The Japanese Embassy has not yet answered ROFL Indian’s question.His question is genuine.Poor guy.

Overnight, I had gained deep insights into the medicinal properties of Japani Oil. It seemed this concoction had definitely something to do with restoring the electrical charges of battered male batteries. Maybe the man and the woman in the picture weren’t afterall exhausted from doing the laundry. It was an exciting discovery of course, which needed independent verification. I contacted the Japan Information Centre of the Embassy of Japan, for help. Here’s the email I wrote to them (I’m not kidding. I actually wrote a mail to the embassy!)

Dreamer writes about the time he spent at Sri Ramana Maharishi Academy of Blind.

And as our classes got over I walked out fresh… The three hours of non-stop noise by JAWS software seemed to be music now. And as I started walking out, Chetan ran out through the zigzag corridor dodging the walls, straight into the playground. I stopped… this couldnot have been for real. I closed my eyes and started walking only to crashed over a stone. I had hurt myself. The shock was still on. As I walked outside the school premises, I took deep breath.

Manuscrypts writes about a priced possession that has traveled with him for over two and a half decades.

It moved to the less homely, and usually less cleaner habitats – the engineering college hostels, and played host to everything from the T Scale and other engineering drawing set paraphernalia to my favourite sliced green chillies pickle that was stocked and used with bread to survive the toxic waste that was regularly served in the hostel canteen. College mates used to eye it lustily because it was also suspected of containing quite a few literary works that kids at that age read for erm, pleasure.

My first choice was Cleartrip. Over the last few years, it’s been the only site I’ve used for my flight bookings. Mostly domestic though. Great experience, everytime. All my international tickets, however, were either booked by clients or conference organizers. This was my first experience booking an international flight ticket on ClearTrip.

Kiruba writes about his hassled trip to KL, thanks to a VOID ticket and Cleartrip blog has their side of the story.

We’d like to state at the outset that we’re not holding anything back here and even though there were various parties that contributed to the screw-up, we took complete ownership for resolving our customer’s problem. That said, here goes…

As soon as we noticed Kiruba’s original post, we swung into action. We apologised to Kiruba on Twitter and informed him that we were looking into the issue immediately.

The song has been buzzing in my head for a while now and since we don’t have the recorded version and the orchestra is live, I walked up to the singer and asked her for the raagam. She said ‘Yaman’. Looking at my quizzical expression, she said  “have you heard SaraswatiChandra – chandan sa badan?” I drop my jaw. That song tops my favorites since 2000

Rads discovers her love for raag Yaman.

Those days something as simple as ‘njanum varatte‘( can I also join in) laid the foundation for a life-long friendship. Today imagine the number of times you think about whether to take the initiative and ask ‘can I join in?’ without being asked to. The three of us hit off really well and in a couple of days, there were few more additions to the gang. We were seven of us now and this time girls were a majority . There was a basement, left idle in an adjacent plot, which became our official playground.

Josmy gets high on nostalgia and remembers her summer vacations.

Basavanagudi, land of the December Peanut Fair around the benevolent Big Bull Temple at the Bugle Rock park. Where Bhavani Bangle Stores , seller of  velvet-cloth-flower-painting-kits (as seen on the housewives show on Udaya TV) and Maybeline for the middle class added an additional floor to accommodate customers. Where Sangeeth Sagar tried the same , failed and went back to the narrow column of a shop selling Rajkumar hits on cassettes now also on MP3.

Jai writes about Basavanagudi.Good read for all of you who love the old Bangalore.

Amooma,an unsatisfied Sony Ericsson customer lands up in the police station. She narrates her tale.

I gulped. They told me to stand up, put on my shoes and come with them.
Sober, I went with them and entered the back of the police jeep, driven by a male police driver.
Sat down, smiled a valicha chiri (silly smile) and said, “Oh! Angane police jeepinte backil keri arrest cheyyapettu.”(Oh my God! So, I have been arrested by the police!)
The police said, “No. This is not an arrest.”

Rads discovers that she is too many cartoon characters mashed into one.

Munchkin. Replace ‘grampa’ with any name. Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother, Granma, Grandpa. Yeah.

Malayali weddings are a popular topic here at DP (1,2, 3, 4) and here is one more from Jade.

And so ended my first mallu wedding in seven years. Probably my last proper mallu wedding too, come to think of it. I’ve heard that the high society weddings in Kerala have become ‘modern’ – the groom wears a sherwani and the bride wears a lehenga. And the women wear shiny saris with thousands of gold sequins on them, instead of proper Kancheepuram silk saris. Other people ape the West. We are different – we ape the North.