The pice vice
We had cause to spend a little money last week. Perhaps the money plant was flowering.

The first involved further expense on the MMI account, which as one ex-participant warned one would probably end up losing money on. The reasoning is rather simple, though one is reimbursed for travel expenses, the books and clothes expenses do mean entries on the debit side. Since no one really gets any prize money, one can write it off financially. This last point often shocks, astounds and surprises (depending on how much TV they've watched and how little quizzing they've done) many people I know. Can't blame their KBC-ed minds. My mother told me of this one incident in which a guest was shown my MMI momento (every participant gets one) and eagerly wanted to know what/how much I got as prizes. This lady seemed most unimpressed at the lack of such reward, what kind of a TV quiz offers no money? Must be some low-budgeted B-grade workable quiz filled with KBC-rejects (I'm being unfair to that lady, I'm sure she didn't think these things). My quizzing life is littered with successes at contests that have an overall budget of Rs. 100 and managing to fail at quizzes where even the guy in 83rd place gets a Ferrari. I have a durable excuse: the good quizzes never have any good prizes and vice versa. But that's a thumb rule with some degree of success, I can only cite the "ESPN-Star School Sports quiz" as a decent example against that.
Anyway, digressing back t o the topic, the object of the MMI-intended purchase was to sew a suit for me. If any purchase was likely to yield less value-for-money, it would be this. Not because the material would be bad or the tailoring would be debatable (both of which were amply taken care of by a discerning father), but because the intended mannequin, viz. me can't think of any occasion beyond the MMI final where I would wear it. I wanted to think in the direction of some Indian-wear for this "momentous occasion" (and I'm laughing here) but the dictates of a long-term possibility tilted the scales to the suit. It will probably be kept handsome company by the mothballs after its début, so be it. Probably it won't mind serving as the scapegoat too.

The other, more massive, expense was a general upliftment of the home PC. It now seemingly runs faster, at the behest of the 1.7 GHz CPU (If I was Tim "The Toolman" Taylor, I would grunt in approval) and the generosity of the 128 MB R.A.M (note the stops in the earlier acronym - prevents an ugly nomenclatural confusion with self) and some 40-odd GB of hard disk. A more swanky cabinet does for its innards what the afore-mentioned suit would be expected to perform. But an upgrade means reinstalls, wallpaper re-instatements, font foraging and general tinkering with the up-settings. A work in progress to achieve the old familiarity, but alas, a piece of it will probably never come back.
Inaugurated the sounds with the RDB playlist and some very familiar songs play a comforting tune. And how could those butcher-remixers cut up a song as beautiful as "Yeh Vaada Raha"?