welcome 2009

Welcoming 2009....
Happy new year to anyone who sees this post!

2008 went like swoooosh. I want a calmer,peaceful,happier and satisfactory 2009.

Cars and Cycles

Hapless car and cycles standing in front of my apartment.

The world

Is such a place ... Humans have gone to every place possible in this planet...Adapted to all the climates....Humans are a remarkable species...We are there in the place where there are polar bears, we are there in the places where the Bengal Tigers roam in the sunderbans...

This part of the world is like a black and white movie during winter. Like the video like Stranger in Moscow. Two predominant colors :- Black and White. White background, Brown and Black Tree barks with no leaves, People walk around with one color jackets : black. But I must admit gold hair on black jackets look cool ;-) I now understand why they call India as colorful. There are so many people, that it constantly changes ... So fast that it is so self-occupied and self-important to itself. Just like we dont like April and May and call it as mid-summer, these guys have the midwinter. They treasure their summers...

I live on a Road by the name Koivukoskenkatu. Try telling it as fast as you can...Thats the way they say it! I think katu means road...Kasariminkatu, Merikoskenkatu. The downtown is called Keskusta. Initially I thought it was the name of an area...I was puzzled, how come every city/town had an area called Keskusta!!! The finnish have several words to say "Hi"...Some people say "Moi", some people say "Moro", some people say one fast incomprehensible word. The Santa Claus is called as Joulu Pukki.

Since the South of Finland is where the action is, the government is taking steps to improve the situation in the North as many youngsters leave the North and move over to Helsinki-Turku-Vantaa-Espoo-Tampere the important cities in the South. The only big city in the North is Oulu. It owes its existence to the University of Oulu. Because the University is a big and a prestigious one, there are many Tech companies there and almost all of these companies are into telecommunications/rf and all that.

There are no landlines in Finland. Even on train when I travel from Oulu <=> Kajaani, in the deepest snow covered forests, there is connectivity. The difficulty of maintenance of Telephone lines here forced people to come with an alternative. That was how Nokia invested heavily on implementation of GSM and the rest is history.

But one things which is welcome here is in peak hour , there will be 4 cars on the road. Which means travel time is negligible. Traffic in India has its own character and personality and you cannot neglect it or take it for granted. The other day when I had to leave to Finland, I has to miss my seminar because of Kumaraswamy anointment as the JD(S) chief. The idiot.

Sudeep the eskimo

I stand here in front of an igloo(eskimos live there)... I went to Rovaniemi, a place in Lapland which is on the arctic circle... There were igloos there!!! yappa....ond tharaa experiencu ...

But in one museum they have shown the effects of global warming in the arctic region...it seems in 1904 rovaniemi had a temperature of -47 in winter...now it is -3 or -4 .... warm winters

the best clothing

is not pyjamas ... heheh.... all my jeans were to be washed...so i went out with pyjamas this weekend... -7 degrees

BigB the blogger

Is audacious, forthright, frank and patriotic. The way he put forth his arguments and ideas are just phenomenal. He could be better than any of those stupid Ramachandra Guhas and Shashi Tharoors

India should end the tolerant attitude

wtf ... no hostages are alive at Taj it seeems....Using people as human shields,.... Seriously wtf wtf...Look at the confidence they have to come and kill in the open......man i am not feeling in a good mood man....

What if we go to Dubai and indiscriminately start firing in a shopping mall ? Bloody shitheaded jackasses

3 snaps

The snaps show road to office , the other one shows where i stayed at oulu and the third one is me.

Shameful..

I guess the worst ever year in terms of number of terror attacks across India..from the list of terror attacks in india in 2008 in wikipedia, 360 are dead and more than 1450 people are injured!!! and the list is incomplete (does not include malegoan blast and i dont know how many more are missing)..this is what i could extract from the list

1. Jaipur - 13 may - 9 blasts - 63 dead 216 injured
2. Bangalore - july 25 2008 - 9 blasts - 2 killed 20 injured
   
3. Ahmedabad - july 26, 2008 - 21 blasts - 56 killed 200+ injured
4. Delhi - sept 13 - 5 blasts - 30 killed 100+ injured
5. Delhi - sept 27 - 1 blast - 3 dead 23 injured
6. Agartala - oct - 5 blasts - 4 killed 100 injured
7. Imphala - oct 21 - 1 blast - 17 killed 30+ injured
8. Guwahati - oct 30 - 18 blasts - 84 killed 470 injured
9. mumbai - nov 26 - multiple attacks - 101 dead 287 injured and counting
   

from that list, 9 different instances of attacks in 8 cities since 13th may (6 months!!) that is like more than one attack per month!! and except for 2, all are instances of multiple synchronized attacks!! and not mention scores of live bombs that were diffused in surati really want to ask this one question to the home minister shivraj patil "Do you feel even an ounce of guilt for what is happening?"

kiththala ,viththala, apajakari, nallikari, kiitos .... the finnish words sound funny. The names sound funnier Pekka, Jari, Juoni , Ville, Ulla , Heli, Jukka ...so on..(difficult to figure out who is male or female by looking at the names).Somehow languages like english,german, french, swedish have words which end in consonants...Here in finnish like dravidian languages, the words end in vowels.

The people are huge and gentle and very reserved. Somebody has told them not to talk. They won´t open their mouth at all.I am currently living in a village called Kajaani (j is pronounced as y : so it is Kayaani). It has only 2 colored people(I think). I am at a client site. The company is called ElektroBit. They do really hifi stuff. Kajaani is somewhere really north of finland. Needless to say it is cold and keeps getting colder...I can walk with a tshirt with a temp of 0 to -1 (ofcourse with thermals) and stay outside like that for ateast 3 minutes...But -8 and -10 are little too much, I tell you.....I have internet connection and that keeps me occupied. I heard the temp goes to below -27 to -30. Really don´t understand why they built an office here.....It is like building an office in Rajasthan Desert or Himalayas..Ask Narayna Murthy whether he will build an office there...He won´t ...It defies common sense...Not many people would love to have their offices in places of extreme temperatures....Yesterday the snow was like talcum powder...Today it is shining (which means another 2 degrees lower)

Life is difficult for Indians here. No doubt abt it. I have a long wait to go home in feb.

I get stares here.One lady actually asked me in the railway station with a guessing look "Indian?" I said yes...Then the lady goes back and tells her friends with a look which I guess means "I was right, he is an Indian".

Benny Lava !!!

What does a PrabhuDeva song sound to a foreigner ?
The answer is here .

I can't stop laughing...

Mata

I had the opportunity to watch this wonderful movie. I am blown away by the movie...Great movie! Wonderful!!!

What delightful acting! This is one of those rare gems. The movie has a strong message and the narrating voice, mannerisms and the voice of the middle class is simply GREAT!

The movie is about the search of a new swamiji for a mata which is run for the cause of blind children. The old swamiji just gets out of his robes and tucks in his shirt and says goodbye to the mata.

I really loved watching the movie and I am seeing it again. It is rich both philosophically and great acting by everyone....

Kudos to the director. Worth buying the DVD.

Reached Oulu

Okay after an odyssey of a travel I finally reached Oulu, Finland. This place is really cold and day 1 seems to be like just the other day#1s I have seen.

I will miss two marriages and I feel really bad about that.

The place gets dark really quickly and as of today , I don't have anything concrete planned here....Except make Anna + Saaru

Hmmm....

The White Tiger

A few days ago, I stopped near the footpath bookseller who seemed to have an interesting collection of books.I decided to buy the book - "The White Tiger " by Arvind Adiga because I read that it had won the Booker Prize this year.I think it is very well written. A short story, but a very angry and a brutal voice telling the story.

The story is about a "social entrepreneur", Balram Halwai, who now has a booming business in Electronics City, Bangalore. The story is written in the form of letters by this person to the Chinese PM. It is not stated whether the protagonist actually posts the letters he had written to the PM.

Every night at about 1.a.m he writes a new letter to the PM. He starts off regarding how he came from one of the darkest, poorest villages of India and got to the position where he is in. As the story unfolds the reader will learn that he is not our conventional "good" person but a very dark, brutal opportunistic person and a classic example of survival of the fittest who can do anything to get to the top.As the story progresses Balram starts off working in a tea stall in his village and then he escapes his village in a truck and learns driving in a driving school and he becomes a driver for a NRI couple in Delhi. There isn't much to the story but it is interesting like hell.

The way the inequalities in the Indian society has been described, the power and sarcasm in Balram's voice, the feeling of hopelessness and the small town, a semi-literate guy's view of the world is amazing! Adiga's describes India's cities like Delhi, Bangalore as "half baked cities full of half baked men". He cleverly observes what works in India and what does not. The way Adiga writes about the
a car driver's psyche and the way he puts down a car driver's stream of thought and conscience is remarkable.

I am not much of an avid book reader. But this book is good enough to make a really engrossing read. Finally it turned out to be an intelligent investment for me ;-).

Read this book if you get a day or two to spare.

Change has come

Barack Obama.

He won because of a good logical campaign and he worked really hard to get the campaign right.

Let's see what this fellow will do about the economic crisis. It;s one hell of tough job to start delivering on Day#1 after so much of promise.

Interesting charity model

Check out rang de. They provide a platform for individuals to become "social investors" and the money invested will be used for providing micro-credit to needy borrowers. You can also choose the kind of people you want your money to be loaned to. At the end of tenure, you get back your money with an interest of 3.5%. Agreed, its not comparable to any other investment option in terms of monetary returns. But then again, such options are investments and by no stretch of imagination can they be labeled charity.
Hope such innovative schemes work out and (quoting from their site)provide a sustainable alternative to charity for the needy.

Favourite comedy shows

- Seinfeld.. Kramer rocks.. George irritates sometimes .. but still this is
- That 70s Show - Kelso and Fezz.. Mrs. Foreman rock ..
- Friends - Its Joey, Chandler and Phoebe's show
- Frasier
- My wife and kids

Hindi

Dekh bhai Dekh
Office Office

Kannada

paapa pandu
silli lalli

Of random thoughts..

Alighting the escalator this time was different. The usual set of people handing out fliers were accompanied by a old man, whose profile was C shaped, a wooden stick hand and a plastic cup with a collection of few coins. You do not see that many of these people in hong kong. The reaction of the people coming down the escalator ranged from nonchalant to extremely generous. I observed a $10 coin when I dropped mine. There were no thoughts just action of dropping a dollar. I never do this frequently in bangalore. It usually would be the first one for the day or the last one for the day, or someone who really looks very bad and doesnt approach you personally (never to the ones in the traffic signals)..

Then continuing on to the MTR, and no company the mind really wandered. Instantly the thoughts were about Gini c0-index, the index which measures income disparity. Having checked the index there were a few observations.

Communist/Socialist countries have the worst income disparity
Capitalist and free market proponents are the next inline
democractic and regulated markets follow
some european countries do really well

i never believed in capitalism .. its a system of/by/for the rich with a fake ideaology that they are helping the others along, where in reality is they are robbing others more than what they actually contribute. i am not a fan of hugo chavez either.. the human nature is naturally egoistic.. and a homospaien with undisputed power, will always be able to convince he is doing in the best interest of others..

That leaves democracies (good ones) with good regulations .. these have either been lucky or have experienced problems of the capitalists or socialist countires.

i believe its a right of every human being to live decently and the govt's basic functionality is to create measures to achieve this. Not just to have policies driven by senseless capitalists ... i am one of these senseless capitalists to be ...?????? or am already one??

Ah..finally..some good news to start my day..here and here

Import import

If you listen to the TOP 20 songs in Kannada charts right now, you will find most of the hits are from music directors NOT from Kannada Music Industry!

Yes, all the big names from Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam are all in the Kannada Industry.

Devisri Prasad, Premji Gangai, Vijay Anthony and the mallu director Jessi Gift are all in Kannada.

Kannada Industry seems to be following the fact from India Inc. : If you can't match them because of demand, get them!!!!!

Of course the other industries are doing the same : getting Gurukiran, Harikrishna, Mano Murthy...

Whatever, the result is pleasant music.

Devisri Prasad is like Rahman of Telegu movies. "Sangama" title song is amazing. The Veena(or sitar?) is sounding haunting...I have to see the movie for the song itself.What melody!

The Boss and reviews

have you wondered what's the main work of bosses or generally managers ..

I think its 'Review'ing.. They are born to review all the stuff done by the people under them..

create a report.. submit to your boss and you are certain to get some review comments.. if he/she is a brit, the english changes from american to brit english.. now incorporate those and submit to his boss.. now if he is a NAcan then the mode of english switches back to NAcan and you shall again get some comments.. and this goes on till you reach the CEO ..

now after doing all the changes as suggested by a dozen people, give it back to your boss (without mentioning that its been reviewd by the CEO and changes have been done accordingly).. you shall get a second round of changes (anulling the changes suggested by CEO).. and you can literally go on like this for months and years if wanted ..

to stop all these chakravyuhas .. I think you should directly go to the highest authority who will sign off your reports.. (lets consider the CEO in this example) make all the changes and send it to all those involved between you and the CEO.. saying i have created this report which is approved by the CEO.. let me know if you require any changes.. and do include THE CEO in the CC list ..

all you shall receive back is congratulations for creating an excellent report .. and use these to get your bonus ..

Christmas in October ..

If Christmas is all about gifts, then this year Christmas is certainly in October..

Following the $700 billion gift oopsy.. "the bail out" from Santa Paulson , there are similar attractive "gifts" announced by almost every developed country's Santa Claus- UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan etc

well what a bounty... but for who?? the benefits of these are always Pyramid shaped with the top few benefitting the most and the masses getting a dollar or two..

The bail out might sounds good for advanced countries where more than 50% of population has investments in terms of stocks, bonds and CDOs whose value has collapsed around 30-50% depending on which country you are... So these people indeed will benefit from the rescue, if at all stock markets bounce back .. but with a global economic recession this would largely help. The markets are staging a come back this week. Wait till 3rd week, when most of the countries announce their GDP numbers and you shall observe the technical recession, which will send the stock markets to their bottom again.

In countries like China and India where 75% of the population doesnt even have a clue about what a stock market is, all this bail outs, liquidity will do any good to them..

Now the real beneficiaries are the top 2% of the people..the wealthiest and the richest.. as usual..

I am generally of the feeling Governments always serve the interest of the rich first, middle class next and the poor at last (if they have time and concern)..and this is one such case....

HK updates

there are a few things to be reported..some of them are very serious issues .(the first one)

1. Sleep has been disrupted in the past few months due to hurricanes and typhoons .. and i hate this.. the ''ooooo' sounds are terrible ..

2. Been the 'last man standing' for a couple of times. this is very common if you are in cities like bombay, hk, ny and take the train to office. Of the cities i have travelled HK is still the safest for public transport. I have consciously avoided Shanghai trains (but the MegLev is impressive @ a max speed of 410Kmph). It is not so fun clinginig on the last sq inch on the train and trying to avoid the doors slamming your back(to save a minute or two).... not that much an hassle when u consider mubmaikars avoiding the walls of houses and electric poles. The NY trains are no better.. some of them had open doors/broken doors.. the best experience is to use the SFO BART .. u always manage to find a seat and can also have a view of the lush green landscapes..

3. I have taken a big deliverable off my list .. rather have it moved from pre-marriage to post-marriage and hence have become so lazy that I am late on my other deliverables ..

4. shopping is in swing .. i never knew watches could be so freaking expensive.. and tag heuer, omega and rado form the bottom of the list of the expensive watches.. i was so surprised to see the prices that i started reading the product descriptions closely, to see if they have found some costlier metal than platinum and used in the watch.. alas most of them were still stainless steel.. but some were interesting time pieces.. created by old men with no modern machinery.. now i really dont want that ..whey would i trust the old men .. its like trying to buy a car from the workers who worked on the first ford.. these watches arent for me for certain..

5. fashion conscious HK.. HK might rank 3rd/4th behind paris, tokyo, NY/london in fashion.. even men carry Gucci Prada bags in here and makes life difficult/uncomfortable.. btw, i got a backpack for myself.. its a Samsonite, finally moving out from the wildcraft, naturecraft, Nike/adidas/reebok years ..feels really Unclish types to own a samsonite ..

6. Finally finally managed time to get an haircut .. i always find these sessions fascinating .. u have to make sure u dont go to a cheap saloon.. else u might repent for the next few weeks of your life. Here is this guy, who works on your head like a sculptor .. you can understand the initial parts completely.. cuting the long messy hair, and after a while it becomes a one way affair ..its the barber's world. All you have to do is to try and avoid sleeping so that he does not cut too much hair .. and a word of advice, please always order one size more than your intended size .. if you want medium hair length, say long and so on and so forth.. barber's have such a penchant for cutting your hairs ..they always prefer the shorter way out, though it is harmful to their buiness (they really cant think business when they are working on a piece of art)

Uncle v/s 3 year old niece

Setting: It is 11 pm in the night, and the niece is still up and about. The parents and uncle are all tired after a long day, and want to call it a day. Uncle takes charge in sending the girl to her room.

U: hey, are you a good girl or a bad girl?
N: I am a good girl.

U: Do you know that good girls listen to their mommy, and go to bed early.
N: [ ignoring uncle ]

U: [ Nonplussed for a moment, that his immaculate logic isn't getting through. ] So aren't you going to sleep ?
.....
.....
.....
N: Today I am a bad girl.

This could be you dear reader, in a few years time :).

early wee hours

blogging at 3:30 am sucks .. another disturbed night.. another wrecked day tomorrow..
its become so common now that i have to finally vomit/admit on the blog..

living with typhoons is no mean task .. the incessant 'oooooooooooo' sounds of the wind .. the rattling of windows .. the doors shaking everything can drive u nuts .. and ppl talk about man damaging the environment crap ..here is nature spoiling my sleep ..probably for the dozenth (not sure if this is a word.. but at 3:40am it becomes one) time in less than 3 months..

i am here complaining about it so strongly and the wind still makes that 'oooooo' noise shamelessly.. btw .. where do we lodge an official complaint against these absurd noises..

crapppppppp............even the laptop fan makes a terrible noise ..looks like most of the things are exercising 'freedom of speech'......... having blurted out like a mad man let me see if i can gather some sleep now

10 Random Things

0. Life in the cab as usual is fun. I am using a Tempo Traveller instead of the TATA Star Bus which I used in Sasken.

1. There is one really fat loud guy who sits next to me in the cab. He wears Rayban glasses and sits in the cab and he yaps non-stop on his mobile until I reach MGRoad.

2. His mobile has Rangeela's Tanha Tanha ring tone. The starting flute sound of Tanha Tanha. He is also crazy about ringtones. Another guy has a "sweet-sounding" bird's ringtone. Some people like it. But for me, the sound gives me a sensation. The sensation of a squirrel nibbling your ears and squeaking with delight as you wither in pain.

3. Our office is gonna shift to Infantry Road....Embassy Icon near Indian express building

4. My dog's vet was upset with me because I was using the leash to drag the dog. He likes animals more than he likes human beings.

5. The actors in use case diagrams look really funny. Arms are stretched and so are the legs. Mostly the guy who conceived The Use Case Diagram was inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. But he forgot to draw the Actor's Johnson ;-)

6. I was reading about some technology which uses Refraction of light. Really interesting stuff.

7. Chitranna song in Budhdhivanta is tooooo goood. The tune is a copy of a tamil song. But the lyrics are good - courtesy Uppi. By the way the actress "Suman Ranganath" is back in the song. She is looking good.But I think she must be at least 35 or even 40 (the last time I saw her, she was paired opposite with Shankar Nag.)

8. I like to watch the new World Movies Channel. It is good!!!!

9. What should we really DO in life ? What do we like ? Who will evaluate us ? Why should we be evaluated ? Finally what is the meaning of all this in life ?

Sex ranks 7th in Indian men's life priorities

and still Men get all the blame for being u know what.. (its not even in the top 5)

btw, the ones which took the top six positions were ..
Family life, spouse, work or career, being a parent, financial well being and physical health.

for details read this http://in.rediff.com/news/2008/oct/01sex.htm

i dont know if this true during kamasutra days..
a big improvement .. or detrioration.. depends on the magnifying glass you use..

Federer v/s Roddick

Came across this question recently.

Part 1:
Earlier, the probability of Federer winning against Roddick was > 4/5.
Now it is < 4/5.

Does there necessarily have to be a point when it was exactly 4/5, during the transition from > 4/5 to < 4/5?

( The probability was determined on the past record of the players against each other )

Part 2:
Does your answer change if, earlier it was < 4/5, and later it was > 4/5, and you are asked the question:
Does there necessarily have to be a point when it was exactly 4/5, during the transition from < 4/5 to > 4/5?

adda .. for fun ..

i propose that "adda" be made an exclusive "fun postings" site ..
no more serious stuff .. yen heltira .. enuff of work related, wall street economy etc..
lets get some quirky, off-the-beat, ridiculing and poking fun types stuff ..
life .. philosophy na swalpa avoid madona ..its everywhere .. lets make adda the escape place ..

back to hong kong ..
in hong kong .. there are two things which are very prevalent ..

"Managers" and good "calf muscles"..
everyone in hong kong is a manager / consultant .. u go to a restaurant .. u have a server manager, billing manager and i think in a salon they have hair stylist consultant.. thats the way it works here .. and i am a product manager as well :-)

coming to more serious issue .. calf muscles ..i dont know if it is genetic or absolute trained from childhood.. calf muscles rock in hong kong .. and it cannot be the "heels" effect .. since guys and girls both compete on good calf muscles in hong kong ..

Steinbrueck Says U.S. Will No Longer Be `Superpower' of Financial World German

hmmm .. I seriously hope so ..
but on the other hand this is a complete joke isnt it ...???

Even after the crisis things wont change.. here are some of the reasons

how many brouses around the world have you seen going against the Dow Jones trend??
By what %age does global commodities change in Asian/ European trading +- 2% ,
where the same in US trading can change like 10% + on a single day. why?? Asians dont like Gold/Crude/Rice/Wheat is it??

US still calls the shots and everyone follows. Thats been happening for a while and will happen for a long while. All these regional demand, powerhouses is a dumb concept. Japan, Europe, the BRICs whoever we combine together have no clue in terms of taking bets or assessing what price u need to pay for what .. we always look towards the fatherland/ uncle Sam for clues so that we can blame someone when things go wrong

Mr. Steinbrueck dint you see German banks losing billions in US housing market ?? what were you doing then buddy .. busy bailing out them?

I personally believe the hi-flying days of wallstreet are over .. though Paulson is trying very hard to not affect executive compensation, people will generally not pay high for investment banking services. But still US will set the pace of the broader industry (asset management, hedge funds, PE, VC blah blah blah) .. others are just followers .. mere followers who just dont have the guts to take bets , but have the guts to take on what the US bets and go under water coolly.. (esp the countries in the 2nd and 3rd positions like Japan and Europe .. compared to the likes of China/India etc)

Hmm my first post from my new company.

First impression has been good...Work is still to begin(which is gonna be C++ and Object Modelling and Design Patterns and all, which I don't have a good idea abt.).The cubicles are very close to each other and I am used to the majestic FAC-Z cubicles.

I can see the view of MG Road from my cubicle and I hear that my office will be shifted to Infantry Road. Meanwhile having an office in MGRoad is good because good access to eatables and anything! Tender coconuts, groundnuts buffet at a place called "Oye Amritsar!" ... Life goes on

There is a cab ( :-)!) and the timings are also good...

Tintin

I finished one round of going through all the Tintin comics after a long time. I have special memories of all the tintin comics. I remember the circumstance when I first got the each of the book and how good / bad it was.

What do I find so special about tintin comics ? At that time it was the style of cartoon, and the pleasant writing font which was used unlike the Marvel or DC comics. Even the Asterix style of cartooning is different. And it was the humor of Captain Haddock which had me glued.

Now as an adult reader, I liked the political references in the Blue Lotus, the amount of research which has gone into the work of Tintin and even now it is the style of cartooning (which is clean , neat and clear). I also found that some themes are recurring across various books written on Tintin.

My favorites in Tintin continue to be The Blue Lotus, The Calculus Affair, the Secret of the Unicorn, The Broken Ear, King Ottokar's Sceptre.

It seems Herege's favorite was Tintin in Tibet. It is too emotional for a Tintin comic and a little different because it was written when Herge was going through a personal turmoil. And my favorite character in Tintin is Tintin himself. Apart from Tintin I like Thomson and Thompson who can actually be differentiated by their moustaches!!! The humor is very french in nature.

Among the least liked ones :- The Lake of Sharks (no creative input by Herge),Castafiore Emerald(nothing happens), and thats it !

I heard that Spielberg's making a movie on Tintin. I hope does justice for fans like me!!

Blasts in Delhi ?

Blasts in Delhi ?

I heard that there are some blasts in Delhi ? Wtf ?

This is too much man ...

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/sep/13delhi.htm

How many blasts in a year? Very disturbing ....

Seriously how do you prevent and whom do you check to stop all this nonsense ...

Hmmm

I moved out of Sasken yesterday. It was a wonderful company. From my point of view, more than the company, it was the team and the people. Team maketh an employee's professional life.

CorePCU is a lively team. Also an eventful one for me :-

a) I moved into our new house when I joined the team.
b) My sister's marriage.
c) My Paris trip.
d) My Ottawa trip.
e) My marriage.
f) My aptmt

Needless to say, I really enjoyed working here. Now I've stepped out of its umbrella, to venture into other things. I feel like a Columbus today, venturing into new waters, this rainy season.

Needed : Swalpa josh and Swalpa hosh.

Current Song : Eno ondthara

ie and ei ..

i hate those words which have both ei's and ie's in them.. i never get when to use "ie" and when to use "ei".. thanks to auto correct features which often helps me out..

my chemistry prof once advised that if a word in which the "ie" pair sounds "e" then the "i" would precede "e", and if it sounds "i" then "e" would precede "i" and immediately cautioned there were numerous exceptions to this rule..

some examples which follow these rules are field, believe, rein etc..

i had some exceptions in my mind .. but its buried in somewhere

Few movies you might want to Catch-up

If you are really looking to get rid of some boredom the following bollywood movies will certainly help you ..

Rock -On - For Farhan Akthar and Shankar-Eshan-Llyod amateurly sounding Great hindi rock.
Aamir - Mumbai Meri Jaan- A Wednesday , I suggest all three. Good work on terrorism in India from different angles . UTV has made a great contribution to the bollywood

If you are not into serious cinema right now then there is 'Singh is King' for you...

All these are available on Veoh.com.. thats my only source in Hong Kong. I try to get DVDs sometimes which are also pirated again and certainly I cannot wait for 3-4 years to catch a movie (avinash does not like me watching these pirated stuff, but I am channel restricted.. sorry).

After The Dark Knight I have not watched in Hollywood movie. Looking forward for Tropical Thunder.

India N-abled

thats the TOI headline today. Though there is lot of skepticism about the full-waiver stuff, this was a great achievement for Congress and India. Whatever the BJP/Left/BSP /Deve Gowda harp about the deal and that India had surrendered Nuclear-sovereignty I genuinely believe that apart from India other countries would want to have India continue its testing ability and be a nuclear powerhouse, apart from the likes of sweden, norway, austria, new zealand and switzerland .

the bigger threat to the region and the world are the likes of Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and China. There is a nuclear nexus here somehow and there is proliferation happening in this nexus allegedly in some instances like the China-Pak connection. Others like the Pak-Iran-NK was openly admitted by A.Q. Khan, though not proven explicitly.

Under such a nexus developing in the region the western world needs a counter balance. The US especially is interested in containing the growing presence of China in this region and its aggressiveness in non-nuclear activities like O&G exploration which is always included with an arms support, be it burma, middle east of africa. Even the european mights are threatened though there is russia which physically separates them from China, but not by a far distance. And if Pongyang claims to have missile reaching the US pacific states, its naive to assume china would not have.

So the US and its european allies really want an Asian heavyweight who can counter balance China and who else can that be apart from India, who also has a special relation with Russia. By enabling India, the western powers are sending a direct message to China. China obviously would and did tried to veto this deal and Mr. Bush himself had not interfered I am sure India would have lost the race.

So Mr. Yechuri and Jaitley mostly oppose for the sake of opposing, esp the BJP which itself would have done a similar deal if it were in power.

Certainly we are N-abled today.
Bravo India

Google chrome

I installed Google chrome for my windowsXP and I like it. It's cool. I think it is faster than firefox. It looks somewhat like the Opera Web browser I think.

Europe is the answer

I am not a technical expert on infrastructure, but looking at two geographies which have different transportation infrastructures, I perceived what could be better.. I might be completely wrong

There is a lot of talk about infrastructure in India and I always follow it up.
Looking at the developments taking across India looks like India likes to follow the US way of infrastructure, building massive road network across the country. This strategy basically sucks. I agree we do need roads, but we cannot afford to have a road network as vast as US/China or even 50% of it. We just do not have enough land for that.

While Roads work for a country as big as the US, like China, this would utterly fail for a country like India. To build world class roads you need land and land acquisition in India is not as easy as in China ( mass displacment for roads is common in China). the NICE road however nice it could be did run into a lot of trouble over acquiring land (most of it was politically motivated, but am sure the number of acres was really a huge number.)

By building roads we are directly affecting the most abundant working class - the farmers.
On the second hand we are encouraging people to buy Cars which could be second worst thing to happen for a country with subsidised petrol/diesel prices and imports nearly 80%+ of its crude oil.

What we currently need is better conditioned roads which will increase efficiency of vehicles and a wider roads (like the golden quadilateral). Building parallel highways like the BMIC is a waste of everything (though its very attractive).

India should look up to europe and build a world class railway infrastructure. Every city/town in India should be connected by railway networks. Being already the biggest railway network in the world and the ability to make a 30K crore surplus surely shows that there is a huge potential in this mode of tansportation. Every city should run a metro like Bombay.Railways consume less space, and can be more efficient for mass transportation. Building high class service trains would make it attractive for all class of people to travel by trains.

And Europeans have proven that they are smarter than the US in many instances (europe banned lead in gasoline nearly 50 years before US completely realized the harmful effects of lead, same is happening with the GHGs) and having a demography and geography similar to europe (western europe) we should act the european way and not the Calfornian way.

Chrome ..

Frankly, the browser business is a little outdated I feel and Google is entering very late into this.
But you never know whats in the store ( rather I do not know whats in the store, as I have not bothered to check the features, its left to my techie friends).

This shows Google has ample bench strength to work from Browsers to office documents and solar power and potentially wind mills.. so ppl dreaming of the coveted job beware.

May be Chrome should have been a Chinese/Japanese browser. Strategically this would have helped. (or atleast give it a wild shot). Mozilla is a good and much needed replacement for IE.
Chrome might end like Safari or even worse... but there is a cool factor (atleast in India and Brazil) to be associated with Google products and so Indians will for sure embrace the Chrome......

10th std A section

This song from the movie "10th Class A Section" is really catchy.I heard it on radio and it actually took awhile to actually google out this song.

The title of the movie is weird. If the title is weird, how about the new Kannada movie "KA-999 B-333".

The lyrics is really clever, but one gripe is that it always has a racist note.

Kappiddru nange OKAY,
Makeuppu haakistheeni.
Kullugiddre high heel haaki
uddha maadstheeni !!!

and later about female infanticide :-

Hennu huttoke modalE saayisthaarallo,
Nammantha hudugura kashta kelovryaarolo!!!

Very original and really worth a listen. You can listen to Bhagawantha Bhagawantha Yeshtondu hudugeerowrallo.

Nice song.

Somewhere in the interiors of South India, an umbrella is seen moving on a partially lit mud road. It's raining very heavily and the sun is about to hide his face.

Beneath the umbrella 4 legs are seen. Walking. One pair of legs don't wear any slippers and wear saffron clothes. The other pair is wearing a Woodland brown pair shoes.

We zoom into these subjects.

The Guru is walking along with the Shishya. There are two roads fading into the dark intersecting at right angles.

GURU : So, here you are shishya. At the crossroads.

SHISHYA : (confused) Yeah I guess.

GURU : What will you do ?
(smirks)

SHISHYA : (apprehensive) This is only the beginning. We still have time.

GURU : Do you ?

The two continue to talk about which road to take, as rain pours.

whats your take on Consumerism?

This post is to solicit feedback..
Please post your views as comments..

thanks

ps: ofcourse the question raises from a quandry again

Quote

Dr.Rajkumar-avaru, ondu film haadu helidare avarade film-nalli haadiddare, Wah! "Gaana Gandharva" Rajkumar-avaru haadiddaare antha anisuthade;
aadare, Dr.Rajkumar haadannu P.B. Srinivas haadiddare, "namma maneya hiriya anna avaru" haadiddare antha anisuthade.

Ravi Belagere.

Many oldies prefer the older Rajkumar songs which were sung by PBS rather than the newer ones sung by Dr.Raj himself.

Small programming pblm ...

Given an array contains 0s and 1s mixed together, in one scan of the whole array, is it possible to put all the 0s on the left and all the ones to the right ?

I got the solution (I think) :-) But I took sometime.

How abt some good news about India ?

Every time you pick up a paper I see headlines which are depressing or sometimes really affecting your daily life.

The real pleasant news amidst this sea of torture just dies a silent death because it is unnoticed. Optimism is really important and it adds that delta and the feeling that we are doing something and keep it going.

It is that ray of hope.

So Dhimant has started a website called www.TheBetterIndia.com which aims to address the good news and give it its due. Congrats and great idea dude !

Things Change

and its very cyclical..
ask me a couple of years ago.. and I would have told the top most issues for me were were inequaility in Indian society, bridging the gap between the classes, creating equal opporutnity, contributing to someone apart from me, my family and friends...

today its about me , me and me .. it has become a egomaniacal world..its mostly about me nowadays, without knowing what i want..but am sure its about me most of the times .. or my closest relatives and friends .. the society has gone at large.....

i believe this is totally cyclical ..i keep swinging between these two levels and often than not stay at the middle most of the times ..but I have been at the extremes completely too.. you get tired of one you sway to the other and then get tired of the other end .. and prefer to travel along the middle line in a slow pace ..

not sure what causes the transistions..sometimes its events, sometimes boredom, sometimes inspiration, and sometimes dejection .. but it happens and you will notice it but forget about the trigerring event ..

winding down another day.. a bad day for India at olympics.. two close matches, which seem to be all indian suddenly became indonesian and russian ..but i am lot more positive about india's future olympics hopes.. we are into quarter and pre-quarters ..usually we were pre-qualifications exits .. and sometimes we need luck in our draws ..unlike the one akhil kumar faces .. he is up against no 1 in weighlifting .. poor thing he will be beaten (and literally too)..

i have found a new distaste toward events which have a judges and need to have judgement in awarding points and determining the gold/silver/bronze.. gymanstics, diving, boxing all suck ... okay i dont like how this guy looks ..heere i go a 9.8 instead of 10... am sure the human psyche is a not a very pure one .. hence we should not have any judging events at the olympics..
heard two boxers (a korean and a french) protested yesterday and complained the judges were biased towards the Chinese ... not sure whats in store for the indians ..

where is the GOLD lost..

This is a tough one to judge ..
where in the supply chain of building athletes is the weakest link and where does India lose heavily in transforming itself into Olympics superweight.

We cannot be China, agreed and partly because we do not want to be like China either..
but dont we want to be like the US, Australia, Russia or atleast like Brazil in the sporting fraternity...

If we look back where we exactly lose out on sports, I can attribute to two factors
- a system which doesnt reward sports
- and people backing the system (you, me, your/my parents etc)

The state of athletes in India is never a rewarding one, in the career sense and monetary sense and hence there is no REAL incentive in pursuing a Gold medal for Olympics, becasue after that all you are left is a few grams of gold ..

What we need is a revolution in each sporting activity - like recently Tennis, where there is money and there is also a chance of winning the Olympics.. In the US this is true for most of the sporting events .. In Europe there is a lot of government and industrial support .. and in Russia and China ..there are the armies of the respective countries..

In India we lack corporates (thought TATA has been very active), the government and the army.. and we all know this .. not only this but we lack athletes..

Athletes lose out in making a career in life vs making a career in sports ..

personally we would have witnessed brilliant athletes amongst us in our school days..
by 12th standard.. this number is reduced by 1/10th or 1/100th.. with everyone cramming to get into the coveted engineering/medical/arts/commerce schools of India.. there goes our first big cut .. a cut as big enough it has been bleeding for the past 50 years with no Gold apart from Hockey.. (now we do not even qualify for hockey)..

the second cut .. in university level there is barely sporting activity.. apart from cricket.. for cricket there is a ranji level and now IPL, ICL etc .. where players do get rewarded with jobs is both corporates and prestigious banks .. and there is a good support system ..
Hockey enjoyed some decent level of support ..
Other sporting athletes are usually supported by railways ..

Imagine having a sports quota in Intel, Tata, Google, Reliance, ICICI, Infosys and all the super power house corporates .. (if someone represnts at national/state level or higher).. would this help???

these companies encourage/sponsor the training of one athlete from one sport (pursue government to make it mandatory).. and the companies are allowed to use the athlete for endorsment of their brand apart from making him write C, C++ programs ..

Would this change something over the next 20 years for India in sports ..???
I think we need much more concrete ideas than these .. oh yeah and the implementation

Rambo anyone ?

Why is Rambo so popular ?

I didn't even bother to see one movie, because I thought it was all about blood , blood and more blood.

Anyone one here a die hard fan of Rambo, Rocky etc. ?

Traits of Kanglish

I am making a compilation of some common terms which is used by Kannada influenced English speakers. Help me compete this list.

*)Using present continuous tense sounding very awkward.
Ex: I am enclosing a photo of a Gorilla along with the receipt which we received yesterday.
instead of
I have enclosed a photo of a Gorilla along with the receipt which we received yesterday.

*)Stretching the vowels
Aye you are doing like theeeees ? Naaaat like that...Thats what I thought!!! Thats why you are doing like thataaah?? ok.ok.

*) Can never get the "a" in words like cat and the "o" in words like coffee. This is commong to many Indian languages.
Ex: Sir there was a traffic jaam (jaam rhymes with Hindi aaam)

*)Adding "u" in the end.
Bengaluru is full of roadsu, busessu, caru and garbeju

*) Adding a rhyming word stating with gi.
Aye, why have you kept all your Books-gicks here ? go man.
I don't post or comment on all these blogs-geegs and all....

Can you guys think of more ?

A Comment

on the previous post by Sudeep, which went so long that I had to post it as a blog .. apologies

Sudeepa, I agree Kannada movies lack originality. Most of our hits have been remakes. (so are the songs)... but I think the industry has moved a bit upwards in the past few years .. in terms of script writing and even music.. i do miss old harmonium style of Hamsalekha, Rajan Nagendra etc.. This is a transition phase, the industry is re-establishing itself... and in this growth there will be some crap and some cut copy paste ..similar to the IT industry.. uppi could have been a shankar nag .. (OM is a classic)..but he got carried away and went to acting.. Yograj bhat has had a couple of decent movies .. heard "moggina mansu" is good too.. its novel to have a whole women oriented movie in Kannada .. even the bollywood cannot afford it ..

the scene in hollywood is pathetic too.. its alll comic books into movies now.. spiderman, batman, iron man etc etc etc.. i am shocked that 'The Dark Knight' could replace Godfather as the best movie on IMDB.. that totally sucks.. the days of classic drama/issue based movies seems to be diminishing in Hollywood.. its more like hancok, wanted matrix etc..which feels like Rajini / mithun movies of the 80s with a Sci Fi and tech twist..

Looks like Tamil and Telugu industry have declined too in novelty. Tamil was at the cutting edge of experimentation a few years back.. Now they have found a easy formula.. copy from malayalam movies.. Now bollywood is chasing the similar angles too.. either copy.. or have a superstar .. or stars who can be sentationsalized and capature on the pre-hype of the movie, (market aggressively) have a strong 1 week sales.. recover all the costs, make a decent profit.. through Music sales, DVD, VCD and channels .. Last year I enjoyed movies like Taare Zameen Par, Bheja fry, Ek Chalis ki last local etc which were small budget decent movies and some really good ones.. I thought the trend would increase, but its back to classic Khan's and Kumar's, Kapoor movies this year...

Cuil

The news of a new search engine has been spreading like wild fire. cuil is started by some former google employees.

What's so special about this new search engine ? The index is huuuuuuge!!!!! Which means the web is much bigger than what google had told us. Hope this index does not contain redundant or unimportant information.

The viral marketing and the TV marketing of this new search engine www.cuil.com is in place, but as a fairly intensive search engine user I think there are two main arguable points :-

a) The philosophy of cuil.
b) The release time. (I think it is too early. They should have waited for some more time).

Philosophy :-
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance."

I would rather trust 100000 people saying that a website is relevant for my query rather than an algorithm which says this is the relevant website. Many search engine users might not know anything on what they are searching. They might be searching something because people are talking about it and they want a quick summary rather than an authoritative treatise on a subject.
Example :
a) I might have heard someone talking about blackberry censorship in India, and I just want to know why people are talking about it. Never underestimate popularity metrics.

b) If something is popular it is for a reason and more people would like to know/read about it. Only people who are interested in going deep have the motivation to go deeper searching for the "authoritative truth". Example : Compare the search of TCP/IP in google and cuil.

So it will be great if popularity metrics is also taken into account.

But one thing I would appreciate is a search engine which provides ALTERNATE RESULTS than many search engines.

That's something interesting.

Release Time :-
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Too early.The pressure of time and money is there, but this is a half done work.Where are the image searches, news etc. etc. or at least something NEW???

This looks more like an academic project rather than an industrial search engine.

They SHOULD put some kind of a spell checker feature. The last time I checked it, Kramer vs. Kramer , Kramer v/s Kramer , Kramer versus Kramer all give different results.

My remark : Lots to improve there is room for improvement.

But all the best to Cuil!!! We need a competitor to google!

Specialty ?

I was going through one of the links of a website called chitratara.com just to check out some new Kannada movies. I heard that the movie "TajMahal" is pretty good. Let me try to catch that movie.

But that's not the point or the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post is cliched shit which Kannada movie makers,Kannada musicians and even the critics have to offer.

The new Kannada film makers guys copy. Of course everyone copies. But the Kannada guys just flick from Tamil/Hindi and make movies. At least let them flick from English/Japanese/ French etc. But no! They flick from Tamil/Hindi. Take a DVD and make the movie scene by scene. A Tamil Goundar is automatically translated into a Kannada Gowda including the mooch. And Mr.Ambareesh looks more like a Tamil Goundar than a a Mandya gowda. It is an insult to audience by copying movies left right and center.

First let's talk about the critics. Let me show you an example :-

Look at the "specialty of the movie" starring some two new people according to the some film journo :-

This is a love story for Andrita but either she or he the protagonist Prajwal will be telling I love you in this film till the end. This is the specialty of the film. Janardhana Maharshi after seeing the photographs of sweet looking Prajwal and Andrita Ray has stitched the story

I love you till the end of the movie. Interesting.

And the songs are shamelessly lifted. Any damn Kannada song you listen to these days, you get a sense of Deja Vu. Kaddalu Manasanna is thoroughly inspired by one RHTDM song. Patra barayala illa chitra bidisala is a mix of two old Kannada songs Jotheyaagi Hithavaagi , Sweety nanna Jodi and Airtel tune. And the beats, support music are extremely predictable with the drumbeats on an infinite loop till the end of the song. I think these are possibly programmed using some amateur software like Fruity Loops or Reason (especially Mano Murthy and Gurukiran generate a lot of computer music). There is absolutely no soul on the songs, just composed due to the pressure of deadlines. No artistry in the songs.

My opinion : Music sounds best when composed with passion and when you mean what you sing/play. When a music instrument is played rather than generated with a computer (no matter what the degree of sampling) it gives a human touch and makes it sound more human. More human means more durable and not a passing fad. Electronic music is good, but not always. Raghu Dixit is OK, but I feel he is very much inspired by Euphoria and Folk.

The lyrics are also pathetic. Kariya needs a mention here, and now Hotappa hotu sakkathu hotu maga lifted from Radio Mirchi slogan. Otherwise the songs contain some esoteric words which a guy never uses when he loves a girl. Example of esoteric words include : amrutha dhaare, inchara, saniha etc..

And the actors. They are the yuckiest of the lot. Forget acting skills. That's too much to ask for. They neither have style or originality or common sense or the desire to improve. Dullards and idiots. They look like a bunch of celebrated and pampered fools who think that if they carry a "long" with some blood on their face with a fancy hindi word in the title name (like Duniya or Zindagi), they are great actors with great performances. And their inrto songs usually feature them in front of Lord Ganesha or some other god with flowers and one long thilak.

And the actresses. Where are the Aartis/Bharathis/ Manjulas / Kalpanas ? They bring some fair maiden from the north, show her legs and midriff and thats it. Over. All acting finished.

I really miss the heyday of Kannada film when Puttanna Kanagal made some lovely movies, followed by Shankar Nag. Ok, if these people were very arty, even the Vishnu-Dwarki-Manjula , Rajkumar and Udaykumar days were also too good. The new guys have spoiled the enthu to go to a new movie.

Asian Phenomenon

Blasts have become a day to day life routine in Asia........ Its really tragic that most of the countries in Asia have such awful security set up .. the matter of fact is we dont care ..not sure if this due to population levels in Asian countries .. lack of political will.. lack of political impact .. or availability of jehadis and ammonium nitrate in abundance .. few cities in the past few days which have witnessed the blasts

Istanbul
Ahmedabad
Bangalore
Kunming - Yunnan
Shanghai
Guangdong
Jaipur
Varanasi
Hyderabad
Karachi
Islamabad
Bombay
Bali
Bangkok
Jakarta
etc etc etc ........... frankly there is a long list

The last European blast was Madrid ?? And the US has not had an incident after 9/11....???
Why is Asia ( in particular India ) so vulnerable .. ? is it 'cos we dont care ..

Ram Sethu

Sometimes you need to be really tactful in getting things done in India especially when the issue on hand is of "RELIGIOUS" in nature. Things could really go erratic on religious issues and effect everyone one from common man to primeminster.. The president is in a safer position

One such issue has be the Ram Sethu demolition and DMK/Congress' stands on it.. Finally there is a tactful story to put up .... look below

The Centre on Wednesday asserted that Lord Ram himself destroyed Ramar Sethu after his victory over Ravana and “we cannot worship something that has been destroyed.”

Mr. Nariman said “Kamba Ramayanam also expressly says the bridge was destroyed by Lord Ram so that no one can cross over to Sri Lanka and ships can sail through. Even the Telugu version of Ramayana says Lord Ram destroyed the bridge.”

Here is the full story..
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/24/stories/2008072460211300.htm

Now the people who are fighting for the bridge, apart from your previous stands you should do something unique in order to save it .. (not sure if it needs to be saved really, I do not have any stand on it as I have not analyzed the Pros and Cons)

- how about getting a UN cultural heritage status - not an easy one ..
- how about involving Lankan government on your side.. saying destroying it might have some effect on the island .. may be lanka gets washed away till antartica .. (oops the bridge is holding it close to india you know)

comeon guys do something .. just dont start another religious fight and start burning down people and property..

I think Indian inflation would be far lesser if we bar strikes, public burning and looting by political outfits .. and ofcourse the political processions

Retirement_age ++;

In Karnataka, the retirement age has been advanced to 60 years.

So my dad and other people of his age who had to retire the next year can continue to work for some more time. Shortage of skilled labor in other areas, I guess ?

Although my dad is happy that he can keep himself occupied, he is concerned like the college authorities. He told me the college could not find anyone who could teach Electronics course for +2 students. He has to take the Electronics Course.

The BSc Electronics Guys, it seems, are not even applying. For CS courses, a fresher from an Engineering College offered to teach the +2 students but this guy may not be around after sometime as they could get better prospects and opportunities.

The sad state is that the quality of teachers could go down. Many students can study on their own, but some people need a push to study and understand things.

Moreover guest lecturers don't take a very good commitment. If the going gets tough/boring, they can escape.

Nuclear Deal - Quote Unquote ..

"The UPA's victory is not due to their policies but a well thought-out political conspiracy by both the NDA and the UPA to check the BSP and prevent the daughter of a Dalit from becoming the Prime Minister of the country,"

"Both feared BSP and prevented me from becoming the prime minister. Had the NDA not helped the ruling coalition, it would not have been saved on the floor of the House," said Mayawati

"It is a sad day for Parliamentary democracy in India when all norms are sacrificed for a nuclear deal which is against the interest of the country," CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat

"The opposition parties should now pave way for Rahul Gandhi," said Puneet Sharma, an enthusiastic party supporter

" I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come" Manmohan Singh

SP leader Amar Singh "today is the happiest day in my political career".
"The politics of Prakash Karat, A B Bardhan and L K Advani has been exposed,"

"The BJP and NDA seem to believe that nuclear isolation should end but no one is clear about the Left parties. Yet the two groups are voting together.
"The NDA has no problem with the strategic relationship with the US. The Left parties have ideological opposition to it. Yet the two groups are voting together.
"The NDA believes in India becoming a nuclear weapon state. The Left parties have always opposed nuclear weaponisation. Yet the two parties are together.
"The NDA says if it comes to power, it will renegotiate the nuclear deal. The Left says it will everything to scuttle the agreement for ever. Yet they are voting together.
"I don't think in the history of Parliament there is anything more bizarre than two disparate groups voting together," the Finance Minister said in his spirited speech.


But the day belongs to Manmohan Singh.. His conclusion in the speech is inspiring..

The Management and governance of the world’s largest, most diverse and most vibrant democracy is the greatest challenge any person can be entrusted with, in this world. It has been my good fortune that I was entrusted with this challenge over four years ago. I thank with all sincerity the Chairperson of the UPA, the leaders of the Constituent Parties of the UPA and every member of my Party for the faith and trust they reposed in me. I once again recall with gratitude the guidance and support I have received from Shri Jyoti Basu and Sardar Harkishen Singh Surjeet.
I have often said that I am a politician by accident. I have held many diverse responsibilities. I have been a teacher, I have been an official of the Government of India, I have been a member of this greatest of Parliaments, but I have never forgotten my life as a young boy in a distant village.
Every day that I have been Prime Minister of India I have tried to remember that the first ten years of my life were spent in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living. I had to walk miles to school, I had to study in the dim light of a kerosene oil lamp. This nation gave me the opportunity to ensure that such would not be the life of our children in the foreseeable future.
Sir, my conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfill the dream of that young boy from that distant village.
The greatness of democracy is that we are all birds of passage! We are here today, gone tomorrow! But in the brief time that the people of India entrust us with this responsibility, it is our duty to be honest and sincere in the discharge of these responsibilities. As it is said in our sacred texts, we are responsible for our actions and we must act without coveting the rewards of such action. Whatever I have done in this high office I have done so with a clear conscience and the best interests of my country and our people at heart. I have no other claims to make.

I am happy for Manmohan Singh and the Nuclear Deal

Piracy..

Last month, the Kannada film fraternity raised the issue of Piracy and sought the government's help in crubbing the same.

I am not sure if this was a joke and really looked hard for some pun in text or cartoon, but there werent many. If anything, the Kannda movie industry should encourage piracy. To be very honest how many of you have the DVD of the recent (remember blockbuster in Kannada movies may occur once is 5 years, by this standard the word recent is apt) Mungaru Male? At first you dont intend to get it, and even if you want to desperately watch the movie, drawn by its sucess, the only theater would be Sapna in the way lanes of Gandhinagar (Majestic)...

On the other hand, if you have pirated DVDs, VCDs or online streaming this movie would have reached a bigger audience (even tams and gults) and increased popularity of the movie( not that its extra-ordinary.. that makes me think whether they wnat to prevent piracy so that others are prevented to understand whey it was a blockbuster)...

Hindi movies are rampantly pirated, you get a dvd rip within a day of the actual release. Piracy could be a serious threat for bollywood and is already a very serious threat for Hollywood.

But if there are no channels for an audience like me .. residing in the Canton country, with a meager kanndaiga population, we should encourage some piracy in Sandalwood.....

I am not actually encouraging piracy, just asking for a channel (which is also cheap) to access Quality Kannada movies in Hong Kong.. ;-)

Well ...

I have opened this big textbox to write something but my mind is kind of blank. It's probably got to do with so many things happening at one shot that i am not able to concentrate on one thing.

Reminds of one of my favorite sarcastic comedies called "The Big Lebowski"

Because of one single action (some random guy comes into the hero's house and pees on the hero's carpet) , the character in the movie lands in a mess. The impact of his one action starts off a chain of dependent events. The character is too confused to think of the consequences. He starts seeing the impact and feels that it is too screwed up. He doesn't want to think of the impact and he says to his friend, "Fuck it, Dude . . Let's go bowling"

I want to go bowling now. Or rather thats the reason I am blogging.

I saw Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Naa. The songs are good except for one song (the title song which sounds like a Jazz song straight out of a 1930s or a 1940s jazz).

Smooth Criminal

We've grown up seeing this dance move, but little did I know that this dance move is patented. [ Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion Michael J. Jackson et al ]. Whacko-Jacko also has a patent to his name and a nice one!

I thought of it as some clever camera move and later editing the video, but it is not the case.

From what I understood, Michael Jackson and other people had come up with the idea of attaching the shoe to the dance floor and then balancing even though the center of gravity does not permit. Looks like the shoe's heel is fixed to the floor, through some nails.

Federer vs Nadal..

It was truly and epic final.. the best I have seen in years..
Beats the Aggassi vs Sampras US semi-final (steffi was pregnant then)..
Me and Naga watched it through the night .. before some exams at Teju place ..
me betting on Sampras and Naga on Agassi.. I had won a pepsi then..

this time I bet on Federer and lost HKD 500 .. but still Federer would be my bet until he retires .. just the way I used to bet on Sampras till he retired. :D

Nadal - He is a freak.. :-) ..

Rajinikanth Re-invented ..

No.. its not about the Cartoon movie or Kuselan ..

This is about 'Wanted' starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman..
To summarize this type of movie was done in K/T/B/ollywoods in th 80s and the 90s and everyone ridiculed it. Its now the turn of Hollywood to enter the bandwagon.
- Bullets curl around
- Bullets are cut with knives
- bullets cancel out bullets (as in mahabharata where arujuna nullifies bhishmas arrow)
- there are some twists and turns as you shall watch in any abbas-mastan movie..


when rajini used to do this (catching the bullet, cutting bullet with a knife etc), ppl (esp from north) used to ridicule this.. Now when Jolie (Zeenat Aman) and Morgan freeman (Vajra Muni) does it, it will become a cult .. (Sumanth if you felt Matrix was Mithun movie, you gotta watch this).

The story goes like this..

Morgan is the head of a mill in Chicago .. ( I prefer to call it the Binny mill).. and also a the head of a assassin faternity.. (already sounds familiar to a some desi movie)..
the yarn machine sews out the wool, which our freeman takes liberty in listing ppl he wants to kill.. (they add complexity here by saying it churns out a binary code and you can get a name from this.. too hi-tec)

they find this rajini chap , (who is an accountant before ).. but son of a powerful assassin and has extreme powers inherirted (through jeans oops genes).. and send Jolie to get him .. (this again is bollywood) and convince him that if he doesnt kill the GUY whose name is produced by the Binny Mill machine , then that guy will indeed kill some 1000 ppl .. she does this by narrating her child hood story of her father being duped, tortured and killed (tell me how many desi movies doesnt have a similar plot)..

they train our Rajini chap ..(all the bullet skills he need) using computer graphics .. and make him a superstar (aka rajini).. and then they set him chase to kill this guy who is suppose to be the killer of his father..

but it turns out that man who Rajini is after to kill, is actually Rajini's father and apna Vajramuni ( Freeman ) would have hatached a plan to set the son against the father with a preconcieved thought that the father will not kill his son .. (its shame for me to repeat where u could have seen such a plot)..

and poor Rajini doesnt even understand this when the person he is after to kill (i.e his dad) resuces him from falling of a falling train .. (well need to comment here.. apna desi Rajini has higher IQ here .. he would easily blurted appppaaaa .. and shed some tears and both the father and son would go and finish freeman)...

but the hollywood rajini needs some convincing etc.. (very low EQ and IQ) ..
finally with the help of some rats (cos he has killed his dad by now) he manages to enter the Chakravyooha of Morgan freeman, where freeman defends himself saying whatever he did was right, because the binny mill machine had produced the names of his and his colleagues (including Jolie).. to be killed .. and orders his colleagues to kill Rajini..

but again in true bollywood style, Jolie (Zeenat Aman in Don.. ) fires a bullet which goes in a circle and kills a dozen before she takes into her brain .. (having had some much confusion.. she knows this is the right thing to do )..

by this time you are done.. so am I .. cant write anymore on Wanted ..

Headwear

Why is headgear out of fashion/less diversified? Probably because of inconvenience, I guess. But head gear is definitely fashionable can make a fashion statement.

The conventional Nike cap is a very important gear to a college student. I remember Teju using a NY cap all through his first and second semesters. But now, Nike cap has become cliched. Times are changin'. The nike cap was also be worn frontside back to give the Yo! look.

I am seriously interested in what are the options for some creative headgear :-

a)Golf cap :
If a girl/guy is into hip-hop, you can see them wearing the old style Golf cap. But this kind of cap is something which I will contemplate on wearing after I am 35, maybe. You can also be mistaken to be a bikini killer like this viper, "Charles Sobhraj". That guy is once again in the news for marriage with a twenty year old.

b) Skull Cap:
Suited for round big heads.

c) Mysore Peta : Why not ? It looks very cool as a headgear. The new designers can use the hat's cloth material to go with the suit instead of the traditional ornamental silk. Or maybe a leather Mysore Peta would look different. You would look like the main character of Prince2 - The Shadow and The Flame.

Some designer should consider Mysore Peta as an option ... Tired of Nike Caps.

Inside Man..

Have you watched this movie? It wasnt a big flick .. dint make a big noise at the box office..

what caught my attention was .. the title track of this movie was "Chayya Chayya" from Dil Se.. I was very surprised.. I had to mute my comp.. switch off the TV and restart, change channels, check my iPod etc to make sure that "Chayya Chayya" was indeed being played as the title track of the movie ..

The film starts as a dull "bank roberry" plot .. you wonder why such a powerful start cast - denzel washington, jodie foster, agreed to make such a movie.. but the movie unravels quickly and the bank robbery turns out to be a masterpiece ..

the movie can be best described as "unexpectedly unpredictable" .. - quoted by someone on IMDB.. rating 7.7/10..


oh yes .. and it ends with "Chayya Chayya".. again I had to check my comp, ipod and change channels to confirm I wasn't mistaken.. and glad that I was not ..

Whats your identity..??

For majority of the people living outside their countries its their Nationality followed by religion.
(Now this could vary a lot for specific ppl .. esp like for americans whether is he a democratic or republican, what he thinks about Iran / N. Korea / Iraq ?? ;-)...

It mostly ends there. Anyone who wants to know more about my identity beyond being an Indian stops at my food preference, and concludes these are my religious restrictions.. (with a bit of apathy that I am indeed missing a lot of juicy stuff )


Now turn the scenario domestically and it becomes more complex .. and I think the complexity in India increases .. It becomes a taxonomy.. we have an obsession with dissection .. region (north south india, state, city, area .. the last level of granularity reached in here was till South Bangalore .. now its heading towards individual localities like katriguppe, Girinagar etc ), religion, caste,language, food, movie star idols (ask a rajini fan)...


this is the price we pay for having a history which dates back to 3000BC .. and 2000 years more we will be back like Jews with a single identity.. and hopefully its INDIAN...

The most remarkable achievement for India or of India , is to be a cohesive democracy, with so much diversity (and adversity too).. This is one front where we have excelled beyond any country in the world.. despite numerous races, religions, castes, languages etc we are functioning as a single country for 60 years..

Some Business guru recently said homogeneity increases productivity and diversity decreases it.. he was referring to corporations only.. looks like it applies to nations as well

Gates' last day

So today , it seems is the last day of Bill Gates at office. A Microsoft without Bill Gates is something unimaginable.

I first heard of the name Bill Gates in a function called "Unveiling Windows 95" at a five star hotel in MGRoad. It was in 1995 (of course). There were around 300+ people attending the presentation. At that time, I was using windows 3.1 and I was curious about this "Windows 95" (yeah, really!). There was a small movie clip in which Bill Gates talks about the features of Windows 95 and all that. In the clip they showed this photo. . I had thought "So this guy is the man who made the Windows Software"

And then I saw him when I was in Infy. At that time, the opinions had changed. Heheh.

But still MS will be affected by his departure, no doubts about that.

What will he do next ?
Bill Gates for US President ?

item News ..

are not the same as News items,
item News' are the 'item number' equivalents .. in my dictionary ofcourse ..

with so many news channels, publication and websites today, almost anyone can make it to the news .. and can make a item News ..

e.g checkout the following link .. http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2008/jun/25mba.htm
no offence to the person involved ... or the concerned school ..

some item News of the future..

GD - Blr to HK and IT to Chemical .. what is he doing..
Richie - Back to Y! or Y! Blor to Y! Sunny Vale ..an incredible journey through Ask

or watever ..

back to the future..

@ work last week we kicked-off the 5-year strategic planning process. It was quite hectic and there were lots of socializing events too which was incredible fun..I seriously cant think how to plan for 5-years.. It became very easy when I assumed that whatever I plan would be wrong.. and I just need to put an explanation for that .. ;-)

I am kind of stuck in post-meeting trauma.. the 5-year strat plan process has set me in thinking mode. How would life be in 2013 ??? My main concern is not "What will I be doing?" cos thats easy.. I would not be doing anything unusual .. i would still be contemplating on life and cribbing out many a things including work :-) .. I would be married for sure..

My main question ins "what kind of an environment would I be living in??"

A decade ago Blore weather ranged between 22-28. Today it swings betwee 12-40.
How would this be in 2013 ??? 0-50 ??

Looking forward the biggest threat to human well-being (including mine, assuming I shall be still human in a competitive environment) seems to be the unpredictable and harsh weather.
there will be more deaths to harsher unpredictable weather patterns than to any other cause (assuming al qaida stops bombing, US stops invading at free will, human genocide problem in africa, burma etc would be solved, politicians become wiser and ofcos no nuclear explosions or something like Bhopal tragedy)

okies.. enuf of crap.. its typhoon 3 warning.. pack your bags and leave office before it gets worser.. the future shall be there.. u need to survive the present hour...

adios

I attended a birthday party and another function this weekend. In other words, this means, that the weekend literally flew away before I realize it and I am already sitting here and typing something hastily.

My niece Lakshmi's birthday party was a very well planned and a 'deftly' executed party.

Just like any other kid of today, it featured cake-cutting, party games, spraying some kind of weird foam in the air, dance, "return gifts" like a pack of pencils or story books (ps: return gifts reminds me of the taamboola). The parents of the kids are generally enthusiastic about these kind of things.

As far as I can remember we never had such birthday parties : That was a long time ago.

Our previous generation would say the same thing.

Ditto previous of the previous generation and so on.

Since I am doing some linked list programming, let me put it like this :-


curr = last;
while ( curr != GENERATION_CAVE_MAN)
{
curr->display("As far as I can remember we never had such birthday parties");
curr = curr->prev;
}


That sums up humanity's opinion on birthday parties.

Women generally like socializing. Thats a fact. So mothers of the kids would team up discussing many things like their dresses, their kids' dresses , the colors etc.

The fathers' of the kids were of two types :-

a)TYPE#1 : Tailing their wives going wherever they go.

b)TYPE#2 : Antisocial psychopaths who make faces because they have been put into an uncomfortable situation like attending a birthday party and want the cake to be cut immediately, because they don't want to talk with the neighboring father about "technology you are working on" OR "prospective customers in a value driven economy"

But both the types of fathers regardless of race, age, income in harmony watched one thing in unison. The beautiful sight of a balloon floating in air. It is human tendency to pat a balloon which comes near you. Some people also make that extra effort like jumping to hit a balloon and acting like a clown.

The other function was a formal one. It was the 60th birthday of my beloved maternal uncle. Great food. It is called as 60 year "Shanti". He has undergone quite a bit of rough patch in his life and now he's quite good and happy. Happy for him.

After driving slowly for quite sometime, have you ever felt the need to throttle?

I will give you an example:-

If you had seen the movie Ghulam, Aamir Khan will be going slowly bending his bike rhythmically as his bike waddles. Suddenly on the quite road, there is this array of bikes, which just swooshes past him with an defiance as though he never existed. Thats' enough to drag him into the race. Aamir Khan just wants to be on top of the other bikers, and he chases the guys to catch up with them.

Hmmm.

It's not just on road. It's with life too. My basic observation is the human instinct to be the bigger/better/faster/stronger wherever you are, whatever you do. Human, all too human.

Everything is looking so resigned and so philosophical today. I am looking fwd for the weekend. Lots of things to be done - everything will be taken one by one.

the indian dinner..

15 people from 9 different nationalities (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Canadian, British, American, Australian, and Hongkongese (trust me they need to be treated as a different nationality :P) ) were introduced to paani poori, samosas, tandoori, roti and curry, pulao and raita, gulab jamoon and ras malai..

they were quite open to the food and everyone ate too much .. (some were scared they might have a sensitive tummy) and the the taste was authentic ..
the atmosphere was fun filled, and I was the scape goat and butt of many jokes.. (unusual position)

I showed the way paani poori is prepared on the streets of Bangalore .. using the hand, dipping the filling first and dipping into the paani bowl.. many followed suit to my surprise.. no one stopped eating fearing contamination.. this was my main contribution for the day.. made sure ppl ate samosas with hand, paani poori with hand and ofcos rotis with hand (believe me many eat with knife and fork..) WELL DONE GD on this front..


and there was a caveat that it was all north indian ..
so the next round would be south indian with idli, vade and dose ..

how to test if someone is a bangalorean

some possible methods..

Derides masal dose in any other city in the world and comments even the worst of the restaurants in blore could beat the best in rest of the world .. (and believe me this is true)..

-Thinks it is wierd when ppl say they miss the cold weather back home or hot weather back home or the rains back home...
for bangalorean its always the cool evening back home ..(well this was a decade ago)

i dont know how to identify a bangalorean in a crowd of indians.. (apart from asking the obvious question.. )

.. u can easily spot a mumbai guy.. (find them to be a little bositerous/bragging to be honest about bombay.. no offence though) or a delhiite (behaves like a politician, talks mostly about power) or a madrasi.. (gets offended with the words Hindi/LTTE etc).. bong from the way he speaks ..(about tagore??)

bangalorean .hmmm ..how to identify this person?? Okies .. may be one more.. gets offended when someone derides rajkumar's ACTING skills? (note only acting).. now that could be a kannadiga ..


today.. my colleagues are going for an indian dinner (north indian dinner to be exact)..
i am expecting this obvious question.. "is this what you have at home daily??"
how do I tell them that the first time I had a full fledged north indian dinner or lunch was in 1st PUC..

Need to culturally educate them about south india..

this reminds me of a conversation..
xyz: Are you from Delhi??
me: No
xyz: Then from Bombay?
me: Err, No
xyz: mmmm
me: I am from Bangalore..
xyz: where is it ?? next to bangladesh?
me: err NO..thats calcutta..
xyz: where is bangalore?
me: Close to Chennai,, errr Madrasss
xyz: clueless stilll,
me: close to SriLanka..
xyz: ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
me: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

There are so many cliches about India which I need to clear .. phewwwwwwwwww

Random

My obsession with randomness lands me with this post. It's got to do with a definition of programming (found on the coding horror website). I am too lazy to create the link, you can go to the website, if you care ....

What is programming ?

Programming is all about knowing when to boil the orange sponge donkey across the phillipines with an orangutang gorilla crossed with a ham sandwich to the fourth power of twelve across the nile with an awful headache from the previous night when all of alfred's naughty jalapeno peppers frog-marched the nordic elves across the loom-lined geronimo induced swamp donkey over and above the fortran fortified kilomanjaro fence past the meticulously crafted anti disgusting sponge cake scenario where all the hats doth quoteth the milk which is not unlike the super werewolf from the infinite realm of ninja-step. it's hard to define, really.

Thats a wonderful definition. But the guy who thought about it deserves to be accoladed.

But, wait a second. It is not a guy who thought about. No not a girl too. It is a random spam program which can generate it. The program uses the concept of Markov chains where a [letter/word] is picked with a degree of probability. Interesting, but we need some time to look into the concept. Here is a link which explains on markov chains. This may be useful in generating some test data for text based programs.

Some play of words with my name :-

sudeeptions
sudeepting
sudeepist
sudeepchism
sudeepheting
sudeeppars
sudeeptulabooking
sudeeptudentlyphered

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious !

I will keep writing random thoughts because it feels good when you are not keeping anything in mind, yet you are writing something.

It is generally a good idea to keep expectations low. Or is it really a good idea ?
I remember seeing a movie called Great Expectations. I liked the movie and Gwyneth Paltrow in that movie. That was a long time ago when the word "Galaxy" reminded me of a theatre.

Speaking of Astronomy, one astronomer wrote something like this :-

I was recently asked to be the external examiner for a PhD thesis entitled A survey of radial velocities in the zodiacal dust cloud. Nothing too extraordinary in that, except that in this case, the candidate had carried out his observational work in the early 1970s, and that at the time when he should have been writing-up, he was enjoying huge music charts success with the band Queen. The candidate was of course their lead guitarist, Brian May.

A rockstar and a PhD. Both are a lifetime achievement. How did he do it?

Let's assume he did it some how. My head is feeling like an empty vessel.As I type this, noises from a busy office are heard. Some people talk about Form16 and some people are talking about nawk. Some one is singing "Khawja Meri Khawja" with headfones on and a shrill pitch. The human brain adjusts the volume of speech based on the dB it's ears is sensing. In other words people shout when they put on earphones. Loudness is measured in dB. Frequency is measured in Hertz. Frequency and pitch are one and the same.

By the way, talking of pitch, timbre, libretto, flat notes, falsettos and so on, I am reminded of SMS based reality singing contests. People dont seem to have enough of it. In future, all the professional singers will have gone through one round of an SMS contest before they make their mark. We will no longer have SPB and S.Janakis who would sing 200 songs a year. Rather 45 people singing about 75 of the songs.

The retired singers have a good career of SMS Contest Judges. I wonder what kind of profession will retired Software Engineers have ? I am sure most of them will run away from any programming competition that asks them to be a judge.

Today the word inertia, grogginess seem to dominate my thoughts. Of course there are other words which are dominating my thoughts too. RA_TS and TO_DO too!

nightmares..

everyone has them.. mine is different ..they occur inconsequentially.. like yesterday..

my worst ones..

a. falling off from a tall structure.
b. Being surrounded by SNAKES ..


but nothing beats this one..

"flunking an exam" , and the period is mostly my under-graduation..
I really cant understand this fear of failure even after 8 years and having an MBA..

well, BU has an everlasting impression .. still remember those days of group studies (rather discussion on issues other than acads in pretext of group studies).. the pre-exam maniac atmosphere, the post-exam discussion/depression, the lab exams - internals, externals, the wait for the results .. the relief/celebrations post results..

well remembering those days once again for fun and to make the post-nightmare morning a happy one

(from a previous post ..here it goes)

I remember my exam days back in engineering,
--the 15 day marathon,
--xerox notes, from malleshwaram, hanumanthnagar and bsk 3rd stage,
--long nights at tejus place ( long because of discussions .. politics , life, career, girls ..everything except studies) ..
--chakku troubling us by call at 11:30 pm and psyching us out by claiming he had completed
--teju's tea and kummi's biscuits
--morning breakfast by teju's mom
-- sleeping the whole day just to wake up for another night
-- the gathering at sudeep's palce at 8 in the morning for the final sharing and ofcos filter coffee :)
-- nair not coming into the exam hall inspite he being on campus ..last minute cramming
-- chilli's record breaking exam writing 2.25 hours max
-- followed by early exits from Avinash (peer pressure), Harsha and Carren
-- Nair bothering swati for answers
-- Tejaswi's recording breaking additional papers, matched equally by Sumanth (with such a small handwriting)
-- Discussions following exam and Avinash claiming the question wasn't there
-- sudeep misinterpreting (minimum 2 from first section as at least 2 from first section)
-- me copying a major step in Eng mech derivation from NAIR
-- lokesh always saying 'adhu neen andikondange easy illa' and HM bashing him up .. Sandeep J getting frustrated before DEC lab due to this
-- juice after the exam at Anand's juice counter
-- occassional beats
-- Dil Chahta hai after one of the exams .. (me satya teju and naga) and sudeep not participating bcos its a hindi moive
-- Maiya collecting notes for the next exam already - Maiya driving Sumanth to a state of nausea
-- Carren using the F word incessantly accusing all the question paper setters as bastards ..
-- Sandeep micro managed chits and Nair photo-copying a chit - truly innovative .. though not using it to any advantage (I think internal times)
-- Me not studying half of Computer architecture and pysching out the last minute ..and maiya explaining pentium architecture..

and the list goes on and on and on

ohh .. My handicapped stage and climbing 2 stories for writing exams and Sumanth picking/dropping me from home (thank u richie) ..

Memorable ..