TOTALLY Annoying Pests

Here is my list of the most annoying people. So who annoys you the most?

• People who ask for “advice” when they only want to vent. Again and again and again. And again.
• People who ask for “advice” when they want justification for their $^%^ behavior. They want you to say that their behavior is understandable. The only thing understandable about their behavior is that you have a $^%^ on your hands.
• The very annoying persistence of patient men. The type who looks bewildered and taken aback that you still don’t understand how platonic their friendship is and want to approach you again and again to offer the purest platonic friendship since the beginning of time.
• Girls at some chain beauty parlors and chain beauty product outlets who get hyper-friendly and affectionate and insistent. Did you like the shampoo that she sold you last week? You did? How nice. Perhaps you should buy 3 liters of the shampoo and a perhaps some 5 liters of conditioner to celebrate this auspicious occasion. One of the girls had the audacity to be sweetly angry with me for forgetting her name.
• Those who send promotional emails that go “Confirmation Mail: We confirm that you can win the lottery if only you checked it out”. Yeah! And I solemnly swear it appears that you are up to no good.

 

Logging off online games… for now

I used to look in awe at the world of gaming where people crashed cars and shot enemy soldiers with elan. I couldn’t get around to doing so. I certainly tried Road Rash and a few of those games. Even Harry Potter video game where we are supposed to learn a few spells left me cold. I certainly was not prepared to handle Voldemort in the last stage, when I could close the game app instead.

But the world of gaming understood. It realised that not everyone is willing to step into mazes and slay dragons. It offered games for tamer people. I have a 3 hour commute (including to and fro) and these games keep me company and in a very seemingly benign way. Soon I had secret goals that I wanted to achieve and saw the common pattern in these various outings. Logging in every single day without missing your streak gives you such big rewards and you for a time don’t see nothing wrong with filing it under everyday must dos. Just go in and come out and a good 150 gold coins/boosters are credited and you see no harm in it.  You see more gold than you do in real life and they fall into your storage with a clinking sound. Delightful.

The one thing that I object in all these games is the way the game tries to trick you into clicking the “Buy gems/coins/t.cash” button. Not once have I consented or even been tempted to buy extra help but it grates on me when they try incesstantly.

I have seen both medical and casual articles put this addiction down to serotonin overdose. Be that as it may as the Big Boss mania overtook Tamil Nadu, I realised for the first time why I was captivated with this world. It was devoid of jealousy, backbiting, two timing and other stuff that exhaust me. That isn’t how I want to wind up my days. I prefer to sink into a pillow and feed my fake cows or serve hamburgers to fake hungry customers for I know where I am with these predictable creatures. But the time has come to swear off online games. At least until the end of 2017, I will not be logging into any of these games. I found twitter just as exhausting with all the hustle and bustle. I deleted that app too.

So what am I going to fill my time with instead? I don’t know, but it is not going to be another online game.

Quick Look:

-> In Candy Crush, you swap colored candies. So much more challenging than it sounds. I stopped crushing candies at 1550 or so.

-> In Clash of Clan is all about raiding neighbours to build your own strong defenses. It does not feel so bad as all that once you do start doing it. I took Clash of Clan as a sort of challenge. An ardent clash of clanner may not see his game as a benigngame what with all the cannons and mortars. But CoC is suffiently cartoonish to look past that and it to me felt not very different to the other games I obssess over. I just build one wall after another with the same ardent fascination that a child builds a lego wall.

-> In Township, you get to plant wheat and corn and use them to make bread and cornflakes. Or you feed them to cows and milk them and make milk based recipes. Soon your fields are extremely productive and so are your mines and foundry and farms and factories. And your zoo. Feels and looks delightful. Best way to finish your tiring day. Easily the one game which made me lose control of time.

-> In Cooking fever, you get to serve hamburgers and cool drinks but cook much more complicated stuff including exotic desserts. And all this without the mess and the heat of a real kitchen. I did not reach dizzying heights there.  I am not built for this sort of thing. It is exhausting. I watched videos and saw that the game gets more maddening as levels progress. So I quit.

Forward Thinking

One of my most important notes to myself when I started this blog was “Be Positive. Do not use your blog to whine about stuff. Nobody visits blogs to hear more whining than they usually hear”. However, let me please whine a little once is a while. And today’s whine is about the stuff that passes off as “Forwards”

I really have to admit one thing. I judge people a lot based on WhatsApp. But No, I don’t judge those who read every forward and “LOL” at each joke or comment about each video. True, they seem to have too much time. But if they are able to complete all their work in spite of their unlimited WhatsApp time, then good for them.  Similarly, I don’t judge those who leave WhatsApp groups without so much as a goodbye or those who hardly ever reply. They have their reasons, no doubt.

But I do judge people based on what they choose to forward to groups. I am not going to give many examples but just the basic categories.

1. Forward this to 3 other groups and the Pakistan flag will change to Indian Flag, Forward this to 5 groups and the balls will start bouncing, Forward this to 7 groups and the battery of this phone will charge to 100% and all that guff. What are these people thinking? How can forwarding something to seven groups recharge your phone’s battery? I am completely unable to wrap my head around this gullibility.

2. There are 4 Sundays, 4 Mondays etc this February, this is a rare thing that happens only once in 823 years. Chinese Astrologers say it is lucky.When there are 28 days in a non-Leap year’s February and a week contains 7 days it logically follows that (28/7=4) each day will occur 4 times. This is nothing special at all. Pure maths. But here, I mean any forward that will only require a look at a calendar, or perhaps a calculator to refute it. Google will willingly help too. I read something about Israelites having more Nobel Prize winners than any other country. This is not so. Why do some people lie so much? Why do some people believe it so foolishly?

3. Some things about the toerings that Indian women use making them super fertile and the sindoor making them super awesome and other stuff about the earth’s magnetic force running through their body and energizing them. I totally hate it when people say “Scientifically Proved” without thought and others start believing them without any effort to check out how Scientific experiments are really carried out. If they give reasonable example regarding how these experiments were carried out and how these things are inferred then that is different. But just throwing around words “Even the Scientists were baffled” does not make every story true. Why is that people can’t see this?

And my main confusion is this. Is it wrong to point out that these information are false? Should I just keep quiet? To some friends I send a private message about the real information about the forward. But most times I have to let it go. For no one likes a smart-aleck. But all this is so sad. I have a dream, that we will start living in a thinking world.