Lessons Learnt (Arz000n)

It was a bright Sunday afternoon, if I remember from the month of August. You know how August summers generally are in Mumbai – unbearable heat, water supply shortage, frequent power-cuts, surprisingly huge discount offers in Pizza Hut, etc. I’m bad in portraying the perfect picture, but I hope you are able to paint a good one in your mind.

I was working at home like a good guy, when my cell phone suddenly started ringing – Tring-tring, Tring-tring, Tring-tring. Well if you are wondering, I don’t keep fancy ring tones; it’s the default one that came with Nokia.

“Hello, this is Z00nie. May I know who this is?”
“Blue or Red pill. Choice is yours”, a s**y female voice said.

If you hear random people calling you to discuss about pills, lot of things instantly starts churning in your mind:

1. Pills? When was the last time I was absolutely stoned and got a gal back home?
2. Pills? When did I change my profession to be a pharmacist?
3. Pills? What pills? I don’t need any pills. I don’t take drugs
4. Pills? Is this about bank loan…monthly instalments…free credit card offer?
5. Pills? Errrmmm…wrong number maybe?
   

“Excuse me”, I continued trying to suppress the series of questions being stormed in my head.
“Do you want to meet in Red Chilli Peppers or Bombay Blues, you moron”, was what I heard.
“Is that Uttara? Jesus Christ…you scared the living sh*t out of me!!”
“Ya it is. I just finished watching MATRIX and I kind of like Laurence Fishburne”
“Who is he?”
“It doesn’t matter, Blue or red?”, she kept repeating. I tried to put aside all the weird question the word PILL got in my head and tried to remain calm.
“Well, I heard of a good offer going on in Pizza Hut, if you fancy pizzas. Boy, am craving for one right now. So how about…”
“Good. Let’s meet in Dominos then. They have excellent choice of pizza's”
“Alwite!!”

I still don’t understand the purpose of that call. But whatever it is, being a good guy that I am (thank you!!) I agreed to meet, Uttara (also popularly known as Uttssy, ta-ra-ra-ra, Utta-ra-ra-ra, Utta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra and by many other pet names), Neha (Musings) and InciVinci (I forgot his real name – the reason for which is in the lessons learnt below)

The choice of restaurant was excellent, the ambience was amazing and our seating was just brilliant for the first blog meet. Anyone could just walk in, look into our plates and say – “Dude, I want to have...hmmmm...that one...that flavour of pizza”, pointing to the one I would be chewing at that moment.

You guessed it right - we were close to the entrance, infact so close that if someone runs into Dominos at the speed of 80 miles per hour in the forward direction, would land directly on our pizza toppings.

Anyway, all four of us spent 5 hours together talking about nothing, that’s right - absolutely nothing, but we manage to consume 8 different varieties of pizza, 8 bottles of sprite and still when we left Dominos, we all were eyeing Bombay Blues. I think it was due to summer heat.

Call me Bizarre or just plain old Z000nie, but when I’m with friends (who generally talk about pills), I tend to crack more jokes than when I am with say, my pet dog. So while the conversation about nothing was in progress, I tend to drop in a general knowledge question for Uttsy. The reply to this question might be considered inappropriate (or as they say in more sophisticated terms these days – CENSORED) in certain parts of India.

“What is this new blog pet names you guys up to these days?”, I threw it in Uttara’s direction. Meanwhile, Neha and Inci-vinci were trying to finish whatever was left on the plates, with the fear that the next person to walk in might just grab it from their hands.
“What do you mean?”, she replied.
“You know…you are the UTTSY, Musings is called as Musssy and Divya is called as Dissy”
“Yeah I know, You are Arz000n. So you will be called as A*sy”
“Kewl!! I don’t mind being A*sy, but I just wonder what Puneet will be called as.”

There was a pin drop silence on the table, as if I just dropped my clothes to show my private parts or something.

“You moron” were the exact words that our so-called friendly-next-door-girl UTTSY said, before she threw Sprite bottles in my direction. I tried to dodge it, by moving towards right, but then she had just seen MATRIX, so the effect was on her mind. A series of bottles flew in my direction that evening around 8 of them within next 10 seconds, out of which one hit my head.

I don’t know what happened next, because when I got hold of my consciousness, all my pizza slices were gone and my Sprite tasted like water. I’m sure somebody must have walked into the restaurant while I was down.

Well I want to conclude this life-threatening incident with a series of lessons learnt that evening:

1. Never crack a joke with a gal that includes topics close to her heart like Pizza toppings, Tomato sauce flavours, Br* and the CENSORED reply above.
2. If you are hit by a bottle of sprite exactly at the location on your head just above your eye-brow, chances are that you might lose your memory. I still can’t remember what happened in my life between 1995 and 1998.
3. Your friends, no matter how close they are in terms of friendship, always take advantage of your unconsciousness and steal your drinks (best friends run away with your food as well).
4. Sprite doesn’t taste like mineral water.
5. I can’t remember this point right now. It was …. Errrmmmm…

Birthday Dedication for arz000n - Arjun!!

***Changing the format of birthday dedications here @ BUF. Now the dedication posts will be put up on your birthdays rather than with the BUF update!***

3rd August: BUFer's sing the birthday song for Arjun :)

Popularly known as z000niee ... the z000n bug ... in the blog world. His bizzare sense of humor reflected in his posts made his blog one of the most 'favorited' blogs around!

I for one have spent many afternoons reading through his blog and laughing aloud :D. Although I missed meeting up with him in my last trip to Mumbai, I've had couple of phone conversations with him and my personal take on him (from what I made of the rather short conversations) is that he's not the totally bizzare person we would expect him to be! He's a nice and interesting guy to talk to and one who insisted that he was in fact a very shy and reserved guy :)

Ofcourse, when you read up the comments made by uttara, vipul, keshi, messy, etc on this post ... you'll get a better insight because they've known him a lot better than I have!

Happy Birthday Arjun! :)

The Z000n Bug!! (z000nie)

Well, finally I’ve decided to release my photo on this blog and its right next to this post, except that I don’t wear goggles and roam around naked in real life. But I believe we all are matured by now, and will not be ashamed to view my snap with our family and pets around.

Blog happened to me more than two years back, when I got bored of constantly gazing at the ceiling fan all my weekend.

"That's it, enough of all this bull-crap, I'm not born to look at the ceiling-fan", were my exact words, "I'll start a blog instead."

Since then I’ve never looked back or on the ceiling and have managed to find a person inside me that was trying to find an escape for a long long time. Farting didn’t help him it seems, so I started writing.

While basking under the rays of blogging, I managed to take some time out to meet fellow bloggers under the name of “BLOG MEET”. Trust me, its nothing but five hours of sense-less ramblings with free Sprite, beer, vodka and ketchup along with Nacho’s sponsored by GOD-Knows-WHO!!

I’ve met couple of them introduced below already and I’m planning to post - in detail running into multiple parts- about how the meeting went, but in some other post. I don’t want them to steal my thunder in this one.

SPECIAL NOTE TO Uttssy & Mala: I’m extremely sorry guys, you’ll throw sandals and beer cans in my direction, once that post is out.

NOTE TO ISHI: Thanks for inviting me, and now aren’t you glad that we didn’t meet in Delhi? Else your name would have appeared in the special note above.

I’m not a people person, which means I prefer not to meet people in person. Especially when they meet me for the first time and go ahead to the extreme of touching my nose and say, “Dude, your nose is way too big. And what’s up with your eyes? And your hair?”

And then without warning – I’m sorry if you don’t like violence – I just go ahead and punch right on the face. This has happened almost all the time till now. Glad that I haven’t been to any blog-meets (if there is such a thing here in UK), else the local newspaper would come out with headline –

Brown Asian male punched a white guy on his face, without reason.

As you might have guessed from above, I’m not the kind of person anyone would love to meet and spend time with. That’s why I fall under the category of mysterious person, whom many are trying hard to poke and get some knowledge about.

I think the mystery about me will slowly unfold in my posts to come on this blog, very much like the movie DA VINCI CODE, except that in DA VINCI you had TOM HANKS, but here – feel extremely lucky when I say this- you’ll have to tolerate ME!!

Thanks for inviting me on this blog and cheers to all you fellas!!