Food Papparazzi and their habits dissected

Picture yourself at a snazzy upscale restaurant ; you and your acquaintances seated at a table, engaged in friendly banter, soft music playing in the background. The food arrives ; spicy kadhai chicken , some hariyali kebabs and an assortment of flat breads. The aroma is tantalizing, the waiter goes about his business, putting a generous helping of each dish in everyone's plate, and making it look aesthetically appeasing at the same time.The reason for this is partly due to a well known adage : We eat with our eyes.

Image source :gq.com

So, here you are, sitting in front of the delicious assortment of food in front of you; you're about to reach out for a piece of roti, when suddenly one of your acquaintances says, "One minute dude! I gotta take a snap of this stuff! Looks really great n yummy na?" And he's off, taking hundreds of snaps in quick succession, in different angles, positions and so on, to get the perfect snap to upload on to the social network.
Meanwhile, said kebabs and kadhai chicken are no longer piping hot and the once soft, tender rotis have transformed into brittle papads.

This my friends, is the story of the food paparazzi, a common menace these days..
These individuals have a pre conceived notion of being professional photographers and unlike many of their breed who stick to photographing sunrises and sunsets at every beach and hill station they visit, their focus is on food and unfortunately at times, YOUR food.

Image credit : tumbler.com

And if you have one of them in your friends' circle, then look forward to lunches and dinners of melted ice creams, cold curries , brittle flatbreads and so on..
Now while I don't condone this practice, I ask food photographers to answer the following in the questionnaire I've prepared below:

1.Did you prepare the food and just want to exhibit your culinary talent?
2.Do you own a food blog?
3.Are you a professional photographer seeking to build your portfolio?
4.Are you a food lover who only wishes to help friends searching for good places to eat out?
5.Are you an attention seeking prick who derives sadistic pleasure from taking pictures of food ignoring the grumbling stomachs and drooling faces of the people you are eating out with?

For those who answered Yes to Qns 1- 4 , I can't really fault you folks, carry on....

As for those who answered in the affirmative to Qn 5, you are a menace to social dining and perhaps one of the few reasons that sites like instagram are in business. And may I add, unless you wanna see the day when you consume food via the wrong end, try to enjoy your meal when you're eating out with friends; savor the aroma ,relish the flavor and appreciate the texture; keep the camera aside for when you're eating out alone.

A brief review of Windows 8

Well, Windows 8 was released just a few months ago, which in turn made me wait before purchasing a new laptop; my old one was without a battery, plus it seemed to have developed a mind of its own , giving me a few electric shocks once in a while..

So anyway, fastforward to the present; my new system has completed a week's existence in my care and I feel the time is right to give a straightforward review of my experience with Microsoft's latest iteration of Windows.

Now, you may have noticed the new windows homescreen kind of makes you feel like touching it, so I went for a laptop with a touchscreen. (so that I don't regret my purchase n bug my mom n dad later )

So here goes:

I switch on the machine for the first time ever; my eyes widened in excitement, the familiar loading screen comes on, I finish the initial setup and then , I'm greeted with this beautiful tiled interface..wowww!

Absolutely stunning!Magnifico! This homescreen has icons for mail, calendar, music, et cetera et cetera.. and there's a tile which leads to the desktop interface; which looks just like any of the previous desktop interfaces except for the glaring omission of the start menu. Yup! It's gone..banished to some mysterious land where all old innovations that have met similar fates reside.

Now this is what I don't get... One of the earliest windows OS's 3.1 did NOT have a start menu; it made its first appearance in 1995 with the Windows logo and "Start" written next to it. This was innovative; it conveyed the message to the consumer."Wanna do something?Well, press 'start'!".The start menu went on in the same fashion all they way to Windows XP, and then suddenly ,come Win Vista and WHAM! The word "start" has mysteriously vanished! But one may argue that by now, consumers had got used to the start menu concept and that just the logo was enough to convey the message.

But here we are, in late 2012, in a desktop mode , without a start menu! After making the consumer get used to what one may say was one of the main pillars of the Operating system over a span of more than 15 years, you suddenly make it vanish!

Okayy, now some may argue that well, that's what the tiled homescreen's for , it's got the word "start" written on it isn't it?

Well, writing the word "start" on something doesn't really mean much...The most irritating aspect of the OS is that if I were to "start" something, I had to access this start screen by pressing the windows logo key or accessing the "charms" bar, (another niggling feature which I'll get to in a minute).On entering this start screen, I am totally disconnected from what I'm doing on the desktop.What ever I was doing on the desktop has been completely masked by this assortment of tiles and whatnot.

Fine, I'll get used to it... Now what's it with this "charms" bar? Was it designed by a leprechaun?Will I get to his pot of gold by clicking on it? No? Then what's so charming about it?

Firstly, I had no inkling that this "charms" bar actually existed until I inadvertently went to the top right corner of my screen with my cursor and moved it down; I was like , now what the hell is this? It has a search button, a homescreen button, a settings key and a "share" key. Now frankly, were I using a tablet, this so called "charms" bar would actually be of some utility, but what the hell do I need it for on a laptop?

Another thing that bothered me was that for some reason, Windows was giving me this impression that they developed Windows 8 as a desktop interface first , and then at the nth moment, decided to do away with the start menu and plaster on a large sheet with tiles on it instead.

Select on any app that isn't a native homescreen app and it first takes you to the desktop mode and opens the app there.Personally, I feel that a transition effect such as a blackened screen would've been more aesthetic plus it would've made the interface feel more fluid. Currently, the continuity feels broken if you ask me.

Now one of the worst design flaws ever is the fact that if you purchased a machine without a touchscreen, your touchpad would then replicate touchscreen gestures.While this may seem as the natural way to go, lets discuss the repercussions of going down that route; swiping from the edge of the touchscreen opens the charms bar, and just moving the cursor from the right end of the touchpad does the same! The touchpad fails to differentiate between a swipe and a random cursor movement! Many a time I managed to accidentally bring up the charms bar by moving the cursor to the left..Not so charming now eh?Thankfully here,the presence of a touchscreen prevented me from using a sledgehammer.

For non-touchscreen users,the chance for error may be reduced by just using a mouse, but hey,the point of having a touchpad was to eliminate the need/use of a mouse..So , FAIL.

I must admit that I did get used to all these minor niggles over the week, but that's a pretty steep learning curve for a guy having an IQ of 149!(Imagine a nice old lady sitting at home searching frantically for the start menu just to open skype to chat with her grandkids!)

A newer version of an OS should invariably be much easier to use than its predecessor, right from the word go. Win 8 fails at this critical point. 

Many folks complained about Apple maps being a piece of crap, but that's just bad software.You can live with bad software.But can you live with a bad OS?

Hopefully the next Win version will be better.

PS . A lil retro analysis

Win 3.1 = good

Win 95 = bad (blue screen when bill gates demoed it for the first time live)

Win 98 = good

win me (millenium edition) = bad

win xp = good

win vista = bad

win 7 = good

win 8 = WTF?!?!

Update: Well, it's been two whole weeks since my foray into the Win8 universe. And I'd like to add a few additional points.
Clickpad gesture support : Once you get used to what each finger position and swipe on the clickpad leads to , it's really quite helpful , be it switching between the Start page apps and desktop or accessing various other features such as two finger scrolling , pinch to zoom etc.
The "charms bar ": Well, you may not get a leprechaun with his pot of gold, but it does come with a sizeable bag of tricks,for example "flight mode" so that you may easily disable the wifi incase you don't really require it, and the search button which actually is way more efficient than your old start menu (obviously once you get used to it)
Infact, apart from google maps and the start page apps , I really haven't used the touchscreen much.
But that doesn't change my overall opinion of Win 8; atleast not yet.

Shark attack

The smell in the surroundings caught his attention; an unsuspecting victim wandered close...
He slowly followed, making sure not to attract the attention of any passersby..
At the right moment , he went for the kill, a brief struggle ensued, but he had the benefit of surprise.
Soon it was all over.
I was attacked by a shark. In Bangalore.
Yup, you heard it right ... I was attacked ..... by a shark..... in Bangalore.

Okay well, my friends know that I love playing with metaphors....
The shark in this context refers to your everyday autorickshaw driver in Bengaluru.
If you listen closely , you may actually hear "da-dum da-dum da-dumm" (imagine Jaws music here) as they approach and also "Ka-ching!" once you sit in.

Mention any location in the Garden city and "150 rupees saaaar!" , pat comes the reply.
Any argument on the matter and you'll be treated to responses such as "very far location saaaar!" or "won't get passenger for return trip saaar!". Yeah right, you won't get a return passenger from the largest mall in the city or the railway station. PUH-LEESE!

Also, there's another strange phenomenon I've witnessed during my Bangalore stay; whenever you attempt to cross a road in Bangalore, an autorickshaw will stop in front of you and ask "Elli hog beku saaar!" (Where do you wanna go?) and I reply "Road cross madu beku bewarsi!" (To get to the other side,idiot!).

Another friend of mine got down to preparing his will , after he was taken for a ride (literally saw the gates of Hades!)...at 100km/h on city streets in peak traffic; on getting down , the auto guy says "Very difficult to drive slow for me saaar! I am 3-time auto race winner! "

So friends , if you're the adventure-seeking type, if you ever make a trip to Bengaluru, if you wanna have the time of your lives, do not forget to add "travel in an autorickshaw" to your checklist; it's an experience you'll never forget in a lifetime.