obtuse angle

I have a smart phone. But I am not smart enough to know what all (not even 10%) it is capable of! I wish to believe I am not alone in this (rather big!) group. Of course I am not that dumb (as you may like to imagine of me!). At least I know how to make calls and receive calls (very basic, right?), use WhatsApp, Viber, Messenger, see my facebook page, browse through some news portals etc. (Am I making you jealous!). But, if you ask me what each and every app is comprised of (the nuances of it), you will beat me hands down. No need to envy me! Yes, I know the basic things. For example, I do not know how to prevent some annoying feeds that crop up in my fb page. I just ignore them and scroll down. Only recently I learnt how to make 'free calls' through Viber. I get video calls on WhatsApp from my son, but I do not know how to call him (video call). Hey! I am a slow learner! Okay.... I still do not know how to see my personal mail inbox on my phone. (May be I am a bit lazy to...

This is the first-hand experience of my friend, who went to Bangalore recently to visit his daughter and son residing in Bangalore. He is a small town-er, where the life is very much laid-back. This is not his first tryst with the metropolitan city, nonetheless, he found it quite enchanting, this time. He narrates his story...... 'I went to a mall in Bangalore (the city, where my son-in-law works) with my daughter's family. It is about a week back. The car was winding up and up and up to get a parking slot.... I was wondering whether we were going to a hill station.... How many floors we were climbing up, I lost count. May be 8 or 9! Each floor has space for about 300 cars, which works out to roughly 2,500 cars or a little more, in total. Considering on an average of 3 people per car, at least about 7,500 to 8,000 people must be inside the mall, doing shopping, window-grazing, eating, children playing games, and some simply loitering.... 'We went to a footwear shop.  ...

"I will come within 5 minutes' - This is what is informed to me over phone, by a known person supposed to deliver some urgent item for which I have been waiting for some time. You would have guessed that it took more than 2 hours for me to get the required item delivered to me. And the 'delivery person' is delivering drinking water cans to customers. Imagine how his clients might be suffering from 'de-hydration'! This is generally the case with people who are supposed to deliver things, may be with the exception of 'pizza' delivery! Everyone must have experienced delayed (too late) deliveries from their tailors. They are known for their inordinately delayed deliveries. There are cases wherein you might have given order for getting your dress stitched for this Diwali and got it delivered the next Diwali! There is a joke famous over the years. 'Hey see, the train is on time today'. 'Hello, this train was supposed to arrive yesterday at th...

'You both could be mistaken  for sisters' A person not very familiar to the 'subject'  in the above sentence utters so! Is it a compliment to the elder of the two or a degradation for the younger girl? Generally, the intention of the speaker might be meant as a compliment to the elder lady! However there is a possibility of the younger girl (probably the daughter) taking it as an offensive statement, right? To avoid such conflicts, it is rather safe to say to the elder lady(!) that she looks surprisingly young. The mother (!) is happy and at the same time the daughter is not offended. May be she also would be happy to hear that her mother looks younger! When someone does a task, you say that 'no one can do it like you'. It could be a positive comment or a sarcastic one as well! It could have actually meant that 'you have messed it up'. Only if the listener is smart enough, he will be able to decipher the real meaning behind the sentence. Do not ...