Category: Humor

It was an uneventful weekend, and I was trying to shed calories by walking down the city streets after a tummy full of fried dumplings and sipping on the famed pearl milk tea (100% sugar, of course). 

Despite walking two miles to shake off the heaviness of the meal, I still felt packed – full in the tummy and full of guilt. Especially since this was supposed to be the 30th day of my 60-day weight loss challenge.

Why was it that I could never maintain consistency in my resolve to lose weight? It was not as if I was not exercising due diligence in finding suitable fitness training videos. 

Trust me, I spent hours curating the ‘right’ content.

Easily doable? Check.

Won’t interfere with my regular routine? Check.

No requirement to go to the gym? Check.

Spoon-feeding on the recommended clothes to buy for the routine? Check.

Everything is always lined up, ready to go, a day before the routine begins. It’s only on the day of or the day after that the routine starts to break. 

It could be oversleeping the day before, a stomach upset, an early morning meeting, loss of internet at the time of the workout (yes, that’s a thing!), or an impromptu meeting with a college friend who is only in town for the day. 

As you can see, given my long list of excuses, I am as far as one can be in creating and sticking to a fitness regimen. My multiple failures in maintaining a fitness routine, might I humbly say, do make me an authority on how not to lose weight.

Here are some of my personal favorites of what NOT to do to lose weight:

• Sleeping late the day before, especially if you plan to exercise in the morning.
• Strictly time-boxing your exercise regimen when you know you don’t have the discipline to go through with it.
• Overeating on the ‘exercise’ days, assuming the workout more than compensates for the gluttony.
• Pearl milk bubble tea four times a week is not a good idea.
• Watching exercise videos does not count as exercise.
• Not starting small when you don’t have a reliable history of a consistent exercise and nutrition regimen.
• Not complementing your routine with mindful nutrition.
• Taking this new addition to your ‘routine matinale’ lightly.

I consider this a journal entry, sans the ‘dear diary’ part, more than anything else. I would more likely smile in amusement looking at this decades later if not getting ready to write a 50-page document around my failures with a fitness regimen. All the while thinking about the famed diary entry by Flannery O’Connor:

“Today I have proved myself a glutton—for Scotch oatmeal cookies and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.”

Let me paint a picture:

You are at a grocery store. It is well-stocked, and the groceries appear fresh. The store has enough people to make you feel confident about its appeal but not so many that you need Luke Skywalker-level navigation skills to avoid colliding with other shoppers. 

All in all, it’s a lucky day.

You pick out your groceries, including limes and lettuce, and you’re on your way, smiling to yourself, on the verge of setting your new personal record for the shortest shopping time ever.

Until you reach the billing counter.

There are six billing counters, each with a cashier manning them. They all seem to have an equal number of people in the queue. You pick your lucky number 4 and stand in the line to be served. 

So far, so good. 

A few minutes pass, and you start to get just a bit curious. You start counting your place in the queue, and it’s still six, the same as when you started. You mentally chide yourself for your impatience, take your cell phone out of your pocket, and bury yourself in your news feed.

You know you will have moved in the queue the next time you look up from your phone.

A few more minutes pass, but the news on your cellphone is boring. You have an impulse to count your position in the queue again, and it’s still six. Something’s going on.

You peek at the counter, and the lady out front seems to be bagging her groceries. There are a lot of them. You can’t help but peek into the carts of others ahead of you, and it doesn’t look good.

There is no one behind you in the queue. Now is an excellent time to switch to the other queue!

The one across from you looks like it’s moving fast, the carts are all lighter, and the cashier seems super-efficient.

This one’s going to be better for you.

Five minutes later, you’re still spot number six in the queue. The cashier at the other queue temporarily deserted his station to answer a call. The queue you were initially in is moving fast now, and the cashier seems to have had a fresh shot of Compound V. Dang! You’re tempted to switch back, but you listen to your good inner cop.

“Where’s your loyalty, buddy?”

Yes, you have a spine and will stick with your decision. You’ve spent too much time to desert your queue now. The sunk cost is too much to bear. Unsurprisingly, your original queue continues to serve the customers incredibly fast. You physically can’t bring yourself to move; you’re rooted to the spot. You never thought loss aversion bias was a real thing, did you?

Having buried your head in your device again, you notice an ad for an electronic appliance, a Morphy Richards electronic kettle. You don’t stay with it long because it triggers painful memories of a law.

Murphy’s at that.

When the Benedict Cumberbatch-starrer Sherlock came out what seems like ages ago, I might have gone batshit crazy. I always loved Sherlock, but this modern spin on Doyle’s delectably sharp detective was a class apart. His deduction methods applied to everyday modern objects, making the show relatable.

I remember seeing a clip where Sherlock explained to Watson the intricate differences between the phones of a drunk man vs a sober one. He pointed, very astutely, deriving from scuff marks around the power connection of Watson’s expensive phone, that the previous owner of his used phone had a drinking problem. All that just from an apparent quick glimpse of the phone! After an obvious ‘Whoa, that’s insane!’ and a few other expletives, an image flashed in my mind.

The image of a USB stick (aka USB flash drive).

Now, the logical question would be, what has a USB stick got to do with all this? 

Attention deficit disorder aside, ‘pretty much everything’. 

If Sherlock were to look at the USB port of any of my laptops – previously owned or current, he would find those scratch marks in all of them. I am not kidding!

And this is not because I have a drinking problem (which alcoholic ever says they have one, though? Hmmm….) 

This is simply because either the USB port on my laptop or my USB stick or both are objects of way higher intelligence than me. They are dynamic in their thinking. Way more dynamic than me.

They know to make sure that my first attempt at plugging in the USB stick is always a failure. 

How difficult is it, plugging a USB stick, really? 

I underestimated the complexity of the task, my stupidity, or both. I kid you not, I haven’t yet, in decades of using a computer, ever plugged in a USB stick right the first time. I secretly think the sides flip inside, anticipating my moves. Just to mess with me.

Computer: Here comes the USB stick

After a thorough analysis peeking into the port for 4 full seconds and then another 4 seconds of broody scientific analysis at the USB stick’s USB connector

Me: Yup, I am sure this side up is right.

Computer: Incoming! Activate the connect flip.

Me: Dayum

Call it One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Call it the Rise of Machines.

The other day I was watching a standup comedy show by a famous comedian. After his usual stuff, the guy talked about how fake pleasantries are these days. And maybe have always been? 

He mentioned how ‘Hello, how are you?’ is such a superficial question and how you seldom expect any answer that is but a variation of ‘Fine, thanks, how about you?’ 

Absolutely true!

He then talked about an incident where he didn’t get the usual answer. Instead, the person he asked took the question literally and gave him a full glowing summary of how he was doing. And in painstaking detail. 

The audience laughed as he did quite an animated sketch of this episode. Then, he moved on to other bits of his routine.

I didn’t. I was stuck.

My first reaction: Oh my god! How many times have I done this? Told a person how I was actually doing? Or Have I done that? 

How many times have I been this loser that the comedian has been talking about? One is naïve enough to be pouring her heart out in front of a stranger, not knowing that they will be an infamous star from a comedy bit in the future.

Oh, the world! Oh, the people!

It took me a while to realize that all this rumination was for nothing! For the simple reason that I am incapable of doing this when asked ‘How about you’?

Why?

Because I am a prisoner of pleasantries. 

It doesn’t mean anything. It’s an ailment I invented for myself. My brain, for some reason, runs in a loop; the only answer that will come out of my mouth when someone asks me this question is, ‘Good, good, how about you?’ 

I don’t seem to be able to get anything else out of the mouth at all. 

It’s as if my brain has set a default answer for this question, and anything other than this default gets overridden nanoseconds before I open my mouth.

Me: Come on! It’s so lame; I can’t keep saying the same thing repeatedly. It looks as if I have memorized the response to such a simple question. Let me say something else!

Brain: It’s not lame; why would you think that? It’s so efficient. Like you guys say, ‘short and sweet.’

Me: No, it’s not. It’s robotic; I want to be creative in my responses.

Brain: Creativity and you? Are you sure?

Me: That’s so rude!

Brain: No, seriously! There is beauty in repetition. Didn’t you watch in a show the other day that Feynman decided to have chocolate ice cream his entire life, so he had one less decision to make?

Me: Oh yes, I did. I didn’t think you’d register stuff about scientists and all!

Brain: Oh, I register all right.

Me: You are annoying; I don’t know if I own you or you own me.

Brain: That a question?

The mention of an escalator or elevator brings up a variety of images. While for the comedically inclined, it could be an image of Charlie Chaplin ‘floorwalking’ or Buddy, the elf, trying the escalator for the first time.

Here’s a quick visual reminder for those who don’t know what I am talking about:

Charlie Chaplin in The Floorwalker:

https://youtu.be/XPweRuT8HrM

Buddy trying to use an elevator:

https://youtu.be/duiRmGxeWSQ

There is a reason there is such a massive compilation of things elevator-y.

Escalators were fun growing up. Beating the escalators to get to the next floor by running OR walking up would confer on you the greatest honors imaginable in the world of children aged less than ten years. You were the envied Escalator Beater!

Back to the reality and joys of the modern world, elevators, and escalators are both necessities of work AND leisurely life.

I like them very much; they suit my lazy temperament very well. I rarely take the stairs at work unless a colleague or a boss decides that the timing of them providing me a brain dump had to coincide precisely with their walk up or down the stairs to another meeting. I secretly swear when that happens, especially if it means ‘going up the stairs.’

Cut to the present, like every other work day, I was rushing into the office to be in time for my first meeting of the day. 

This one occasion was extra special, as I was on a definite path to being late to a meeting I had set – a rare and disagreeable honor that I had no intention of earning. Not that day, not in front of that audience! 

So yes, I was in some extra hurry. 

Two elegant ladies behind me had every intention of catching the next elevator too.

Cue the classic ding and the elevator doors open. A burly guy emerges and our eyes meet. I offered him a curtsy elevator gratitude and quickly jumped in with a sigh of relief. 

‘Oh, thank God!’ I think to myself.

The relief was only momentary, as the minute I tried to push the button to get to my floor, I noticed all the buttons were already pressed. 

Damn! No way am I going to be at my desk on time! 

As if that was not enough, I feel eyes burning a hole at the back of my neck and right cheek. Unsurprisingly, the ladies behind me are giving me scorching eyes. I have a feeling that they think that it was I who pushed all those buttons! I was crying inside.

It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me.

At one point, I did think of vocalizing my emotion, but I have seen enough movies to know that would probably be inferred as an admission of guilt. 

I swallowed figurative coal and stayed silent.

I will never be hired in those departments now; oh well!

I eventually got to my desk, miraculously only half a minute late, and somehow, with a well-deserved stroke of luck, I got to hide behind a brief office-wide internet outage that coincided with my little elevator adventure. So, my meeting audience never got to know about their clumsy hostess or her little adventure.

What happens in elevators stays in elevators. 

I sure hope that’s true.