How to Shampoo - a Random musings guide for Men

At the outset, let me make this article useful by providing links to sites that actually tell you how to use shampoo.

• http://www.wikihow.com/Wash-Your-Hair
• http://www.wikihow.com/Shampoo-Your-Hair

Now that that's out of the way, I can safely get on with my own booger article! [Health tip: Following advice of booger journalists can lead to several tax-deductible hospitalizations. One needs to weigh the pros & cons of reduced income tax liabilities versus the dull and drab ceilings of hospitals. There is no competition, actually - tax deduction wins hands down!]
Okay. Welcome to the first ever how to guide for men from The Authority on men's hygiene and other issues. Today's topic for brother neanderthals is: How to Shampoo. A typical male will use any soap available (if he uses soap i.e.) on his hair whereas a typical female will consume at least a gazillion litres of shampoo, conditioner, stabilizer, shining pearl drops and what not (and that is just till her pubescent period) I know typical males reading this article are probably sniggering at the words pubescence and period. I just have the following piece of useless advice for them: grow up!!! I say useless because I know guys never grow up. I am a living example of a typical guy! :)
Anyway, since the male species is absolutely uninformed about the use of the shampoo (though they may be intensely involved in the manufacture of it), let me advise menfolk of the world on the benefits of shampooing as it were:
1.        It makes your hair shiny
2.        It helps remove split ends
3.        Your hair feels smoother and men will want to touch it (not much utility for guys from this particular function)
4.        Your hair will smell great
5.        blah blah blah
Essentially, everything that you have right now, except that you get the pleasure of spending a few thousand rupees on all of it, with the security of the knowledge that all the chemicals and surfactants in the shampoo are probably ringing the death knell for your hairs and their roots. That apart, there is also the advantage from using shampoo that in social circles, you can disdainfully cluck at other nescient males and guffaw when they speak about which soap the jocks use to rid themselves of grease and muck.
So here, I present to you, the guide to using shampoos:
1.        Taking a bath: To be covered later in this series of articles (maybe. if I ever get around to getting a bath myself!)
2.        Look for shampoo in the bathroom - bachelors living in their own pads (pads! hah!) can skip this step. This step is applicable for males having female relatives
3.        Realize that there is no shampoo for "Cro-Magnon Man hair". There is only shampoo for hair with split ends, soft hair, root strengthening shampoo, conditioner, daily use pearl drops, etc. i.e. no form of hair vaguely resembling the teeming mass growing on your head
4.        Make mental note to buy Shampoo for Men from chemist shop
5.        Forget about shampooing for two weeks
6.        Finally buy shampoo for men
7.        When taking a bath, grope around in the bathroom looking for shampoo because you have soap in your eyes
8.        Find shampoo and use it lavishly on head. With the extra foam, clean other parts of the body
9.        Wash off
10.        Panic! You see a large black swirling mass on the bathroom floor that you think is a large insect from some horror movie you saw a week ago
11.        Relax, as you realize that its all your own hair!
12.        Your own hair!!! Look at shampoo bottle! Its not shampoo, its Fem Body Hair removal lotion
13.        Console yourself by saying that since you have used it on your face also, there is no need to shave now [never mind that you are missing eyebrows also]
14.        Vow never to fall into the trap of using items meant for female consumption
That's all there is to it! I hope you have found this first edition of Random musings How to Guide for Men useful. Do come back and check out later for more informative articles for men in the battle against social ignominy!
/radgovin

Economics of Ergonomics

I work at a large conglomerate, a so-called MNC and my desktop offers me least physical comfort. “Ergonomics? What’s that?”, was the response of the person in charge of PCs and accessories at the office. Unfortunately, the way things work over here is that the IT guy does
not get to hand out the furniture that accompanies the PCs. As a result, for most of the people in the office the PCs have become a pain issue in more than one sense. The other sense is of course Websense. Go to websense.com to find out why I am bitching about it!

Anyway, have not been up to much other than getting bank guarantees for clients. You should read some of the clauses that are present in the tomes that these bank guys hand out. One of these days, you chaps are going to make the mistake of actually reading one of the bank loan forms and then you will realize that other than your genitals, you have mortgaged about almost everything else to the bank in lieu for the pittance that they have given you. Actually, if you are taking a loan from xxxxx bank, you will have mortgaged your genitals also. See page 23 of their instructions to loan applicants document. I know what your response is going to be: what the heck is a instructions to loan applicants document? Followed by: how the heck can websense classify Radgovin’s blog as tasteless?

Anyway, coming back to ergonomics at the work place. One of my colleagues recently had a painful introduction to the reality of ergonomics [or lack thereof] at the workplace. He had been complaining of back pain for a long time and one day out of pure frustration he hit out at his chair. The reason for his frustration of course was not his back pain but an anatomical activity that the client was carrying out with him, which in polite circles may be described as “screwing”

Anyway, imagine his surprise when out of the portion of the chair that was supposed to be supporting the small of his back, came out a mouse! Not the one connected to the PCs, you dummies! A real, live mouse. I began to wonder: is this a corporate strategy to keep control over employee activity? Has the mouse been programmed only to give back pain to employees being “screwtinized” by the client? Or has it been programmed to bite off essential body parts of rambunctious workers? Of course, people with bank loans have nothing to worry about because their genitals are already in the safe deposit box. But what about us average God-fearing, mortgage hating, low-salary earning mortals? Something to ponder over, ain’t it?

In case you are working for such an MNC, I suggest you get your wooden chair replaced immediately. Better still, buy a plastic one yourself and haul it to office everyday - that way, you can be sure its not going to be “moused”. And considering the spiralling cost of plastic these days, take a loan for the chair and leave your essential body parts with the bank for safekeeping!

/Radgovin

Resume of a Hero

This flash fiction story is an entry for the Caferati Flash Fiction contest 2008. Let me have your comments on the same.

Name: Sajnee Rant

Age: Twenty seven years only. Period.

Status: Married to Seventy two thousand females and keeping each one of them glad.

Special abilities: Can dodge bullets, scale sky scrapers with bare hands, sing in twelve hundred languages, light a cigarette without the aid of match sticks / lighters, hair style that sets the trend, clothes that can give an emperor a complex, sport skills including but not limited to football (ability to score from goalkeeper's position), cricket (able to hit any ball out of the stadium, especially if it is the last ball and there are 5 runs required to win the match), table tennis (reflexes quicker than a gazelle's), tennis (currently playing under the pen-name of Federrer), javelin throw (world record for longest throw of javelin, across the pacific ocean), shot put (another world record), kho-kho (captain of the Indian team), rifle shooting (under the pen-name Rathore), boxing (world heavy-weight champion in the featherweight category), et al. Other abilities include: ability to run faster than Rajdhani, stop an Airbus A380 from colliding with runway fences, up turn cars and trucks at will with a single flick of the wrist, ability to raise and raze mountains with the twirl of the little finger, control over the rain gods and an immaculate sense of timing, when it comes to saving damsels in distress.

Academic:
B. Tech. CSE, IIT Bombay,
PGP Marketing, IIM Ahmedabad,
Ph. D. Social Sciences, Stanford, California,
MBBS, K. E. M. College,
M. D. Neurosurgery, Oxford.

Applying for the post of: Sweeper for Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), 'S' Ward

Finance Basics

Everyone can do with understanding the basics of Finance. Same is applicable for me too! :)

Sr. No.	Term	Meaning
1	Liquidity Ratio	It shows the ability of a firm to pay its short term debts as they mature
2	Current Ratio	Current Assets / Current Liabilities
3	Quick Ratio (Acid-test)	Quick assets / Current Liabilities where, quick assets = current assets - inventory
4	Profitability Ratio	It is used to measure a firm's efficiency & ability to generate profits
5	Gross Profit margin	Gross profit / Sales
6	Net Profit margin	Net Profit (PAT) / Sales
7	Ownership Ratio	This helps to analyze the present and future investments in a firm & to compare the investments with factors such as Debt, Earnings, Dividends & Stock price
8	Return on Equity or Net Worth (RONW)	RONW = Net Profit / Avg. Equity
9	Earnings Per Share (EPS)	EPS = Net profit / No. of shares outstanding
10	Price Earnings Ratio (P/E)	P/E = Market price of shares / EPS
11	Debt Equity Ratio	Total debt / Total Equity
12	Debt Service Coverage Ratio	(PAT + Depreciation + Non cash expenses + interest on loans) / (interest on loans + Repayments)
13	Average Net Funds Employed (ANFE)	ANFE = Average Net Working Capital + Average Net Fixed Assets
14	Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)	ROCE = (PBIT - TAX) / ANFE
15	Economic Value Added (EVA)	EVA = (ROCE - WACC) x ANFE

For further reading: http://www.dsm.com/en_US/html/invest/glossary.htm

Movie Review: Taare Zameen Par

All the citizens of this great country that we live in, i.e. Bharat, will agree with me that some of us, or even most of us, are the biggest hypocrites in the whole wide world. Not only that, we are among the worst racist and non-secular people in the world. There is ample proof of all these qualities everywhere. I will cite a few examples:

• Policy formers emphasize the need for increase in female to male population ratio. Policy formers reside in New Delhi. India's highest rate of female infanticide occurs in the northern states of India.
• We talk about equality for all. And then we go ahead and have reservations for backward classes and women, when economic concessions are the need of the day.
• We talk about equality and yet when the time comes to implement a uniform civil code, we make hasty reversals in policy.
• We crib about how the west has zero respect for women, how women are treated as objects in the west and how, traditionally, India has always been kind and generous to women. And then we have incidents such as rapes, molestation and groping that take place every day.
• Worst of all, we have got a very poor media: one which is interested in marketability of the news as opposed to the impact. A media which excels in doling out sensationalist oeuvre as opposed to journalistic excellence. A media which leaves no stones unturned when gets an opportunity to calumniate any individual/organization - an opportunist media, in short.

Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that cinema has chosen over the last few years to make movies which deride this phenomenon of rapacious journalism. Also, movies over the years have criticized the attitude of the Indian masses: the chalta hai attitude, the over dependence on fortune as opposed to hard work and the ineptitude of the junta to realize plights of differently abled people in this country.

The movie Taare Zameen Par, which speaks about learning disabilities, comes as a breath of fresh air. For me, there was serendipity in how I came across to seeing the movie. Me and MsF had gone to watch Welcome [which by the way is a good brainless comedy to watch and forget about your worries for a while]. Since the theatre we went to was not playing the said movie, we decided to watch TZP. This was what we call a run-time-decision (RTD). And like most of my RTDs this proved to be an amazing experience.

TZP is the story of a boy Ishant Avasti, born to middle class parents in the city of Mumbai. Therefore, that puts him into a category of millions. He is, therefore, no different than any other kid roaming the streets of Mumbai and that is exactly how his parents treat him. What his parents do not realize though is the fact that their child is unique. He has abilities that very few other people on this planet possess. That of looking at the world in a different way than is taught at schools, imbibed by parents and reinforced by interactions with peers. He is a dyslexic: he has learning disabilities. Unfortunately for him, even his parents do not realize this disability. However, with this disability he is also in possession of a wonderful gift - that of an amazing ability of capturing what he sees as pictures - pictures which range from tranquil colourful panoramas to intense, soulful paintings showing the pain in his small heart.

TZP scores maximum points for the rendition of the lead character's emotions. The movie revolves around the child actor [sometimes a tad too long!] and Aamir Khan plays a wonderful supporting actor role. He lets his lead actor direct the pace of the movie, involving himself just at the right time when he feels the movie might be losing some steam. Although the movie has a running time in excess of conventional hindi cinema, at no point is the viewer forced to think about taking a breather. The musical score by SEL is brilliant, especially the track "Kholo Kholo". This depicts the state of mind of "the brash and confident child who loses his confidence because his parents don't understand his plight and send him to training school where he meets a teacher who helps him understand himself and regain his confidence so that he can shine in this materialistic world".

A must watch movie for people who have been deprived of good viewing fare over the last year, with ostentatiously crappy movies such as OSO and Saawariya hogging the limelight. 4.5 stars to this movie out of 5!!!