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Friday, October 13, 2006
The 13th row
Yes, yes, stop them mails, I know I haven't blogged for around 35 hours or so. I'm perfectly all right, thank you. But when a guy's got to travel, a guy's got to travel, and I'm a guy. (No Hindi puns please.)
I flew to Bangalore early last morning, and flew back late last night, spending much of the day discussing workaciousness with MadMan. He is most exasperating, though. You know how some of my posts end with the words, "Link via email from MadMan." Well, he's only good with links via email, it seems.
"I need to blog," I said during lunch. "Give me lings."
"What lings?" he said. "I don't give lings like this."
"No, no, no," I said. "You must give me a ling. Just tell me a url. Please. I'll get you started. Etch Tee Tee Pee... "
"Ha!"
"Give me ling!"
"Ho!"
Anyway, did you know that some planes you fly don't have a row 13? I had seat 14C on yesterday morning's flight, and noticed that 14 came right after 12. I mentioned this to the gentleman besides me.
"Yes, that is because 13 is an unlucky number," he announced, clearly pleased with his great insight.
"True," I said, as sombrely as I could. "Well, however they number the rows, the fact remains that we are in the 13th row."
I'm not implying causation, but he didn't have breakfast.
And I haven't had breakfast today, for reasons more to do with sleepaciousness than fear or superstition. I shall be off for lunch shortly, and then will blog with a vengeance not seen since the day the Rani of Jhansi chopped off her dhobi's head for daring to ask if her riding breeches belonged to a male companion.
Update (October 14): Salil Benegal writes in:
I flew to Bangalore early last morning, and flew back late last night, spending much of the day discussing workaciousness with MadMan. He is most exasperating, though. You know how some of my posts end with the words, "Link via email from MadMan." Well, he's only good with links via email, it seems.
"I need to blog," I said during lunch. "Give me lings."
"What lings?" he said. "I don't give lings like this."
"No, no, no," I said. "You must give me a ling. Just tell me a url. Please. I'll get you started. Etch Tee Tee Pee... "
"Ha!"
"Give me ling!"
"Ho!"
Anyway, did you know that some planes you fly don't have a row 13? I had seat 14C on yesterday morning's flight, and noticed that 14 came right after 12. I mentioned this to the gentleman besides me.
"Yes, that is because 13 is an unlucky number," he announced, clearly pleased with his great insight.
"True," I said, as sombrely as I could. "Well, however they number the rows, the fact remains that we are in the 13th row."
I'm not implying causation, but he didn't have breakfast.
And I haven't had breakfast today, for reasons more to do with sleepaciousness than fear or superstition. I shall be off for lunch shortly, and then will blog with a vengeance not seen since the day the Rani of Jhansi chopped off her dhobi's head for daring to ask if her riding breeches belonged to a male companion.
Update (October 14): Salil Benegal writes in:
On the 13th row post you'd made - be thankful that at least it wasn't Hong Kong or China! The number 4 is considered inauspicious there (as the Chinese pronunciation is very similar to their word for death - 'sz', if I remember rightly), and a number of lifts/stores/etc tend to avoid it. The lift buttons in our residence in HK were numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15... (and the taller ones of course didn't have anything in the 40s).Yes, well, once I had a keen interest in this shit as well, and being a triple-8 (born on the 26, having a prominent mount of Saturn on my hand, and being a Capricorn: Saturn, the planet of Capricorns, is a No. 8), I was supposed to avoid No. 4s. In my adoloscent years, I inform you with shame, I used to choose the titles for my poems or short stories by first making sure they didn't add up to a 4. To my relief (now), I soon saw the error of those ways. Kids, I tell ya...
