Blog Archive

Friday 24 February 2012

The Art of Miscommunication


Being a good communicator is not everyone’s cup of tea; being a really bad communicator is an Art. It requires special skill in saying and doing exactly the kind of thing that would tick someone off or make them cry. So how do you become the perfect Miscommunicator?

Firstly it requires practice and a complete lack of patience. You can start by learning the steps below.

 1) Learn to Never Listen:  This is the very CORE of being a good miscommunicator. Listening comprises of 80% of your communication, so if you want to better your skills as a miscommunicator then—Learn NOT to listen! You can do this by ignoring the emotion in the voice of the speaker, avoiding eye contact, not giving listener feedback, speaking over the other person or better still never allowing the other person to talk and finally being so preoccupied with your own thoughts that you don’t even know when someone is talking to you.

2)  Pick the right Body Language: Try this out– point you finger at a persons face and say ‘What are you doing?’  Did you like the reaction you got? Ok, now you can try a few other things, like, if you are a guy hold on to a girl’s hand longer than 5 seconds when you shake it, stand with your hands folded and shoulders hunched when you don’t like a person, learn to roll your eyes in a condescending way when you don’t like someone’s ideas, shrug your shoulders or slouch, thump tables, gesticulate wildly and most importantly NEVER EVER EVER smile at ANYONE.

3) Never mind your Paralanguage: Ah a nice fancy word here ‘Paralanguage’ it is nothing but the tone of our voice, our pitch and the speed at which we talk. The best way to bring out the very worst in a person is to talk really LOUD and really fast, with a really high pitch (women seem to achieve the high pitch better than men, but don’t worry guys, you can still aim for one). If this is too strenuous on you, then you can switch to low, grumpy / snappy with short bursts of irritability.

4) Speak your mind: This is the easiest bit and my personal favourite because I love doing it all the time. To get best results start by learning to not thinking before you talk. If you think you may not speak, so don’t THINK just TALK. It helps if you use a lot of negative words like– Never, Can’t, Have to, Must, and the best one– a capital NO. Sprinkle in a good dose of – What rubbish, Nonsense, Stupid, poor show, not happening, very bad, and yeah whatever!

5) Defy Logic: So you want to be a miscommunicator, learn how to start from nowhere and end up else-where, go around in circles, refuse to come to the point, it would be better if you had no point at all, jump to conclusions (look at listening skills for this), all things do not have to have a particular reason behind it, think as abstract as possible (see why I call it an art) and use words that you and the people around you would not be able to understand without looking up the dictionary. In short try to make life harder for those around.

So I think these five points should give you a good head start. If you need more advice you can always ask me or wait till I think of more things to write part two.

Thursday 31 March 2011

March Mayhem


So it’s finally the last day of the month and it’s time for me to churn out some monthly nonsense. Salary has been credited, reports have been sent, deadlines have been met, tax planning has been ignored… here we are once again and tomorrow is April Fool’s Day. 

March is one of those months you know when people finally get over their post Christmas, New Year, Valentine’s day blues and finally realize that the new year is getting old, and suddenly decide that they need to roll up their sleeves and start working… is it any wonder then that March is a crazy month? Well just look at the word ‘March’ for instance, a word that makes it so convenient for us to rhyme it with Madness, Mayhem, Mania, Masti… you get the picture…    So yeah… I know I’m just blabbing now. No good for a wannabe serious writer to blab so much. 

Sooo let’s talk about cricket for lack of anything else occupying anyone’s mind at the moment. (And you thought I was not going to talk about sports on this blog!)  Was it a busy month for the cricket crazy fans or what! I mean… it doesn’t get crazier than the world cup does it?  And it certainly doesn’t get any better than an India- Pak semifinal with all the tamasha that surrounds it. Whew! what a day it was yesterday! I Still cant get over the excitement… hehehehehehhehehe

Ok please don’t leave… I promise I won’t giggle anymore. 

It’s been eat, sleep and drink cricket for most Indians this whole month. Well I had my share of world cup excitement when I went to watch my very first ‘live’ match of Australia vs Canada, which as far as matches goes was not the most exciting but, I got to watch a world cup match at the stadium and perhaps see Ponting and Brett Lee play for the last time ever in a world cup. I don’t think you can ask for anything better than seeing Brett Lee warm up less than 100 meters away from you. As far as first experiences go in watching live matches, I must say it was loads of fun even for a minnow match against Canada. Watching matches at the Chinnaswamy stadium is  definitely something I will do again in Bangalore. 

It’s 30 minutes to April. Here we are sitting 2 days away from the final BIG game. One billion people (give or take away those few cranky cricket haters) are waiting with bated breath. There is just one question on everybody's mind right now. Sorry two... When will Shahrukh Khan stop making dumb adds and

Do think we’ll win??

Saturday 19 February 2011

Do you remember?

Summer is finally here! You can feel it in air and it never fails to bring back childhood memories.


Do you remember those summer days?
Glowing golden and warm

The mango flowers: fragrant, fresh and white.

Do you remember the lemonade?
Sugary sweet and cold.

The last day of school: exams, escape, liberty.

Do you remember those sun set hours?
Family, friends, and tea.

The afternoon naps: lazy, long, and groggy

Do you remember the evening breeze?
Refreshing, cool and sharp.

The library books: musty, thick and old.

Do you remember the million stars?
Radiant, vast, and infinite.

The moonlit nights and mosquito bites.

Do you remember those summer days?
Now just a memory…