Share your OSQ ("OLD SCHOOL QUOTIENT") inputs

trittya

Active Member
Joined
Aug 12, 2009
Messages
510
Points
43
Location
The PUNJAB (whats left of it) & Delhi, India
Here are some of mine :-
* I (still) like to wear an HMT hand-wound pocket watch.


* I (still) use Godrej Shaving Round (shaving soap) Try using the best of Gillette/DESIGNER shaving gels/foams on a fortnight- old stubble {have to be lucky as I, to be able to grow one w/o te boss or spouse frowning} and you'll know what I mean)
and
OLD spice after shave.

* I miss Aqua Velva after shave and Tata's coconut shampoo.

* I prefer 'cheap' apple cider over 'expensive' beer.

* I miss
Sea Pirate & Hercules Rum,
Rosy Pelican beer,
Authentic Solan No 1 single malt whisky,
GOLDSPOT(the zing thing), Double-Seven, Tingler and Campa Cola,
not to mention the old-taste LIMCA.

* I still uphold that Amul butter, Kissan mixed fruit jam and tomato sauce are the best things that ever happened to breakfast,
as also taht Mohun's/Champions cornflakes taste much better than Kellogg's.
I still adore having Parle- G biscuits and Melody (itni chocolatey kaise bani)

* My Yashica Electro 35 is still a prized possession (although in a state of disuse). Got it when I was in Class III.

* I have a Philips radiogram that I intend to restore with the guidance and help of FM venkyts.

* LPs, turntables, Vinyls, cassette tapes and decks still turn me on.
I regret selling my FISHER component music system.

* I still use a Godrej 300 ltr single door fridge.

* I still believe in the magic of home-made, hand-ground masala and Chicken 65.

To be continued . . . .
 
* Miss ... the 'couple' of 'hardly' half boiled eggs with 4 slices of semi-burnt (over gas stove) bread slices drenched in Amul Butter .. all due to a promise to my wifey ... damn that chipmunk doctor!

* Yes, miss Hercules rum in Delhi .... Old Monk sucks!

* MISS my Dad ... its now 16 long years. Only hope my spool tape (Crown Corporation - 1972) comes back repaired ... want to hear his voice .. :sad:

REST ..... compromised and accepted! :indifferent14:
 
* Yes, miss Hercules rum in Delhi .... Old Monk sucks!

Try the Old Monk bottled in Sikkim, the one that comes in a "Budda Baba" 1 ltr bottle. Its much better, though nowhere near the Sea pirate & Hercules of yore. BTW, Khodays XXX has a label that is reminiscent of the Hercules label. Tastes different, though, but still pretty good. Sadly, AFAIK, its not available outside Karnataka.

I forgot to mention our version of this. I miss those. I am sure many others do, too. So, the Chileans have matka speakers, too, LOL.:lol:

Handmade Clay Speakers Belt Out The "Sound of the Earth" : TreeHugger
 
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Trittya and Avidyarthi, that's two lovely post that change a boring day in a foreign office.

For me, I miss my Nikon FM2 and my first all manual cameras and their lenses.
I still believe analogue sounds natural, I think missing accuracy in sound reproduction is not bad, I think square is after all square, not a curve.
I still miss my first home made speaker out of a shoe box and a driver from our tube amp radio. I still miss my cycle and my sleepers who used to be their brakes as well in my college days.
I miss all my girlfriends. I miss my two dear friends from Kolkata the most.
I miss durgapujo. I feel celebrations made at home like Saraswati pujos were much more enjoyable than grand celebrations. I miss home made sweets made by mother.
I feel ambassador is a great car. I believe Maruti Versa is a true city and weekend tour car for a group family in India.
I feel I can feel more with ears now than I used to be.
I feel machines like camera and speakers made me a better human being.
I think reading books helped me in living life the way I enjoy. I miss reading books now, specially books of adventure stories and detective ones from Satyajit Ray.
I miss my palette and oil colours and time to use them.

Enough for now....
 
Try the Old Monk bottled in Sikkim, the one that comes in a "Budda Baba" 1 ltr bottle. Its much better, though nowhere near the Sea pirate & Hercules of yore. BTW, Khodays XXX has a label that is reminiscent of the Hercules label. Tastes different, though, but still pretty good. Sadly, AFAIK, its not available outside Karnataka.

I forgot to mention our version of this. I miss those. I am sure many others do, too. So, the Chileans have matka speakers, too, LOL.:lol:

Handmade Clay Speakers Belt Out The "Sound of the Earth" : TreeHugger

Old monk is one of the best rums in the world. Its not just me but tons of people all over the world that say this. I have tried quite a few rums, including jamaicans, nothing was that good. Bacardi is absolut pits.

OM vs khodays/hercules is like comparing single malt vs mcdowell's #1/officers choice. Of course there will be fans of the taste of khodays etc, people have been drinking it for years, but these are in totally different class altogether.

Good booze is supposed to bring winds of change, not rock you like a hurricane:lol:
 
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Being used still:
Still soap my face before shaving using a wooden handled shaving brush - 15 years old and still going strong - Pig hair bristles. Made in China.

Old style double edged safety razor - these days, it is being used only to get rid of thick stubble, followed by the Gillette Mach-whatever​

I miss:
My BSA/SLR bicycle.

Drooling over pics of equipment in thick issues of Brit "Hi Fi" mags bought from the "raddiwala"

Drinking "Golden Eagle" beer

"Strohs" beer once available in India

North star keds

Cycling on the roads for long distances without fear of being flattened

Roasted "chana" for 10 paise. Yes, we got a lot for 10 paise back then.

The "Sun" magazine

A JVC mono 2-in-one - we thought it was an el-cheapo one [no one had heard of JVC back then]. for that time, it rocked :)

A friends Toshiba "Bombeat" 2 in one. 8 inch woofers on them boomboxes. Yeah!

Our Crown CRT TV - bought during the Asian games held in Delhi in the 80's. WONDERFUL picture quality. In those days Sony CRT's were supposed to be # 1 but this Crown beat them hands down in picture quality and natural color. I opened it once and inside it was labelled "Hitachi" :) Would have put any of todays LCD/LED/Plasma's to shame :D

booting into DOS. A cool T-shirt that I saw 15 years ago had this emblazoned on the front:
C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
RUN\DOS\RUN

My VCR and VHS tapes

My VHS tape rewinder

My audio tape head demagnetizer

Cleaning the head of my cassette deck

Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bruce Lee and the Nunchaku. What a weapon. Both of them.

Playing my pirated "Thompson" brand cassette tapes

Eagerly waiting for the pre Grammy awards to be telecast on TV. I still remember the 1st pre Grammy music videos telecast in India - MJ, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George, Sting, Lionel Richie.​

I do not miss:
5.25" & 3.5" floppy disks

Dot matrix printers

My US Robotics Sportster 14.4Kbps modem

My Monster speaker cables that I bought ~25 years ago. I estimate they were around 12AWG and I remember I spent a bomb on them. The copper strands started oxidizing after 2 years. Someone swiped them. Good riddance!!! What a waste of good money.

Smoking "Charms". Ugh!​
 
I miss:

A weekly (later fortnightly) magazine called JS (Junior Statesman) which was published from Calcutta in the 70's. Editor: Desmond Doig. Rookie reporters: Jug Suraiya, Bachi Karkaria, Dubby Bhagat, C.Y.Gopinath.
Listening to Cliff Richards, Neil Diamond, Paul Anka, Rod Stewart, Abba, Carpenters, Beegees, Simon & Garfunkel, Dire Straits, Eagles and Beatles (70's)
Watching the films of Steve McQueen, Michael Caine, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Alfred Hitchcock (70's)
Reading Enid Blyton, Richmal Crompton, Frank Richards, Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley, Oliver Strange, Agatha Christie, P.G.Wodehouse and James Hadley Chase (70's)
Reading Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Melville, Flaubert, Stendhal, Camus, Kafka, Hemingway, Nietzsche and Ibsen (80's)
Listening to Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Traffic, Doors, Cream, Steely Dan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Louis Armstrong (80's)
My first viewings of Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Andrei Tarkovsky, Luis Bunuel, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Robert Bresson, Alain Resnais, Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Satyajit Ray (80's/90's)
Smoking Wills Navy Cut and drinking Blue Riband gin and lime (80's)
Ice Skating in Simla (80's)
My 3 best friends in Simla whom I lost touch with almost 20 years ago (80's)
My brother who loved speeding on his Yezdi and had a fatal road accident at the age of 28 (80's)
 
Old monk is one of the best rums in the world. Its not just me but tons of people all over the world that say this. I have tried quite a few rums, including jamaicans, nothing was that good. Bacardi is absolut pits.

OM vs khodays/hercules is like comparing single malt vs mcdowell's #1/officers choice. Of course there will be fans of the taste of khodays etc, people have been drinking it for years, but these are in totally different class altogether.

Good booze is supposed to bring winds of change, not rock you like a hurricane:lol:


miss my Old Monk days in those chilly nights in jaipur... phew... very few i find to have Old monk in Hyd and neither those winters...

still have a favre leuba passed on to me...

wooden box crown tv with the "khat khat" knobs..

awaiting for a year for a phone connection (bsnl landline)

and yeah of all the galli - nukkad.. bycycle races.. guess thats what i am still doing just with a motor added...

sunday morning rangoli.. on doordarshan..

...i ain't old though.. :)

lot more..
 
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The Old Monk bottled in Ghaziabad (which is what Aatish probably gets) is BAD, no doubt. The Hercules that I speak of was discontinued in 1994. They did come up with "3x Gold" but it wasnt upto it. Sea Pirate, IIRC was available only in the forces. About old (Indian) rums, trust me, I happen to know a thing or two as I used to be a hard core rum drinker. My vote for favourite all-time rum would go to Sea Pirate. Other (surprisingly) good rums of those years were Black Bull, Caribay, Contessa, Lord Nelson and NIGRO (no wrong spelling here). All these were 'sweet rums' to an extent, as also, they were winds-of-change kind of rums, then.

The rock-you-like-a hurricane stuff or Khachhar Rum (Mules' Rum) were Apsoo, Vijay, Nicol's etc. Another great rum was Contessa. Sadly, like most others including old Monk, it wasn't what it was.
 
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The Old Monk bottled in Ghaziabad (which is what Aatish probably gets) is BAD, no doubt. The Hercules that I speak of was discontinued in 1994. They did come up with "3x Gold" but it wasnt upto it. Sea Pirate, IIRC was available only in the forces. About old (Indian) rums, trust me, I happen to know a thing or two as I used to be a hard core rum drinker. My vote for favourite all-time rum would go to Sea Pirate. Other (surprisingly) good rums of those years were Black Bull, Caribay, Contessa, Lord Nelson and NIGRO (no wrong spelling here). All these were 'sweet rums' to an extent, as also, they were winds-of-change kind of rums, then.

The rock-you-like-a hurricane stuff or Khachhar Rum (Mules' Rum) were Apsoo, Vijay, Nicol's etc. Another great rum was Contessa. Sadly, like most others including old Monk, they aren't what they were.

If you think Old Monk from ghaziabad is bad, try the khopoli version, absolutely the PITS!!! Had a ghaziabad vs khopoli blind A/B test last week & all 'participants' agreed that the ghaziabad monk is far better!

Hercules is still going strong, though have to get it from karnataka.

Sea Pirate, :licklips: remember my dad getting hold of it through his friends in the armed forces, sadly no trace of its availability now. Lord Nelson, another deadly 'Hit Man' :cool:

Christian brothers was good while it lasted, contessa too (not anymore).

PS: If you notice carefully, any thread which has even the slightest mention of booze in it, it (booze) invariably gets discussed minutely & in detail, whilst the rest of the topic is forgotten & derailed almost completely :eek:hyeah:
 
Interesting thread. Thanks.

OSQ:

1. Still use a old style razor that takes Topaz style blades.

2. The only TV is a 21 inch Sony CRT. I don't watch TV so I guess it doesn't matter.

3. Old spice all the way.

4. The smartphone craze passed me by. I kept upgrading from early Nokias (almost by instinct) till a Blackberry and then decided smartphones were not for me. Gave it away and now use a Nokia C1. Smart enough for me.

5. No Facebook, Orkut or LinkedIn.

6. Can't stand liberals. The self hating spineless b**tards will run the world into the ground. No tree hugging 'Aman ki asha' hippies for me.

7. Indian writers have been attracting a lot of attention but I find them quite uninteresting. I tried a few but these days I don't even flip through their books in the stores. The only Indian authors I enjoy reading are V S Naipaul and Rushdie (and Faiz if you include the subcontinent).

Give me a Hesse, Kazantzakis, Campbell, Jung, Gide or Nietzsche any day. Not interested in the latest flash in the pan.
 
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* I miss Aqua Velva after shave....

It really was the best wasn't it...

My OSQ -
  • Listening to songs recorded from tape to tape in the late 80's using my (then) state-of-the-art Philips double cassette deck
  • I miss travelling by DTC to some corner of North Campus because a friend of a friend of a friend has got a Uriah Heep cassette from Manipur, borrowing it, coming home to Noida, dubbing it and going back to return it on the same day
  • I miss DTC
  • The classic Cinthol soap brick (only when's dad's in town and brings them with him)
  • DC, Marvel, Indrajal, Diamond, Commando, Wild West, MAD, Amar Chitra Katha comics (still have a few left)
  • Though I have moved on, Old Monk is still the greatest...has anybody tried the Solan-brewed version?
  • Chole-kulche by the roadside
 
Wo Kagaz ki kashti

Ye doulat bhi le lo,
Ye sohrat bhi le lo,
Bhale chin lo mujhse meri jawaani,
Magar mujhko louta do bachpan ka saawan,
Wo kagaz ki kasti,
Wo baaris ka paani.
Wo kagaz ki kasti,
Wo baaris ka paani.

Muhalle ki sabse purani nishani,
Wo budhiya jise bachche kehte the naani,
Wo naani ki baaton mein pariyon ka dera,
Wo chehre ki jhuriyon mein sadiyon kheda,
Bhulaaye nahin bhul sakta hai koi.2
Wo choti si raatein,
Wo lambi kahaani.
Wo choti si raatein,
Wo lambi kahaani.

Kadi dhup mein apne ghar se nikalna,
Wo chidiya wo bulbul wo titli pakadna,
Wo gudiya ki shaadi pe ladna jhagadna,
Wo jhulon se girna wo gir ke sambhalna,
Wo pital ke challo ke pyaare se tohfe.2
Wo tuti hui chudiyon ki nisaani..
Wo kagaz ki kasti wo baaris ka paani..3
 
I Miss The fact that the concept of loans / EMI's in India was at a nascent stage and I lived well within my means. Too many loans available easily at the moment, Car loan, Home loans. Personal Loans, Loans against property, Loan against shares, Gold loans, Credit card etc etc etc

Infact
A couple of years ago. I was contemplating on taking a loan to pay a loan.
 
My OSQ, hmm,

1. Listening to ABBA track 'One of us' on our Murphy Valve Radio. Need to restore it.

2. The starting music of Door Darshan.

3. Our Dyanora T481 B&W TV. It's still there; can someone repair it?

4. Morning PT (Physical Training) parade of my ol Army days.

5. Parties in Officers' Mess.
 
It really was the best wasn't it...

My OSQ -
  • Listening to songs recorded from tape to tape in the late 80's using my (then) state-of-the-art Philips double cassette deck
  • I miss travelling by DTC to some corner of North Campus because a friend of a friend of a friend has got a Uriah Heep cassette from Manipur, borrowing it, coming home to Noida, dubbing it and going back to return it on the same day
  • I miss DTC
  • The classic Cinthol soap brick (only when's dad's in town and brings them with him)
  • DC, Marvel, Indrajal, Diamond, Commando, Wild West, MAD, Amar Chitra Katha comics (still have a few left)
  • Though I have moved on, Old Monk is still the greatest...has anybody tried the Solan-brewed version?
  • Chole-kulche by the roadside

DELHI...ITE to the core, eh!
I know, Bangalore would be a listless place after the Delhi experience, all except the weather, of course!
 
DELHI...ITE to the core, eh!
I know, Bangalore would be a listless place after the Delhi experience, all except the weather, of course!

oh yeah! :eek:hyeah:

Spent the first 30 years of my life there...which reminds me...

"Machine ka thanda pani - 10p prati glass"
"Piyau - Sri X ki yaad mein Smt X seh parivar dwara janta ko samarpit"...
never bought 'Bisleri' in those days...
 
Alstom?

Phelur series gulo giley niyecho? (Read Phelu's series by SR?)

No Linde in Baroda.
Used to follow Feluda, the detective and Professor Shonku of Ray. Plus every other writer in my reading ages. A Bengali without books is a driver (electromagnetic) without a magnet.
 
A beautiful, well-constructed speaker with class-leading soundstage, imaging and bass that is fast, deep, and precise.
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