X and O?

I'm so confused. I always thought x stands for hugs and o for kisses, but I recently heard from somewhere that it's the other way around, that x stands for kisses and o for hugs?

I'm trying to see what makes more sense.

X- could mean hug. It does look like two people embracing. Even though it would be a weird hug involving just your middle body. Could work if your feet are cemented to the floor and your avoiding each other's faces because it's too ugly and you can't be near it.

O- could be a kiss. Like a pout or a little peck.

X- could be a kiss. You know, the messy French kiss. With the tongues all zig zag.

O- could be a hug. A weird hug opposite to the first hug where you hug only one's face and legs. Oh who am I kidding, there's no way that's a hug. If you hug like that in real life, I'm sorry but that's not an o. That's 0. For zero affection-sense. Get tutored by me.

Well. The internet is still pretty weird. And I'm still confused. What do you think x and o means? Please help me!

Ps- will start legit blogging after I'm done with board exams aka done with school forgood. And please forgive typos, delays, writers block, excuses, etc.

Xoxoxoxoxo (because if you read my entries, you get a hug as well as a kiss) (v-day special, brozers)

How To: Pretend you've started a trend.

We have all wanted to become trendsetters at some point, and as much as you might try to deny, every time you wore those converse with your dress, you had your fingers crossed thinking maybe, you might just start a trend. And you know what, I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm exactly one of those wannabes and that is why I am writing this entry.

Fellow mortals and immortals, I'm starting a trend for my blog!! (be excited!!!!) !!!
From today until when the Earth finally realizes that it's merely a mothball waiting to somehow be drained through the sink, I will attempt to follow this How To series! in which I will explain how to do things.
Of course you are obviously wondering about my credibility with giving advice. In that case, you will be pleased to know that I'm a certified satirist. It is as if my shoulder is made of some high volt disease-virus-thing because the second someone tries to place their head on it, they are electrocuted with confusion and misery. People have often either acknowledged or avoided the theories I would come up with, and the wonderful solutions that I conjure up for the sad, sad humans.

Basically, I like giving advice. One of my favorite hobbies is to help others out by lecturing them. (okay, so I just contradicted pretty much everything I said about myself above). And often, people have told me that I do, indeed, have this ability to listen to others and offer practical feedback, and therefore I should probably start an advice column. However, I also realized that this is not entirely who I am. I can't be expected to be caring and advisory ALL the time, but I do want to help people out as well. So due to these conflicting aspirations, I am going to start this How To series! where I will try to offer helpful, entertaining, or stupid steps to overcome trivial, paranormal, or significant events in life.

Today I'm going to teach you how to pretend that you've started a trend, slightly because it's an interesting topic, but mostly because that is so not what I just did. Because wikiHow totally doesn't exist and even if it does, I have never really accessed it or owned any device to access an unheard phenomenon known as *The Internet*. <heavenly background music>

1) Think of something- Before you start a trend (or pretend to), think of what the trend should be. Are you sure that you don't have any original ideas so you won't have to pretend? Are you sure people don't already get the white area of their eyes whitened? Either ways, it is essential that you think of a trend, whether it already exists, and whether you are going to pretend or not.

2) Look innocent- If you are a girl, it is highly advisable that you stop wearing clothes that expose any portion of skin. Start wearing long, floral skirts and tie your hair in a tight ponytail. If you are a boy, throw away your T-shirts and crawl into collared, striped shirts, buttoning up all the way to your voicebox. Start watching kitten videos and tell everyone that you're vegetarian.

3) Publicize- Of course, a trend is not a trend unless you share it with the world. Go on every social networking website that you're a part of, and create accounts in those websites if you don't already use them. Text all your friends and bribe them into telling their friends, unless you are positively sure that a good amount of people are aware of this trend.

4) Follow your own trend- So if you started the trend of riding a deer to school every Thursday, make sure you buy a handsome deer (not a doe or a flying shoe or your really thin brown friend) and ride it to school every Thursday. Attract attention by blowing trumpets and bursting confetti on your history teacher, feeding your classmates' homework to the deer, and adorning your lovely animal ride with any awards and medals you have achieved, even if it is just the local High-Pitch Sneeze contest.

5) Get others to follow your trend- If you're really hot, offer to date anyone who agrees to follow your trend, and if you're not, bribe them with money, coupons, tea pots... whatever you can find.

6) Make sure you never talk about your source- Your biggest secret is your potential traitor, so ensure things/places such as Narnia, wikiHow, newspaper articles, or any other traitors do not pop up in conversation. If the media blames you for plagiarism, learn up all the flaws of your source. If there isn't a flaw, make one up. Yes, it will make you a bad person, but you might as well just go on with this trend since you already started it.
For example, the person who already rides to school every Thursday on a deer is probably a mental patient. If he isn't, he is now. Therefore, that source is not reliable and you are totally the right owner of the trend.

7) Admire yourself in every possible occasion- If you are called to talk shows, boast about yourself. Tell them about how your high IQ inspired you to not attend school or college. Tell them about the time you pulled a car using just your eyelids. Every time you boast about yourself and look innocent at the same time, your credibility increases.

8) In the meantime, try to be better than the original trend source- Your deer should be faster, sexier and smarter than that man's deer. So even if you may ever get caught, people will still follow your trend or favor you for successfully improving an older trend and modifying it to perfection.

Annnnnnnd, there you have it! You have now successfully started a trend and no one knows that you are merely pretending. Except for me. But I won't tell anyone if you promise to share this blog entry with all your friends.

Nah, I'm kidding. I'm that kindhearted.
PS- If you have an idea for a How To series, please do let me know & I shall exploit (lovingly) that topic whenever I post one of these entries next. So please don't hesitate and do let me know! I dine on suggestions and feedback. nomnom.

Girls vs. Guys- Facebook accounts.

You may or may not have noticed that my blog has entered puberty. If, by any chance you happened to be accessing my blog from around 8 to 9 pm IST and tried to hit refresh, your brain would have probably melted, surged through your ear canal, and made you deaf. Not to mention brainless. If you are brainless now, I needn't bother an explanation since you wouldn't comprehend it anyway, but in case your brain is still intact and you want to know the reason nevertheless, here it is. I was deep into the process of giving my blog a makeover, and well, what you see now is the result. Look around!

I mean, I know it doesn't look as if I worked very hard. The collage of my doodles in the blog cover and the creation of the background did not take very long. But what took long was fitting those things into my blog. UGH. It was so annoying! I had to resize the picture a frazouland times in order to make the cover photo fit. And why should it fit, you ask? Guys.... I think I have OCD. Some weird, things-should-fit-and-colors-should-change kind of an OCD. I'm sure there's a term more technical for it. Giraffe. On your left, in the background.

Anyway, it's funny that I'm typing this post right now because I haven't accessed Facebook in quite some time since the beginning of exams, but I had been thinking about having an entry about this phenomenon for a while. My dear mortals, within a few years from now, babies will be born without known genders, because no one would care about the chromosomes or peer at their peepees or do an ultrasound or any such thing. Rather, I have a theory that these infants will be given a laptop and told to access facebook, and this in turn would determine their gender.

Now I know I have exaggerated, obviously. But if you think about it, there most certainly are some definite distinctions between the way the two main opposite genders access social networking sites. And yes, I am aware that I'm generalizing (just like I always do for such posts), so I hope you will keep in mind that I'm in no way trying to push you into a category or mock you for being in one, rather rainbowunicornflowersponies nuffsaid. Besides, you should be aware that I'm totally a near-perfect example of one of those girly profiles.

1) Profile Pictures- If this is a guy's profile picture-

This is probably a girl's profile picture.

I don't think that anyone can deny that most guys do, indeed, have simpler profile pictures than girls. They just feel the need to crop their face from any random tagged picture and upload it into their profiles. In fact, most of the guys I know rarely change their profile pictures or care to upload their own profile picture. If they happen to be tagged in something, they will go ahead and profile it, after doing a wonderful job of cropping, of course. 

But girls? NO WAY. I don't think you realize that cropping a picture ruins the picture's resolution, and a picture's resolution is way too important to be tampered with. Girls, in most cases, need the best quality pictures that are in no way cropping any of their essential body parts, and understand the importance of pouting because smiling just hides the cheekbones and pouting makes them more prominent. Moreover, girls feel the need to edit their pictures, to highlight themselves and the beautiful background of the most beautiful resort where they've been chilling so people know that not only are they beautiful, but also that they appreciate nature and sceneries which make them seem innocent, appreciative, and humanitarian. Or simply hot. 

2) Captions of Profile Pictures- I find that guys rarely find the need to have captions for their pictures. They may be bald with a shark chewing remnants of hair, while juggling tomatoes and yet they don't feel the need to explain their actions in a minimum of one to two words. Like, c'mon, you could've written 'yolo' or 'bau5' or something in the caption, that would've be acceptable. But nooo. 

Girls, on the other hand, have 3 main kinds of captions:

1) Song lyrics- Lyrics are basically a girl's way of saying "wow look I'm so hot and this song totally describes my hotness and you should be reading these lyrics right now and downloading that song because it is totally directed towards you and listening to this song will hopefully remind you of me (and my hotness)." 

For eg: If a girl just went through a break-up, and she wants the guy to know that she's totally over him and doesn't give a damn, she will take the hottest picture possible, edit it to make it look even hotter, crop out the toothbrush and the bathroom mirror, and upload it with the lyrics 'WE ARE NEVER EVER EVERRRR, GETTING BACK TOGETHER!' She might even call up a friend and ask her to tag her in the picture so that it comes in the newsfeed and the person-under-question sees it... and regrets seeing it. 

2) Birthday captions!- Honestly, if a girl wanted, she could've merely texted her "BFFL WHO HAS SEEN ME SNIFFLE" or "PANTIE DINOSAUR XOXO" or "JUICY SAAXBOMB" instead of writing a lengthy caption detailing all sorts of maneuvers that she has had with her "OOPID DRUNKARD" on the night she dirty danced with a man who actually turned out to be a disgusted puritan. Why do girls write such long captions, or ask their friends to write long captions for them? For you to see it, of course! Birthday captions are just a girl's way of letting others know that she is fun, has friends, and you should either totally be jealous, or you should totally hang out with her too.

3) "HI OMG YOUR SO PRETTY BUT YOU WONT UPLOAD THIS PICTURE SO I UPLOADED IT, K? KBYE. LUV YA PRETTY THANG."- Captions/eulogies written by others. Either a girl is lucky enough to have such considerate friends who are always on the lookout for hot pictures of her comrade in her laptop that is uploadable on facebook, or the girl has bribed her friends into uploading the picture for her because the girl wants to be seen to have a modest, "I-have-better-things-to-do" attitude, OR her comrade herself uploaded the picture in hopes that the girl would also do the same for her and appreciate her beauty at some point later in life.

3) Timeline- Moment of nostalgia as I almost wrote "Wall" :(

A guy's timeline is usually kind of empty. If anyone did happen to write on his wall/timeline, it would be something vague, like a link to a dexterous wrestler's muscle-building secrets with the remark "yo we gotta do this" or "thats me in 10 yrs". Or it could be a link to a video game. Or a music video that features a hot model. Or a meme. Or a link to my blog. ;D

A girl's timeline on the other hand, and especially a girl who is, say, 14-15 and moderately popular, is filled with other people. Basically, they have wall-to-wall (now, timeline-to-timeline) conversations so a girl's wall is usually beautiful, colorful, and buzzing of a wonderful social life. 

What's that, you don't have such a lovely timeline? Aw, well that's okay. I gave up on wall-to-wall long back. Eventually, people tend to get sick of facebook. I know I am, so my wall is just.... oh wait, it's a timeline now, I keep forgetting! 

4) Comments (in pictures)- It wouldn't be surprising that low resolution, cropped pictures are unlikely to get a lot of comments...

Girls, on the other hand, usually get so much attention for their pictures. Or they make sure they get attention. I mean, come on, what could be more important than the number of likes you got for your picture, eh?

When I was younger, I would tell all my friends to 'check out' my profile picture whenever I changed it. It used to be such a big deal! My friends and I would request each other to like each others' profile pictures and comment on it, because nothing seemed more important than getting likes and comments. But after a point, it just doesn't matter. 

5) Status Updates- Now, thankfully I found at least one area where guys are, more or less, active. If anything, most of the guys I know do update their statuses quite often, but again, these updates are highly subjective. But probably what I see the most on my newsfeed are UPDATES ON SPORTS. So there I am, just chillliiin, scrolling down the newsfeed, and suddenly, from around 10-11 pm, there are all these shoutouts and type-screaming and analysis of players and reprimands at their shortcomings and all these unfamiliar names and unfamiliar games.... and my head just starts to spin. Now, I'm not saying that all girls are like me (I'm such a poor example), but I rarely watch/follow sports, so I have no clue what's going on. Oh, so Ronaldo scored a basket... sorry I mean goal? Oh, so Chesterfield.. I mean Manchester United is in this season..... and that man won wrestling? That's really great, oh wait, he didn't win? You thought he'd win but he didn't? Or wait, oh he's injured? Well that's bad........ seriously, it is just super hard for me to keep up. I do try, though. Like, I sincerely tried to watch cricket and actually follow it throughout 9th/10th grade. Is it obvious that I failed?

Girls rarely update their status in vivid enthusiasm for sports. They write about either a) their mundane daily adventures, or b) songs that are basically implicit messages towards.... (surprise)... you. So I always see statuses like "Just got out of the spa with my mum..... best mother-daughter day ever!" or "just sittin' here under the tree with my sweet ol' southern boy" or "I knew you were trouble when you walked in (trouble trouble trouble)" or "I just wanna shop all dayy!!! :)))" I wouldn't be the least surprise if girls start the trend of describing the difficulties/joy of their morning poo- "Just got out of the toilet! feelin' all excreted and healthy. ran out of toilet paper tho".

Unfortunately, my statuses rarely have to do with these things. My last status was this lame desi joke that I found HILARIOUS for some reason- "Santa and Banta were feeling happy. Happy got disgusted and went away". :D :D :D (Happy is a very popular name in India)

6) SMILEYS- Honestly, I have never seen guys use smileys. Or it is all too rare. And I know I'm not using smileys right now either, but trust me, it takes SO much self control, because I've used smileys throughout my adolescence and can not imagine not using them, because I feel like without them, things can be misinterpreted. Moreover, all my female minions also use smileys, so automatically, I end up using smileys in conversations with them too. 

For eg: Consider the phrase 'wow, you're so cool.' Now, when said without a smiley, it sounds sneering, almost sarcastic. Like, that time when you were reciting to your friends about the time when you were dancing like Ke$ha wearing rollerskates and you fell, and one of your friends go like "wow, you're so cool", HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW IF THEY MEAN IT OR NOT, HUH? Because personally, I think that's really cool. So if I'd say 'wow, you're so cool', I'd mean it. But it could also be said in a sarcastic way like, "wow, you think you're so cool but you're not". THAT is where the smiley comes in. So if I'm online, I'd just be like "wow, you're so cool!!! :'O :')" and anyone who's sarcastic can go like "wow, you're so cool -.- " so thereyago!

Well, that's all I can think of for now. However, if you can think of more distinctive behaviors adopted by girls and guys, why don't you comment and add to my little list? I think I can't think of any more reasons because, I'll be honest, ever since I got this awesome smartphone of mine, I just never felt the need to waste time stalking others on facebook when I could be stalking even more people through other applications! Oh hey, maybe I'll include an even better entry about other applications/websites as well!

But again, I haven't completely let go of Facebook. I still think it is a great way to connect to people who live in great distance from you, see what your old friends/acquaintances are up to, allow those who don't know you very well to get to know you, and find old friends because virtually everyone has an account on facebook. What's that, you don't? That's okay too. You must be having great self control, then.

:)))))) you know, before I end this entry, I felt like sharing two epiphanies that I recently had, about my own blog entries. Firstly, I noticed that I apparently put a lot of commas in my blog entries when I'm having a writer's block, have you noticed? Maybe you should read through the posts in which I mention things like "I wrote this with a writer's block!!" to clarify this point. And secondly, I have noticed that all my entries start off good but end bad! For example, this one. And I also end up saying things completely irrelevant and different from what I initially started off saying. I think that's because these entries, with the fancy pictures and all take too long, so by the time I'm finished, it's like.... 1 AM, lol. 

I've been noticing too many things lately, hmmph. That's just weird. 

Okay, good night! 

Yehahaha.

H

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(I'm soz for this vague post. I'm waiting for these putrid exams to end so I can commence my only life occupation (writing about random things) properly)

Being evil gives you strength, do something evil today. xo

Lol I'm such a bad influence. 

The meaning of Year.

A few days ago when 2013 was ending, I'll be honest, I wasn't feeling very sentimental. I don't know about you, but for me, the end of a year doesn't always feel like a closure. Or a beginning, for that matter. It did when I was younger. In fact, till I was about 13, every year I would take this huge strip of paper and write WELCOME (insert year)!!! with dots and squiggles and lines and every color of the rainbow with stars and hearts and every shape imaginable. But as the years grew, I realized what a 'year' could be symbolic of. (so this is where my 'find-the-deeper-meaning' mania kicks in). 

So what exactly is a year? 

365 days? 366 if it's a leap year?

52 weeks?

One summer, long winter, an autumn, a spring, and possibly a monsoon?

A school year. August to June. Then June to August to June. 

Lifespan? If you die young, if you're a certain insect, if you're a druggie, if you're an oxygen-deprived newborn?

A few diseases, a few hesitant appointments to the dentist with the coughing old lady and the braces-adorned receptionist's teeth. 

A marriage. A relationship. A friendship. An affair. A crush. Struggle to get over someone. A long battle for divorce?

Battle for justice for someone who died. A new pizza place that eventually ran out of business.

Phases. Emotions. Happy phase, sad phase, longing phase, hyper phase, emotional phase, reflective phase.

An anniversary. Your 18th birthday. An artist's short-lived fame. An acronym that went viral.

A struggle. A war. A battle. An argument. A fear. 

Continuation of a habit. Continually trying to rid of a habit. Rehab. Recovery. Miss Manners Classes. Yoga sessions. Anger Management sessions. Medication. The prescribed time to wear your retainers.

An academic course, badminton classes, your phone before you dropped it in the toilet.

And there are many other things. But do they all begin here, this very moment? Do they all end here, at this very moment (assuming it's January 1st right now). 

Are you okay with putting so much pressure on this one teeny 24 hour-ed day right here, where you are going to end it all, end all the fear of the cold weather, end all those feelings you had for someone, end all your aspirations of becoming a pilot, end becoming an alcoholic ....begin rehab, begin reliving your life, begin letting go, begin trying harder.

For all it could mean, you could make this very day your starting and ending point for all the things I mentioned above, things that you've been dying to change for ages, things that you've overlooked. You could end it all and begin a new life right here, on this first day of this first month.... but does that mean on the eve of New Year you sit in your terrace and go like "Okay, 2 more days till I become a new person" and then wait till it's exactly 12 so you suddenly take off that purple bandanna you're wearing and replace it with a helmet? 

You don't need to wait that long. What you should realize is that, if you want, every single day, every single moment, THIS VERY MOMENT RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, could be a new beginning or an ending. It could be the beginning of a beginning or a beginning of an ending as well, if it's a process that you plan to initiate. TODAY, no wait, THIS MOMENT, THIS NANOSECOND could be the beginning of an year even if it may be like 18th of April. 

Back to why I wasn't feeling sentimental... For me, I control the day. I control when it begins, I control when it ends. If I want I could make the sun rise at 7pm and begin something. If I want I could set the sun at 10am. I could stretch the sun of my mind out into a rectangle and be like, okay sun, you're going to rise starting from this moment, and you should end rising by 5pm tomorrow. Then you can start setting and end setting within around 11 days. 

Okay, that's it for now. I'm so sleepy and again, I know I'm going to regret posting this entry when I see this in the morning/afternoon when I wake up, when I know that I myself rarely follow this wonderful advisory logic that I've just sort of put in words, that I always forget that I have the power to control the sun (of my mind, ofc), that every day can be a new beginning/ending, if I set my mind to it.

But anyway, I don't think people should take that as an excuse and stop celebrating New Year's. It's still a very cool concept.

Happy 2014! :)

Bonus- My doodles.

Exams are round the corner and I'm feeling really crappy.... and artistic.

Now you know I don't lie when I claim I doodle a bit too much. And that also, at the wrong time. 

So this was made by me with a ballpoint pen whilst studying Psychology. I think this is the structure of my mind. Or maybe the face of a fish diving into some papyrus ocean. 

I think this is just me wasting ink. A bunch of overlapping squiggles.

There's an upside down alphabet series, interesting. I like this one because it's a bit more organized. It looks like different layers of soil, or ocean. You know those pictures in your textbooks showing the formation of oil layers... 

Again, this one was made on the margin of my notebook. I don't know about you, but I see dancing fish bones, tentacles, worms, sperm, and musical notes. It's a party in the ocean! Where some people got extra naughty.... 

These are three different pages I somehow put together in one picture. The first one reminds me of the underworld with people dying and bones falling, etc. The second one looks like the bones coming together and back to life, and turning into pretty squirly insects. The third one looks like germs and thorns. 

This could be Rapunzel's hair in bunches. Of course it is tangled, what do you expect when you keep throwing your hair down the window for strange men?

I rarely use pencil to write because a) We are required to write in pen at school, and b) It's too light. But pencils come handy in doodling because you're able to shade in things. This doodle could be the inside of a body. I see bones and flesh. (Does that make me someone with homicidal tendencies?)

I included this picture because it is the most common thing I doodle. You may or may not have noticed these curly squirls everywhere in my doodles. I can't stop drawing them for some reason! 

 Yay, an intricate blue sun. 

This looks like a war.... between fish eggs? 

For some reason these remind me of those people in movies with French mustaches and instrumental music. Maybe a Charlie Chaplin comedy. Except with a historical twist. A historical comedy with swords and music and French people!!! 

The OCD in me is coming out in this one! I need perfect gaps and straight lines. 

This is Diwali and what you're seeing is an X-ray version of a firecracker blowing up. 

Brushing up on my alphabets and basic geometry!           

You may or may not have noticed that once again, this is one of my margin arts. There are numbers for points that I was writing on the other side. Again you can see a lot of curls and squirls and everything is dancing! 

Ugh, I give up. My doodles are indescribable, un-analyzable. I have no clue what I make. 

I swear this is only like one-twentieth of the amount of doodles that I make, ALL of them while studying for exams. You can't blame me.... exams make me do this, and well, exams are neverending so my doodling is also neverending. One a similar note, you know what this reminds me of? My blog post on Extreme Doodling. That doodle might be a little more interesting. 

In the meantime, where do you think these doodles of mine will be the most useful? I've gotten several suggestions, so I created this poll: (Psst. Fellow bloggers. Are you wondering how I added this poll INSIDE my blog entry? Here's the secret. Except it's a little flawed, I had to modify the method a little to make this work. Instead of highlighting and copy-pasting the iframe tag, as described in the link, you should first publish your blog entry, publish your poll, then SEARCH FOR THE HEADING OF THE POLL, NOT THE IFRAME TAG, then copy-paste it into the html of your blog entry. I know this sounds a little complicated, but trust me it's worth it. Thank you whatever little of html I learned in 10th grade! )

I hope this poll works! -.- I'm so sorry if it doesn't!

How can these doodles be used?

Food for Thought?

Might I take a moment to acknowledge the (unrevered) fact - It's December! And you know what that means. Christmas carols, anonymous presents, and calorie gains are only subordinate to high adrenaline for it's GRADUATION YEAR next month which means you're going to, you know, die.

It is amongst all this hungama that I find time to do general mundane activities such as eating or eating in restaurants. A few days ago I went to a restaurant with my family to gnaw and gulp some endearing Indian delicacies when I noticed this interesting trend that I thought would be suitable for one of my stupid blog entries.

OMG.

So what I've horribly sketched here is the overall outline of the restaurant.....

Okay, so this is the LOL restaurant. It doesn't have to stand for Laughing Out Loud, or Lots of Love. It could stand for, say, Lecturing Objectionable Llamas. 

(That's a llama wearing a bikini smoking weed.)

(Jk. That's my desperate attempt at trying to be funny. And let's just get past this, because this is a restaurant, not llama rehab.)

So Laughing Out Llamas or Lecturing whoever, I went to this restaurant and the circle things in the diagram above represent different tables where people could sit. There were two on the left, two on the right, three in the middle, and four at the back. Note that even if I have made the three tables in the middle purple, they actually were exactly identical to their furniture friends on the sides. 

Okay so the four blue people at the entrance is me, my dadi, and my parents. So we're entering the restaurant, and we notice that 7 of the 11 tables were occupied with the little black circles (representing customers). So we look around, deciding where to sit. And without much ado, we choose the second brown table on the right. 

Then another family arrives.

After thinking for quite a bit, the new family chooses the table near the back row, which I have marked. 

Do you see the trend?

When this family chose the table near the back row, it made me wonder. Why didn't they choose the middle, or the front table? It's not like those tables were made of velociraptor skin or had thorny chairs. And it's not like the tables we chose had hot waiters enacting Glee scenes. Every freaking table in the restaurant was the same, made of the same material, and just as appealing. 

Everyone who entered that restaurant chose tables that were near other occupied tables, and out of direct view so that when someone would enter and their eyes go straight to the center, it would meet the seclusion of a desolate, empty purple table that no one really thought of occupying. 

Now before you begin brandishing your opinion of my absurdity here, I know what I'm saying here is also pretty stupid. Firstly, who is weird enough to notice such things, forget making an entry about it? Moreover, this 'trend' that I have noticed is not applicable in every scenario, because I have definitely seen people choosing tables that may be beyond the solar system. 

But don't you think this sort of scene does happen once in a while? And maybe there is some explanation for it?

This, my beloved reader(s), arises from our general human tendency of conformity. I tried to Google this phenomenon but I could find none underlining my allegations of conformity in restaurants, so I'll remind you that this is just me rambling and straying away from any possible facts that I may or may not have overlooked. So don't count my little theory as the one and only, and possibly as the accurate, because, you know, I'm just thinking.... 

None of us really like to stand out. I mean, when everyone at a party wears formal wear because it's the dress code, you don't just barge in in your panda costume (hopefully) (but this could totally happen if you're the girl in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging). When all your friends like a person, you also try to like the person and notice the good qualities in them. As much as you may deny, as hard as you may try to 'stand out' and be different, at the end of the day, there are some things, as minor as they may be, that make you conform, and this little restaurant scenario is just one of them. 

Both our families did not choose the tables in the center, because well, as blatantly as we may try to deny, we didn't really fancy standing out or be in perfect view for everyone to enjoy watching us wipe butter chicken off our nose, or pull out strands of our hairs from our mouth while eating. Besides, the human tendency to seek contact and be near others similar to us is a given, innate quality and well, I guess we are more comfortable being around people like us, with their flawed eating styles so if someone were to enter the restaurant and judge us, he/she wouldn't just look at us, but also everyone around us, and would probably conclude that this restaurant indeed is Llama Rehab and walk out. So if you're eating like a reckless hominid, your wacky eating habits will be covered by the wackier eating styles of your hominid comrades sitting in tables surrounding yours.

Actually, if you think about this whole conformity thing, it can be dated further back to something totally unrelated yet equally intriguing.

So I have been tweezing my eyebrows since I was 12, then I started getting them done properly since 9th grade. Now, why do I get them done? Because well, it is given that having thin eyebrows supposedly make you prettier and more presentable. And why is it 'given'? Because, well, everyone around me gets their eyebrows done and tries to advocate this practice. 

But if I think about it, like really think, I would jolly well love to just not get my eyebrows done. It is annoying, painful, and makes me visit the parlor 800 times a month when I would much rather stay home in my Extra Extra Extra Large Tshirt, sprawled on the couch. 

But I still go. And I still have thin eyebrows.

However, thin eyebrows weren't always the trend.

So this is Shyama, a Bollywood actress of the 1950s, and as you can see, she has thick eyebrows. This shows that okay, maybe not all our lovely ladies of the 50s had thick eyebrows, but surely, it was a trend at some point- maybe when your grandmother's grandmother was conceived- but it was a trend nevertheless. Then sometime between India's converting from Kurtas to Jeans, eyebrows went from thick to thin. I saw my friends getting their eyebrows done thin, so I also started getting them done thin. 

Now you ask, how in the world/why in the world did I bring eyebrows into the restaurant/llama rehab?

Well, both these cases are similar because they show that as human beings, we tend to go along with the crowd and do what everyone else is doing. We try not to create a scene. But you know, again I'm just being general. Because personally, I would LOVE to stand out, and that's what I always try to do. 

Anyway, I leave it to you to decide whether this whole entry that I have just finished typing with this throbbing writer's block makes sense or not. Meanwhile, I think I'm going to catch up on my sleep. 

One more thing though- Lately, I have been obsessed with WWYD videos on Youtube. These videos show how human beings sometimes choose to break free of the notion of conformity, which results in some really heartening beautiful incidents that give me hope for human beings. So I would highly recommend you watch these videos. Not unproductive at all, I promise.

Much love (and heavy droopy eyes),