My hair grew too long. Yeah that sort of thing happens in life. But the bad part is hair cuts in Germany are billed in Euros – to be precise 15 euros + 2 euros tip to the barber.

Now lets refresh some high school mathematics: 17 Euro = 17 * 57 = 969 Indian Rupees. Hair cuts in India are billed in Rupees – to be precise 20 Rs. + 0 Rs tip to the barber. That means with 969 Rs., I can cut my hair for 969 / 20 = 48 times. Lets say I cut my hair once in 2 months. So that is worth 8 years of hair cutting money that I gave for doing it one time in Germany. Well that puts it into perspective, doesn’t it? :D

Lessons learnt? 1: Germany is sehr expensive. 2: Don’t convert money. 3: If you can’t resist converting, grow long hair! :(

The rules of Germany. Well it does get some “getting used” to. From applying for a residence permit to driving on the roads to walking on the streets for everything there is a system. And for an outsider it seems like fitting a round object in a hole meant for something square.

I dipped my toes into this strange world before even leaving the shores of India. They need a biometric photo for my visa. Passport size photos won’t do. I always thought the passport size was invented for, well things related to a passport. Germans seem to disagree. They need a biometric. Ok fine, biometric then. I got my visa.

Visa in hand, I reach Deutschland. Then what? I need to apply for a residence permit. Ok great. Preplanning a lot of things I pay (or was it Bachu who paid? :D ) a few hundred bucks and get 20 additional copies from India. I recieve an email from my relocation agent saying you need a biometric pic. Glad at my genius of thinking about stuff before hand I read the next line in the mail – “Biometric photos taken in India are not valid”. Crap! My relocation agent says, but your company will re-imburse for it, what is the big deal! Hmmm. The big deal is a biometric photo is a biometric photo whether taken in India or Uzbekistan or Pluto! But the rules are theirs, and I need to play along. So paying 15 euros I get 4 more biometric photos of me from Germany. Now what? My friends say there is a chance that even this might get rejected.. Awwwww… I wait fingers crossed!

Ok, this is not just about the biometrics, but the rules, rules and more rules. Hmm. I take consolation in the fact that, their system works. Punkt! Everything here just works, so may be I shouldn’t complain too much. But I am an Indian. I have the right to crib about things. And after all being Indian I did make a round object fit into a square hole!

Maybe this was all inspired by the hazzle of getting the photos and missing trips to Salzberg and Paris because of the delay. But the German rules… Arggghh!

:)

Why I do not know. But me and my friends never miss a bad movie to hit town. Hindi, Malayalam, English … we have seen the worst of it all. And with each passing day we get to see a new movie that sets a new benchmark! The latest one was the Malayalam flick “Rashtram”, on which we unfortunately wasted 30 bucks. I still don’t get what the hell those film-makers were doing, apart from boring us to death! So today I take a bold decision. Why suffer alone? Why not publish my worst nightmares? Hehe. Get ready to taste the worst.

Here go my recommendations for the worst movies ever made, that you should probably never spend money to see in a theatre.

God! We have seen enough bad films, that “Rashtram” doesn’t even feature in the worst 5! Scary!!

So its February, the time of the year when you look back at those delightful ambitious resolutions you make in January… and as usual find them all broken.

To refresh your memories, my resolutions were not to get angry, not to complain and to update this site often. So far this year I have gotten angry more than once already, started complaining right from week one and you definitely know the status of the last one ;).

So it’s official. All my resolutions stay broken. Wow… its so much more fun announcing your resolutions to the whole world and then breaking them so publicly. Note to self – Next year don’t be this stupid! :D