Shaving and the art of stubble maintenance

Lately, I have been having a lot of shaving disasters. Every time I shave, it seems to be a blood bath on my face. I have managed to cut myself on the face a lot in the recent times. For example, take today’s incident. I open up a new set of Wilkinson Sword razor blades and when I started shaving it was like a slaughter out there. The blades were as smooth as a blade only about 2 years old. In one single sweep, there were 3 distinct cuts. Looks like I ended up with a real defective set of blades. And I decide to apply some after shave to this. Man, the excruciating pain this caused just cannot be explained in words, it has to be felt. And all this has to happen when I am running a little late to catch the morning bus.

But this was a little better than what happened last week. The same situation, but this time the blade had been used by me at least a few times. The result was inevitable, 4 cuts on the face, 2 on each side and 1 particularly bad. I was asked by a colleague of mine if I had been in some sort of a knife to knife combat situation. For one thing, I am surely going to stop using these $#%#$^#^ Wilkinson Sword razor blades. I used to be a purist, always depending on the conventional razor blades. From now on, it’s going to be only Mach 3, with a 3 blade system as the name suggests. One clean swipe should do the job.

And by the way, I claim to be the only person who managed to cut his nose a few years back with you guessed it, a Wilkinson Sword blade. Thank god, they stopped showing the ads of this particular brand on TV. The ad had the guy using this particular blade who ends up with this amazing looking babe. Needless to say, the man had no cuts whatsoever on this face. I now strongly believe that Wilkinson Sword is just about the worst blade ever made. The maker of this blade is also trying to make a point with the name, “Sword”. Why the @#$@ does he have to call it a sword? He knows sword signifies cutting, slashing and a blood bath.

I beg you, o gentle reader to please use any other brand other than this friggin’ one

Crying in the Rain..

I missed to write a blog on the great Mudumalai Road trip I had with the guys last week. Chilli’s or Dhi Only One’s blogs do a great justice to the trip and I don’t have anything more to add and hence shall refrain from writing more about the trip. However, I should add that after the trip I have one more principle in life. Earlier, I had only one, i.e. never argue with a male barber wielding a razor blade and if it’s a lady barber never argue with her at all. Now my second principle is , stay at least more than 2 feet away from a male tusker and be in a car ready to run (ready to flee is more like it). I love wild life and animals. But if it’s a giant menacing pachyderm you are looking at in the night with one of your pals using the camera flash liberally, be sure that a cage separates you from the elephant unlike in Mudumalai. Please check Inder’s blog for a mugshot of that particular elephant.

But I digress, back to the title of the blog. Got completely drenched in the rain yesterday after a typical Saturday meeting with the gang over a cup of coffee. To begin with it was an awesome experience getting wet like this and having water splashed all over. It’s been years since I played in the rain. But soon the driving conditions got really dangerous with the hidden potholes and it wasn’t fun anymore. The visibility was nearly nil. And of all the days to rain, I didn’t want it to rain yesterday. But if it’s going to rain, it anyway will (a slight modification of one of Murphy’s laws) and here I was all drenched and for some reason humming the Ah-a tune called Crying in the Rain. The lyrics go something like this “Someday when my crying is done, I am gonna smile and race in the sun……”.Beautiful words those, especially since I don’t happen to appreciate poetry so much.

Anyway looks like the co-god position is now filled. This last line is supposed to make sense only to a few people..

Crowded Malls!!!

Bangalore is getting crowded. Period. So on this Saturday we decided to go to the Forum mall to get Devil a birthday gift and it turned out that most of Bangalore was in that friggin mall. The drive to the mall itself was quite arduous. Akilles did take 20 mins to cross that particular signal in front of the mall. Akilles also commented that some sort of attack on this mall would at least cut down the population of Bangalore by half. There was hardly any space to walk or even stand. The bookshop had a huge queue at the cash counter. I have seen lesser queues at a Rolling Stones or a Mark Knopfler concert. Makes one wonder, is there a quiet spot to hang around on a weekend?

Anyway, the occasion was chilli’s treat in MTR. Now MTR does not exactly have an ambience of any sort, but the food more that makes up for it. On entering this place we were shown into this waiting room which looked more or less like a doctor’s waiting room. From the waiting room we were led into another room through a maze and then shown the table. I am sure Inder could have never found his way out of that place. Then the royal feast began. The food just kept on coming. I was never able to keep up pace with the incoming food. Chilli devoured the entire food, the Sapad Raman that he is. Inder was seen clutching his stomach in pain after the dinner. He threatened to barf and he swore never to go to MTR again since they just stuffed him with lots and lots of food. Not to mention that he took the window seat on the ride back home and requested Chilli to drive slowly over the speed bumps. The food was truly awesome. One of the amusing things of the evening was the water sinks in MTR. You get to use a car accelerator like pedal to get water out of the sink. A very complex mechanism where a faucet would have actually done the job.

Got back in the night and finally saw some good TV. The Australia-England match ended in an exciting tie. The other channel had the live8 concert going on with some real good music. It sure was great to see Pink Floyd and The Who back in action again. Pink Floyd played a few songs from The Dark Side of the Moon. Gilmour and Waters on the same stage after 24 years was quite a scene. Meanwhile, the new Coldplay album sounds real good. Havent been able to get the song Speed of Sound out of my head for a fortnight now.