A couple of things made me write this post:

First is this video by George Carlin, and the other is… well, cyclists. And specifically the kind of self righteous cyclists who think that cycling to work is not only cool and green, but also saves the planet. I’m not talking about those who have to cycle to work as they can’t afford any costlier vehicle, just those who can, but still cycle to work.

On Indian roads, people drive all sorts of vehicles in a single lane: cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, and of course cycles. Simple laws of traffic engineering (or a little common sense) tell us that in a lane, the slowest moving vehicle governs the overall speed in that lane. What do you think is the slowest moving vehicle then? Not only the cyclists decrease the overall speed in the lane, they also increase the overall chaos. Because the traffic is moving at a ridiculous speed because of the cyclists, the other vehicles are burning more fuel than they could have.

Add to this, I’ve never seen a cyclist stop at a traffic signal which doesn’t have a free left turn. The left is ALWAYS free for them. They have an awesome way of dealing with these signals. Just get off the cycle, become a pedestrian carrying a cycle, walk a few steps, get back on the devil and there you go. Because cycles are not motored vehicles, no traffic rules apply to them (I think), I’ve never seen a cyclewala getting a challan.

Talking about safety, it’s the most unsafe vehicle in my opinion. Cyclists seldom wear helmets (if they do, it’s more fancy than safe). Plus, because they consider themselves both motorcyclists and pedestrians, causes a lot of nuisance. For example, when they’re riding on their footpath (which every cyclist proudly does, and hates motorcyclists for it) causes confusion on the footpath and rage in the pedestrians. Also, when the slow moving cyclists (even when he rides the cycle like it’s stolen) rides on the main road, causes rage amongst the motorists. And a lot of road rage is not a good thing, definitely not safe.

If there’s anything worse than one cyclist on road, it’s two cyclist buddies. I can bet my life that 90% of the times these two cyclists would be traveling together, almost hand in hand. And they’ll do it till death (or their ways) do them apart. Such a scenario is almost unseen for any other kind of vehicle.

I know that in Mumbai, heaven exists at a place called Marine Drive. Not because it’s home to the rich and the influential, but that road is heavenly because cycling is BANNED there.

Just now a colleague of mine showed me an orkut profile of some random ass guy, and I  had to blog about it! No, it’s not one of those ‘I want frandship blah blah’, or some stupid album. It’s a guy who was genuinely confused when orkut asked to fill in his details for the sake of completion.

And he chose to write about his favourite cuisines as well

And I suppose he assumed he was being asked about his ‘cousins’.

I think I’ll have to start another blog if want to capture a lot of stupid people on orkut, and their online profiles

If you think that orkut is the only social networking platform that cannot count, think again!

We’ve all had problems with orkut’s calculations gone wrong with number of friends, scraps, posts in communities. It’s a common error you get when you see when you check a community thread with number of posts, say ‘14′, but when you click through, you get only 11.

But facebook has gone a step ahead and has started messing up with dates. You can actually write a wall post in future as well

I went to a person’s profile to wish him ‘happy budday’, but guess what… people had already wished him ‘tomorrow’ and he had replied to them as well. I thought it would be some kind of problem due to time-zone difference, but he’s from India as well, so my theory had to just bite dust then and there.

p.s.: Yes, the birthday dude’s nickname is ‘mausi’.

And yes, wishing people ‘tomorrow’ for their birthday is another thing that really grinds my gears.