Thoughts as I leave

I am gonna miss this place! Chicago!

I came with a different opinion. I am going back with some of them changed, and some of them strengthened.

Could understand many things better now, like the addiction on oil. This country is beautiful. And the people too!! ;-)

The one aspect which confounds me still, is politics.

I am still unable to understand the reasoning behind the wars. In my opinion the military is highly spreadout. At one point in time, when the draft gets implemented, public opinion will turn against it forcing a retreat in the many theatres of war. But that will come at a time after lots of enemies have been made and ironically when the troops should be in the battle field. One has to pick the battle to win.

In India, we appear so conservative. One family's black sheep becomes the talking point of the entire neighbourhood. And to become a blacksheep one doesn't have to stray much. If it's not a metro city, just marrying out of caste is enough. But we tolerate public leadership who are no paragons of virtue in their personal life. I bet no member of public would like to prefer the personal life of the leaders, but would still prefer the personalities to lead the society. Bigamy, shady relationships, everything goes. But in US it's just the opposite. The public tolerates anything among them. But for leaders they expect characters straight out of the scriptures. No extra-marital affairs, sorry! This in a country where the bonds of marriage are very flimsy. The country's leader may have boosted the economy, increased minimum wages, pursued peace instead of war, but still gets his knuckles so hard for a private deviance from values. You can't call what happens between consenting adults illegal. But still he can be besmirched for that. Hmm...

Anyway, I am leaving the place I like, to the place I love!

You say goodbye and I say hello*

This month has been pretty hectic for me. I try to absorb the imagery that flies past in space-time (whoa!).

Yes, I am getting ready to return home and it's causing lots of work. It's also seeing me trying to capture the year that was.

And I tell you, trying to pack things that were with you for a year in 2 suitcases is no joke. So as I pack as much I can, I also leave things that can be easily replaced. Not all things are material, and some things have to be replaced. A snapshot from my list:

Things to leave/pickup:

Fake accent/Inglish
Yes, I'll have to soon get out of the forced habit of rolling over my words. I'll have to soon unleash my natural inclination to sit and do a squat on every R in each word.

Disciplined driving/Driving on the other side with the right amount of indiscipline:
Initially felt like a moron waiting at the red light with no one on any side. Now have to get out of the moronic habit. Back home, that thing is for the ads.

Hugging/Nodding
Going about hugging females indiscriminately gonna be a strict no-no {First this gonna should be replaced with a strict "is going to be"}. And yeah, I don't belong to the Indian P3 elite where hugging females is cool normal and hugging males is cool gay! Back to backslapping my buddies and nodding at others.

Hi! How are you?/ ???
Barking a "How are you?" at persons known and unknown has to cease promptly on landing at India. Studious indifference to people who stare, walk-by, travel with, is gonna (dammit) be the norm.

Starbucks coffee/tea in a glAAs
It took only a day or two to get used to watery decoction in a high collins like container with very little milk (Half & Half to boot). No more dodging the low fat milk and trying to get real healthy milk. But ofcourse Starbucks will be sorely missed. It's pretty much high-end back there. Moi part of hoi-polloi.

My cop-magnet car/My ruddy old bike
It has been definitely proved that my car is a cop magnet. Last week a cop pulled me over (as in several weeks before that) and asked to show my insurance for the Honda I drive. I politely told him that it's a Mercury upon which he left. They have to stop me even before deciding the offence! :-( But I have to leave this here and get on to my old love, my bike.

So if any of you find a bag trashed at the O'Hare containing words rolling over each other hugging other known words, spitting a "How are you?" from themselves while soggy with Starbucks coffee, you'd know who left that, won't ya?

* From the Beatles' song "Hello Goodbye" by Lennon/McCartney

The Pain of Birth!

That's my room mate almost getting to experience the pain he caused his mom at birth.

I am in the first pic camouflaging him with the cake!

:-)

Thanks a lot!

Last weekend was the first long weekend I didn't go anywhere out of state. With an eye on optimal spending and another on possible shopping I decided to spend 4 days at home. Come Thanksgiving and there was a buzz among all my friends here. Everyone started planning for shopping on Black Friday. They checked out the deals, identified the shops and mapped out the strategies. I had only one item in mind, an external harddrive for my laptop. So I didn't bother at first. Then the enthusiam caught on and by 9 o'clock at night, I was cruising from shop to shop, checking out the queues. All my friends were dispersed in various shops. Best Buy offered laptops at $ 249 and $379, a steal! My friend who went at 2 in the afternoon was not the first in the queue. One of our brethren beat him to it. The time I went, it had swollen into a 70 + strong queue with still 7 cold hours to go.

To cut the long story short, I took position at another store and joined the fun of waiting. What started out as a plan for an external harddrive ended up with me getting that, a thumb drive, SD card, camera, surgeguard, Ferrari toy car with remote, Microsoft Flight simulator, some more toys, some jewellery (silver chain and strands of pearls), blank DVDs and some more! By evening, I was driving like a zombie checking out shops. I got some things for my friends who stood at other stores and they got me some other things which I couldn't get. Quite a bit of shopping! :-)

This led to me thinking what if this happens in India. With Walmart about to open shops in India with a tie up with Bharti, this looks very much possible. But things will be pretty much different.

1. Queue will start 100 hours before, not a mere 20 hours.

2. Queue positions will be sold.

3. The store will get calls from bureaucratic highups asking those deep discount items be allocated to them.

4. All tenous connections with the store employees will be recalled and friendships emphasized.

5. Fistfights will be common. In US too, this occurs at places.

6. Political TV channels will blame each other for the possible riots that will happen. They will shove a mike at some bleeding loser and let him have his 10 seconds of fame.

Thank God we don't have this Black Friday concept. As it is, the Deepavali shopping spread over 2,3 weeks makes everyone crazy. A special sale concentrated on a single day will bring the nation to a boil.

Nonsensical niceties

Last week I caught a cold. By Thursday it became acute, setting off concerns from colleagues with my incessant sneezing, coughing and sniffing. I left early and on my way home stopped at Walgreens, the pharmacy chain.

I slid a box of Tylenol across the counter for payment.
The cashier emitted a cheery "Hi! How are you today?", while scanning the medicine barcode.
I, tired looking and reddish faced, replied with "Obviously I am not doing well".
The cashier's jaw dropped at the unexpected reply.
She looked at me, a bit perplexed.
I repeated myself while pointing at my purchase.
She then sheepishly said, " We never look at what people buy."
She must have rolled her eyes after I left.
Sometimes when you are already down and out, saccharine polite conversation kills you.

Green is the colour of Greed!

In the past 30 days, I finished 2 books. Normally this would be a shock as I'd go through a tome in hardly 2,3 days. Not these days. Maybe it's that I've almost stopped reading pulp. I find that non-fiction is as racy and rivetting as well.

The two books I read, both of them, are about the rarefied worlds of finance. The first one, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, is a quite old one. It is a cult classic now and a prescribed reading for many business schools. It is about the sale of the tobacco and food giant, RJR Nabisco. Then in the 80s the sale was for a record 24 odd billion dollars. The peculiar thing is that the buyers, a consortium led by KKR group, put a fraction of the sale amount from their own pockets. Rest was borrowed money to be repaid from the company's cashflow itself. The borrowed part was made up of different flavours of junk bonds. After the bidding war starts, the management group led by chairman Ross Johnson tries to buy the company for its own. The advantage was they knew exactly how much the company was worth and hence how high they can bid. Still they fail in their bid and the tale is taut and spell binding given the fact that everyone knows the end. Poker play with nail-biting finish.

The other book, "When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management " is a much recent one. It is about the late 1990's boom and implosion of a firm called, Long Term Capital Management. The name might be dreary, but not the people behind it. The option pricing gurus, Myron Scholes (of Black Scholes equation fame) and Robert Merton lead the think tank. All the trades (derivative contracts) are made by using the formula they devise and fine tune. They indulge in global arbitraging and shrewdly build up their portfolio. The unique thing is it is very little of their money as in derivative contracts only the margin is required to be paid upfront. So entire cash available need not be allocated to a single investment and multiple "trades" can be done by small investing margins in each. So compared to the investment amount, the returns are huge (leveraging), even obscene.It is a sort of a gamble, no matter how educated their guess is. The downside is when the contract is out of the money, they have to pay, and how! But the traders of Long Term Capital Management are sure about their formulae and bell curves and calculate that the tail of the bell curve will occur only once in a million years! Ofcourse, it doesn't happen that way and there the story begins. While they are part of the firm, both Scholes and Merton are awarded the economics Nobel (Fischer Black is dead by then) and their prestige increases. Way to go before a fall! The story makes rivetting reading. Only problem is while the Barbarians at the gate was constructed from interviews with all the persons involved, "When Genius Failed.." author Roger Lowenstein was given no official interviews. He has constructed the book purely based on hearsay and painstaking research work.


The authors of both the books give cursory treatment to the finance theory which is the bedrock of the dealings, almost afraid of scaring off the lay readers. Maybe they should have explained a little bit more even though it would've meant less drama and action. For example, the spine of "When Genius Failed" is the premise that the present discounted value of a bond will converge to its face value plus interest, over time; And how it didn't work out that way. The LTCM bets on the convergence. They pick out the tiny divergent "wrinkles" that exist in the market making money when the "wrinkles" are ironed out. When the two values (traded and guaranteed) diverge, the bottom falls out of the firm. I couldn't understand how such a scenario will happen naturally. Ofcourse artificial bear "hugs" of the stock market are possible but they last for a very short time. The LTCM geniuses too failed to understand such a thing will happen and thus they went bust. Atleast here I am in exalted company!

I'd recommend both the books to anyone. And to my friends I'd insist they buy them so that I can borrow for a second reading and subsequently decorate my bookshelf!
:-)

Whose life is it anyway?

Whom does one's life belong to? To self? If you think you own your life, think again.
When a child, mere some days old, smiles, who takes pride in it?
When a child starts babbling, who goes ga-ga over it?
When a child starts standing and walking who goes crazy over it?
When a kid starts for school, who drives all others crazy over how the kid scribbles something that in an abstract art form looks like an alphabet?
If a person is x, x's life is owned by x's mom.
x can also be a mom herself. Still x's life will be owned by x's mom.
If x is a male, whatever the age is, this theory holds good.
If x is married x's ownership, at times, is transferred to x's wife. But not always.
Bachelor xes sometimes blog about it, still owned by their moms however.

The typical mom has an obsessive pride and possessiveness in her creation.
My mom has evangelized ad infinitum about my brilliance and genius, eventhough in my one score and some (that's some some! ) years, I've never exhibited even a modicum of proof of that. She is an one woman church spreading her word (ofcourse no believers!) about how brilliant her son is.

She never even allowed her son to ride as much as a bicycle on the highway, fearing that her precious gem would be lost in an acccident. Ofcourse even motor cycle accidents went unreported. Chennai's Mount road aka Anna Salai has seen me up close, countless times. Quite dashing was I. :-)

Men can never feel that way about their offspring, I think. The closest a male comes to experience that feeling would be when he customizes his bike/car. Yeah, I'm possessive about my motorcycle still, eventhough someone is driving it now! :-(

Coming back to moms and stuff, I thought by now, my mom would've relinquished her feeling of ownership. I recently discovered I was wrong.

When a friend of mine went back for a visit to India, I gave him a DVD of me skydiving, to scare my mom. I half-expected a call from my mom berating me for risking the handsome life she gave me. That kind of call never came. I forgot about that. On this Deepavali, I called up every friend and relative I could reach, to wish them. Every single one of them mentioned about seeing the DVD! To my horror, I came to know that it was even lent to people who could not come to our place! Continous shows of me skydiving is on, courtesy my mom advertising my "daring" to all who care and a few who do not. I guess she is hardpressed for my achievements.

- Written by a dumbass son who is not with his mom on her 60th birthday. 60 years of weathering countless severe storms and still steady. Wishing the mother ship countless number of smooth years in future before riding onto the sunset.

Cuckooland, here I come!

Me: I have been tagged to write 6 weird things about me by mitr_bayarea.

My pal: Only 6? {sniggering} She doesn't know about you.

Me: Ofcourse, she doesn't know me. But how to get 6 weird things to write about?

My pal: Yeah, You are all things weirdo. Which 6 to pick? {guffaw} A difficult decision to make.

Me: Shut up.

My room mate passing by: Dude, Whom are you talking to? I see no phone. *

Me: I am singing, man! {hurriedly starting...."ta ra ra ta ta na na..."}

My room mate: {more hurriedly} okay, okay....whatever!

Seriously, I am baffled by this tag. What to write about?
And how is the weirdness factor measured? For me, many things are normal which are truly bizarre for some people somewhere in this world. Likewise I balk at many things that many people do effortlessly.

I am tempted to write things that go, "1. I am obsessive about cleanliness 2. I am perfection personified 3. I am fanatically punctual". But who am I kidding? I am not attending a job interview here. Has anyone observed how these interviews are conducted? There, one is always asked the standard question to list out one's weaknesses or failings. The interviewee should always come up with things like, "My weakness is I cannot stop working till I drop dead". Imagine an interview where after being asked this inevitable question, the interviewee answers, "Post lunch I cannot stop breaking wind all afternoon in office". Never happens, right? It may be the thing that he always does, but still it is impolite to brag of your real achievements. {No, It's not mine}
So I am gonna refrain from mentioning truly oddball things that I do. This is no confessional. Just my blog. I'll start now.

1. I like to brush my teeth daily. Not weird? Just ask all those animals. For this post, I approached a cow and said to her, " I brush my teeth daily, you know?". She remarked, "That's weird! Mooooo (that's boo in their language)". There you go.
Okay, okay, I will try to think weirdo stuff like a human being.

2. I like to have my tea with a chikki (peanut candy/kadalai mittai).

3. I dislike ties and suits and such formal stuff. I am more comfortable in what is comfortable for the human body. Sandals to smelly socks inside shoes, anytime.

Hmm....I've managed 3 points. 3 more to go. I have a doubt about the tag here. Weird things about me. Weird in whose perspective? Me or other fellow human beings? After my first point, I decided to stick to humans but now I am a little bit concerned on which human's perspective I should be referring to.
I've seen enough to say that nothing is weird to me anymore, eventhough I have not done most of them. If I were to base it on my perspective I cannot complete this post at all.
So I will continue to approach this tag from my fellow beings' assumed perspective.

4. I hate shaving on weekends. Does this count as a weird thing? I mean, even if I have to go out of my home, I don't shave.

Two more to go. Why 6 points? Why not, 4,5 or 7? Mitr_bayarea doesn't seem to be my mitr now.

5. I am never able to hold on to money. I don't know, but whatever money that I come across, I lose as fast as I get. I cannot save for the life of me. My friends regularly offer to save for me. But before I could hand it over to them, it seems to vanish! :-( It's becoming a serious problem. No, I neither drink nor smoke. And NO, NO, this is not my matrimonial ad. :-)

6. I hate those "realistic" movies depicting life as hard as it is. Weird, I can enjoy films as long they are funny and depict happier things in life. But once they get into real tragedies, I'm out. This doesn't mean I enjoy actors cavorting around trees singing. Positively revolting, they are.
I rest my case.

I'd love to pass on this tag, wanting to see how others tackle it. But I observe that writing as per a tag and then passing it on is not a fad anymore. Infact denouncing tags seems to be the in thing.Blogging is all about one's own thoughts and if one were to write on a given topic reduces it to a school essay, doesn't it? Or maybe with everyone tagging each other, defying tags is a way of standing out.

Whatever, I'd like to tag two persons whose blog personae are diametrically opposite. One is the King of abstract posts. Even his normal(?) posts being sort of weird, I'd love to see what he writes on things weird about him. The other blogger is as normal as anyone can be. Remniscing his motherland, yearning about long past childhood, poems and stories dominate his blog. He seems so normal, everything as they should be, so much so, that I'd like to see him revealing his quirkier facet, if any. But this being a weird post, I shall stop short of declaring a tag on them.

* just my imagination, this too! Go figure!

Will the real funny comic please standup?

Recently I have developed a fondness for standup comedies.
I have seen Jeff Foxworthy (read his book too), Larry the Cable guy, Adam Sandler, Seinfeld, Ellen Degeneres, Maragaret Cho (God forbid!), etc, etc.
And I arrived at the following conclusions:
1. An essential item for a standup comedy is sex. The more vulgar, the raunchier it is, the better.
2. Family is fair game, the more dysfunctional the more funnier.
3. The audience always have the mental maturity of a juvenile. So one should keep the comedy level always low, pretty low.
4. If you are not married, the more difficult and the more contrived will be your performance. Ellen, for example. She has a great voice but the topics are not always hilarious and she also seems to deliver the punch line with a reluctance.

But I have to agree on one thing, whatever their perceived drawbacks, standup comics provide much needed relief. I cannot but help comparing this to India where humour as a general doesn't exist in the society. We take ourselves too seriously, I think. If I am mistaken, please forgive me. Do not send an auto.

Ofcourse after seeing these American comics,even the British seem staid and tepid in their humour.

What is required to become a successful stand-up comic?
Self-deprecatory humour is a must, I think.
Sarcasm.
Then abilty to build up to a punch line.

Whatever! The ability to make a whole bunch of people laugh at one's jokes must give a huge high for so many people to go into that profession.

Pyrotechnics in prose!

Yesterday, I was surfing channels and suddenly came upon a Rudy Giuliani speech somewhere in NewHampshire. The man was mildly interesting with holes in his argument even I could spot. Next followed John Kerry speaking at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner stumping for Paul Hodes and Carol Shea Porter, the democratic candidates for the NH senate. That was some speech! The way he went about blasting the party in power and the vocab he used was admirable. The only downer was it was a prepared text and not extempore. For off the cuff fireworks, Clinton is the man, who pummeled down a caught in the corner anchor at Fox News recently.

Shards of soul

Ever felt like a bottle?
shattered to pieces;
jagged edges that hurt like hell.
Only to people who got hurt by it,
one would think.
Did anyone ever think,
how it felt to be the glass?
Not knowing why, for getting broken
in the first place.

tangy tragedy!

Last Sunday.... A lazy Sunday.
I am roaming the city with two friends of mine. A temple, mall and a superstore. Pals 1 and 2 work in another organization. P1 is an Assamese, while P2 is a Tamilian as yours truly. P1 starts, "Dude! At our office, yesterday there was an argument over tamarind rice!".
"What?".
P1, "The Kannadigas were saying that tamarind rice should be called Puligere while the tamilians said it is actually PuliyOdharai".
I am interested. "What happened then?". This maybe another country and we all are Indians here. But inter-state wars are carried over. Cauvery water does that.
P2 says, "It was decided to google both the words with the one with the most number of results to be the winner!".
Sounds perfectly logical to me. "So who was the winner?".
P2 says, "The Kannadigas man! Puligere returned more hits than PuliyOdharai".
I was outraged. Damn the MTR guys! When the poll doesn't favour you, trash the methodology. I proceed to do that.
I argue, "But that is a stupid way to decide!!".

I fervently give examples. "Listen, if the words "Jesus" and "Jenna Jameson" were to be googled, who will return the most results/videos? They are poles apart. Just because Jenna is favoured on the Internet, does it mean that she is better?".

Fuming, I continue, "For deciding who is good, if we depend upon these results, we have to decide Jenna Jameson is good. But it is not so. Jesus is the good person. Jenna is not good. So this googling method is not correct".

After a pause, P2 the Tam pipes up, "I don't believe that".
"Whaaat?" go I.
"I don't believe Jenna is not good", smiles P2.
Cause is lost because of my stupid example.
:-(

Tag - 10 things I miss of Mom’s cooking Meme

I was tagged by Shankari to do this, like some 3 months back. I may dither; I may delay; but I never fail to deliver. {punch dialogue copyrighted}

Filter coffee
Ultimate. A brew famed among our clan.
Morkuzhambu
Basically, it's boiled buttermilk with turmeric, salt and what not. To simplify such is blasphemy, though. She makes it extra spicy. Oh! It goes even with curd rice.
Poondu thogaiyal
Never had like this garlic chutney anywhere else. Usually not an item in our households, she used to prepare this.
Carrot fry
Not the usual style. A lot different and a killer dish. Many a time, I would have rice mixed with just this and nothing else.
Cocunut burfi
Her staple sweet for all functions. Can't think of a festival without one. Here I ponder. Is it just the food or the association of the particular food and mom that makes it special? Well, One never knows.
Onion and capsicum bajji
Her "Hall of fame" snack, veggie slices coated with flour and fried. :-)
Aviyal
I love it. Why does a common dish which can be had everywhere tastes unique when prepared at home? It's like a doosra of Saqlain or the sneaker(actually a "snaker", for it crawls in without a spin) of Kumble, a patented, associative thing.
Thakkali thokku
Spicy tomato chutney, made to withstand for a week or so, but can't last beyond 2,3 days as it gets devoured with a relish.
Paruppurandai kozhambu
Lentil balls soaked in sambhar. No side dish needed. They rock! I am yet to learn to prepare this delicacy.
Green chilli chutney
One loses count the number of idlis eaten when taken with this extra super hot side dish. This too is one which I've never tasted anywhere else so far. If one is not very careful with the amount of this taken with idlis, dire consequences which I do not wish to eloborate in a "foody" post, will befall.

And sitting down to write this piece, I wondered how things that we take for granted make us miss them when we don't have them. Like mom and her cooking. I am one who used to eat out as much as possible, spend time out of the house almost all of the days and hooked on to phone even while at home. Even for festivals, I used to wait for the decent amount of time before roaming out into the city, not caring to enjoy the food at home. I have had her saying that it is better when I stay faraway because I call and talk regularly than when at home. But some things grow on you within the small amount of time that you devote to them.

I don't tag anyone. It hurt me to write this, living far from home. But if any of you take this on your own, give me credit! :-)

Conjectures Invited!

Today I came across a thought provoking quote.

While lamenting about the current World political situation Ted Turner says "The men have had millions of years where we've been running things. We've screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women."

So let's give in to the hypothesis that we'll have women running everything. Governments, Legislatures, Dictatorships, Wars, Religion, Stockmarkets, Sports, everything.Not that they are not in every field now. Let's assume not a single man is part of any decision making in the whole world.

How things will be?

Better than now? Or still be bad?
All Pink and flowery?
No rough and tumble ball games?

I don't know.

Will countries go to war still?
What role will man have to play in the society?

God only knows!
God? Goddess?

Steve's latest Job!

Apple is out with 80 GB iPod! Latest Dada of music/video players!




The stakes have just been upped for Bill Gates whose "Zune" is yet to hit the market.
At $ 349 this 80GB pocket monster is an ideal gift for any of you people to give it to me!
:-)

Curve Ball!!

It started some 2,3 months back.
An idle afternoon, me and my colleague get down talking. She is a baseball fanatic and first base coach for her son's team.
I say, "Teach me baseball. It's kinda hard to follow".
She starts about bases, pitcher, home run etc. After 2 minutes, I lose her.
Then she says, " The best way to learn is to go and watch a game. I'll arrange tickets for a minor league game"
"OK" I say and proceed to tell her about cricket. She gets shocked that it is played over 5 days. I assure her that there is a shorter version too. But I say that it's a game of strategy and the 5 day version is exciting too.
A disbelieving look.
True to her word, she sends a mail to all of us for finding out the number that would be interested in coming to a game.
Families (wherever present) included. Some 10 of us sign-up and including friends and families the number comes to more than 20.

It's a game between our local team, Schaumburg Flyers and some team from Fargo, ND.
That Saturday evening has me going to my first baseball game. I am the only foreigner there in a sea of natives (atleast nobody else there had my skin colour). I get stared at, but nobody says anything. My colleagues ask me to tell them whenever I can't follow the game. The colleague who organized this, deputes her son to me, who is more than eager to clarify my doubts.
I enjoy the atmosphere. It's a massive family outing there in the stadium. Ofcourse, the crowd can't match the boisterousness of Chepauk crowd, or for that matter any cricket ground in India. Anyway, I've only been to Chepauk. But we don't go to stadiums in families. A sea of males and a very few interested females form the crowd in our country.
My friend and her son are very helpful. Sometime into the game, the home team pitcher fails to latch on to the ball hit by the striker and I react involuntarily. She notices that and becomes happy that I am getting the hang of it. Then I get a googly.

She asks me, " Isn't this game interesting?"
"Yeah"
"Isn't this more interesting than cricket?". Right then and there! Everyone around is looking at me expectantly.
I offer a diplomatic laugh, more of a guffaw. I may be brave enough not to let down cricket but I am not going to be make fool-hardy comparisons.
Just a laugh, and no more.
A guy, husband of an ex-colleague offers me a way out saying, " He enjoys this company and crowd". Wholeheartedly, I agree.
Mentally I list out the ways in which baseball comes second to cricket.
First, the fielders, all of them, wear mitts. No such sissy thing in cricket. Ofcourse the wicket keeper needs it as he is catching more of a bullet than a ball.
Second, the fielding positions seem standard, with no great strategy needed.
Third, the probability of bat meeting the ball is less in baseball, given the shape of it.
Fourth there are coaches standing beside the bases to tell the runners to run.
Ofcourse, I can add a few more, but I don't know baseball well enough.

To be fair, I think cricket can take a leaf or two from baseball.
Cheerleaders, for instance. Imagine cheerleaders break into a routine waving their tassels at drinks intervals, when a new batsman walks in, at tea, etc..
:-))

Coming back to the game, the home team loses, and everyone leaves quietly. Three hours of fun, it was, though. Looking forward to see another game of baseball.

P.S.:curve ball or curve-ball (kûrvbôl)
n.
Baseball. Any of several pitches that veer to the left when thrown with the right hand and to the right when thrown with the left hand.
Slang. Something that is unexpected or designed to trick or deceive.

Flights of fright!

After a pretty relaxed and forcibly-been-idle Monday, I unwind on the way back home ( Is there such a thing? ). Doors' Jim Morrison was performing for me and I had him loud; blaring. At the traffic light a neighbouring driver slowly rolled down his side window and peered out at me. I became a bit apprehensive. Expecting a curse and a scowl, I inched my hand towards volume control. He just looked at me and took his head back inside. His fingers started drumming to the tune. He must have started humming too. Phew! .......
Relieved, I became all courageous again. :-)

Today, I enter my home and see a letter waiting for me. I idly look at the address it came from. It's from some court of law! Everything forgotten, shit scared, I claw at the envelope trying to pry it open. My mind gallops, mining for some past incident which plausibly now requires my presence in a court. No more signs of a tired tuesday, my adrenalin racing to an all time high, I finally get my frantic fingers to open the mail, lacerating the envelope in the process. Out jumps a cheque! For five bucks! Completely bewildered now, I manage to read through the covering letter. I learn that out of 100 bucks collected from me some time ago for over speeding, I am getting a refund of five dollars as the fine had been only $ 95! That incident happened nearly 8 weeks back. It takes some time for me to calm down, and calm I become laughing hysterically. Whoa! The very sight of a court address on the envelope has shivered my timbers.
Shaken but not stirred! :-))

Chicken Run!

Today I found out that the keyboard has become mightier than the pen.
I had to send a mail. I could have typed the letter out and mailed it. But I chose to write as it was hardly a big one. And I discovered how worse my handwriting (it is illegal to call that; more of a scrawl) has become. My letter looked like crazy lines in sand caused by chickens running through it.

Even before, my handwriting was not something to write home about. But this was a nightmare even for me, to read back what I had written. I only hope that the person whom I sent the letter is well versed in hieroglyphics. If my letter is intercepted by someone, they will find it a tough one to crack. To my knowledge, a code is one which has a logic in its encryption. This cipher of a mail had no logic in either form or substance. The same alphabet got written in a different manner each time. Figure that out.

My letters were running across the page at a manic speed in different directions not unlike a riotous crowd scattering on being tear gassed. Or like the behaviour of the suburban train crowds of Mumbai and Chennai on reaching the terminal.
How addictive our (the plural is intended to spread the guilt) life has become to the machinations of the machines!

I believe in a future not so distant, the "hand"writing as we know would become non-existent. More and more speech recognition software makes me see a future where our fingers would be mere vestigial fixtures evolving into forks for holding objects. Without even our realising, we have submitted ourselves to the comforts of email and IM. Maybe I'll IM my friend what I wrote!

Musings of the moment!

Every afternoon after 2 o'clock, I feel very sleepy. Sometimes it is difficult to just see the monitor, and having the cube in an aisle which is like a main street with everyone walking by, it is difficult to catch a shut eye. I wonder whether it is possible to have jet lag even after nearly a year of living in a different time zone?

When I lamented that I never got around to meddle with my blog template, my dear friend retorted, "you males are always lazy". !! Is being lazy a male trait? I never knew that. So are we males the weaker sex, handicapped by the "lazy" gene? Do any of you gazillion readers of my blog know of any lazy female? {Gazillion is number less than 15, I am told}. Or are lazy females actually men in drag? whoa! A simple accusation and my mind veers off into countless logical avenues! Ofcourse if laziness is a male trait, then I am the most virile and macho guy to be found! When a task is to be completed by the n'th minute, (n+1)th minute finds itself kicking me shouting, "Start on the task, yo man!".

Why the only day I decide to leave early has the manager sitting late?


I am trying for a full page post, but thoughts dry up as soon as they start. It is not that I don't get topics to write on. But the topics that come to my mind, come very shy, limiting themselves to one or two paragraphs at the most. Can this be the writer's trickle, the precursor to the much abused writer's block?

Signs

Today out of curiosity I walk to the ATM in my office. I swipe my Debit card and check my bank balance. A rude shock. My balance is less than $ 10! Not enough for even a tank of gas. Ofcourse tomorrow is pay day but still, I've never fared this worse before.

It's a languid afternoon and I crave for a coffee. Starbucks depletes me by another dollar and 39 cents. Praying that no misfortune should happen on the long drive home, I start from office. Safely I reach home. I have a mail. A credit card waits for me! I am informed that my application has been approved and after performing the necessary security ritual, I am bestowed with credit!!
I doubt whether this is a good omen!
:-)

Strategic Offense Initiative (ishtaar vaars!)

For a very long time, I've wondered about the visa regulations that the US has. Why should they go to great lengths to restrict such apparently peaceful, hardworking Indians to their country,thought I. Even Bill Gates opposed the restriction in H1 visas last year and I was as puzzled as he was. But recently I found out the reason. Rather, I witnessed the reason. It is to protect its national monuments and landmarks that the US has adopted this strict visa quota regime, but I should report that they are miserably failing in that. One reading this logic might not believe me and might even think that in my absence from blogging for some time now, I must have gone cuckoo! But it's true! I know we Indians are incredibly brainy but never believed that we could invade and occupy a country far removed from our shores. One has to see it to believe the Indian offensive.

Whichever American touristy place I vist, I see only Indians. And not just individual Indian visitors. While the other countries go to war with armies, We always invade in families! Every monument, national park, museum, casino I visited so far was teeming with Indians. Ofcourse i could see some stray Americans around but they had the look of the occupied. And this, with me yet to check-out Niagara falls!

Every Indian invading family (IIF, for short) essentially comprises of a husband, wife and their parents. Sometimes kids also are a part of this army. The guy leading the IIF charge is always armed with various gadgetry hanging from all sides. A digicam, a handycam, a phone are the essentials. Then the wife would follow. She will be either happy or sulking depending upon whose parents accompany them. The most important of the IIF battalion are the parents. Be it their son or son-in-law who is leading them, they will be demure and self-conscious. As certain is that the guy and his wife will be in trousers, the parents will always be in their Indian attire. They will be stiffly marched in formation before the unfortunate monument/statue/musuem/casino and the IIF leader will whip up one his gadgets and proceed to film them. It would all seem natural to the natives that tourists are taking photos. But actually the IIF is on a surveillance and reconnoitering mission.

Be it Sears tower, Statue of Liberty, LasVegas casinos, Golden gate Bridge, Universal Studios, they all have been invaded and continue to be under the occupation of the IIFs. Infact the United States tourism department identifies places of interest by first checking whether any Indians are there. "No Indians here? Nah, this place is worthless" go the department officials.

The only way that a place of interest can be identified that it is not part of India is there won't be any hearts pierced by arrows sculpted on the Golden Gate Bridge, there won't be any guide introducing the Hoover dam as the place where the film, "Fools rush in" was shot which by the way happens to have a dam and there won't be any broken beer bottles in the Pacific Ocean beaches.

Infact IIFs have already achieved success. When Pokhran nuclear tests were conducted, the US first went into hyper-criticising mode and threatened to sanction everything from India. But they were bolting the coop after the fox has come in. The Indian Prime Minister had only to call up the US President and politely tell him that all the US monuments and other attractions are being held hostage. US had to relent and for a face saving measure was allowed to ban the export of nuclear weapons related materials to India and the visit of scientists fro m India to US. Even then they didn't realise how much India's strength lay in software engineers and not the nuclear scientists. No, not in their code but in their inlaws and parents. Not only they bug the code (and later debug) but they also bug the Americans out of their own national treasures. And I am proud of them, every single IIF unit which bravely led and continue to lead the invasion. I salute them.

Belatedly the Americans are trying to salvage a losing battle. Jai Hind!

Vanity, Thy name is Jinguchakka!

Somebody tell the Indian government that I'll continue blogging.Just because I went away for some 10 days they need not shutter down blogspot.There are other bloggers too!

Paradise Found!

Once upon a time, Mother Nature decided to deck herself up. She chose a ocean's shore for that. She had a range of mountains end right at the ocean. She added her usual greenery on the mountains. At some places, she let the mountains slope gently into the waters. At others she made it a sheer drop from the heights to the waters.

Then in a gracious mind, she let the human beings build a road right at the cusp. Travelling through the road, with mountains staring you down on one side and waves rushing at you on the other is an amazing experience. The only road (atleast among I've seen) which has a sign cautioning about the surf coming onto disturb your travel. The road, which you can stop on your way through, to frolic in the beaches (which I did). The road which is panorama personified. It is like living through a series of those beautiful picture post cards which you get but wonder which place it is. No photo can justify the actual beauty. No digicam can capture the beauty drunk by your eye. An early morning drive in which Nature plays with you by rolling a fog from the ocean blocking your view momentarily then revealing herself in all her glory.

Paradise on earth!
Pacific Coastal Highway!

Also called Route 1 or Cabrillo highway, I took the stretch from Los Angeles to San Francisco. An out of the world experience.

When talking about Colorado's beauty Teddy Roosevelt said, “The descriptions would bankrupt the English language.” My vocabulary fails miserably when I strive to capture the sublime beauty of the Pacific Trail. I consider myself fortunate to have had the chance to travel along it.

Have you had this happen to you?

It is almost six months since I took any kind of leave.
I, having planned to make the coming long weekend a longer weekend, broach this topic with my client and my own managers.
I tell them that I plan to skip office for 2 days.
Client says "No problem".
Then I approach my onsite manager. A pretty senior manager this one, heads the entire delivery team at the client end.
She asks me to shoot a mail, just in case she forgets about it.
About to leave, I blurt out the reason for my planned absence. I plan to go on a long road trip, I tell her. I also tell her the places on my plan, the routes I'd take and so on.She just nods and wishes me well.
Next morning, I get a mail from her, asking me to have fun.
Also attached to the mail is a document generated out of a software detailing the routes I told her I'd take, the times, places to stay, map etc.
This doesn't fit in any Dilbert strip, right?
It's a warm and sunny day out here.

Narcissism

Usually I avoid writing about myself preferring to write what I observe. But Casa has asked me to fulfill her tag and here I go. Still I tried to frame answers that are true but don’t focus on me. A difficult thing I found that to be, as I re-read what I wrote.

I am thinking about..
....my oncoming road trip (an arduous one) this long weekend and wish it should be a success.
I said...
....I should buy a home, but yet to do this.
I want to...
....pilot a plane (at the least, a hang glider)
I wish...
....for peace in my mind. (whoa!)
I miss...
:-(
I hear...
....Apple’s gonna release a 100 GB iPod
I wonder...
...why money never stays with me
I regret...
....not doing well in my school finals
I am...
....brutally frank
I dance...
....to no one’s tune
I sing...
....my own meaningless lyrics to popular tunes
I cry...
....unshed tears
I am not always...
....happy. But who else is?
I write...
....to improve my writing. Very little success so far!
I confuse...
....myself when it comes to balancing relationships
I need...
....heavy doses of self-confidence
I should try...
....to clear CAT!!
I finish...
....idlis, dosas and all food in general very fast (of course with appropriate side-dishes)
I tag...
....Paravai
....Janani

I wanted to tag some more of my blog friends but I decided to save them for my future tags. Yeah, I am yet to honour some more tags. Watch this blog for more!

Guns and a Rose

After a long day at office, I slowly make my way through the car park. Two football grounds and some more, the huge carpark can pack. Always one who comes in late, it is a long walk for me having get to park the car farthest from the door.
I push myself in and drop my backpack in the backseat and myself at the wheel.

About to start, I see a car rushing in fast. The car park is hemmed by my office, a creche, a construction company etc. The car stops in front of the creche, some distance from me. Nothing unusual in that except for the rash driving. I am about to turn away when I espy a guy getting out seemingly in a hurry and at the same time being pulled in by the driver, a lady. Rivetted I look at them. A family argument.

The guy peels himself and starts walking away. The woman wildly gesticulates and talks something which doesn't reach me.The guy walks out into a pavement nearby and slowly but surely makes off. The woman starting the car with a ferocious speed matching her temper tries to come on to the other side and take on the guy head on. The guy nonchalantly gets back to this side of the pavement which is long and wide and the woman turns back the car and comes without reducing her speed. She tries to climb on to the curb and hit him. Failing in that, she stops and getting out of the car, rushes on to him. She, her arms spread wide, starts pleading something. I watch a tragic mime. They belong to different races, I could presume from the colour of the skin. A subconscious observation as I am transfixed by the quarrel.

After about a minute flailing and failing, the woman walks back to the car, alone and angry, pulls the door shut and takes a U-turn on her drive back. As the car makes the turn I notice a doe-eyed kid sitting without an expression in the back seat.
Another war, another innocent victim.

'G'agged!

I was tagged.
The Tag Instructions: Comment, and I shall give you a letter. Go back to your journal, and write ten words beginning with that letter, including an explanation of what those words means to you and why. And I was given the letter G.
Hastobeme must have been really mad at me to give me that letter! I think, thank and thunk but for the life of me, couldn’t manage ten words starting with G. Of course, some exotic but had-to-be-censored “G” words, I had them down pat. But I pretend to be a gentleman and so tried to get hold of other words. No progress! So I archived the post in the trenches of my shallow mind {It kept floating :-( }

You allow me in peace, and I’ll ramble, drivel, blather, babble and generally won’t leave you in peace. But you test me with an alphabet and I flunk.

It is almost like stage fright. I can talk by a tea shop for hours together. But remove the tea glass (pronounced T-gloss) from me and give a mike, I’d become verbally challenged. It has happened so many times. How I overcame that and became a proficient public speaker with a stray dog and a lamp post for an audience (yup, it happened, I promise), is the stuff of legend. Will be narrated sometime in the future.

OK, what I am trying to drive home is that this simple tag had me stumped. I was almost tempted to buy up a dictionary and jot down all the “G” words.

Then a week back, Casa threatened with the letter X. That was too much for me. So I decided to hurry up and finish this tag before someone throws a “Z” at me.Here I go!

God – “I am in him; He is in me” – sounds good and high falutin. But I’ll stick to saying that I have felt His presence.

Green Day – Their “American Idiot” is a masterpiece. I love it.

Goal – I am in a country where there is no interest in the soccer World Cup. And the first match starts at 10.00 AM when I’d be in office busy having my coffee break. By the time I reach home, all the three matches are over. I hate it that I am in a place where nobody talks about it.

Goal – One which I don’t aspire to have in life. I meander like a river shifted by the sands of time!! Big funda but can’t help it. Lol.

Gloating – I never like it when it comes from others!

Grumpy – My current mood

Goa – The place I like to visit, hopefully next year

Google – They have made our world a better place with their search engine. God knows how it was before one could “google” anything.

Godfather - The movie (Part 1) which every aspiring screenplay writer should see. Not a scene wasted. Never an irrelevant gesture. A marvellous movie on its screen play alone.

Girls - :-))


I am done!

Budding Buddha!

As I lay waiting for sleep to come, I was thinking deeply. All of a sudden I had gone into a philosophical mood. I thought whether there could be any person in this whole world without any worry. But I also know that, for any person, there would be atleast 2 or 3 people around him who will perceive that given his riches, material or immaterial, he wouldn't be having anything to worry. But to each man, his own pain. A poor man might think the rich who has a luxurious home and all other amenities would be a most happy person. But in truth that rich person might be neck deep in debt, or a failing business, no family and friends....one may never know. Infact the rich person might actually be envying the poor for living a care free life (his perspective). Nothing with you, nothing to lose would be what rich man's opinion would be. Why so many ills and worries plague this world thought I. And I plunged a bit more into the pessimistic morass.

Whatever I do, there is always a problem to nag me. I seem to be running only to stay in the same place. Not one day passes without me worrying about one thing or the other. Personal, official, genuine, imaginary, whatever but something always troubles me. Deeply I thought and I reflected upon whether there had been any great soul who had over come all these. I remembered Gautama Buddha.

I pondered on how Buddha was so disturbed by human sufferng that he quit the material life and go sit under a bodhi tree! That would be a good person to follow, I decided. So immediately I tried to remember how he had renounced his worldly possessions. In the middle of the night, he'd get up and spend a fleeting moment before his sleeping wife and then leave, I remembered reading somewhere. I too decided to do so. I turned and searched for my wife beside. She was not there. Then I remembered that I am yet to be married. Shucks! What all problem one has to face even to renounce this material world! The path to salvation is never easy. Deciding to wait for my wife, I turned back again and went to sleep!

Curse on those Captchas!

I like blog hopping. I don't stop with bloggers that I know or blogrolled. I like to go to one blog, select another blog from its blog roll, then repeat the process to hop to another blog without looping back to an already visited blog. This way, I go to completely new blogs. I've come across many interesting blogs this way. I've come across funny blogs, serious-with-a-cause blogs, plain but interesting blogs, dead pan humourous blogs, very diverse everyone of them.

Some posts make me wish I had written them. Some are so well written that I think of ceasing my blogging altogether and remaining just a reader. Standards so high! Some blogs I remember without blogrolling them (OK, OK, my browser remembers) and visit them frequently. One widely prevalent thing I found is a majority of them employ captchas.

Captchas or "word verification" as described in blogger are a real nuisance. I'd spy a real interesting post which would provoke a comment from me. But in there a captcha would be sitting patiently waiting for me. After commenting, I'd scroll down to hit the Submit only to find cursive and mangled letters asking me to identify them. Some letters among them are a real pain to identify. Some captcha styles make the letters lean on one another making it more difficult to make out what they are. Even if they don't schmooze, they look twisted nearly out of shape. Simply put, they take the joy out of commenting.

Except for the regular blog network, I don't comment on every blog. Infact I avoid commenting on popular blogs that have an insane number of comments even though the posts are too good to leave without a comment. Still a random blog with a post that stops me in my hop and skip through the blog world elicits a response. But the captcha hurdle has to be crossed before saving my thoughts on the post.

Ofcourse, I realize the reason for them reptilian letters being there. I too had the "spam rash" once. But the spammers now seem to be losing interest in hitting blog comments. They must have got a very low rate of response. I guess only a few cranks just for the joy of annoying others still churn out those despicable things. But the cure for them has almost become a bane now. Sometimes I'd hurriedly mistype in a captcha only to be served with another of its ilk. This time I'm chastened enough to patiently pore over it, make it out and repeat it like a kindergarten child writing out the alphabets!

Only good thing is a captcha is less of a pain than a password. Passwords!! Now they are an entirely different story and deserve a more blistering post!

Captcha is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University coined the term in 2000 to describe codes they created to help Internet giant Yahoo Inc. thwart a spam problem. "Turing" refers to Alan Turing, a mathematician famous for his codebreaking work during World War II and, later, as a pioneer in artificial intelligence.

In defence of reservation

Usually I avoid topics where everyone has already gotten into it and sparks fly around. No use stirring the same broth. But I notice one issue that's going around in many blogs (I blog-hop to new blogs all the time) and everyone seems to have the same opinion and that too one which I do not share. It is the burning reservation issue that's rocking the country. In my opinion from my perch afar, I think that the violent protests are confined to the North of Vindhyas, while token protests simmer in the south. In the blog world I notice there is a near unanimity in that reservations are harmful. I can't help a cynical thought that the chance of coming to any physical harm being slim has made the bloggers write their true opinions. No offence intended, but in the place where I hail from, Tamilnadu, speaking against reservation publicly is taboo and is inviting danger. In fact I was astonished when some years ago agitations against the Mandal committee recommendations broke out in North India. Anyway what I feel is anyone blindly against the reservation system doesn't understand the reason how it actually has helped the country, and the politicians and the jingoistic nincompoops who show themselves as the protectors of the oppressed don't help a bit in this.

There is a sound economic rationale behind the system of reservation. Here I am not talking about the reservation system in its present form. In its present form it is actually making everyone forget the reason for its being and is harming the real downtrodden. The per-capita income of our country at the time of our independence, as everyone knows was not at the present levels even adjusting to the inflation and occasional devaluations. The peculiar feature about it was that the per capita income varied with communities and skewed in favour of the "forward" communities, the Brahmins. Simply put Brahmins as a class had far higher levels of income while the communities who came into the Scheduled Castes list had abysmal income levels. In order to increase a country's per capita income, it is not enough to merely increase jobs and schools. It would have been a generic band-aid solution and certainly not one which would cure the malaise. It is easy to declare that in this country everyone is equal. Bitter it may be though, it must be realized that centuries of caste-based oppression has stunted the growth and psyche of the humiliated and kept-servile people. It was simply not a level playing field out there at the beginning.

Just opening more and more schools would not increase literacy. The very success of the noon-meals scheme is a reminder to this stark reality. A family where every new addition is another mouth to feed and hence its capability to earn, however fragile the body maybe, simply cannot be spared and provided the luxury of education, is the norm among the historically downtrodden. Just because education is accessible to say, a poor farmer's child and a middle class child it doesn't mean that both would get schooling. Harsh realities of life stand in the way of the less-affluent child. It is common sense that apart from school, the family situation, its environment and even the vocabulary of the parents play a great role in empowering the child. So certain steps designed to uplift the children, the community and thus the nation, have to be accepted and are inevitable. Country's progress is team-work, the pie is limited and the weaker links have to be nourished enough to strengthen the whole team.

Here individual poverty is not an issue. That cuts through communities. But repression of an entire class of people is a sad but very true history. That ails the country's economy and any prescription has to take in consideration the nature of illness to effect a cure. Individual poverty can be (and must be) addressed through merit scholarships.

Unfortunately, the reservation system was viewed as a god-send for unscrupulous political parties. They used the reservation system to create vote-banks. This became a tool to create and support vote-banks enmasse. Every political leader wanted to bring one community or the other into the list. It assured the leader the eternal gratitude and support of the community. At least that's what the leaders believed. With everything, one can go only so far. In their greed and intense competition of vote-bank politics, insanity and unbridled casteism played a role. A sort of reverse-snobbery prevailed with communities rushing in to declare themselves oppressed and backward. In fact many political leaders do not have a genuine interest in educating the downtrodden. The more uneducated the people are, the more rock-solid the vote bank is. This was amply exposed when the issue of creamy layer among the backward communities came about. More on that later.

Even Mahatma Gandhi hoped for a future where reservation won't be needed and every community would be in equal footing. He naively assumed that in 50 years it would be achieved. What he didn't foresee was how this economic upliftment tool would turn into a contraption of political leverage.

So the medicine has actually aggravated the illness and its side-effects have proved to be a detriment to the whole body of the nation. It was mainly because the medicine of reservation was administered recklessly and without proper thought given to it.

My two-cents worth recommendations:
1. The concept of creamy layer should be imposed. The affluent families from the backward communities should be made to compete on par with others.

2. A family who has availed the reservation for three successive generations should be excluded from the reservation process. This measure is because such families actually hinder other families of the same community to prosper

3. Nationwide merit scholarships should be instituted. This should be regardless of the community.

4. A national database should be created containing the families and persons who avail reservations and the communities who lag behind in availing the benefit. In future this would facilitate tailoring the system towards the actual needs and also would help in designing out-reach programmes targeting communities that are not utilizing the opportunities available to them.

I feel even our PM and President skirt around the issue. They advocate creation of more seats everywhere. I seriously doubt whether our country's infrastructure has the wherewithal to support that. It's a mere gimmick, however well-intended it may be, I feel.

For the people out there who would like to know my roots, I am a Brahmin by birth. And I didn't get enough marks in my school finals to get an engineering or medical seat on merit. Of course, no quotas for my community meant I was deprived of those exalted streams of education. That's one way of putting that despite an educated lineage I am a dull-head. Do I deserve reservation? Even I don't think so.


P.S: I am aware that I have not provided statistics supporting any of my arguments. It is merely because that I don't have the time and access to get them. I am lazy as well. All the same, I assure that my hypotheses would stand the test of factual scrutiny.

Sane to Insane

Have you seen the trees change their colour through the seasons? The leaves which were a lush green suddenly become a melange of red, brown and yellow hues. It is beyond belief that they could change so drastically and one wonders at Nature. If you are nodding to this, then you can understand when I describe how guys change beyond imagination over a trivial matter as love. Trivial to others, that is.I narrate the changes that I've witnessed among my pals, and even then not all of them. Only a small subset. I've seen people developing altogether different personalities, much like the leaves through the seasons.

1. The dude would have been a loud talker on the phone. He would never mind swearing at some friend for all to hear. But you will find suddenly him whispering to certain calls selective while remaining his usual booming self for others. It's a 110 % certainty that the guy is in love.

2. As a gang we would have seen all movies till now. But if our bub suddenly says that he cannot come as he has already made plans to "just give company" to someone else, all you can do is praise Cupid's aim which results deserting friends for some new found "company". Ofcourse all while blotting the blood from your ears.

3. Our dandy would have worn decent shirts till now. Suddenly he would be sporting bizarre styles not in sync with his usual nature. Not only none of the other guys would know when he makes the purchases, but the new-shirt-wearing frequency would also zoom up. Trust the card companies to dream up for their sales, of some-day or the other which would result in increase in business for funky clothes, trinkets, flowers and many other useless items.

4. The gentleman who has never hid his passwords from his friends for various accounts would suddenly change his passwords and keep it real secure. If any friend of his with tenacity manages to crack the password, he can very easily see where it has been derived from, usually a girl's name and her birthdate.

5. Our romeo who till now was a fan of all noise that goes for music and hip shaking (Shakira! Hint, hint!! Hips don't lie!) that goes for dance will be suddenly crooning his version (ghastly) of "Nothing else matters". Or he'll choose some melody in his mother tongue and proceed to murder it.

6.Our chap's mobile will become an attachment to his arm. Either he'll be talking on it or checking for sms. Pretending to listen to all the talk going around, he would be furiously punching out smses. And he'd single-handedly (the other hand will be clutching his mobile) aggressively fend off even two guys trying to grab his mobile and read the sms (No exaggeration, believe me).

7. The macho-guy for whom wishing his mother on her birthday is a sissy thing will suddenly begin a countdown for somebody's (Not for him, that somebody) birthday one month before.

I can go on and on. Infact points that I have observed rush at me faster than I can type. But I need my friends to be my friends. So I stop here.If you had observed the same things happening with your friends at one time or the other, go check-check-check! Additions to these pointers are always welcome!

And I've also seen the cure for such MPD. Marriage!

Chennai Chef in Chicago!

Once upon a time, there lived a guy with no cooking skills. He used to happily devour his mom's cooking without a worry. He never gave a thought to the process that went behind the screens to make up the heavenly food as he swiped clean plate after plate of delicious mom-cooked food. He imagined he'd happily live like this ever after. Sadly that was not to be.

He made a job change which landed him up in a distant place. That place was so inaccessible that he could visit his home and taste his mom's cooking only once every 3 months. We would have thought that'd have landed him in misery and he'd have learnt how to make delicious food all by himself. No! He found out a mess that catered to his palate, it's cooking almost similar to the place he hailed from. And the office he worked, offered subsidised food and him being in the office the majority of his waking hours, he had no problem. Just that he had to adjust his tastes a little bit but adjust he did. So he and his tummy flourished like before.

One'd think this is a happy story all the way through. No. Many a time the mess dished out food that was a mess and all the kitschy stuff he got elsewhere finally sickened our guy. The guy was not alone. He was staying in an apartment with 3,4 other guys. One of them was kind enough to buy a kitchen (yes, a full kitchen, from stove to all utensils with a gas connection to boot!) and so our guy and his friends had their own lab to experiment. Oh I forgot to tell you, our guy was a coffee addict. So for starters he stirred up his coffee by himself. This guy may have been a novice, but his roommates were a little bit more experienced in the art of cooking having moved out of their homes a bit earlier in their lives. And with a kitchen available, our hero and his friends started trying their hand at cooking atleast twice in a month. And one person among the roommates suddenly found it necessary to learn North Indian cooking. He was good at sambhar and curry before, but now he started making parathas too! One can never tell when a man will start doing odd things but why he does some thing out of his nature is much easier to figure. Oops! I am digressing here. Anyway coming back to our story, good home cooked food was not a once-in-three-month rarity anymore. Also our hero got to start learning the art of cooking, eventhough it was nothing much. He knew how to boil rice, make coffee and stir up an odd sambhar ("vathakuzhambu"-tangy as they come) before, but he got to learn something more. He became a sous-chef in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, boiling rice,washing dishes and the odd stuff.

Ofcourse it is not to say that all his other room mates were more experienced than him. One friend's experience was limited to calling up his parents and informing them, "We cooked X,Y & Z today". Here the stress is on "We". Very much like a leader who takes up the credit and leaves the dirty stuff to the troops. Oh! Again I have moved from the main story. Coming back, our hero never shirked learning and when a willing group was available, he did experiment. In the process, he learnt a few dishes, all South Indian though. He didn't cause himself the need to learn other styles of cooking! ;-)

The story would have ended here, but for the fact that he was again moved from his abode and had to go abroad. There left all alone he began his own practice. He had another person with him who knew very little about cooking and thus became our guy's own martyr. So our guy became a Chef on his own and had enough opportunity to hone his skills. Limited by the boarding amenities provided, his cooking nevertheless became a grand success. Such a success that he didn't have to use the ready made pickles and "mix-it-and-eat-it" stuff at all! Sometime after that he was asked to stay in the new place, a bit longer than was originally perceived. So he had to move out of the existing accommodation. The chef found an apartment which the existing person was willing to share, which is where he now is. So the new person has become our chef's lab rat. The only difference is the new roommate is an expert cook by himself, in North Indian varieties, though. So our Chef is learning some North Indian ishtyle cooking from him.

But the good thing is now the Chef (we can't refer him as a mere 'guy" anymore) has become proficient in south Indian dishes with the help of repeated trials and a willing accomplice in his roommate. He having mastered the basic cooking has passed on to conjuring up exotic dishes, with elan and panache. He makes a call to his mom back in India, gets the recipe, and starts his experiment. The results are invariably met with praise and applause from his room mate. The good roommate sometimes weighs in with a facial expression not unlike the title winning model contestant in a beauty show. This well deserved praise and appreciation from his roommate makes the chef look over the fact that the roommate occasionally scurries elsewhere for dinner after tasting (and praising) the latest concoction of our beloved chef! And the Chef cooks happily ever after!! The only gripe he has is no matter how good he is, he still cannot replicate his mom's cooking.


"mOrkuzhambu" in this picture!

Thus ends the ungarnished saga spanning three cities in two continents. From Chennai to Chicago! The path may have been arduous with many wasted dishes and fallen tasters strewn along the way. But glory has been attained now and the Chef continues in his ventures of trying out more exalted recipes!

Necessity: Invention's mom

I like my Coffee.
I love the "Filter coffee" as South Indians call it.
I have to have my daily fix to kick start my day.
Today morning, as usual, I have the decoction in the glass, add sugar while waiting for the milk to boil.
The microwave beeps, I take the milk out only to find it curdled.
I become a bit nervous wondering whether I'd survive till I reach office and grab a starbucks.
I try a taste of the decoction, but it's too thick and strong to be taken as it is.
It is a crisis situation.
I rifle the fridge. No milk other than the can which is past its due date.
I spy upon a can of Pepsi.
What the heck, my coffee-deprived brain thinks and I pour a large dose of Pepsi into the decoction.
I mix it well and gingerly take a sip.
Mama mia!
It is as if a fuse is lit in me.
It rocks me into life as I slowly take in the quirky taste.
I skip my morning starbucks in office as the taste still lingers.
Try it. You may love it.
Even I will think twice before trying it. It will suit evenings better. Morning, I need my brew to be hot. And how!
An acquired taste, though.

Ennui...

I am bored.
I am sick of waiting forever to do something, eventhough "forever" means maybe a day or two.
I do not enjoy being relaxed. I turn paranoid and think that there must be something I missed.
I am not able to sleep for more than a few hours but feel sleepy all through the day.
And I don't like it.
I have difficulty in focussing when I do not have a deadline. Without a goal, it's very difficult to do anything.
Lethargy in one area affects everything. I become languid in all, working, eating, having a life after-work, everything.
When the fire is gone, the drive is gone.
When the drive is gone, I am gone.

Pearls before a swine!

Last Sunday, I got a chance to hear a Carnatic music concert. All the time I was in Chennai, but for once, I have never been to a concert. And it's the mecca of Carnatic music where in December all the "Carnatic music inclined" people congregate for a festival of music. One never realises the value of a thing when it's nearby.
Anyway Mrs.Sudha Raghunathan was on a tour of North America and gave a concert at Aurora, IL.



I went with a hope that she would sing more songs rather than spending more time for elaborate exposition of a raga, which is the done thing in Chennai concerts. My reasoning was here the audience would be more diverse ranging from swines like me to savants of Carnatic music and she'd aim to please us all. To my mild surprise, the audience were knowledgeable (not counting myself) and demanding as well. They wanted the detailed rendition of a raaga more than once. They called it the "RTP" meaning ragam, thanam and pallavi. Even the world of carnatic music doesn't escape the acronyms!! "RTP! RTP!", many in the audience cried.

Per audience demand, Sudha did a detailed rendition of two raagas and added to them, some kritis, bhajans and before one knew the concert went for 4 hours.
To my big surprise I enjoyed the entire concert. I can't recognize a raaga for the life of me. Still I was in thrall to the divine music.



Sudha brought the concert to a close with a very moving "Kurai ondrum illai". Ofcourse I have not heard M.S' version of this song.
It was Sudha's birthday. So at the end, the audience in one voice (very strong voice) sang "Happy Birthday" to her and also provided a strong proof as to why she is the singer and the audience are , well, the audience.

Book Review. Or is it?

Sometime back, on a boring weekend I strolled in Barnes & Noble and bought a book on impulse. And ever since then I had a struggle finishing it. It is a book on Riemann Hypothesis, one of the seven unsolved problems which carry a prize tag by the Clay Institute of Mathematics.

Wait, before I go any further, I anticipate the question what the heck I'm doing reading a book on mathematics and that too a book on one of the unresolved problems. Also, people who know me would wonder what in this world made me, a first class dunce when it comes to mathematics, take up this book.

Yes, I am no good when it comes to mathematics and even to this day, my Higher secondary school teacher would remember me well enough to attest this. Which teacher would forget a guy sitting in the first bench snoring within 5 minutes of the start of the class? And that too in each and every class! The only classes I didn't sleep, I still remember, are where he lectured on the equations of parabola, ellipse and hyperbola. I don't know why I didn't sleep in those, just that I didn't. To be fair to me, the maths class was a combined two hour session scheduled immediately after lunch! Ofcourse lunch was for everybody and I don't know why & how others kept awake, while only I slept. All they gave was just moral support.

My dreaming in maths classes didn't help a bit. I came dangerously close to failing in that paper.I had to go to extra tuition to make sure I clear the paper in the school finals. But still I had an extra-large dose of heebie-jeebies when waiting for the results. To my huge surprise I cleared, albeit with very low marks.
So I and Mathematics didn't have a cordial relationship for a very long time. Then sometime later in my aborted attempt at an engineering diploma, I had the fortune to have two eminent teachers of Mathematics, Mr.Raman and Mr.N.Srinivasan.They made I and Mathematics shake hands and smile a bit too! But it was too late by then. The school finals could not be revisited and so my dreams of studying B.E going on to acquire an electrical engineering degree and become a software guy went bust.
So whenever possible, I pursue my efforts to befriend those school subjects who once bullied me mercilessly. You never know when an acquaintance with a subject will help you. For example if I were to date a woman, who happens to be a Fields medal aspirant, I can hold my own when the discussion veers to zeta functions and how the Mertens function if proved true could have solved the Riemann hypothesis! I would nod my head intelligently. Otherwise I would be just nodding my head. See the difference?

Ofcourse men are put to tremendous hardship when figuring out what a woman's interests are and boning up on them. The easy way is to date a woman who works or studies with you. In this case you have enough time to gather intelligence , use it to good effect and then pop the question and the cork.

"Oh What a tangled web we weave,
when first we practise to deceive!"

As typical ads for cards, toys and shoes predict, women do not simply go ga-ga over teddy bears, chocolates and candies. They do that but not just that. For example in my pursuits I had to learn two, three languages, literature, music, poetry, quantum physics and what not. I am not going to tell the languages I had to sidle upto, incase smart deducers who call themselves my friends, find out my objects of pursuit, by trial, error and elimination. Those missions might have failed, but still the documents have to remain classified.

Men comparitively are more simple. Talk to us about the ball game of the country, cricket, soccer, baseball or basketball and we are putty. Me, you can talk to about how the one day cricket has corrupted the Test cricket's techniques, how when the ball gets the inner edge when the batsman tries to drive long-offishly, and goes to the fine-leg boundary, the crowds still applaud and you'll have me gazing fondly at you. Even otherwise I'll gaze fondly at you but in my mind I'll be thinking about whether India can convincingly win a Test match even while missing Sachin due to injury. Ofcourse in the first place "you" has to be feminine in gender.

So my hypothesis is that the longer men are single, the more intelligent they become trying to master various topics of conversation. Atleast the more intelligible they sound.

Okay, I have deviated much from my original intention that is to review the book I read. The book by Karl Sabbagh gives a layman level intro to the Riemann hypothesis. Don't ask me to explain the hypothesis. I've read it but I cannot lecture on it. It's all for intelligent nodding, remember? I am not supposed to spout formulae. Well, the reason I purchased it because, three years back, I chanced upon a book on Fermat's theorem and how the Fermat Theorem was proved by Andrew Wiles. That book by Simon Singh (if I remember correctly, I am not sure) went at a blistering pace, the narrative similar to a thriller fiction. That made me buy this book and I then found that this book doesn't have the same pace, but still okay. Actually this book narrates the history behind the hypothesis and the ongoing struggle to prove or disprove the hypothesis interestingly.

The Riemann Hypothesis, if true, proves that there is a rule for generating the prime numbers, the building blocks of all other numbers. At the moment it cannot be proved that such a rule operates. The distribution of prime numbers in the long list of whole numbers do not fit to any pattern and look random. But Bernhard Riemann identified a mathematical function, now called the Riemann zeta function which is a sum of series whose expression involves complex numbers. This Riemann zeta function generates an infinite set of numbers called the zeroes of the function which describe the prime number distribution. Too abstract, atleast for me.The book assumes that the reader is pretty ignorant about Mathematics, which is fine by me for the most part. But at times the author takes this too far when he explains what a numerator and a denominator are! I recommend this book for readers like me, once badly bitten (by mathematics) but not shy.

Title: The Riemann Hypothesis-The Greatest Unsolved problem in Mathematics
Author: Karl Sabbagh
Publishers: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY.
www.fsgbooks.com

P.S: Except about the book and my academic performance, rest all are work of fiction!

All jazz; No moss!

Recently, I got hooked on Rolling Stone magazine. My roommate had a subscription and when it ended I found myself buying it in stores.

Primarily it deals with music and news from the music world. It also dabbles in politics and leaning towards the Democrats as the music and arts world tend to. From what I have seen, almost everyone in entertainment and music industry seem to be Democrats or atleast viciously against Republicans.

I got to hear some very good music (to me) due to Rolling Stones. Arctic Monkeys, Kings of Leon, White Stripes and Hawthorne Heights for example. I found that the albums live up to their recommendations.

Another thing I liked about the mag is the investigative piece they do. Every issue contains a detailed expose on any one topic. Be it the ongoing war or Scientology or some cop who is on a witchhunt they meticulously back up their line of view.

The mag has a zany sense of humour streaking through, too.

A cool read, but wouldn't make you intelligent in any way.
Who cares!
:-)

200% Indian!!

Elections are due in Tamilnadu besides some other states. The state's Public Elections Department has put out the entire voterlist of the state in the net. Laudable initiative!

I searched for my name in the list and guess what! My name appears twice in the list!!

I have two votes!! Yeaaaah! I may be in a place too far to come and vote. Still, the Government must have realized that I am very patriotic and decided to bestow me with two votes.
More than any award, I say. :-)

Horror of horrors

Lately I've begun noticing that I'm reading lesser and lesser. This would be normal for most people as it is difficult for one to continue reading beyond your work needs as you settle in your job. But among my relatives I was known for my reading. No, not for the stuff I read. It's the voracity I'm talking about. I used to read anything without any preference. And almost tended to be just light stuff. Magazines, fiction kitsch, news papers, old newspapers that the grocer used for packing etc.. Basically anything went.

Some people remember the characters of all the novels they read. Not me. I basically read for enjoying the read. Usually I recognize what I've already read but never the characters. Ofcourse rare exceptions are there.

In my once daily train commute to work and back, if I were to be without anything to read it would be difficult for me to endure the ride. I'd crane my neck on to what others would be reading. I'd even borrow some reading material.
I still remember Saraswati puja days of then, when it'd be tough going for me without the daily newspaper. The only stuff I was not interested in reading was the academic books and Mills & Boon. Otherwise I've read even while walking!!

Such a person, I used to be. But not anymore. Yesterday I went to Borders, the books and music chain. I found myself gravitating more towards music racks than books. Not that books lost the allure. They speak in their own language to me, still. But somehow, I could not bring myself to buy them as I know I've already three unread books with me. I've committed to myself that I won't be buying anymore till I finish them. All I bought was two frivolous magazines. And that too because I've decided not to buy music CDs for now.
The 10 or so I've ordered, are in transit, that's why. :-)

The net is a culprit to a great extent. I like to check all my mail IDs atleast twice a day. Orkut and blog-hopping takes up the rest of the time.

Last week I was furious about myself for not doing enough reading. I decided on a drastic action. I vowed to myself that till I complete atleast one pending book, I won't be coming near my laptop. It lasted all of an evening. After dinner, I promptly went to an early sleep instead of reading. Morning I found myself catching up on my lost net-surfing.

Also my friends whom I used to discuss books are not with me now. I've moved cities since.

Somebody help me!!! Any ideas how to get back on reading? And that's reading like a maniac which I used to be.

Missing Millions!!

On Saturday I watched Rang De Basanti one more time. Still I am hung on the way the characters have been etched, the way songs blend, the way editing makes the movie weave....I can go on.
The movie also focusses on religious harmony in addition to the defense scandal which is the main theme. The gang camraderie is shown to exercise more influence over religion and family. That set me thinking. Among my friends there is nobody who practises Islam. Wondering whether this could be a weird thing, I embarked on some preliminary back-of-the-envelope research.
Total Indian population as of 2003 - 1065462000
The Muslim population of India is said to be anywhere between 13% to 20% depending on whom you read. Assuming 15 %, they come to 159819300 in 2003 itself. They form the second largest religious community. Not only that, Indian Muslims are among the biggest in countrywide Muslim population demographics of the world.
So even if not 15% atleast 5 % of my friends should be Muslims, right? No!! I have Christian friends whose religion comes only after Islam in numerical strength in India. But no Muslims among my friends. Thinking further, I could not recollect beyond 2,3 people as Muslims even among my acquaintances.

It seems strange to me.
Is it that we have been segregating ourselves, even without fundamentalist bigots egging us on?
Or is it that ancient caste divide has manifested itself into a religious divide too, with only select communities adopting religious conversion?
Are we practising any kind of apartheid here?
The word "apartheid" is obnoxious, but truth is seldom sweet. I am sure some of us may have differing religious statistics of their friends, but I am looking at the normal distribution pattern, and that doesn't bode well to me.
The more I am distant away from a thing, the more I would be misinformed about that. More the distortion, the more easier my mindset can be turned against a thing. I can easily be "made" biased against something which I am unfamiliar of. I can be brought to hate something which in my mind is sinister.
Ofcourse, here "I" refers to my countrymen of all religions.

Men can't win

On April 1, me and my friend A were chit chatting. He was espousing a seemingly brilliant idea to me. It was about proposing to a girl.

A: April 1 is the best day to tell a girl that you love her.
Me: How?
A: You tell a girl that you love her. If she accepts it, then fine. If she rejects it and starts spewing noble thoughts on how the relationship should be platonic and such blah, you can laugh at her face and cry, "April Fool". Either way you come off unscathed by her. :-)
Infact he was grinning ear to ear explaining me this.
Me: yeah, seems a brilliant one.
After some thinking,
Me: What if she says yes to your proposal and then seeing you glow, cries "April Fool" onto your face?
We laugh together uproariously at this. Hmm....Conniving men and convoluted thoughts!!

And you thought GD is a cool management tool!

Cockroaches Make Group Decisions
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

March 30, 2006 — Cockroaches govern themselves in a very simple democracy where each insect has equal standing and group consultations precede decisions that affect the entire group, indicates a new study.

The research determined that cockroach decision-making follows a predictable pattern that could explain group dynamics of other insects and animals, such as ants, spiders, fish and even cows.

"Cockroaches use chemical and tactile communication with each other," said José Halloy, who co-authored the research, which is outlined in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "They can also use vision."

Looks like visionary management gurus were making cockroaches of all B-school grads! Me couldn't stop laughing reading this.

Source:http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060327/cockroach_ani.html?source=rss

Gentlemen finish last!

The team I am part of, has completed the current assignment we were on. It's walk through time and so a lazy week last one was. I hold back from doing all the stuff acting as a sort of trouble-shooter. No trouble -> no shooting -> No work! Gawking at the females who are part of the walked-through team was our main occupation. Me and my friend N, who is from Vietnam, exchange notes.

N: Dude! 'S' has a fiance!
Me: Hmmm...How did you know this? Thought you were executing scripts.
N: We "talk", dude!

A bit later,
N: 'A' is a bit skinny.
Me: I remember seeing a ring on her finger three months back, which is now gone.
N: Oh! Those things don't mean a thing. And she smiled at me today.
Me: Excuse me. I am the single guy here.
N: But I am the more aggressive one.
Me: So what? you are married, Man!

Unfazed, N continues,
N: I'll get 'A' to go out.
Me: What!!
N(mollifying): We'll go out as a team.
Me(ever the gawky tourist): I'll bring the camera with me.
N: No way! I don't want any evidence for my wife!

Here we stop and part ways for the weekend!

Monday comes.
A middle aged femme J is responsible for signing-off some of our work. Our team lead guy P asks, "Who wants to finish that walk-through?"
I, keeping quiet, let it go.
J(humorously): Oh! I have two guys competing for me? I like it.
N(acting as a big help): He is the single guy (pointing at me)!
I grit at the wise-crack.
I show P the responsibilities I already have and beg-off.