Death to the coffee vending machines

As of today, I am trying to garner a world wide support to ban coffee vending machines. When humanity had the need for a machine that made coffee automatically, it got more than it bargained for. Today’s coffee vending machines are extremely sophisticated machines armed with artificial intelligence and complexity, a little lesser than your average super computer.

It’s been 3 weeks now since I managed to get a decent cup of coffee from the machine in my office. Firstly, everyday I get a different amount of coffee in my cup. While it overflows more often than not, there are also times when I have to stare at the bottom of the cup to check if there’s any coffee in there. Since this machine seems to have emotions and has an inherent hate for me, I never get the exact amount of coffee I need. After some investigation, I was informed by an unknown coffee drinker who knows this machine all too well for the past few years, that there exists a knob that controls the amount of coffee. He showed me how to use this. When he used it, he got the perfect amount of coffee. When I did, the mug overflowed. That’s AI right there for you.

A second problem with this machine is that it gives me espresso even when I ask for a cappuccino. When I ask for a cappuccino, I clearly see the milk going into a tube from the milk container kept next to it but alas, no milk ever comes out. I have no clue what happens to the milk. This is a mystery that is yet to be solved. Lastly, the coffee machine comes equipped with a steamer so that one can dip this steamer into the cup and heat ones coffee. Why provide a steamer when the machine promises a hot cup of coffee is something that I will never understand. This means that even the manufacturer of this cursed machine could not control the machine and was aware that when the machine gets angry it will provide a not so warm cup of coffee. As of yesterday, I have developed a new way of getting the coffee. I push the espresso button to get some black coffee, pour some cold milk into the cup and use the steamer. That’s the best the vending machine could do for me. I swear that I saw a smirk on the coffee machine that day. The machine is also equipped with some sarcasm and has a digital display showing the message “Coffee ready” and the sign of a hot mug next to it.

From tomorrow, I am shifting to tea. No machine involved there. All I need is some hot water from the water fountain and a bag of tea. I say that this issue should be taken up in the UN Security Council’s next meeting calling for a worldwide ban on coffee vending machines. I also request that this issue be tabled in the council right after the global warming issue given the gravity of this widespread problem.

On a different closing note as usual, I have begun to rate Prasoon Joshi’s lyrics right up there close to Gulzar’s. After Rang De Basanti, the lyrics from Taare Zameein Par are very impressive, especially the song Kholo Kholo.

The hugging issue and the globalization of Mithun

On this particular website visited by millions everyday, I happened to notice this piece of news which went as “Study reveals that the Swedes hug the most”. Since I had no other important business to attend to at that time, I went ahead and read this extremely path breaking piece of news. Let me share the contents of this article with you. It said that when it comes to hugging each other the Swedes beat everyone else and more so the Swedish women. I started wondering as to who conducted this survey and why. Did he have so much time to survey the people from various countries to find out how many times they hugged in a week? And lastly and most importantly who funded this survey? I would like to meet this person and ask him if he can fund my traveling/vacation expenses. If the fund”er” wants to part with his money, he might as well do something useful with it. The writer of this article, fearing that such pertinent questions will be asked called this an independent study and also did not mention his name. The article was signed “from our staff reporter”. The use of the word “independent study”, I am hoping, implies that the study was a mere conjecture of the staff reporter or was independently conducted by someone with no funding and enough time on his hands. Lastly, is there such a word as a funder? What do you call a person who funds someone?

In the words of Monty Python, now on to something completely different.

Since people in India now refuse to watch Mithun’s movies, he has decided to globalize himself and take his business elsewhere, for example to Israel. How I found this out goes something like this. I get into a taxi in Tel Aviv and explain the place I want to go to. The taxi driver nodded in acknowledgement and the next thing he asked if I had heard of Mithun Chakraborty. And mind you, he said the full word “Chakraborty” perfectly. I was amazed at this. Clearly, Mithun classics like Commando, Dance Dance and Pyar Ka Devta had clearly left a lasting impression on my newly found taxi driver friend. In unrelated news, Mithun is currently fighting the Bhojpuri Film Producers Association since it decreed that all Bhojpuri movies shot outside Bihar will be boycotted. This is clearly affecting Mithun’s business, who chooses to shoot all his movies in his Ooty studio and hotel, needless to say owned by him. I got this important news from India’s oldest and largest national daily. Again, no surprises there.