Jus'Fun

The Don is back....

2011-12-16T23:37:00.001+05:30

I typed, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" to ensure that keyboard was not the reason that I haven't blogged for this long.

I kept switching channels on the tv thinking about my floundering virtual pets, my blogs. Slowly it dawned on me that it is the TV that is the problem. Early this year, I got myself a HD TV (LED to boot) and got addicted to it. Recording at least one hour of TV programmes per day, ensuring I finish watching the daily quota either late in the night or early in the morning - It was addiction on steroids. And still no signs of de-addiction, with new books lying unread.

This post title too is a result of getting affected (infected?) by overkill promos of Shah Rukh Khan's next movie.

Imagine my surprise last month, when I went to an acquaintance's home to see they were living without a TV!! Never knew such people existed. People!! Get a TV, I say.

Only good thing is that my shopping this year has not been restricted to TV. Got myself a 6 foot bespoke bookshelf made of real wood, no less. For all the unread books. And I am slowly becoming a pseudo hifi audiophile too (By pseudo I mean picking audiophile friends' brains and a getting good AVR & accessories while distinctly lacking appreciation).Nice show off, though.

Here is to wishing for next year (and the remainder of this year) seeing this blog being continuously updated and commented upon too.

Enough for now, gotta catch up on today's rerun recordings of "Home Improvement" & "The Big Bang Theory".

Hi! Hang in there!!

September the 13th

2011-09-13T20:22:00.000+05:30

Today is the day I began my formal career 18 years ago. A change of life, a breath of fresh air of a career I plunged into then.

Looking back I am grateful for the amazing experiences I had, the friends I have made and sustained through the years.

Some people come prepared for their career. For me it was serendipity.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

But the hand of God has ensured that the path I was taken was the path worth taking. Not for a moment I regret my choices, however less splendid some of them turned out to be.

The innocence may have gone, but the thrill remains. Jest for the Quest is still left.

Ringing in the New Year!!

2011-01-18T19:20:00.001+05:30

Usually my New Year's eve days have been pretty staid ones. For example, I spent the turn of this century watching some dumb movie on TV. And for the last 2 years, all I did was just hang out with my cousin.

But for a change I decided that I'd spend this New Year by the Marine Drive at Mumbai. And how I did!!

It was a crowded place when I went there alongwith my friend. Still it was a disciplined crowd of revellers watched over by a crowd of policemen. I had a late dinner at Leopold, where a raucous crowd enjoyed the ambience. Nobody seemed to notice the bullet holes on the walls caused on 26/11. How quickly time flies. After getting mildly irritated noticing that Indians and foreigners were let in through separate entrances, I finished my dinner and left.

The New Year's day was a bit unplanned with me just catching up with some old friends, having a heavy lunch and then a siesta. But evening, I alongwith my friend, went to see Anish Kapoor's installations in the Mehboob Studios at Bandra. And what a treat it was!

I have seen (and contemplated) his Bean (officially called "Cloud Gate") in Chicago. The monstrous reflective bean shaped art installation by the Lakeside drew enormous crowd always. I have lots of photos taken of that and so was eager in visiting the first-time-in-India installations of Anish Kapoor. And I was not disappointed.

So many installations and the main theme was reflection conveyed through different objects conceptualised using bright and shiny stainless steel. Anish Kapoor brought performing arts a new dimension by his installation of a cannon from where red wax was fired at periodic intervals.

The exhibition was held simultaneously in New Delhi (NCPA) and Mumbai.

But understanding the installations (or rather interpreting your way) proved to be more easier than understanding the write-up that came in a booklet meant to help the visitors understand the art. It was highly abstruse text meant to be more high brow and snobbish than bridging the artist and the audience.

Anyway it was a great beginning. Here is to hoping the high note is the harbinger of higher notes to come.

Happy New Year of 2011!!!

My Landmark woes

2010-12-06T23:34:00.002+05:30

The past weekend I was in Mumbai.
Saturday, I went to the Landmark bookstore at High Street Phoenix, Lower Parel, supposedly the biggest bookstore of them all. I had been there before but this time it was not a happy experience.

It was chaos all over. The music was not organized properly. Major rock bands were missing. After having a huge wall poster on Green Day the least you'd expect is to have their latest album prominently. It was completely missing.

I remember the days in Apex Plaza Landmark in Chennai where the staff used to be knowledgeable about the books and also were able to retrieve one you ask for immediately. Here it is a chaotic mess with books strewn around. The staff were not knowledgeable at all, relying on the database search.

In the DVD section, after noticing Season 7 of "Two and a Half Men" on the shelf, I wanted the earlier seasons. The counter staff immediately checked the database which showed that none of the "Two and a Half Men" DVDs were in stock. That, when I was holding the Season 7 in my hand!! Outdated database, messily stacked books, poorly organized music...Nothing good to write home about in High Street Phoenix LandMark.

The next day, Sunday, I went to the Landmark at Infinity Mall, Andheri. Yeah, I am a diehard Landmark fan. It was slightly better, though I have seen better days of it. The books were piled up, overflowing the shelves. The aisles had become narrow to accommodate other items like jewellery counter, handbags shelves etc. Still it looked better than its bigger cousin down at Lower Parel.

I feel that the Chennai (Apex Road, Citi Center & Spencer Plaza) and Bangalore (Forum Mall) stores still rock.

But certainly the current majority shareholder the Trent Group is diluting the Landmark brand. I guess they want to cater to the entire family, relatives of bookaholics who tag along and wish to have something they like to shop. I wish the founder Hemu Ramaiah had stuck to the original concept of a book and cards store staffed by people who knew and loved what they helped sell.

I have a feeling that I would be better off shopping at landmarkonthenet. So far I have bought two books online. The books came on time and I got good discounts too!

P.S: With all this effort last weekend I bought just one book, "It shouldn't happen to a vet" by James Herriot. An old book and if I my memory serves right, I had read the condesed version in Readers Digest. Anyway, it has joined my growing list of "Waiting to be read" section.

P.S 2: Logos are the rightful property of Landmark owners. Copyright acknowleged.

December 8, 2010

P.S.3. It has to happen. Yesterday I purchased a book online at landmarkonthenet.com. The amount got debited but the transaction got marked as invalid in the Landmark site. I could see no way to email them. Called the helpdesk and got an unhelpful reply that mistake is at Bank's end. I am at my wit's end.

Say Cheese

2010-11-28T23:43:00.000+05:30

The 'Dent'ist! Till recently I had never fully realized the full import of the profession; the terror that they can instil in you.

Misfortune struck me and all of a sudden last month, I had a tingling sensation in my teeth. I should've let them tingle. As they are my teeth after all, I decided to interfere instead. Big mistake!

First I did an extensive inquiry as to the best doctor in town. I wanted an older dentist as the newer, younger ones would normally not have recouped their investment on education & the infrastructure and hence would look at me as a milkman would look at his cow.

Thanks to my friends who did enough due diligence, I finally found a dentist who was old, avuncular and fit the bill. But one thing I forgot was that old habits die hard. In fact they seldom die. Shortly you'd know why.

I visited the dentist. The moment he came to know that I can speak in English, quack in Hindi and the local vernacular is all Greek and Latin, I could see a glow in his eyes, or at least now I imagine that there had been one. I couldn't recognize the high-fives exchanged silently through eyes between him and his assistants.

After a couple of X-rays of my teeth, the dentist's assistant, bless her soul, identified that root canal treatment was needed for only one of my teeth. The doctor came in for review and almost determined that only one tooth was healthy.

He prescribed three root canal treatments and two extractions besides scaling and other peripheral treatments. His another assistant pulled me aside and started going over through the long list of treatments and appending costs to that. She finally mentioned a huge amount and termed that, I swear, as the total "project" cost. I was truly done in.

For example, the dentist prescribed removal of right molar saying that it is leaning on its neighbours like some do in a crowded bus. Then he mandated that left molar should be removed saying that it is too far from its neighbour and for being the cause of a cavity. He mentioned that my upper molar too has to be removed sometime down the line (meaning he doesn't need all the money now) as it has the potential of hitting the lower molar. Wait! There isn't one lower molar now, er, the lower gums it has to be.

I was a greatly disturbed by a vision. On my marriage day, I sit for the infinite and one number of photographs alongwith my wife. The photographer intones, "Say Cheese" and every one of the infinite and one times, I reveal a perfect set of gums; just gums. Soft, pink, a set of nice upper and lower gums with no pearly white intruding line in-between.

I was impressed by the dentist's "take no hostages" attitude. Anything standing has to be yanked out, was his mantra. Any person was seen as with the potential of generating 32x income for him.

I was very polite to the dentist. After all he is the person who drilled, cauterized, hammered (Oh, yeah) and scraped my teeth. No sense being rude. In the course of the treatment, I could see many of the hardware store implements used in my mouth for the scaling, root canal and the ultimate, the tooth extraction. Tooth extraction itself, I can blog a separate post on.

Over a period of 3 weeks and twice as many sessions, it dawned on me why the world quivers at the word, "dentist appointment". But I also came to realize how lucrative the profession is. In fact the idea of marrying a dentist's daughter is now very appealing to me. But I'd never marry a dentist. It would be a bit dumb; she would have all the implements of torture and I'd have what was left of my teeth. Certainly not a very good idea.

However before accepting any such proposal, I'd ask my dentist father-in-law to-be, that I have to speak to his daughter in private. Once granted the audience, I would get up close and tight, and while gazing deeply into her would fondly murmur, "Say Cheese". Just in case.

Shaken and Stirred!

2010-11-22T00:32:00.002+05:30

Amidst the daily humdrum and dodging of one problem after another, sometimes life throws up pleasant surprises as well.

Last week I took a cab from my office for my visit to the dentist. When I got down the meter showed something close to 330 rupees. I remarked that usually the charge is less than 300 rupees, or at least something to that effect through whatever Hindi I was able to rustle up.

The cab driver politely asked me to give him only 300 rupees!! I was truly shaken by this.

After handing over 300 rupees I asked him whether he could take me back as well, after my dentist appointment. Usually cabbies jump at direct offers because they don't have to shell out a portion of the fare to the cab company. The money is entirely theirs and so they are eager to take direct requests.

So here I go, "Can you give me a drop back to my home as well?".

"When would you require a cab for the return trip?", asks he.

"In another 2 hours".

He floors me saying, "Please can you call the cab company and book a request for the return trip at two hours from now?".

God is in heaven and all is well with the world!!

The under-confusion wannabe economist

2010-10-26T09:09:00.007+05:30

Read in the Washington Post that The Treasury auctioned inflation-protected bonds at a negative 0.55 percent Monday, the first time the government has sold bonds at a negative yield.

Here -> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102504347.html

I am no economist so this doesn't make sense to me.

Does this really mean that people buy bonds which will promise something less than the face amount? Is it like taking a loan of 100,000 guaranteeing that repayment would be something less than that?

Hope Tim Hartford or Steven Levitt can explain to lay people like me. Or can you, please?

Oct 27, 2010 - An Update

On a whim, I had mailed Steven Levitt. And got a prompt reply:

"These bonds are inflation adjusted. So if inflation is 10% and you have a $100 bond, then you get back $109.45. still better than having pure cash. If,on the other hand, inflation is zero, then you wish you had cash."

Service for free!

2010-10-22T06:36:00.000+05:30

A few months ago my hotmail account was hacked. I found so many spam in my sent box (apart from the spam, I send). I was embarrased at the content being sent using my name but couldn't think of a way out. Then a month ago, I couldn't log-in to my mail. It looked like the spammer had changed the password. I resigned myself to losing that account.

Then on a lazy day, I went through the whole gamut of links strewn on the msn page. I found out that even if you have lost your password without any back-up mail ID & questions that only you would know the answer of, still you can get your account back.

I filled up a questionnaire on my account, the answers being proof of my ownership. A temporary link was given (like a blog) where interactive help was available, though not real time. My answers got verified by somebody in techsupport and they allowed me access to my hot mail account again after a couple of days.

I couldn't believe MS has techsupport to that extent, for Hotmail. After all, it's a free email service. Hotmail was my first email account. Those days, it came with a 2 MB free storage and you have to pay for anything extra. Before the days of Gmail! I am happy to get back my first mail ID.

Ofcourse, it's not all altruism on Microsoft's part. Still Big brother does some good things too!

A slice of life!

2010-09-26T21:01:00.000+05:30

In life, one full of day to day routines, I often marvel at people who are adept at some small task. For example there is one road side eatery vendor in Bangalore who cuts onions at a frenetic pace, all into small pieces into a big pile without once adding a dash of his finger to it. Watching such activity is engrossing.

But the most impressive work in my opinion is the slicing of tomatoes. Not all tomatoes are firm and I have difficulty in even chopping them. I used to wonder how they make the tomato slices for the sandwiches.

I saw one road side sandwich vendor at Charni Road area in Mumbai. The way he sliced tomatoes was all grace. He held the tomato in his left hand and the knife in his right. He pushed the knife using his thumb into the tomato, slicing it straight and neat. I stood mesmerized by the verve and elan with which he went about creating slices uniformly thick, laying them onto the bread.

Keeping on to the task makes one proficient at that. But the beauty with which it is done makes it spell-binding.

Being watched from above......

2010-09-18T15:35:00.000+05:30

My previous employer is also into hardware, FMCG and all things apart from being an IT services major.

So when at desk in my current workplace, if I just so look above and stretch, I find my previous employer's name staring at me from the light bulb.

It is as if my employer is watching me from above morosely. Maybe because it was a mutually enjoyable experience till it lasted. I atleast was happy and cherish the stint. It looks like now I am being haunted!
:-)

Avani Avittam – 2010 variable values

2010-08-23T10:24:00.000+05:30

First day

vikrudhi naama samvathsarey dakshinayane varsha rudhow simma masey........bowma vaasarayukthayam sravishta nakshathrayukthayam.

Second Day

vikrudhi naama samvathsarey dakshinayane varsha rudhow simma masey........sowmya vasarayukthayam sadhabishak nakshathrayukthayam.

Long live Thamizh!! We're gonna murder it.

2010-05-25T11:15:00.003+05:30

Heard the Thamizh Conference Theme Song.
ARR had done a decent job. Harini, Chinmayi do their bit. No complaints.

But what is with Blaaze & Shruti Haasan? Truly horrible pronounciation. One can play with enunciation but pronounciation is the life of language and has to be perfect.And both of them particularly Shruti, proceed to murder it.
Their section is grating on one's ears.

A legend of a father is no excuse to dish out mediocre stuff, but that's what makes it possible.

Meeting Mom

2010-05-18T21:12:00.000+05:30

I am currently addicted to the series, "How I met your Mom". I have managed to finish only 2 seasons of it over the past 3 weeks, catching 1 or 2 episodes per day.
I am able to find similarities in this and other series like "Two and a Half Men" to some episode in "Friends". Many get inspired by the scripting and style of humour delivery of "Friends".
Any other such series that I should be watching?

Am I hearing it right?

2010-01-22T21:34:00.002+05:30

Army chief has gone partially deaf in left ear
Josy Joseph / DNATuesday, January 19, 2010 0:36 IST

Army chief General Deepak Kapoor suffered acute deafness in his left ear because of loud noises generated by booming guns when he visited the US last year.

As a result, the army chief has been placed in a lower medical category just four months before retirement. A lower medical category indicates partial disability and entitlement to higher pensions.

A normal army officer should be in SHAPE-1 — SHAPE is an acronym for psychological, hearing, appendages (limbs), physical and eyes. The H2 classification of the army chief means he is in a lower medical category. In fact, the military sources DNA spoke to couldn’t recall another chief in recent memory who would have retired in a low medical category. A low medical category entitles the army chief to about a 20% increase in monthly pension since it is a partial disability. Gen Kapoor retires on March 31.

Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_army-chief-has-gone-partially-deaf-in-left-ear_1336429

I thought everyone gets to make their bones and should've heard their share of guns before they move up the ladder. Either I am cynical or the way media presented this piece of news is skewed.

What's your take on this?

Shards of my soul

2010-01-17T22:42:00.000+05:30

Mince me; million shards of my soul
what's in a fight? let the massacre start
You'd still be there; in every coal of my soul

Actions hollow that blast a hole
Through the happy, throbbing embers of the heart
Mince me; million shards of my soul

Saw the forest for the trees; the beauty over many a mole
Cruel fate wrought by costumed wart
You'd still be there; in every coal of my soul

Stranger to hurt; innocent streaked the foal;
Cut down to pieces by honey poisoned dart
Mince me; million shards of my soul

Say life is a stage, and you play a role
Unbridled trammels deeds on thoughts; So I do own the loser's part
You'd still be there; in every coal of my soul

The kill has flown; Still in chase. Really,is there a goal?
Prose turns verse. Futile and fatal, sweet dreams are thought
Mince me; million shards of my soul

Dylan would spin in his sleep; And even may wake up with a start
Desires sheathed, dodging stigma; Mute words warbled as a resort
Mince me; million shards of my soul
You'd still be there; in every coal of my soul

One in thousand!!

2010-01-16T00:16:00.000+05:30

ஆயிரத்தில் ஒருவன் movie review

A movie of a genre different from run-of-the-mill tamil movies. A action packed fantasy movie.

First half zips along, a treasure hunt through the sea.

The second half is a thamizh movie with chaste thamizh dialogues. That majority of the audience would need sub-titles to understand is a drawback even though it is alluring, the sounds of words from yore.

Less of gore and lot more of editing would have done this film a world of good.

Reminds of Pirates of the Caribbean in that past & present mingle.

Seeing the movie(ahem..), we realise why director's marriage failed. :-)

Bookaholics Anonymous, Anyone?

2009-12-14T14:56:00.000+05:30

Suddenly there seems to be a lot of books around me and I ain't reading any.

I remember the way I use to look out for things to read, books, mags, even shreds of paper which has something new to read. Now lots and lots of books around and no time to read. :-(

Thinking of taking a week's vacation from routine and finishing off them all the stuff I got.

I finally admit that I am an hopeless addict of Landmark. I go there to buy. I go there to check out whether any deals are there. I go there to spend time with my friends. I go there to check whether the deals are still there. I go there to check whether Bangalore and Chennai outlets differ. I have even checked out Andheri Infiniti mall Landmark once. Now I realise all I need is a flimsy excuse to go there. And every time I land up there, some book gets my eye and landmark gets my money. And for all my purchases I am yet to get their membership card, with which atleast I could have gained some consolation deals.:-(

Any ideas to get a grip on my book shopping and maybe my slowing reading, anyone?

Singapore, a fine city!!

2009-11-14T14:37:00.001+05:30

Captured at the Rail Terminal at Singapore Airport.

Geeky love song

2009-09-13T19:58:00.000+05:30

A very old one. Funny lyrics with infectious beat. I had a tough time recalling it and finding it in youtube.
Putting it up here for posterity's sake!
Here they come! The Klein Four Group!!
Finite Simple Group (Of Order Two)

By the way, the group's (Klein Four) website is outdated.
I guess they have disbanded their acapella group.

Pink Floyd at Pushkar

2009-09-02T00:57:00.000+05:30

It was one of those unexpected turn of events, albeit a pleasant one for a change. In the midst of the regular humdrum of office work, there came an offer to visit a client location at far-off Ajmer in Rajasthan. I had planned for my colleague to go there but had to go myself.

Even though it was a two day visit and was fully booked with meetings client side official accompanying me helped me get off on a well deserved 3 hour break (yeah, that's correct) sight-seeing in Ajmer.

A suggestion was made to visit Pushkar some 13 kilometres from Ajmer and I gladly took it. Added to this was that the trip was to be on a bike and the road took us through the hills!!

The hills of Aravalli ranges were inviting and eventhough it was a very short ride it was made highly enjoyable by the fact that we had a Honda CBZ Extreme bike and I was the driver.

The Brahma temple (the only ancient temple for Brahma) was full of crowds and the town of Pushkar was all bylanes, dust and souvenir shops.

The ride was the best part of the trip and I returned to work 3 hours later.

After another hectic day, we (me and the client side rep) returned to Jaipur at night for a flight next afternoon.

Lady Luck was on my side and there too we got a bike from one of my client's friends. I grabbed the chance for a never expected ride through the streets of Jaipur and again the Aravalli ranges waiting on the outskirts of the Pink city.

It was a pleasant drive going to Amber Fort atop the hill. Roaring up in first gear on cobbled path to the fort atop the hill was great. While returning, on a whim, I turned towards the Jaigarh Fort too, located on the next hilltop.

It was ride-through sight-seeing of Amber Fort, Jaigarh Fort, Jal Mahal, Hawa Mahal and of course the blushing buildings of Jaipur.All in 3 hours flat only to drive like a maniac back to pack and be in time to catch the flight back home.

Lost moments, belabouring in office, make it all the more pleasant when such breaks from blue steal over you.

* Pink Floyd is a small lodge-restaurant nestled in the by-lanes of Pushkar run mainly for the foreigners. I could see zonked out foreigners lounging with appropriate kitsch off the wall. Rates pricey for Pushkar completed the scene.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.| Genesis 1:3

2009-06-26T14:37:00.000+05:30

Today ShivSena leaders told that naming the Bandra-Worli sealink after Rajiv Gandhi is a great idea as the link is to be used by all Indians and not just Maharashtrians.

Karnataka Govt announced today that they will honour the Cauvery water tribunal award even if monsoon fails.

Times of India decided to publish more news and less of "views" as filling up the paper with socialite photos is demeaning and insulting to the readers.

Tamil "comedian" Vadivelu announced that he will not do "banana skin" slapstick routines as tamilians are sick of juvenile fratboyish "comedies"

My blog attracts minimum 100 comments within the first hour of a new post

Day broke.

Load of crap! - Out of context!

2007-12-18T08:50:00.000+05:30

These days I am fully dunked in jargonese - jargons and officialese, a heady mix indeed!
I am just giving some samples below, plain english and what it gets transformed into.

I don't have enough time - I don't have the bandwidth.

We'll use the information - We'll leverage the material

2 people are needed for this work - 2 resources are needed for this assignment/project

Tell what you have understood - Prepare a functional appreciation document

Prepare a PPT - Prepare a deck

:-)

Thinking aloud!

2007-11-29T14:27:00.001+05:30

Does sending personal mails through office mail ID amount to using office stationery?

Does blogging from office system tantamount to diverting office resources to personal work?

Illegal or unethical?

As my guru ordered!

2007-11-20T18:47:00.001+05:30

"If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears."
- Lord Byron

Over the months, I have neglected my blog. This year has seen me move cities and jobs.

Whenever I check my blog, increasingly sparing as the days pass, guilt engulfs me. Sometimes I have thought of taking down my blog. But that is the only evidence I have of my writing skills, or the lack of them. So I decide to let it be.
And today I had further push to continue where I left.
So I am writing about writing to give me a start.
All I hope is I become prolific as I was.

Why this happens to me?

2007-07-29T15:48:00.000+05:30

I tend to change my desktop pictures often. Looking at them is a nice change from doing important tasks like orkut-surfing, chatting and checking mails for the nth time.

Rarely, I allow salacious pictures to decorate my desktop. The rarest of the rare times I have them, my friends who happen to be girls use my system.
:-((

Image damaged!!

Hurt hurting hurt

2007-07-06T00:50:00.000+05:30

Something that hurts, happens.
Down with depression.
As if personal pain was not enough, office irritations rub it in.
There comes a stage when you go numb and nothing matters to you, atleast you think so.
Then something worse happens to someone your friend. The thorns which had you as pin cushion get thrown off. A fury at what happened to your friend alone simmers.
It's not that something good has to occur for you to forget your worries. Sometimes closed ones' misfortune can make you forget yours.
Unfortunate but true.

River struggles; A dam cracks.

2007-07-01T22:56:00.000+05:30

Some hesitation.
A shyness to come back to what I left.
New found friends left behind.
Hectic schedule. A mere excuse?
Why the block with so much to unlock?
I wish to write.
To put down what all I sight.
Feeling guilty hasn't helped a bit.
Still I wish an old fire be lit.
I hope I blog again.
Come back to live in the world of my choice.
To live in the world of my choice
As I exist in the world I am in.
I am getting a life.

Fat boy slim!!

2007-04-01T02:40:00.000+05:30

It's been a long time since I got myself a pair of jeans.
The one that's my favourite clings to me too much for comfort. The ones fit look dirty even after a wash.
I, preset with a particular shade, searched for a month, not being in too much a hurry and not getting the shade either.
Today lady luck smiled on me. Atleast that's what I thought first, not knowing what was to come.
That shade was in all the sizes, except for my size x, which is my size since 1 year before.
So I tried size x-2, since they jump along even numbers. I had half a mind to take it, but my tummy protested too much.
Heeding it, I convinced myself with a jean of some other colour and a different brand and tried one in my size.
It fit alright but not that comfortable.
So I walked away, saying to the salesman that I'd visit again once he gets one of my size in that particular brand.
My friend asked that I try one of size x+2. I pooh-poohed him in confidence. He insisted.
Reluctantly, I yielded to him and walked to the trial room with my chosen jeans in a size too large.
Horror of horrors, it fit comfortably.
A long walk to the billing area, and a longer walk back to my friend!
I've got to exercise.
Any ideas to get the lazy bones to start working out?

Kicking to start; starting to kick

2007-02-10T19:37:00.000+05:30

I never intended to take this big a break. At home and catching up with friends for 2 weeks. A long travel to Indore and getting swamped with work immediately slowed down my intentions to blog. Laziness brought a complete stop. From Indore a shuttle trip to Chennai within two weeks of coming from there, made January a travel month. A full month without any post in the 20 months I've been blogging, is a first. So without bothering to take the effort to transmit the posts from my mind to my blog, I just blog about not blogging. Nurturing my blog is first. I'll bring it back to life, then I'll nourish it.
Blogging to continue..........

Thoughts as I leave

2006-12-30T02:31:00.000+05:30

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*

2006-12-19T04:23:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-12-02T01:07:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-11-29T00:09:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-20T23:58:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-11-12T23:44:00.000+05:30

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?

2006-11-11T06:18:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-10-31T04:55:00.000+05:30

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?

2006-10-26T05:07:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-10-17T00:42:00.000+05:30

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

2006-10-05T00:17:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-09-28T12:13:00.000+05:30

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

2006-09-27T01:17:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-09-20T22:59:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-09-13T10:09:00.000+05:30

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!!

2006-09-06T05:16:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-08-23T09:44:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-08-19T06:53:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-08-10T05:50:00.000+05:30

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

2006-08-04T10:09:00.000+05:30

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!)

2006-07-26T09:07:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-07-18T19:58:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-07-05T22:27:00.000+05:30

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?

2006-06-29T21:30:00.000+05:30

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

2006-06-28T06:03:00.000+05:30

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

2006-06-24T04:41:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-06-14T05:35:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-06-08T23:44:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-06-07T05:02:00.000+05:30

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

2006-05-31T05:16:00.000+05:30

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

2006-05-26T04:32:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-05-23T03:32:00.000+05:30

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

2006-05-18T08:25:00.000+05:30

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...

2006-05-11T02:24:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-05-06T03:07:00.000+05:30

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?

2006-04-27T22:36:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-04-22T13:31:00.000+05:30

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!!

2006-04-21T05:31:00.000+05:30

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

2006-04-19T03:37:00.000+05:30

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!!

2006-04-11T02:23:00.000+05:30

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

2006-04-06T04:51:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-04-01T08:21:00.000+05:30

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!

2006-03-27T23:48:00.000+05:30

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.

Sweet home Chennai!

2006-03-24T05:46:00.000+05:30

Today morning I was online chatting with a friend who was planning to move back to our hometown, Chennai. I didn't give the matter much thought then. I finished chatting and went about getting ready to go to office as usual but splashing cologne a little extra than usual(nothing) idly wondering about how today will fare.

Suddenly my inner voice screamed, "Chennai". I was suddenly day dreaming, lost in thought, mind in Chennai while body in Chicago. Chennai, my mind cried.

It's two years since I moved out of Chennai. All of a sudden I started missing my friends, my bike, the Chennai roads and traffic which I used to course through, Parry's corner, the downtown of Chennai, the suburban trains, the southern suburbs. How I wish to be back there.

It's not that I dislike the cities which I have lived hence, Indore and Chicago. Indore has it's slo-mo style inspite of it's pretence being a big town. It's not fast enough for a big city guy. And Chicago, I like the city, for everything it has. But still I miss my Chennai where the climate is abominal and one stinks in sweat like within one hour of taking bath. The city where water is liquid gold, in value as well as in colour. Chennai, the city where the rudest auto-rickshaw drivers of the country can be found. But I still love the city. So I'd love to go back there.

While on this moping mood, my mind opened another parallel stream of thought. I miss a silly thing as living in a city. Any city can be good as well in these days where mail, chat and mobile have made sure that you never miss out on your friends. Yes physical presence is something which cannot be replaced, but still these devices have gone a long way in keeping people together. I miss all my friends, though. It's hard for a person who is used to have gangs of friends (yes, more than one gang). But will I get the same environ if I get to go back? Probably not. Hmm...Definitely not. And another thing is that one's mind tends to blur out all the negative things and focusses only on the happy events of the past. So it's all a collection of experiences that I can recollect but which I will never regain.

Meeting Mr.Murphy

2006-03-21T23:13:00.000+05:30

Murphy does his thing (Part I)
We have a walk-through scheduled this week. And I have taken responsibility for a crucial area that has to be done first before anyone could start their work. We'll have to start at 9.00 AM and since another team is involved, my lead cautions everyone to be at 9.00 sharp. That doesn't matter to me as I come well in time always.

Last night my cold and cough after a week or so finally get my attention. I down two alka-seltzers, take a dash of cough syrup and lie down earlier than usual. Drugged I sleep for ten straight hours! When I get up it's eight already and in an hour I'm supposed to spear head a delivery.

8.00 - I get up
8.13 - Brushing, Shaving, Shower done
8.35 - I start my car, get on the interstate expressway, not minding the toll today.
8.59 - Reach office!

Murphy acting up - Part II
9.00 - I rush in like a whirlwind dump my bag, jacket and start the system. I ask my colleague whether the previous day's work by another team is done which we have a dependency on. I come to know that there has been an environment issue, which means baton won't come to me for another day!!

I need not have bothered getting up at all!
Murphy's world, after all!

I miss you! *

2006-03-18T00:18:00.000+05:30

I was totally wrong when I said sometime back that I won't be seeing any more snow. Yesterday, it snowed and how!
All day long, flakes flying fast and far.
To see they crash in the windshield of your car!
Wow! And on my way back from office, it was a thick white blanket all over with black snakes of cleared roads slithering through.
I was a bit irritated at drivers driving very slow :-). Now that was something new.

Today morning there was sun. And when I set out I saw all the trees standing happily with half-melted snow. They were all lined up fall-blown brown with streaks of white. It was like chirpy children running into the living area wet and happy after a bath!

Hmm..Some sight!
I MISS MY CAMERA!

* - Darren Hayes/Blink 182 - Take your pick

Take it easy *

2006-03-13T08:28:00.000+05:30

It's Sunday.
Everything moves at a languid pace.

Morning, I had stepped out around 8.30, tooled to a friend's friend's place, handed over a thing which needed to be given to my friend. Then I had gone to temple, had darshan & lunch and then came back. A good movie had been followed by some browsing and then I realised our home needed another week's grocery supply. So I had come out again.

Now, here I am at the supermarket pushing the cart around, mentally checking out vegetables. "Tindori - No, had them just three days back. Potatoes - Oh yeah, they are our staple diet. Okra - sure, haven't had them in the past 10 days, Onions - three big bags because we put them in everything except coffee". And thus I decide on the menu for the week. I load them in the trunk, drive out to my next stop, the video rental where I have to return our weekend viewing and take out a next set.

There is a drizzle showing off its percussion talents on my car. Traffic's slow, everyone having wound up early to start a new week fresh. And suddenly for me it's a moment of self-reckoning. I ignore Santana filling the car. I am immersed in looking back. What have I achieved so far, I wonder. What am I doing here and what have I done to be here, I mull. My life at present, looks to me like a string of chances and nothing else. Nothing has happened as planned and nothing that has happened was
planned such. I am not one of those who live life according to a plan, achieve goals that are aimed and in general lead life in a focussed manner. And as Unforgiven goes,
"What i've felt
What i've known
Never shined through in what i've shown "

I ponder whether the life lived so far had been a success or failure. I know for sure it is not a success. For a dose of luck at appropriate times has helped me. Or it could have been god's way of showing his presence to an ex-mild atheist of me. Nor my life can be called a total failure. Bar certain important events of life where I've been a loser, I've done quite well, thank you.

And then I proceed to think why a life should be evaluated, rated or ranked in terms of success or failure? Maybe we are in this game to see who gets maximum things wrong, and by succeeding we might be actually failing! Who knows! Or life may be merely a roller-coaster ride of a reality show where we forget the reality once we get on the ride. Mine's been a true roller-coaster so far!
"Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before "
- Don Henley

But as the doorman said, I relax as I can't leave any sooner.

* - Eagles

Faith! *

2006-03-07T12:46:00.000+05:30

The latest issue of Rolling Stones carries a special report on Scientology, which it calls the secret church.Every one knows that Tom Cruise is into it. All along I've been thinking that it's some zany idea of his. Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, the Scientology cult was founded by L.Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer in 1954.

The Scientology "religion" espouses that 75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled over populated 76 planets in this galaxy. To reduce population, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into vulcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls or thetans until they were caught up in electronic traps set around the atmosphere and implanted with false ideas like God, christ and organized religion. These "thetans" attach themselves to human beings and cause emotional and physical problems.

Some theory this is! Whew!!

Rolling Stones reports that before starting his religion, Ron Hubbard was into black magic and sex rituals. After his death in 1986, David Miscavige leads this cult now. Apart from Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kelly Preston and some more Page 3 (or Page 6, depending on the country) mainstays practise this "religion".

It was a fascinating article which details how the organization revels in having their own jargon and how it is very secretive in nature.

Reading that, I could not help wondering how seemingly normal people join this obviously abnormal groups. This is not an one off group, I am sure. The world over we can see money being made in the name of some religion or bonding, whatever.
I guess all these cults play on an individual's insecurity at some level. Also they feed on the human being's social needs. All rituals and invokings of any group can be seen to provide a feeling of belonging to the members.
Also surprising to me is the ability of a single individual who leads the organization to hold in thrall, the people who are actually no different or no lesser than him. Such is the power of the mind. It can dominate everything around it or it can be so submissive.
In our country, where religion is a big draw, I have seen clean shaven personalities lead organizations in the name of religion. What struck me was they need not have to grow beard and morph into scraggly sadhus, to convince others. Such is the power of the spoken word. Seeing them i've always wondered, "In what way this guy is different from me?". But not everyone does and hence they thrive.
And I thought Tom Cruise was a normal handsome guy like me having a string of beauties as girl friends! Ofcourse on Penelope, I have reservations. But when the guy ditches someone like Nicole Kidman, I should've known!

* - This song from the eponymous album is by George Michael. A Grammy winner which went platinum, I absolutely love this album. All the songs are good, to say the least!

Hasta Manana! *

2006-03-03T11:47:00.000+05:30

Today morning I start for office. It's a 35-40 min drive from my home.
Today as I start my car, I notice that's the climate is very cool, after being around 40 - 50 degrees (fahrenheit) for the past 10 days.
And when I come out onto the road, there are flurries!
It's nearly 3 weeks since we had snow! Usually I become careful when it's snowing! A bit tense and watchful while driving!
Today I was happy at seeing the flurries falling on the windscreen and with reluctance set the wipers to work.
I daily pass through a forest preserve on my way to work. Usually I never relax to notice. Today it's different. Because I know that probably I may not be seeing the snow again this season and so wanted to enjoy.

Climate chilly

Vishnu Sahasranaamam by Smt.Vedavalli playing in the car

Flurries falling

And Nature by the roadside trying to regain its beauty after the autumn shedding.

One never appreciates something which is always beside oneself. Only at the prospect of getting separated from something, one realises its value!
I was bidding farewell to the snow before I see it again.

Hasta Luego!!

* - Good old ABBA!

All that she wants!

2006-02-28T21:13:00.000+05:30

Why do females get what they want for gifts while men get what the females want to gift?
A burning question in my mind. The females get perfumes, cards, accessories, all those pink and lavender stuff they need (they think) while men get shirts (n+1 th, come on! we can do with max 3, 4 shirts and that's too much), cards (!!), men's perfumes (Deo is ok, but perfumes are yuck)....such stuff. No man except a few metrosexuals lurking around need such stuff. Why don't anybody gift trousers to a man? Every man needs that and all he is given is shirts and some more shirts. And what about razors! They get blunt easily with everyday use and they are always needed.Why can't they be given as gifts? Socks! Don't we ever need them, like a thousand pairs! To me razors, socks,jeans, coffee powder (yes!!) make the most thoughtful gifts. Ofcourse I don't mind the occasional iPod or a metal CD. :-)

* - I like Ace of Base for their smooth sound. They make for very good light listening.

Fools rush in *

2006-02-25T00:00:00.000+05:30

We were in the Chicago auto show last weekend, touted as the biggest one in the US. Wait, I am getting ahead of me. Here by "we", I meant me, my room-mate P, my friend from Ohio G and G's friend V. We having drooled over Ferrari, taken snaps with Golf then were roaming amidst the Lexus and Bentley cars area. It was more than an hour since we were in. And we had completed inspecting, around 5 percent of the cars on show, by then. Everybody know of certain objects that when had a mere look at, make one forget his friends who would be with him. Everybody would also agree that cars are one among them, those unlisted objects mentioned as a class.
There we were ogling at those cars oblivious to everything else. So it was sometime before, we realised that V was no longer with us. After that it was with difficulty that we went around watching cars having had to keep one eye for that lost guy. Ofcourse the part about keeping one eye for that guy, we didn't do it very well. So we in haste wound up our tour, had a team meeting (!), decided that we should go separate ways in search of Mr.V and come back and wait for another meeting in fromt of the Bridgestone stall. Meet again, we did, but without Mr.V. Then a casual look at my mobile told me that V has been trying to contact me. My friends P and G were mildly irritated at me (because they were only mildly interested in the search for V) for not listening to my mobile.
Cutting a long search short, we finally found our lost guy. But he was holding a bag bursting at its seams. I politely enquired whether he had managed to get hold of one of the car engines on display. That was not to be. It was full of only pamphlets and brochures. That's what we thought until he pulled out one tee shirt out of it. The tee shirt had the auto show's logo emblazoned on it. And our lad said he got it for free! That was it.
We forgot all the tiredness in our legs. Suddenly fresh energy flowed through every tired muscle and sinew of our bodies. Hearing the words "tee shirt for free" had that effect. We asked him the stall which gave them away. It was located in a remote corner far away from us, obeying Murphy's law. Undaunted, we all set on our quest for that tee shirt dragging that guy with us. There were two stalls having the t shirts on display. I rushed in one, asking for, actually demanding for that tee shirt. The salesperson told that we have to apply for a credit card to get one! Our heads turned in slow motion towards our wise guy standing behind holding the tee shirt. When we asked him whether he did apply for that credit card to get that tee shirt, he replied nonchalantly that the store people asked to put down some details for giving the tee shirt and he had done just that. Mr.V had'nt even realized he was applying for a credit card when he filled up the form for the tee shirt! We started kidding him a bit, just to get the jealousy out of our system.

The kicker came in last. Walking together later, suddenly something dawned on me. I turned towards V and asked how come he filled up for the credit card form when he didn't have a SSN number. The guy, casual as ever, replied that he just skipped that field. So much for the stall scrutinising the applications! Seemed the guy's been smart after all!

* - I dig the UB40 cover than the Elvis' one.

Paradise City *

2006-02-22T07:13:00.000+05:30

Last week, an accident happened to me.

It is thursday, a very cold and wet thursday. Sleet has been predicted for the evening and everyone is driving slowly. I am very cautious as ever. Since it's the route I take daily and the traffic is smooth, I lean back and enjoy the drive listening to the music. I am crossing a traffic light. Just one more traffic light and I'd be home. Suddenly there is a thud. My car is hit from behind. I stopping the car then and there, take my time to get down. And then I saw a big vehicle and a really young driver behind. She, in her teens, quivers and asks me whether everything is all right. I reply yes, eventhough I was in a daze. Seeing her state of tension, I just point her the damage to my car and exchange phone numbers and let her go.

I manage to drive the car home and call my friend immediately. First thing he asks, "Where are you?"
"Back at home"
"You shouldn't have let the girl go. You should've dialled 911 then and there. Let's see what we can do"
He comes to my place, and then in my "shaken but not stirred" car we go to the cops. They say that we need to bring the perpetrator too, to get the police report that I need for insurance.

We call the driver's father. We just inform that my car was hit on by her daughter not yet asking him to come down to the cops. We learn that he is a doctor.He asks to wait at a store front nearby, for him.We drive there and wait. And he comes there immediately after.

He takes one look at me. Figures me as one new to the city.
Pointing at the damage, he starts, "This looks like an old damage to me"
I shocked, say, "This happened just now"
He: "No way it could have been my vehicle that hit yours"
Me: Speechless, give an angry and shocked look.
We very reasonably ask him to call his daughter and verify the identity of the car, for I made her note down my car number too.He does that. The girl must have vouched for me. He asks her to talk later and cuts the call.

He continues, "I am here since before you were born. I can haul you up in jail for trying to cheat me".
An argument ensues. My friend intervenes here and takes all of us inside the store as it's freezing cold in the open. There that doctor tries some more brow-beating.

"I need to see that you are the owner of the car"
I show my documents.
" I need to see your passport. I can put you in jail for this"
I enraged, staring him down, say, " That I'd very much prefer. Let's go to the cops. There we will decide".
My friend sends me away on a pretext and starts drivelling the fact that I happen to be the victim. The fact that we are ready for the cops and not scared calls the father's bluff.

Then he gives his game away and admits that he doesn't want insurance to come into the picture. Eventhough he doesn't say, we know, and he knows that we know, that his girl is not legally qualified to drive.

And a lot happens after. The doctor haggles for the settlement, even offering a discount for his medical services as a payback, which we politely refuse. I am yet to receive the money, but have received a very good lesson. Never ever allow a person to leave the scene of an accident.

"If we were the ones to hit another car, would we have behaved in a similar manner?", I bemuse to my friend much later. He says the decent thing is to settle the damage. But people do stoop to such levels, I figure.

* - Guns'n'Roses were belting out this song for me, at the time I got rear-ended.

Rock you like a hurricane *

2006-02-20T10:11:00.000+05:30

The Chicago auto show
Can't have enough of this!

The crowd

Sexy!!

Fundoo!

Cool looks!!

Hunk with a tank!! :-)

Hmmm...a car I would like to own!

I rest my case!!

* - Scorpions

Let it be

2006-02-10T11:16:00.000+05:30

You step on a thorn. It embeds itself. After some efforts, you remove it. But still there's a niggling for quite some time.

I have the feeling now, for the past 6 days. I read an article in our local paper. A guy dies in a traffic accident. He all of 21 years. His mother plants a cross by the road as a memorial. There being creeps among humans, the memorial gets stolen. And for the past seven months somebody's removing all the memorials the grieving mom places. The reporter further talked to her and brought her anguish. And what she said refuses to go away from me, still.

“You never get over the loss. There is always that hole in my heart. Having a child is like having your heart walking outside of your body.”

The full article

Letterbomb

2006-02-05T02:40:00.000+05:30

I came across this site Snapshirts , recommended by another blogger. You type in your blog url and they create a collage of words culled from your blog. You can even get it printed into a T-shirt, it seems. Go check out.

* The title is from the song by Green Day in their album, American Idiot.

Don't ask me why

2006-02-04T07:10:00.000+05:30

Today at office, there is a technical environment issue, and we could not work for some time. That means some rare idle time. Rare? Yes, frequently we have free time, but idle time is rare.

So wondering what to do, I get an idea. Why not count my managers? Yeah, just like they do at the census. I start framing the rules (that much idle time).

The rules for the managers to be counted are, first I should be reporting to them directly. Second only line managers are counted.

Here's my list:
1.Team lead: She is the client manager whom my team reports to. She looks after all the day to day work I do. She should be looking into the data, but she is more interested in the metadata. They go to make the ppts, right? But a nice person.

2.Project lead: This is the MS Access guy. He is a freelancing contractor, out to justify his position. His responsibilities are the timelines, deadlines and dependencies. He gets himself interested in the actual work that is being done, without being qualified/empowered to do so. A micro manager, a dilbertian classic.

3.Resource lead: While my manager #1 is from the client, this manager is from my employer. She approves my time sheets, leave and gets feedback on me from the clients. A macro-manager, good one.

4.Offshore lead: He is my manager who conducts the appraisal, decides on the rating, promotion and consequently the hike.

5.Matrix manager: He is the guy whom I should be copying my reports. He is to participate in me-management, and is to have a say on everything that #4 does. It's not far removed from line management, in theory.

6.Informal manager: This person, asks a lot of questions, replicates what i do to see what I say I get, is what it is, and constantly looks over my shoulder and does a lot of back seat driving. This person, part of the client team, is not accountable but takes all the credits ensuring I don't get any updates as well as limelight.

Oh my God! The count is already six.Six people for one. That's too many cooks and I am the broth.

Please somebody reading this hurry up, run and close down those IIMs. Shutter them down. I have a cousin and friends out there, but I don't mind. There are too many of their species roaming about.

P.S: 1.The intelligent IIM grads reading this will argue that I am not the only guy reporting to all those people. On this my take is that it's still a many to many relationship. :-)

2. For my managers who may chance upon this post, it's all in a lighter vein. I am trying my hand at humour. Please do not mistake this as my opinion. :-)

3. The title, one may know, is from a song by Billy Joel. Here onwards, I'll find titles for posts in songs I like, and from artists I favour. So all you out there, you'll get an idea of how my taste runs. This would help you in choosing a birthday gift next month for me (Hint! Hint!). For further important details like my address to send it to, mail me. :-)

P.P.S: Free time is when your load is a bit less and you feel like going for a coffee, take a leak and answering personal mails. Idle time is when you've done all that and still left with some time and some problem that inhibits work. :-))

Mine my mind

2006-02-02T04:10:00.000+05:30

Hurtling through life
An express train, I am
Passengers are the people
Who board on the way

They stay in my mind
Seldom they alight
Their trains may end too.
They would still be in mine

Compartments, I am made of
And they are made of me
Always ever increasing
Rarely do they fuse off

People in one, wonder 'bout the other
Some know not. Too much to bother
For netherly dark, everything else is
Nary a light, all sigh and hiss

And some try to pass through
The aisle doors of my mind
Amusing it is,While I idly watch
The attempts of my friends
Through the eyes of my mind
For I am the train

Maybe a stray one or two
I'd like them to visit all through
But it's all in vain
They don't know the depth of the train

Some do realise, they who hearken
what that's beyond their eye
They haven't been there, though
Still, perceptive they being
For them it isn't too hard
Seeing through, the ornate lard

Some coaches do carry
Roaches and rodents as quarry
Memories of many an event
Which have me still in torment

For those who are in here still,
You won't find rhythm in my verse
B'cos journey is rough and tumble
All tense and terse
Never a dance or a prance
Grey and black, do my mind fill

The train never laughs
For the terrain is tough
It's all grunts and squeals
Careening through the turf

I am Alice's train
I don't know where I go
Rolling on the track
Running in my brain
Journey knows not its end
Not even what lies around the bend

Now it may be coasting
Smooth may seem the trip; but
It had its share of roasting
In downs that've wrenched the gut

All along as the train whistles
One thing deep inside rankles
The passengers who threw out
This passenger of a train
From the train of their brain
Why, Oh Why?

Mine my mind
It may reveal its gems
Or it'll throw up its bilge
But never mind!

Excuse Me!!

2006-01-29T00:04:00.000+05:30

From The Hindu frontpage
Saturday, Jan 28, 2006
U.S. tells India to back off Syria oil deal
NEW DELHI: Taking strong exception to India's recent decision to buy a Syrian oilfield in partnership with China, the United States has asked the Manmohan Singh Government to "reconsider" its proposed investment.
A demarche to this effect was made earlier this month and an aide memoire outlining Washington's objections handed over to the Ministry of External Affairs by senior diplomats here. In December last, ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) teamed up to purchase a 37 per cent stake in the al-Furat oil and gas fields from Petro-Canada for $573 million.
The mature fields, jointly run by Shell, have proven reserves of 300 million barrels of oil equivalent. Indian officials consider the Syrian venture to be of enormous strategic significance, both for the value of the underlying assets and the role it will play in cementing the China-India partnership for acquiring oil and gas equities in third countries.
The U.S. aide memoire, a copy of which is in the possession of The Hindu, says: "The United States strongly opposes such investments in Syrian resources."
Pointing out that the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed two resolutions, UNSCR 1636 and 1644, "mandating complete cooperation by the government of Syria with the U.N.'s investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri," the U.S. note says: "Now is not the time to send mixed messages to the SARG [Syrian Arab Republic Government] either through investment deals or through any form of economic or political reward to the Damascus regime."

It is not known whether China has been told such. And I am not sure it will be. And No, Shell is not an Indian Company! Yes, Shell has huge business interests in the U.S. itself. And yeah, Shell could have been easily arm-twisted. Ofcourse, US-Canada relations are cordial and not affected by Petro-Canada's investment in Syria for this long.
Getting a warning is one thing. I am trying to figure out what we did or did not, to let others think that they can poke their noses in our affairs. Our policy/attitude must be introspected upon. We should try to rise a little bit higher than the door-mat level.

Inquilab Zindabad!!

2006-01-28T14:29:00.000+05:30

Do watch RANG DE BASANTI. The movie must be made a hit!
I am not going to dissect its storyline or whatever. But I swear by it!!

Driving Mad - Part II

2006-01-25T10:33:00.000+05:30

Part I

Last week, I had to buy a car. Till then, I was enjoying my company's hospitality and latest cars. That had to end. Here I go with what happened after.

I put down the loan my company gave me for one pre-owned car. The second day I take the car to office, we had to have a snow fall. :-( And a good seven inches at that! Nature knows that I was yet to buy the snow shovel cum ice scraper.

I decide to leave office early, and still the snow catches up with me. Not sure how my new acquisition would behave in the inclement weather. I am all nerves inside as I try to gingerly drive out in the falling snow. For some time traffic is heavy making my job easier. Then I turn to the desolate road which takes me to my place.
There the road becomes a single lane either way, cars are sporadic, and people are in a hurry to reach home. They try to drive at the maximum speed possible. But one guy in his new car is blocking their way. I crawl at 25 mph, wipers work furiously and my eye balls stay glued to whatever I can see. The guys behind cannot take it after a while. They overtake me by moving into the opposite lane! Voila! I have made Indians out of disciplined law abiding Americans. Ignoring stares as they zip by, I continue to drive them mad by driving at snail's pace. Finally I reach home after an hour's crawl which usually is done in 25 minutes drive.

The next day, being a weekend, I wake up in the afternoon. Armed with a credit card, and my hands rolled in a polythene bag, I proceed to remove the snow from my windshield and scrape the ice coating that is beginning to form. One helluva job.

Above, is my car with a white fuzzy top! If you carefully see, there are lemons under the wheel to be crushed!

Fighting hearts; Connecting pain!

2006-01-21T19:49:00.000+05:30

You have a neighbour. You have fought with him. Bigtime, thrice. And you daily argue with him. Skirmishes are there all time. It's rare that smiles are exchanged, leave alone congenial talk. Is it possible to sympathise with such a person? I thought not.

But I was wrong. Last week I was sorry for Pakistan. Here they are, bombed in their sovereign territory, by a person who is their ally. Some seventeen of their countrymen die, and all they can do is wring their hands.

I could feel what their countrymen are going through. That's because I hold my country dear. Crazy? Ironic? Seems weird, but I'll try to explain.
Long ago I had my blood boil with rage, when my stupid foreign minister went to Kandahar for the release of hostages. Submitting to the captors' demands was inevitable then, but what got my goat was the external affairs' minister's pose holding hands with the terrorist who was to be released.

Another time. This time the government was the same but the ministers had changed. We conduct a nuclear test, and the superpower frowns at it. Each country has its own reason to behave the way they do.You do what is good for your country and stand by it, come what may. But what we saw was our minister chasing the super power's then under Secretary of state, all through the world, buttonholing him wherever possible. It was almost like a sub begging a dom after playing truant. I personally felt humiliated. If you don't have the guts to do something, you shouldn't do that at all.

Okay, I'll stop here, for still I get worked up just thinking of those incidents. Such events like these humiliates the ordinary patriotic citizens. And because we have had our own share, I am able to relate to the collective psyche of the Pakis.

A government is not some amoebic torso of a creature. Ultimately it boils down to some individuals who take decisions what are touted as Government's actions. And when they have no sense of self respect, integrity and steadfastness, first their character taints the government's actions. Then such an action stains the country. And this, pains ordinary people like me.

My sympathies are with such ordinary people of Pakistan who are caught in a vicious cycle of jingoism, over dependence on military and religious extremism. It seems that to keep people from asking to be alleviated from poverty, the prescription world wide is fundamentalism. It is the opium of the masses.

Ofcourse, I can be thought of as mistaken. I have read only our history books.

Preening myself

2006-01-21T19:42:00.000+05:30

When I was in Chennai last month, I visited my previous organization. I have a big gang of friends there, and pretty close they are to me.Nearly 2 years have passed since I quit. It's a home like thing to me still. I know almost eveybody there, even now, after so many changes.
I stroll in. It's a six storey building and I used to work in the fifth floor. I walk to the lift. A group forms waiting for the lift to come.
A person suddenly smiles at me. I don't know him. I smile back at him.
"Are you not here anymore?", he asks me.
"No".
"Have you been transferred to any other place?", he asks.
"No, I quit", I say.
Again we trade smiles, and we are on our way. He is a customer, who has been attended to, by me. A long time ago, and I don't even remember him. Well, it's a service organization and scores of customers come daily. But it's a big organization and the staff also, are considerable in number.
I was happy inside, thinking somebody remembers me even after such a long time. It seems I am good at CRM, after all!
Ofcourse, customers remember you even better, if you are bad at service.
The guy wasn't scowling at me, though.

Makaan ka talaash (or whatever they say in Hindi for house-hunting)

2006-01-15T07:20:00.000+05:30

I am stressed this week. Not because of any work load. I have to find an apartment to move in, as I can stay in hotel, for only one more week. I began looking for one. My friend K advised me to go for a shared accomodation, as that would be cheaper. And I faithfully started following the Indian websites where classifieds are the staple diet sorted by cities. And my research resulted in several findings but not a suitable acco for me.
1. If the ad is for the area you are looking for, then it would have been taken already.
2. If the rent is very low, then it would be far away from the place you want to move in.
3. If it's your area that's advertised and the rent is fabulously low, then it would invite only females! Infact men are almost a minority, I felt, going by the ads.
And I started hunting for apartments on individual sharing basis too. There too, I became experienced enough to write a thesis.
1. If the place comes up to all your expectations like affordability, accessibility, then the owner would reveal that there are already people who have shown an interest. Infact only if the background checks on them reveal a lurid past, you'd get a chance.
2. If there are no takers for the apartment you are shown, then it is sure to have some faults.
Here I am, searching in a far western suburb of Chicago (infact it's almost another town) and yet there is enough competition.
Next week would reveal how I fared in my hunt for a home...

Food to the hungry; Friends to the lonely!

2006-01-06T04:14:00.000+05:30

I've seen pictures of pythons after a meal. A monstrous bulge in the middle of their slithering body indicating the size of the creature they have swallowed. How the python must be feeling! It can't move, the prey weighing in like an anchor. How it must have been for the python to starve for a long period and suddenly having to stuff itself with so big a meal at one go!

I can understand its feelings. After going without a leave for more than 8 months, I managed to finagle a leave of absence for a princely 7 days. In those seven days I was to catch up with my friends and relatives for the past months that I've not seen them. Too little time to achieve that. And I end up feeling guilty towards everyone for not devoting enough time. I was like the python gobbling up whatever I could manage, boning up on all events that I missed out, enjoying the camraderie as much as I can. Not with anyone, I spent as much as I wished!

And now I'm back at work, far removed from my friends. Only the memories are with me, still to be dwelt and digested. And the next meal is far away, beyond the time horizon!

Art in my heart

2005-12-12T11:09:00.000+05:30

Last weekend of my business trip, I thought I'd catch a glimpse of history of the city. So I contacted the Chicago cultural center who arranged a volunteer to give me a 2 hour walking tour. It was a nice experience. Learnt about some of the important buildings of the city.

I saw the Hay Market memorial where a violent end to a labour meeting gave rise to May 1 being observed as the Labour day the world over. At the end, I thought going to the art museum would be a better way to spend the hour I had before catching the train back to suburbs.Called the Art Institute of Chicago,it's a veritable treasure trove of art, from the world over.

They have a hall for Indian art, where scultures from Karnataka, Tamilnadu,Rajasthan and AndhraPradesh were displayed. Mostly they were donated to the museum by people whose ancestors were in India during the British occupation.

There is a special sculpture showing Shiva and Parvathi with Muruga in betweeen. The uniqueness is Lord Muruga is in a dancing position, normally never in such a position in any temple. And it's not in our country!

There are rare paintings, sculptures, artifacts ranging from very old to Modern abstract ones. One day won't suffice. I did it in hour! Just 2, 3 halls. That's all.

A sculpture by Rodin in the foreground. Claude Monet's paintings in the background.

P.S: The volunteer who accompanied me in the morning walk till my museum visit, had been to many places in India than me. He embarassed me saying that he'd even been to the Andamans!!

Environmentally yours!

2005-12-10T05:06:00.000+05:30

My city, Chennai, has been again beset by torrential rains. The good thing is that government is in damage control, full swing. Prompt disaster relief and elections next year maybe beyond happenstance. Anyway I don't want to nitpick as long as something good is done. The bad thing is the poor, the homeless bear the full brunt of the Nature's fury. At times as these, it's hard to find justification of uneven distribution of material wealth through the society.
It seems in recent times the climate is going haywire, world wide. A slew of hurricanes have blasted the Central and North America. They have come in such huge numbers that the meterologists ran out of conventional allotted names and resorted to Greek alphabets. In India too, Mumbai had its share of rains and a lot more. For that matter be it rains or drought, they hit us severely.

For some time, I've been thinking whether these phenomena could be a result of man-made causes such as the green house gases and stuff. Global warming and such stuff are gobbledygook for me. Recently in US some liberals (or whatever such people are called) got together at Vegas, conducted a show called, "Earth to America". It was a two hour skit kind of thing. Stand-up comedians like Wanda Sykes, comedy show men like Ray Romano, Larry David, actor Tom Hanks, country singer Tim McGraw and other assorted entertainment industry people got together to garner support for environmental consciousness. They went bashing Dubya Jr., bigtime. The show was humourous and I liked it. They wanted everyone to logon a web site and click to show support. It was like a virtual march in support of environment protection. I never got to do it. Later I bought a Tim Mcgraw CD, though! At the end of the programme there was a brief mention of the Kyoto protocol. It seems even though the US is not a signatory to it, many US cities, around 40, have adopted it. Seattle was the first.

It was then I decided to bone up on the Kyoto protocol. Kyoto protocol is basically an agreement committing 38 countries to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2
percent from 1990 levels, by 2012. Greenhouse gases are carbondioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and Hydrofluorocarbons. US and Australia are the only developed countries not to sign it. And now,there is a Montreal protocol too.

The Kyoto protocol is peculiar in that it is valid only when countries that agree to the protocol, account up to 55% of worldwide emissions or more. It very recently came into force(Nov '04) when Russia ratified it. Developing countries like India, China and Brazil are not required to sign up, for now. The world's largest polluter US has refused to join, on the one hand saying that it's too costly to implement while on the other maintaining that developing countries too should be made to join. I guess it's cheaper to implement for the developing countries!

Ofcourse, it's a moot point that just by agreeing to control emissions, whether a country will overnight become 100% safe to breathe.Infact the signatories themselves are actually facing increasing emissions year over year! And there's a big club of nay-sayers who pooh-pooh the theory that the gas emissions harm our earth's climate. There are some prominent men like Michael Crichton, who wrote an entire book, not just a blog post, to denounce it. "State of Fear" became a best seller, infact.

Generations to come will vindicate either of the side. Hope they don't do it at their own cost.

Work of love!

2005-11-30T11:13:00.000+05:30

I was on a drive to NY last week. Driving through snow covered landscape was an enjoyable experience. Pennsylvania and NewJersey are beauties. On the way, through Penn, I was idly gazing around while my friend was at the wheel. Suddenly something caught my eye. It was some graffiti in an Indian language, complete with the heart and arrow symbol!! Even in desolate places, my countrymen, diehard romantics they being, strive to declare their love. One must be a complete whacko to take out a paint tin and brush to a remote place, just to scribble his love.I naively assume here that Indian females are not given these tendencies. Now I'd like to visit Everest, just to know whether any Indian who had gone there, has proclaimed his love, thousands of feet above sea level! What all a love lorn guy is driven to!!

Hairy tales!!

2005-11-25T10:02:00.000+05:30

After well over two months, I finally got my hair cut last week. Having no time to get the hair cut, I let it grew, and grow it did like wild weed. Curly, unkempt hair is not a great advertisment for your company when you're visiting a client. And I was getting looks too. Afraid of being mistaken for a rock star, I decided to go to the saloon. The poor lady at the saloon had her clippers break trying them on me. I was a bit embarassed.My friend whom I went with, helpfully suggested her to go for a lawn mower. There's nothing like a lady to make one take snipe at even friends! :-( It took a whole 10 minutes for my Delilah to figure how to get at my hair. "You should have come earlier", she told me primly. I mumbled, "Didn't have time", my eyes bleary having pulled an all nighter just before. Then she doused me with water and then managed to do her work. The next day, I got appreciated for the hair cut, at office. Lotsa ladies and a few men too!
While I was there, I got reminded of my first hair cut at Indore. It was a hilarious (not to me, then) episode. I was new to the Hindi heartland and had a very small vocab. I sat on the swivel chair, and the barber went to work. He asked me something. I just nodded, proud to let him know that I didn't understand a single word of what he asked. After 10 minutes, I was shorn and was about to get up, he fired away another question. I made some undecipherable sound. He poured a cool oil on my head and started practising tabla. I realised, albeit a bit late, that I was asked about having a head massage. In my mind, I started counting the money I had, to give him for this extra. Then he again enquired something pointing at my face. I should have atleast got up then. Proud I am, I did some more affirmative sounds. I forgot whatever Hindi I had known till then. Not a single Hindi word came to my mind and said, "I'm here". To my horror, the barber took some cream applied on my face. He took a mallet sort of thing and went about hammering my face. I couldn't have been any stupider then, though my friends contest this. This went on for some time. Enjoyed at the opportunity to practise all his skills and apply all his concoctions, the barber started talking to me about something again. This time, I managed to croak out a "nahin" and got off. The good thing at the end was all of them, the massage, facial or whatever he did to my face, came at a very low cost. For that money, I would've got just a plain vanilla haircut in Chennai. Even after that, my repertoire of Hindi words didn't increase. But I started rehearsing what to say, before going for trimming my mop.

Chink in the armour!

2005-11-23T05:32:00.000+05:30

Since I came to the US I am fascinated by one thing. Whatever store I go to, I see products with the "Made in China" label. And this is not a stray occurence. In stores like WalMart which caters to the middle class, almost all the products sold, are from China. I saw some clothes with the "Made in Bangladesh" tag too, never a "Made in USA"! But ofcourse, sodas are the obvious exception.
Amused, I started a game to myself, to find an article which has the words, "Made in USA". I searched and searched. Finally I found Zippo lighters carrying that etching.
USA, it seems to me, is a large consumer economy than a manufacturing one. In general, all products for the high end market come from Europe and for the rest down below the affluency line, it's the Chinks! It looks as if China has bought the manufacturing rights to all sorts of consumer durables!!
No doubt, the Chinks are leveraging their population as an asset.It is a controlled labour market as well. Important of all, China's exchange rate is artificially pegged down to the dollar, making it's exports to the US dead cheap.
I made an hypothesis. Let any US president restrict the imports from China.
Effects: 1.He will see a raise in prices.
2.It will result in public unhappiness and complaint over the prices.
3.Ratings down for the incumbent in the endless opinion polls they conduct.

That is why, No US president offends China. US will preach the whole world about signing NPT. They'll demand that all markets should be open to them. But when it comes to China, it is at the decision and timing if its own, does it relent. All the South East Asian tigers got plundered because of having their currency at free float. China and India as well, escaped then because of their relatively insulated economies.

US may be known as the super power but I wonder what will happen if China lowers the boom either through its currency rate or making its exports a bit costlier!! It'll hurt US badly. So who's the actual super power?

To be a big daddy, a country has to do two things.
One, create market dependencies. you control a nation's market, you control the nation!
Second, Go Nuke! It's the Insurance!!

Shooting Bull!

2005-11-18T08:55:00.000+05:30

Today I had 110 calories worth of Carbonated water, Sucrose, Glucose, Sodium Citrate, Taurine, Glucoronolactone, Caffeine, Inositol, Niacinamide, Calcium-pantothenate, Pyridoxine HCL, Vitamin B12, Artificial flavours and colours, and managed to stay awake through the day!!

P.S: I had a Red Bull Energy Drink.
P.P.S: Too much of fine print is injurious to health!

A tough question!

2005-11-12T08:56:00.000+05:30

It's winter and cold has started its regular nocturnal visits. And my city, is known for its winds sweeping through. The winds shiver your timbers, while forcing the temperature down south. I quiver inside three layers of clothing. But what never ceases to surprises me are the raiments of the womenfolk. I see them still coming about in skimpy dresses, tank tops, sliver straps, and what not! And every dress fights shy of reaching the navel, leaving the midriff to the mercy of cold winds and having the men at their mercy. It defeats me how they manage or why they should torture themselves such!
I am no male chavunist, or atleast I think so. But what seems to me a 10,00,000 dollar question is, when the men, fully clothed, could sweep the opposite gender off their feet, why the femme fatales have to indulge in such masochism just to get our attention? Your two cents please.