“I will give you a missed call”

Here is another interesting tidbit from our India trip. First, everybody and his mother has a cellphone in India. I kid you not when I say that the porter (usually called “coolie” in Northern India) I used at Durgapur station flashed a cell phone. My guess of an average porter’s daily income is about $2 !!

However, what got my attention was some of the unique lingo in the cellphone culture in India. The most prevalent one is probably “Ekta missed call diye debo” (translated from my mother tongue – it means “I will give you a missed call”). You can understand my state of confusion in trying to find out how the heck is anybody going to give me a “missed” call? Don’t I decide whether the call was missed or not? 🙂 What if I pick up the phone when the call comes in? 🙂 How does he give me a missed call now?

Well, after some enquiring I found out that essentially this is a protocol to confirm a previously agreed upon event without paying the cellphone company. So, if I tell you that after I reach Calcutta safely, I will give you a missed call – it means upon reaching Calcutta safely, I will call you and wait for the phone to ring once and then cut it off. You don’t pick it up till it keeps ringing which presumably means I need to talk to you!!!

All this is designed to not pay the cellphone company (in India the caller pays but the receiver does not) for the call. And of course avoid the unpleasantness of actually talking to me 🙂 (who has all that time in India? 🙂 )

Maybe that is how the porters are affording their cellphones !!!!

Rajib

New Element called “Governmentium”

This is very funny. Have you ever looked up “Governmentium” in Wikipedia? This is the entry that you will get…

Govermentium (Gv) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years; It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.