We bought a new Air Conditioner in March this year. Twice since then some birds have screwed up the wires leading to the external unit outside. I earlier thought it was pigeons, as a lot of them fly around. But recently saw a few parrots going there, at the point where the wires were messed up last time. How to deal with this issue? I told my wife in Hindi - "Ye kabootar nahi, mitthu ne kiya". She burst out laughing. I came to know that Mitthu is more like a loving nickname for parrots. The more common word for them is Tota. I knew Tota, but didn't know that Mitthu is more the with-love kind of name. I sort of understand that now - Irfan Khan used to call Saba Qamar as Mitthu in the movie Hindi Medium - it was a love-name like for a parrot, i.e., Tota. I see that Tota is clearly masculine, I am not so sure about Mitthu from the sound of it, although it has to be masculine just to be consistent. Anyhow, the damn creature keeps damaging the wires of the AC, and I can't do anything about it. I have to set up some hurdles, so that the parrots can't reach the wires.
I came back just now from a stroll in our neighborhood - one of the 3-4 tea-and-walk breaks I take everyday as I work from home. There's a new ugly speed-breaker built on the nice concrete road in our area. I was totally pissed off looking at it. Firstly coz I hate these things called speed breakers in India, which you find all over the country, and which I find most idiotic as a concept. And secondly, a lot of times these are made really huge and high without any consideration for the vehicles that have to pass the hurdle... my brother's Honda City was hit at the base because of insufficient ground clearance.
The most ridiculous aspect of these so called speed-breakers is the concept itself - creating a hurdle on the road so that one is forced to slow down - who thinks like that? Well, I do agree that humans are a kind that don't adhere to speed limits if you just tell them to. You have to either penalize them effectively and without fail, or force them to slow down somehow. And the latter is what these bumps on the road do. It seems the more technical term for these is speed-bumps.
As is common with the way we Indians think about ourselves, I always felt that the these speed-bumps are so idiotic that they must have been invented and are used only in India. But when I looked up their history here - Speed_bump - Wikipedia, I came to know that the invention was by the Americans in the early 20th century, and the first ones were built in New Jersey. In my 3 short trips to the US over the past 10 years, 2 of which were to New Jersey, I've never seen these bumps. If they're still found in places, I didn't pass by any. According to the wikipedia page UK and parts of Europe have what are called speed humps, which are less aggressive than speed bumps, and are built with lots of regulation, oversight and research. I find them stupid too. Anyway, Indian city roads have all kinds of humps and dumps on our roads resulting from patches, stuff, gutters, potholes, and so on, besides the specifically installed bumps, which together make driving here a lot of fun.
Being a Civil Engineer only by a 4-year degree, I know that guidelines exist in India as well on how these bumps are to be constructed. And I know for sure that they are rarely followed. I still remember the lecture in my 3rd year at IITB where the professor talked about the guidelines present in some IS code, and then referred to the newly built super high and ugly bumps in the campus and talked about how poorly they were designed, rather not designed at all. That was in 2003.
We live with them. We adapt, coz questioning could be dangerous or tedious in India. It's much easier to just cross the bump and move on. Often when I am driving, I feel like I am running a hurdles race. Sometimes I refuse to slow down and let myself fly, but manage land immediately thereafter and keep going. They say if you take off and reach orbital velocity, you can go round the earth. And if you reach the escape velocity, you can go beyond. Some day these bumps will help me take off to heavens, not slow me down!
The most ridiculous aspect of these so called speed-breakers is the concept itself - creating a hurdle on the road so that one is forced to slow down - who thinks like that? Well, I do agree that humans are a kind that don't adhere to speed limits if you just tell them to. You have to either penalize them effectively and without fail, or force them to slow down somehow. And the latter is what these bumps on the road do. It seems the more technical term for these is speed-bumps.
As is common with the way we Indians think about ourselves, I always felt that the these speed-bumps are so idiotic that they must have been invented and are used only in India. But when I looked up their history here - Speed_bump - Wikipedia, I came to know that the invention was by the Americans in the early 20th century, and the first ones were built in New Jersey. In my 3 short trips to the US over the past 10 years, 2 of which were to New Jersey, I've never seen these bumps. If they're still found in places, I didn't pass by any. According to the wikipedia page UK and parts of Europe have what are called speed humps, which are less aggressive than speed bumps, and are built with lots of regulation, oversight and research. I find them stupid too. Anyway, Indian city roads have all kinds of humps and dumps on our roads resulting from patches, stuff, gutters, potholes, and so on, besides the specifically installed bumps, which together make driving here a lot of fun.
Being a Civil Engineer only by a 4-year degree, I know that guidelines exist in India as well on how these bumps are to be constructed. And I know for sure that they are rarely followed. I still remember the lecture in my 3rd year at IITB where the professor talked about the guidelines present in some IS code, and then referred to the newly built super high and ugly bumps in the campus and talked about how poorly they were designed, rather not designed at all. That was in 2003.
We live with them. We adapt, coz questioning could be dangerous or tedious in India. It's much easier to just cross the bump and move on. Often when I am driving, I feel like I am running a hurdles race. Sometimes I refuse to slow down and let myself fly, but manage land immediately thereafter and keep going. They say if you take off and reach orbital velocity, you can go round the earth. And if you reach the escape velocity, you can go beyond. Some day these bumps will help me take off to heavens, not slow me down!
