Hippy Bogus - ness

Today has been one of the most different days I've had in Pune. My team had a 11.30 a.m. meeting at 3D (a local gaming zone here, with Pune's only bowling lanes, and a bunch of other sad assed games, save for Air hockey which I think I have a good shot at turning pro).

By 11.30 a.m. meeting, I meant we were supposed to meet at that time, to exclusively hang out, behave like asses, and waste time for the whole day. the underlying reason was to apparently "celebrate" the release of a product we have been working on. (Whatever happened to being taken on a cruise, flown down to Bangkok, or being sponsored massages at Ayurvedic spas?)

Taking your valuable resources out to a local bowling alley is a really cheap way to get off rewarding them for their "earnest" efforts on a project, but that's just what happened so I just decided to bowl my heart out.

This was only the second time in my life that I have bowled, and for the first 6 tries I bowled into the gutter like a seasoned "gutter penchant having"alcoholic. (We were 17 of us pitted against each other, playing in groups of 5 odd, in 3 lanes)

However, the competetive streak in me was rekindled, and watching the scoreboards display my pathetic score was ignominy I could do without. So I decided to head to play a small game of "Shoot-the-Hoop" (sad assed game #n where you shoot into a basket ball hoop, from 4 ft out, and the digital scoreboard updates your score, with background sound effects that go like "You make Micheal Jordan look like an Amateur, That would have almost gone in, and You got it going there"

I returned to the bowling lane, convinced another gutter ball was coming up, but bowled nevertheless. And Voila! My first career strike. I felt like Kolo Toure, after his first champions league goal. And the next 2 attempts were consecutive strikes. It had to be something the bowling lane people were doing, because I was bowling the same-old-damned way, save for using the same ball (Orange Number 10 - will never forget it)!

I never won the game, but had put up a respecful score after 20 odd tries, so left feeling like some pride had been regained.

We headed to lunch at the same gaming complex (BAD MOVE!!). After bowling, and showing up at an ad hoc mid-day dancing session in a gaming complex, the last thing you want is have lunch in a closed restaurant without an AC. And that is exactly what happened. We could have whacked the restaurant manager (if "it" did show up that is, but "it" never did). And the gentleman who took us out to dinner (read as Bill Footer), needed to leave, to take the visitor (in whose honour the play-for-the-whole-day session was organized) to the airport.

So we were 15 idiots left at a restaurant with the freedom to use one of our credit cards, to be fully compensated later. The lunch was strictly OK, and the ice-creams that arrived later were ravishingly devoured. So some of us were left with time to kill, in between finishing dessert, designating a "Bill Footer", and deciding whether or not we wanted to continue Bowling/playing ice hockey.

So I came up with a "Guess the bill game". The rules were simple. You needed to guess the standalone lunch bill, and you needed to pay Rs 10 to avail of the opportunity. The guess with minimum distance (positive or negative) from the actual bill amount wins the "game entry fee" collected from everyone. None of us had seen the right hand side of the menu (none of us had even seen the menu), because the lunch was was pre-ordered by the original "Bill Footer", so none of us could possibily have known the total amount spent on lunch.

For some wierd reason, all the "game stakeholders" at the table were very excited about the game, and I became the hustler who went around collecting 10 bucks each of the 11 other people (I DID not pay up. Watching Don King hustling is standing me in good stead).

On the back of one of my used ATM account mini-statements, I went around writing the guess each person was hazarding. Hustling also involves avoiding potential conflict, and that would have been a distinct possibility going foward, because a few people were bidding the same amount. So a few quick rounds of convincing people to change their bid amounts/equally split potential windfall of Rs 110 ensued.

Hippy-Bogus also got a chance to bid, and his guess was Rs 4100 (underlying logic = company would not have spent more than 5K on lunch). And the bid amounts ranged from Rs 2000 to Rs 5434.80. (Don't ask me why. And hustlers are only supposed to collect money, which I did with a vengance). And we waited anxiously for the bill to arrive.

And arrive it did in style, with this stamp et all! For a grand amount of Rs 7435!!

And just when Mr Rs 5434.80. thought he had won, we realized the bill included bowling and "dance floor" (sic!) charges. So after few rounds of subtracting from the grotesque main bill, the lunch bill was isolated, and found to add up to Rs 4325. And Hippy-Bogus promptly declared himself winner!!

And a worthy hustling winner he was. Holding 11 of those slightly soiled and very crumpled Rs 10 notes was the best feeling he had since almost beating the mechanical Rodeo at the Flea market in Goa!

And he promptly decamped with his windfall, lest he be designated as the "Bill Footer" on account of his newly acquired windfall.