Thursday, December 17, 2009

The one where i am fascinated.

Sometimes the simplest of things will trigger of a thought that’s, at that time anyway, baffling. Some things that absolutely make no sense and you cant figure out for the life of yourself why the person/place/thing that did it, did it that way. Inventions, machines, I mean aren’t they suppose to really help things along? You know, make life simpler, easier or faster. Somewhere along the way, the purpose is lost and we are left struggling with the aftermath of what was once a great idea. Lets look at some of these things:
Packaged ketchup: Clearly makes sense. I mean cmon. How else would you deliver ketchup? But, now heres the tricky bit. Tomato slush is neatly packaged in sachets. Cute and all. But, the single most annoying problem with that is that they don’t OPEN. Try as you may, you cant tear open the sachet. Even where it says Tear Here. At a deeper level, it could mean, that in an emotional state, when you need to waste some precious eye water, you have a slot where you can neatly tuck it away. But, when you are eating (and not doing a site recce for your tears), the sachets will not tear open and spill their contents. Throw in some oily hands and its simply an exercise in futility. Many a teeth, nails and sharp objects will fail here. Oh, btw, you people out there packing these things. Heres a heads up, when we order takeaway, we might not be at home. Therefore, we don’t have a scissor. So, use your head and end the struggle.

The “Fs”: On a good day, I can be really tech savvy. On a bad, I can access my outlook. On none of these days can I figure out what the rest of the function keys on my keyboard stand for. And because of the sheer fear of making my computer hang, I don’t randomly punch on these buttons. F5 which makes a slideshow out of a work-in-progress is really useful. The rest, I am not so sure you know. What do they really do? Besides thrilling anyone with an eye for beauty and making the keyboard look balanced, I am not sure these were attached there for a reason. Besides, I don’t use them for anything useful and I do a lot of work on the computer, so they really cant be that important right? Coming back, why are they there again?

Swiss Army Knives: See, clearly, these were meant for the Army, But since they have snuggled into our lives, and men seem immensely fascinated with them, people thought they were a great idea. Technically, speaking they are. But, you know, not for us. At several levels. One, when in dire need, you will not find them. You can dig your purse, suitcase, scratch your head, murmur some expletives, say you were sure you put it there, but you will not find it. You then improvise, effectively rendering your army knife useless. Two, when you do have it at hand and pull it out with all the style you can muster, it wont work. One corkscrew function is useless, the knife is not needed, the scissors to tiny to cut anything but thread and leaves your fingers severely damaged (another post about the delinquency of that) and what you really need to open is a phone. You see where I am going with this? Besides oozing with style, you cant do much else with these things. Baffling, truly.

I will think of more and put it up. Surely this deserves more.

2 comments:

Malesh Ponnusamy said...

Full marks on ketchup and the "F" keys :)!!!

paritosh said...

and thats the reason, in the macbooks, the main purpose of the F keys are some other purpose like the widgets and itunes, and if you want to use the F keys for the function operations then one has to use the 'fn' key just like shift. Apple's smart :)
ketchup .. totally agree.
one more thing i can add is the packaging of the amul cheese cubes in india. just try it to see how irritating it is to just OPEN.