Rambodoc at large

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I am used to having people search for 'Celine and FTV', 'Condoms', 'vibrating condoms', 'Vibrating condoms-how they work', and enter my blog. Many spend 0:00 minutes in the blog, some do spend decent time, and a few become regulars. I am astonished, however, to note what all stuff people Google for, and where they land. Imagine you searching for a red light area in a new city and you end up spending your evening in a temple!
Today it was 'large scrotum', and someone managed to find me. I mean, not me as a representative of the condition, but this blog. I mean, I have the balls to say what I want to the way I want to, but isn't 'Big Scrotum' a bit too much? I surely can't advertise for that! The search result just before mine was a site in Jakarta that says "He had testicles the size of medium-large potatoes. ... are drugs to kill the parasite but it’s best to take these before the scrotum swells up like this. " Very interesting, I am sure, but he must be talking of filariasis, which doesn't move me.
Today, another search that led into this blog was, believe it or not, 'what is the name of the hole in which the urine comes out of a female?" Fortunately, I was in honorable company, with Addenbrooke's Hospital as the number one hit. This search led to my The Third World post, which dealt with gender benders. Now, I am sure this must be one of the new illiterates, who can press thirty different keystrokes in a blur but only type out sms lang wth min ffrt. On top of that, this person does not even know the hole story of life.
Next, "Botox availability in limerick" led to one of my limerick posts. What do these guys think? That someone will have created a limerick only on 'Botox availability' so that they can use it in their PowerPoint presentations and look less retarded? Unless that person is me, or someone more retarded.
'Antonio villaraigosa is a typical mexican male cheater' was one that I flunked. Just dunno how that hit me.
I am sure there are lots of you who laugh out at some weird searches that found you. I still find some satisfaction in being hit with 'life of a surgeon' (its lots of sex, I mean stress, and makes you less money than good old shopkeeping, trading or lawyering does) , or 'treatment of piles without surgery' (wait till I get my hands on you!), or, best of all, "b. ramana gall bladder surgeon kolkata" (Nothing but the best for you, mate? Hope you are carrying lots of cash!?)
What about you?

The fruit for which Samir Johna makes a welcome return to this blog is over 11,000 years old, cultivated first in present day Jordan (near Jericho) much before wheat and rice. There are lots of interesting things about the fig.
First of all, this is not really a fruit, but part flower, part seed. Man's dirty mind was attracted to its alleged phallic shape, and it became a religious symbol to the ancient Greeks, and popular with the Romans as well.
Though figs are nutritionally at the top for calcium, fiber, and antioxidant content, my interest is well beyond its physical potentials.
We all know that not giving a fig means not caring a damn. Much like how a sensible man should treat Lindsay Lohan's antics.
In full fig means to be dressed up in smart clothes. Accordingly, figged up means to dress up and look smart.
In marketing, FIGS refer to the market represented collectively by France, Italy, Germany and Spain, which is the target of any company which wishes to break into the European market.
Sometimes, the Devil's print may make the word appear as frig, but I really don't know what it means.

Jam made of many fruits is a common denominator in my breakfast meals in the Middle East. Generally, it is used to add sweetness and a preferred flavor to that taste. Making jam is also a reasonable way to deal with the large product that can not be preserved for a long time.


That was the situation in my small backyard when suddenly I had to deal with large amount of juicy, black figs (fig 1). There is only so much you can give to friends and relatives!
Here is what I need to do to make fresh, home-made fig jam in my kitchen.

Materials:
Ripe figs. In this case I used a total of six cups of chopped figs.
Four cups of sugar.
Four tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.



Recipe:

Chop the figs into 4 pieces each.
Place the chopped figs in a large container.

Add the sugar to the figs. Distribute the sugar all over (fig 2).
Leave some 60-90 minutes until the sugar is all wet and mostly dissolved.


Add the lemon juice and mix well (fig 3).



Add the whole mixture into a pot and place over a fire (fig 4).

Start with high temperature until the mixture start boiling, and then take the temperature down half-way.
Until the mixture is boiling, you must stir the mixture gently and continuously to prevent sticking of the mixture to the pot.

Once it is boiling, then you can stir the mixture less frequently.


The jam should be ready whenever you see no more vapors coming out of the mixture!
Let it cool and then place in cans or bottles as required (fig 5).

Serve (after keeping for some time in the refrigerator) on bread and butter, cream cheese, or cheese!
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.

(Circa: some time in this century, in a hypothetical hospital in Kolkata)
Mohit Bansal was a businessman who normally made his bucks count by selling second hand mobile phones as new ones, in his multiple shops littered in the markets of Kolkata. Nothing made him as happy as when he could clinch a portion of his customer’s bank balance just by the sheer gift of being able to flex the metaphorical muscles of the frontal cortex. As it happened that day, when he was about to scam a couple of thousand rupees from an unsuspecting clerk out on the prowl for a bargain phone, he felt a discomfort that needed a bathroom call. To his shock, he bled blood from his rectum, quite like money from a bride’s tight-fisted father. An alarmed Bansal fled to his family GP, who tried things like Thank God, but to no avail. Bansal was somewhat educated, and did a Google search and came up with an article that seemed to answer his every cry for help. Piles, he read, could be operated without painful cuts, and clean up his health and wealth.
With great trepidation, like how Harry Potter’s creator must have viewed the launch of her first book, he set out to meet a surgeon, with the rather phoren sounding name of Dr. Urs Truly. The surgeon truly did not bat an eyelash, nor did his nasal vibrissae move (as the patient noted indignantly) when he pronounced a need for Bansal to undergo immediate surgery. In fact, it seemed to Bansal that Dr. Truly, the way his myopic eyeballs were popping out, seemed to relish the prospect of chopping up his posterior, and profit from it. In a strange way, Bansal pictured himself at his last sale, when he convinced a college student to part with ten big ones for a Nokia phone that would do a favor on its owner by not exploding by his ear-side, or worse, in his trouser pocket.
When the surgeon, using an irritating matter-of-fact tone, stated the total price tag for the new-fangled surgery, Bansal didn’t know which organ he needed to use to gulp the figure inwards. With the difficulty with which dentists extract an impacted molar tooth, or first time mothers deliver babies obstinate on coming out butt-first, he managed to arrange for the ransom quoted for his surgery.
When he came to the hospital for his admission, he was shown in with great gusto, as if he was the first-ever swindling shopkeeper to grace the linoleum floors of the institution.
As soon as he settled down in his room by 9 pm, a nurse came in and expertly poked in an IV line in several places till she found no fault in one. By this time, his wrists had swollen up enough to bear comparing with that of a pugilist who gets his ears habitually bitten off by Mike Tyson-types.
All night, Bansal fretted, unable to sleep because the darn IV cannula would get stuck in the sheet somewhere the moment his eyes closed. After all, tomorrow morning, 7 am, he was due for surgery.
In what seemed like five minutes after he drifted into sleep, he was woken up by the nurse in a way that is normally reserved for the more exceptional inmate of the Guantanomo Bay facility. When the nurse demanded that he get ready for surgery, he asked to be given a little time for freshening up. He brushed his paan-stained teeth, bled some more in the pan, and drank two glasses of water. The nurse, when she heard of this, behaved in a way as to suggest to Bansal that he actually deserved to be in the American facility north of Cuba. Normally, Bansal was as unflappable as an Indian Airlines hostess, if you could imagine Bansal dressed up in a sari and exposing a two-inch deep umbilicus to the scanning eyes of 456 bored passengers with nothing better to look at. No one told him not to drink water, though the nurse had said ‘No breakfast” tomorrow!
The patient was getting increasingly stressed out at the injustice of putting in an IV channel at 9pm in the evening when the first drug was to be given at 7 the next morning. When he asked the nurse why he had to suffer this through the night, when it could very well have been done just when it was needed, she looked elsewhere and said, “We are only two of us in the floor, and don’t have time for all this in the morning”. That got Bansal’s goat, though he never sanctioned identifying said animal for man’s selfish needs. A brief verbal skirmish ensued, not dissimilar to a tired Hamas-Israeli exchange long after the world had got used to the sound of sundry missiles and all-knowing bunker-busters monopolizing the otherwise silent night. You see, both sides know it is nothing serious, but just like dogs urinate by their favorite lampposts, they both declare their differing positions and sentiments. In Kolkata, Bansal then went one ahead. He questioned the ancestry of the nurse in question, and all nurses in general. By the time the aggrieved nurse went to call her supervisor (one of the blessed breed of women who can still sleep in spite of the milkman, the school-going child, and those unsocial crows who shout abuses at their ilk from across buildings in Kolkata), a Class IV staff came into Bansal’s room. In the classless society that is India, Class IV staffs are those who line up at the time of surgery or discharge for the largesse of satisfied customers. They are to be found outside maternity wards, when a baby is born every time the minute hand of the ancient clock strikes a Roman numeral. At the time of discharge, each ward boy who had served tea in the room even once would line up along the corridor, like a victory salute, looking pointedly at the exiting and excited parents. The parents also know the ‘sistam’ (a.k.a. the ‘shistame’) whereby the Class IV staffs are rewarded appropriately for having successfully helped with the delivery. At least, the parents’ looks suggest that, as do the self-congratulatory expressions on the visages of the ward boys. Digression complete.
Aforementioned ward boy to Bansal: “Saar, shaving karna hai” (“Sir, I’ve come to shave you”)
B: “Theek hai, karo!” (Ok, go ahead).
If you remember, the patient was due for a piles operation. While self-declared modernists like Dr. Urs Truly scoffed at the tradition of shaving patients’ body parts before surgery, the ‘system’ had its way, and the doc was ignored. Surgery meant shaving, doc be damned!
The ‘barber’ pulled up the patient’s shirt, as if to shorn B of his manly growth on his chest and abdomen.
With a dangerous glint in his eyes, he asked, “ You know which part of the body to shave?”
The boy shook his head casually, as if it was quite an absurd question for which he had no time.
A shudder of abuses followed the barber to the restless door. To prepare the patient finally for surgery, a boy from the Housekeeping department came in with a towel: “please sponge yourself”. When the patient asked for hot water for this, the boy came back with a beaker of hot water and poured it into the basin, filling it up. Throwing the towel into the steaming basin, he waited. Bansal looked at the basin, and said, “You expect me to wash myself in the same dirty basin where everyone spits and coughs? What do you think I am, an asshole?”
We don’t know if the boy was cheeky enough to answer in the affirmative, but all Hell , like an environmentalist’s movie on global warming, broke loose.
The patient, clearly, could not take the loss of advancing 50,000 Indian rupees (around $1300) for the operation, and be given such a raw deal in service. He almost empathised, at that moment, with a student who, two months ago, came back to him just weeks after buying a ‘new’ cell phone that now had no display. Bansal had shooed away the student, accusing him of dropping the gadget into his morning coffee or tea, with milk and one spoon of sugar.
Back to the present. Bansal refused to go into surgery, expressing great suspicion as to the behavior of the nurses and ward boys after surgery. He feared that they would take turns in kicking him (in his immediate drowsy post-anesthesia state) after covering him with blankets so that no marks would found of both the surgery and the post-surgical trauma.
Called to the scene of the battle, Dr. Urs Truly did the smart thing. Surrounded by a belligerence of relatives, he just laughed it off. He said they were right in every allegation they hurled, and said the Hospital’s deficiencies were incurable. He asked them to take the patient to his rival’s hospital, where (he assured them) the surgeon and the nurses were brilliant. He said sorry, and shook every hand in sight, till he realized one of them belonged to the bewildered self-professed barber. Smiling ingratiatingly at one and all, with the appearance of an American President waving at a crowd of prospective watch-stealers, he disappeared, leaving behind a feeling of awe in the crowdling. As he turned off the corner, Bansal thought, “Now if I had Him as a partner, I could make my own brand of mobile phone!”
He decided then and there that he would get operated only by Dr. Truly even if he chose to do so under the shade of a tree. He did not believe in being mobile with his requirements!

A surgeon friend of mine tells me a story.
A young 13-year-old girl is being evaluated for a disease no one is able to catch. The clinically astute doc ordered a special x-ray test (the name of which is immaterial) that ultimately clinched the diagnosis and spared her a major surgery. You can well imagine how relieved and grateful the parents would have been. One can imagine these people sending sweets to the doc’s house on Diwali, and expect him to attend the girl’s marriage in the future.
This story, unfortunately, did not quite go along these lines. The twist in the story came in the x-ray room. During the procedure, the x-ray technician fondled the breasts of the young, innocent girl. She asked him why he was doing so. ‘Just adjusting your clothes’ for the x-ray, said the technician. After the procedure, the kid cried out to her mother, who hushed her up (afraid of a scandal), and only much later told the surgeon what had happened. My friend was deeply, deeply offended. "How dare the swine?" he asked the CEO of the hospital. The CEO promised immediate action. The action was not dismissal, for that could cause problems with the Workers’ Union. No, a three-member committee was appointed to investigate the incident. In the meanwhile, the patient (and her parents) went back home, and soon became well with the medicines prescribed by the surgeon. As the days went by, they chose to forget the unpleasantness. They decided never to go to the hospital again. Courtesy their family doctor, they got another surgeon later. Embarrassment avoided.
Our surgeon got busy again with his patients, but still called up the CEO: “What happened to that technician? Why hasn’t he been sacked?”
Now, the technician had genuflexed to the Committee, saying he had a pregnant wife and a small baby, and that “I can’t afford to lose this job, as I am a poor man”. It was obvious to the Committee that sexually deprived as he was, he just succumbed to some "momentary weakness". The hospital was facing a shortage of trained hands capable of doing certain procedures, and the Committee members agreed within themselves that he wasn’t easy to replace. On top of that, bad press was inevitable should the thing get out. They therefore pronounced the whole thing as a mistake and a misunderstanding, and reassured the parents in writing that “strong action” was “being contemplated”.
Bullshitting over, the world carried on with its business. Only the victim of the pressure-cooked male lust, that little girl, remembered it all. She became a timid woman. She lacked normal responsiveness to men. We don’t know what became of her. Another lost nonentity, another collaterally injured victim of sub-human control, of mindless androgenic aggression. And so much more.

I am now faced with serious issues in my life. No, nothing as trivial as surgery. I have been forced to download Firefox. I use a Mac for all my comp work, and the Safari (version 3.0 beta) was great, I thought. I just bought a domain for a new website, and bought a version that would help me design my own website without professional help. In other words, web designing for dummies at a price (remember, a fool and his money are soon parted!). When I went to try out this WebSite Tonight (a product of GoDaddy), after having paid my $100, I got an error message: "WebSite Tonight does not support your browser (Safari), please use Firefox or Windows XP."
So (eyeballs herniating through orbits, stretching optic nerves to breaking point), Dear Daddy, why didn't you ask me what browser I use before taking my money? You thought I was some stupid asshole who could be conned that easily, eh? Er, how did you know?? (E. Balls replaced in situ, appearance restored from Mutant Martian to Old Fart.)
Anyways, I downloaded Firefox, with its promise of being lightning fast, and have been prompted to download another 24 add-ons that will make life as smooth as, well, Thank God! As one who has looked at new downloads as you would look at a blue, new growth on your nose-tip, I am now in mortal crisis.
Any ideas or suggestions for using web development tools, all ye Web 2.0 Death Eaters?