HYDERABAD, INDIA—Rajesh Gopalakrishnan, 15, was deeply embarrassed Monday when his sister and her friend barged in on him as he played air sitar in his room. "Don't you know how to knock?" said a red-faced Gopalakrishnan, who was caught sitting cross-legged in front of his mirror, imitating Ravi Shankar while the sitar god's classic 1973 Ragas album played loudly. "The door is closed for a reason! Shiva." Gopalak-rishnan, who also ran his hands through his hair and mimed a ferocious tabla solo before being interrupted, later added: "Arundhati Shridhar, the girl to whom I am promised for marriage, just saw me acting like a fool. I'm so humiliated, I could move on to my next life."

BERKELEY, CA—Coffeehouse patron Lenny Niyo awkwardly accepted one cent and a receipt Wednesday after purchasing a $1.99 biscotti. "It made me feel kind of cheap, standing there waiting for six or seven seconds while the receipt printed out and the cashier put away my singles and got the penny, but it would have looked weird if I'd just walked away, too," Niyo said. "It's not like I wanted the receipt. I was confident the biscotti would work out fine." Niyo has reportedly not been this humiliated in a food-service environment since May 1998, when a waiter told him to enjoy his meal and he replied, "You, too."