 and 20 degrees, with some spells of rain and winds strong enough to ruin flight operations. My flight to Chandigarh was the most turbulent I’ve ever been on. The flight spent an extra hour flying in circles till the weather was nice enough to land.                

I’ve been to three cities in this week itself; Chandigarh, Shimla and Manali. Okay the last one isn’t a city, but has traffic like any other. It’s the ‘season’ for these places, people throng to Shimla and Manali during summers for the cool weather. They’re tourists, my mortal enemies. Idiots with selfie sticks.                

I, being the noble traveler that I am find better places that are free of a annoying tourists. Like the Viceregal Palace or Curzon house in Shimla.

 Lord Curzon, of ‘Let’s split Bengal,lol’ fame had a swanky pad. After 1948, the Indian government made it into the Indian Institute of Advanced studies. With a huge library. The most beautiful library I’ve ever seen. It’s a shame they don’t allow photography inside.           

The third leg of my trip in Manali has been cool. Literally and figuratively. I visited Manali back when I was little, so I couldn’t do a lot of adventure stuff. I did that this time around. I rafted down an angry white river Beas for 9 rough kilometers. And paraglided  (paraglid?) from a Manali hill to a cricket ground 7 kilometers away for a solid 20 minutes which were probably the 20 most amazing minutes of my life.           

Tomorrow morning I leave for Dharmsala, the fourth leg of my trip. Home of the Dalai Lama and beautiful Dhauladhar Himalayas. Hopefully I survive the 18 kilometer hike I have there day after tomorrow at 5 am in the frikkin’ morning. I guess the traveler in me isn’t lazy at all.           

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 62. Happy holidays !!!

Samit Sharma

Published May 20, 2016

Dear Matey,            

I’ve run out of ways to start an email. ‘Dear’ was the last shred of email etiquette that I’ve had to flush down the outbox because of the sheer number of emails I’ve sent off over the last few years. I’ve exhausted every annoying way to start an email, as listed here : https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukebailey/ways-to-start-an-email-defined?sub=3148413_2751200&utm_term=.elX7exzY2N#.tom35LE8bY

There’s a good chance I’ll address emails with ‘jabroni’ and ‘sucka!’ now. Brace for impact, sucka. Actually, no. Scratch that. I’m never using sucka in a sentence again.             

I’ll soon be in the travel and tourism part of my holidays, when I leave for the airport this Monday morning. I fly to Chandigarh Monday afternoon so that I can leave for Shimla that evening. Monday is gonna be a looonng day. An hour to the airport followed by an hour at the airport followed by 140 minutes in a flying metal box followed by another 30 minutes at new airport followed by 4 hours in car. Approximately. At least I’ll get to see Terminal 2 of the Bombay airport. And a whole lot more over the next eight days.              

I travel to Manali, Dalhousie, Dharmsala and such tourist places in Himachal Pradesh. I don’t want to, but I have to. My initial plan was to go to Mongolia. But flights to Ulaanbaatar are very infrequent connecting flights that take well over 16 hours. Big no no for my parents. So they went their own stupid route; make travelling a mere checklist of all the places you’ve ‘visited’. That’s not called travelling. That’s just tourism. Yet, I look forward to seeing the home of the lower Himalayas. Along with sending off WEB 62, the Himalayan special all the way from Manali.             

I learnt a lot before I go on vacation already, like the fact that Myntra is way better than Jabong, which are still teeny tiny compared to Amazon. And that I’m addicted to online shopping.              

Tis, mate was the Weekly Email Blast, email 61. Happy holidays !!!