odzer's blog

placenta |pləˈsentə|noun ( pl. -tae |-tē| or -tas ) a flattened circular organ in the uterus of pregnant eutherian mammals, nourishing and maintaining the fetus through the umbilical cord.

However I have found that there are other uses for the humble placenta, its the perfect thing to wash your hair with. Do not believe me just look at the image below :

Only Rs. 99+VAT, Its a real steal!

Made Proudly in the United States!

We have these wonderful “E-Sampark” centres all over the city where you can among other things get a bus pass, pay your electric and water bill, file a right to information request, pay your mobile or landline bills, buy stamp papers or revenue stamps, get a birth or a death certificate and if you happen to be starving even buy subsidised and vitamin fortified wheat flour at a discount. Nothing to complain about them really, they are nice comfortable places which are air conditioned and they even have a TV to pass the time while you wait.

So yesterday I went to pay my electric bill and I observed they had this notice there. I guess the photo is a bit incomplete so I will repost what I saw on the notice …..

“Dear Customer

1 PM is cash tally time and the same has to be handover to bank collection team which comes around 1:15 PM as such case the cash counter’s will stop taking bills for atleast 5 to 10 minutes (approximately) at around 1 PM.

Kindly bear with us

Sampark Centre-18″

Apart from the terrible English, I am sure you can probably guess what it means but if you can not what they are basically saying is — that the bank people come around 1 PM to collect cash from their centre and they can not take bills for around 10 minutes around the time when it happens.

So here is my question now, why should not some person who has every intention to get rich by a couple of hundred thousand rupees come over at 1 pm, point a gun at their heads and take away their cash one fine day? Which brilliant mind had the idea to give away this information? I mean these guys are loaded with money, so any of you guys out there if you want to make a quick buck  and if you own a high calibre handgun or two, head over to E-Sampark Centre, Sector 18 its adjacent to the road that heads to Madhya Marg and cuts between Sector 17 and Sector 18. Good Luck!

I am recovering from a really bad nervous breakdown. I own these two floors of a house here and I do not know what I was thinking when I decided to renovate the top floor. So from the past one and half months I have been having people walking all over the place trying to do something or the other. Well I could be bitter about the fact most of people seem to be utterly incompetent and tardy when it comes to construction work but let me put this in a better perspective.

What I noticed when I started this home improvement is how untrained the labour is. It seems that there are no standards when it comes to the construction industry in India. No wonder we have bridges that fall, buildings that look shabby and most importantly — they all look the same. The majority of the labour and masonary seems to hail from East-Indian states like UP and Bihar. Not only did I face a problem trying to get work out of them but it seems we also had communication issues. Having said that I must say that they do try their best and work for a pittance. However the problem seems to be  that their “Best” is not good enough!

So my small project now is finally moving towards its finalisation, its a different story that the carpenters  that I have hired to do some woodwork have not showed up for 3 days and it took 3 days to chase after a glazier to have glass fitted in. No one keeps to commitments and its really frustrating that whatever I conceived at the beginning of the project has in some ways been modified by the workmen because of their inability to follow instructions precisely or rather their lack of precision. I must say that somewhere if this country needs to progress we need to have standards among blue collar workers rather than just some uneducated farm peasants doubling up as construction workers, carpenters etc.