10 types of lunch-eaters at your office canteen

Whenever you walk into your office canteen, you are faced with hundreds of people eating away to glory. If you notice carefully, these people usually fall into 10 different buckets that are described as follows -

1. The solitary man: He has a very serious expression on his face. Or is mostly expression-less. The food is either very little - so he can finish fast and get the hell out of the lonely place. Or is a lot, and that is precisely the reason why he is sitting alone, so others don't make fun of him.
   
2. The 'different' folks: They are the ones who do two or three rounds of the regular canteen. And then go order a sandwich in the side shop since they don't seem to like any food. It is usually the necessity to be high on the 'being different' coefficient that makes them pay half their salary on outside-canteen food.
3. The giggly girls: You feel that this gang is laughing about anyone and everyone that goes past them. In reality, they just have a disease. To keep giggling at everything. And make loud noises to announce their presence to the entire canteen.
4. The bosses: Bosses are of two types, ones that sit far away from anyone except their peers and discuss global company strategy or the state of the Indian economy. The other type is of course the ones who utilize lunch as an opportunity to socialize with their next rung, only the next rung utilize it as a chance to put in class-participation and pain the hell out of everyone else in the table.
5. The dabba-walas: These are the home-food specialists for whom canteen food spells doom, or they have a spouse who forces them to take the home food. The dabba-wala folks follow a pre-defined process which consists of 4 steps -(i) Heat up the food in the micro-wave (ii) Utilize the plate from the office canteen (iii) Pick out the choice delicacies from the canteen food to go with their own house food (iv) Sit down like true kings who have the best of both worlds and hog away.
   
6. The dieters: These are the people where the empty area on the plate shines from afar. The quantity of food taken puts baby food to shame. Reasons include hidden lumps of junk food in their cupboards, failure to understand a concept called 'exercise' or the long length of the weight-reduction prescriptions prescribed by the doctor.
7. The treat-givers: This is the noisy gang that has ordered pizzas from Dominos as a treat for someone leaving the company! (enjoyment for the person surely) The ratio of veg to non-veg is always a point debated for close to an hour. Finally when the pizza lands, everyone wants to dig their hands into as many different boxes as possible. They never realize that the pizza folks have fooled them into believing they are different pizzas by altering the amount of the same toppings.
8. The silent couple: This can be a newly formed romantic pair or a husband-wife combo that has been working in the company for dogs' years. 'Silence is golden' is a rule that is tried and tested. Since they have too much to talk back home or over the phone, they hardly make anything other than gestures during lunch time.
9. The intellectual marathon: Heated conversations happen in a few tables. This heated conversation can be about a game of sport or about who will be the new boss. Opinions and counter-opinions are exchanged in the middle of gulping down parathas or curd rice. The ones that are most vocal are usually the least knowledgeable (applies in generic circumstances too)
   
10. The big gang: This gang roams around the entire office, always sticking it up for one another. The 'gang' laughs together, cries together, takes food together, washes together (their hands) and makes a hell lot of noise together. The gang usually has more girls than guys. The gang's loud-mouths sit at the extremes of the table so that everyone else can hear them talk. The gang is usually made up of a mix of all of the above types of people...

Any other types you have encountered, please add them to the comments section...

5 much-needed technology innovations

This was a post that was hidden somewhere for better expansion and putting up on the blog. But laziness ensured I never got around to it. This contest on Indiblogger - the HP My Demand contest - ensured I dig it out from the 'In Process' folder and put it up here. In a shoddy state, but I guess the laziness cure by technology would be a welcome addition to the list...

Why can't technology be used to create these machines or innovations across countries -

1. Transferring weight from one to the other - It is supremely painful for someone who does not want to go on a diet or go near a gym to lose that 1 kg, leave alone the targeted 10! It would be just fantastic as well for all those lean mean machines who actually pain the hell out of others saying they are going to the gym to 'put on weight'... This machine can just transfer weight from the fat to the ones who are not!
2. Observe the sights and sounds of another country - This would be the poor man's tourism dream. Mimic the sights, sounds and probably even the cleanliness and the weather (and the food and the people and the dressing etc.) of another country inside an enclosed space - with an artificial roof - huge investment but possible with the help of technology and the running costs would be more than recouped by opening it up to the millions who can spend but not that much on an air ticket.
3. One universal voltage and socket everywhere - Is it that electrical engineers in these countries were also fanciful about their own designs of voltage systems and sockets? Why on earth do different countries have different systems otherwise? Leave alone the socket, even the voltage. I know of fat converters that exist right now but we need a mechanism where the same socket in every device is ready for it instead of fixing a fat converter...
4. A noise canceling chip inside your ears - Why should it only be in the very high end ear-phones from the Bose and the Sony of the world. Why can't we have a noise canceling chip inside our ears - switching it on may just involve a short pinch of the ear and you are taken into the world of peace and solitude away from the honks of the Bangalore traffic.
5. A machine to do all your chores for you - Early morning is the worst time - you are just cranky after you wake up. Won't it be just wonderful to quickly get a machine to do all your brushing, bathing and ablutions without having to move a muscle. Then morning is more a massage in sleep than a painful chore.
   

I am sure more ideas will emerge - if so please put them on the comments. Or write them on your own blogs to win a printer :)