I don’t make new year resolutions. And I tend to be at a loss when people slip and lose balance over the steep precipice of making small talk by clutching at the dangerously tenuous branch of asking people what resolutions they made for new year. So I usually keep my garden pruning scissors handy to cut that strained branch and provide fodder for the crocodiles below.
The shady technology humour escape route.
So, any resolution for the new year?
12 megapixels.
Uh?
600 dpi
Eh?
The wikipedia research based confusion route.
Ennada? What new year resolutions?
Did you know that a resolution is a rule of inference leading to a refutation theorem-proving technique for sentences in propositional logic and first-order logic
Ennadhu?
And therefore a new year resolution is a rule of inference leading to a refutation of common sense in daaru-drinking logic leading to first-order tragedies like this
(curse in Tamizh that can best be translated as “Since I asked you, physical violence using footwear must be exercised on me with immediate effect”)
The Question-the-Question strategy.
Hellovanakkamhowareyouhappynewyear? (followed by vigorous shaking of hands)
What is so special about January 1?
Why, it’s the beginning of a new year.
Since when?
Well. Since a long time.
Dei. Why so much rowsu? Just take the wishes and say thank you no?
No. I celebrate Tamizh new year in April. So I will accept wishes only then.
And so on.
Another interesting phenomenon is the use of technology to wish people a happy year ahead. So if you think that it’s an unnecessary use of one’s time to wake up at 6 am to visit close family and friends’ homes and wish everyone, you could call them on the phone. But then, that’s wear and tear for your vocal chords and if old people are involved, more than just a one-rupee local call. And hell, it could be STD or ISD too. So best to send an SMS message. It’s cheap and also provides a nutritious diet of vowels for the sender. But hey, it’s cheap but not free. So why not save that cost and send an email instead? One could even send colourful, midi-music playing e-greeting cards and one doesn’t have to pay a penny for it. But then, one has to waste time typing all the addresses to which the emails need to be sent, and that could cause carpal tunnel, so why not just post a message on Orkut or Facebook, where selecting friends is easier. But it still involves typing and therefore I would personally recommend Twitter, which restricts messages to 140 characters or less, and one doesn’t even need to choose friends to send to. People who are part of your network will receive the message automatically.
But in my personal opinion, we can do even better. Typing 140 characters is also tiresome. So one should keep the following sticky notes handy on the desktop. A few samples,
Wish you and your family a very happy, colourful, fun-filled and prosperous next 31,556,926 seconds
Wish you and your family a wholesome, lip-smacking, cashewnut-loaded, ghee-dripping Pongal with generous servings of coconut chutney
Wish you and your family lots of sundal and not much gastric trouble.
And so on.
Then one can simply copy(Ctrl-C) and paste(Ctrl-V) into Twitter for appropriate occasions. But wait, why must I expend a few neurons remembering these occasions or wasting precious time copying and pasting. So, one can use Remember the Milk, a free online to-do-manager service that can be setup to automatically send pre-configured Twitter messages (shown in the sticky notes above) on predetermined days. One stone, many mangoes. No?
Doing Jalsa & Showing Jilpa 
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