A world where all is free

Retiring on 92

2007-04-29T04:55:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the conventional wisdom about retiring while at the top, I hereby announce my retirement from blogging (after this, the 92nd post). I shall now focus my energies on something else, till the next big thing hits the Earth.

Retirement is clearly a difficult decision. This is especially difficult in an Indian context as Veer Sanghvi's article nicely describes, though in the political arena. I could easily extend that to virtually all other aspects of life (cricket, entertainment, business and so on) and you will see how difficult we find it to make a dignified exit. In this context, Infosys seems to be a remarkable example where the senior management seems to step out just when they seem to be irreplaceable.

Anyway, now my time has come to move on from this medium. I have been looking to improve upon the format for a while now, but haven’t quite succeeded, hence my decision. In any case, I believe the blogging mania on this planet has come to an end. Another year from now we will be cracking jokes about this format.

So long.

P.S. As a parting note, let me refresh your memory of the early 90s MTV with this video.

Al-imentary my dear

2007-04-20T04:02:00.000-07:00

I realise that I have been highly opinionated and judgemental of late which means this is the perfect time to change the mood of this webpage. For your entertainment, I provide below 3 links to Weird Al videos which are guaranteed to perk you up irrespective of your state of mind (well ok, no one can guarantee 100% satisfaction, but still).

But first, a quick recap - Weird Al is a well known parody-ist who has been around for the last 20 odd years, writing songs with social and unsocial messages. (Almost) No one has been spared Madonna, Nirvana, Michael Jackson, Queen, Billy Joel, the list is endless. He has a few originals too.

But he's not just any parodyist. He's a versatile musician and actually extremely talented. Has a great voice and does not restrict himself to any one style, though I get the impression he prefers the alternative grunge scene. On top of this he's extremely witty and his lyrics are gems. Add to that the videos and you find yourself rolling on the floor. Check for yourself.

1. Amish Paradise - an absolute gem, and a must see (except if you don't know who the Amish are). And remember, his opinions are his alone :)
2. Bedrock Anthem - a crash course on the Flintstones. Especially enjoyable if you know the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
3. A Saga Begins - This one's for Star Wars fans, about Anakin Skywalker as a kid and his journey to Jedi-hood on his way to becoming Darth Vader. You may also enjoy this even if you don't know Star Wars since Don Mclean's American Pie is rather catchy :)

There are numerous others, and these might not be the best ones for you - there's a large repertoire to choose from. If you need more recommendations, just ask.

Rediff-ining news

2007-04-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Rediff seems to have successfully built upon the commonest possible business model on the internet, i.e. generating traffic by allowing readers to freely post lewd messages in response to any article on the website. The content of the article doesn’t matter. Often Rediff posts a headline with a couple of leading statements, and the readers do the rest. I have followed these comments over the last few months, sometimes in amusement, mostly in annoyance, and often in anger. I have even sent a mail to Ajit Balakrishnan (after all, he is an IIMCal Alum) expressing my disgust at the complete lack of accountability on Rediff’s part to moderate these distasteful comments. Of course, I have not received a reply.

I have two points to make. First, by taking no ownership for what appears on the site, Rediff has positioned itself as vulgar media. Their wish. Second, the Indian general public is violent, cynical, communal and lewd. Very disturbing. (note: please refer to disclaimer)

Just about every article is a case in point, with reader comments ranging from “You can never trust these Pakistanis, they can kill anyone” to “Everyone knows Inzamam is the murderer” to “These Muslims are causing riots” (read disclaimer) to open comments on women’s anatomy to Sania should not wear shorts, because (sic) “What impact on Performance that a short skirt has for winning the game of Tennis. If she wears a full pant and play, she will lose or what. I think the wearing short skirt impacts your game by 1 % or less, so I beleive that the purpose of a short skirt is just a show-off and it is not much functional to the game” .

By the way, rediff does provide readers with the option to “report abuse” but given the kind of messages that do not get reported, I shudder to think about the ones that do.

You may criticize me for visiting this site if I indeed find all this so disturbing, but the issue is not about me, it is about the inciting nature of these remarks going completely unmoderated. These could have really drastic consequences, converting opinions into facts by repetition and confirming prejudices (a la Orwell). This is especially dangerous when the comments are communal or racist or sexual (one person's obscenity is justified because apparently "everyone does it").

I would compare this situation to Channel 4's reaction during the Shilpa Shetty incident - they were clearly embarassed about appearing to support racism and did a whole lot to counter that. Rediff continues unabashed. I sincerely hope they take note and reposition themselves as responsible media.

Disclaimer: please do not accuse me of generalising - of course I know that every Indian is not like this. Also, I have not repeated the comments verbatim since I have not bothered to store them - but what I have mentioned is approximately what the messages meant.

By the way, I am not the only one unhappy with Rediff.

A Disturbing Trend

2007-03-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

The dramatic debacle at the World Cup has revealed to me a rather disturbing
trend. I am not sure if this is accurate, and would like to be challenged, but it
seems to me that India is running out of role models. Most of the people we look
up to have been around for at least 7 odd years, if not more.

Starting with cricket, the great tragedy has not been the fact that we have lost.
The great tragedy is that we actually found ourselves in a position where we had
to turn back to yesterday's superheroes. A lot of us feel depressed at the sight
of a helpless Sachin for we have effectively grown up with him, having seen him
battle through his first two one day innings scoring a duck each and so on (won't it be an
outrage if the SriLanka innings ends up being his last, in which
case he will have a duck in his first and last innings), all this while
treating him like a man from Krypton, feeling a sense of awe at his ability to do
unimaginable things. It appears to be a highly tragic end to this amazing fairytale and I would like to remember him for the awesome 15 years through which he amazed us
and nothing else. Yet, I hate to say this, but this emotion is not good for
India. What India needs is someone who can upstage this remarkable man the way he
himself upstaged Kapil Dev who was then going through a similar phase. We have
had (apparently) false starts, like Dhoni and Sehwag and Pathan, but we just
haven't found someone who can make us forget Sachin. Yes, Ganguly, Dravid and Kumble have
had their moments, Yuvraj may be the future but they are not quite Sachin, Kapil or Gavaskar, and besides, have been around for rather long as well.

Moving on to movies, the trend becomes even more evident. All our heroes are in
their 30s, 40s and 60s. You may argue for Hrithik, but then, he's been around for
8 odd years, and well, hasn't proven himself to be an Amitabh or a Shahrukh. Not
yet, at least.

What about music? We have not found someone who can make us forget Rehman.
Shankar Ehsaan and Loy have been a good distraction, but they have not made
people cry with their genius, have they? Wonder if this is the fallout of the
Indian Idol approach, but we just don't seem to be finding artists who bring
something dramatically fresh and new.

Moving to business, where we do have reason to feel euphoric, we encounter the
same trend - we have not found a Narayanamurthy, Azim Premji or even Sabeer Bhatia in
the last 10 years.

In politics, we saw a glimmer of hope with a lot of younger, good looking, well
behaved politicians appearing around the last election. But again, no one has
really stormed in capturing everyone's imagination. Buddhadev B did seem to be
filling the gap created by the absence of Chandrababu Naidu (whether good or bad)
but he seems to have been upstaged by the overgrown complainer Mamatadi. We do
not even have an Atal Behari or a Manmohan Singh to look up to anymore. Abdul
Kalam is around, but with his tenure ending, who knows what the political scene
will look like (peering very superficially of course).

Looking into other sports and walks of life, the trend continues. We are still
following Vishwanathan Anand, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi. Sania Mirza is
one exception, and am I thankful for that. We had our hopes in Karthikeyan and
the shooters and so on, but clearly there is scope for a lot more visibility for
these guys. For gods sake, even our commentary teams have not changed - we
launched a vigorous campaign for "Harsha ki Khoj" a couple of years back, but no
one really seems to have taken his place.

Or at least so it seems to me.

I am not trying to undermine the leaps and bounds in the Indian economy, the
Indian psyche and general standard of living (subject to the urban-rural
argument), and this is not an outburst following a general negative sentiment as
a result of the cricket. In fact I believe the overall depression is a lot
overdone since it would have been exactly the opposite had we managed to win the
game against Sri Lanka. We would have all been worshiping our cricketers for
"getting out of jail".

This is just an observation that I have made, and if it is
true, and if indeed we are entering a decisive decade, I believe we are in the
desperate need of a few superstars in the next 2-3 years, without whom our
national shoulders will droop and we will begin to lose all of this relatively
new confidence built painstakingly over the last 10 odd years. And if we have indeed been part of a revolution over this period, there should be hundreds of them lurking somewhere just waiting to emerge in the open. Or am I dreaming?

Market re-search

2007-03-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

It was a freezing morning today with sleet and snow flurries forecast for bulk of the day, accompanied with bonechilling gusty northerly winds straight from the Arctic ocean. Under these circumstances, as I stepped out of a fairly warm train into a wall of cold air threatening to shove me right back into the train not unlike the multitudes at Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, I noticed from the corner of my eye through a veil of wind-induced tears, a poster inviting me to visit India because India has snowclad mountains.

Or at least that is the message that I got. The poster had a large caption proclaiming "Incredible India!" and an even larger white mountain as its dominant image. If you paid closer attention to the poster you may spot a serene lake and a boat by the white mountain, but under the circumstances I kind of missed that bit.

So let me get this straight - after living through cold dark months (ok it wasn't as cold this year as it could have been but it was dark nevertheless), the Indian tourism department is inviting the general British public to vist India to see some snow? Imagine this - a Mr Jennings steps onto a wet platform with an umbrella that barely succeeds to stay open without turning inside out, sees this picture while his coat flaps violently around his legs and thinks to himself "Aha India! This is where I want to go ... to see some snow! Must propose this back home, it'll make me popular with the wife and kids!"

Well here's the catch - while the poster sent a shiver down my spine with the inopportune image, I realised in due course, as my brain thawed slowly following internal neural activity triggered by extreme confusion, that the actual message that the ad agency was trying to pass on to Mr. Jennings was that he should visit India this summer. At least there was a small caption that said so.

In other words, the ad agency is inviting Mr Jennings all the way to India this summer to actually catch some cold weather and relive his fondest frostfilled memories. Or maybe it isn't - in which case the invitation is actually to ignore the image and come over for a lovely 40 degrees in the shade holiday in India the way summer is really meant to be. In either case, I doubt Mr Jennings is likely to be particularly excited.

Clearly the department of Incredible India needs to ask its market research agency for a refund. If anything, better hotels, roads, booking facilities and security measures might excite more visitors to what is actually an incredible holiday destination. But that doesn't seem to have crept up in the market research.

But I really have to insist this failure to understand its market cannot be attributed to the fact that this is a government agency building a marketing campaign - in fact when it comes to government agencies, this is a spectacular piece of advertising - there are some mindbogglingly ridiculous ad campaigns government agencies launch here - for instance the income tax ad for "time is running out" with a man walking inside a sand clock and sand slowly slipping under his feet which might actually have been a good clear message had the execution not been so bad- or the local tube ad claiming that "one of the many improvements in your DLR - a new uniform for the staff!" which clearly isn't a good clear message (though is very well executed with the image of two giant railway staff nattily dressed in lovely green uniforms overlooking a bright red Dockland Light Rail enter a station) especially when severe delays are occuring on your way to work right across the line due to a signal failure at Gallions Reach?

It isn't only government agencies that are clueless about the market - most corporates are ultra-mega clueless too.

Most car ads fall into this category - I have observed car ads at close quarters in India, the UK and the US and they all astound me with the mind-numbness of it all. There is this ad in which a car turns into a giant robo and starts roller skating through streets before converting back into a car ... and then there are countless ones in which a car undertakes the bumpiest ride imaginable outside of Bangalore for instance through a mountain stream or an arctic landscape or whatever.

A lot of bank/insurance ads fall in this category as well - either they try to impress you with something that leaves you completely confused (e.g. what does the HSBC clone ad have to do with my savings account?!) or they try to entice you with spectacular deals (e.g. move your credit card balance at no cost to our credit card so that you can then move the balance from our credit card to another credit card and so on till everyone is confused about your actual liabilities).

You may argue that this is because of the nature of the product - which I find very hard to buy. Even within these products some ads can be more specific than others - e.g. the 2599/pachis ninetynine campaign of Maruti vs the Josh machine...

The bottomline is that I feel very angry with anyone who makes a bad ad, which seems to be the order of the day mostly. Hence I suggest market researchers try re-search. It might just help.

Not Mine shrug

2007-02-01T13:01:00.001-08:00

An SEP field is a generated energy field which affects perception and is a cheaper and more practical alternative to an invisibility field [1].

Entities within the field are perceived by an outside observer as "Somebody Else's Problem", and will therefore be effectively invisible unless the observer
is specifically looking for the entity. This effect is greatly heightened if the entity within the field is already unexpected or out of place.

Yes, this is another masterpiece of scientific thought first published in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy series (the famous trilogy in five parts).

A solved example is provided in the second part when a spaceship built to look like an upside down bistro utilizes an SEP field to land unobserved in the
middle of Lord's Cricket Ground.

A more practical application is to extend the field in stifling situations - e.g. if on the moon, the field can make you
fail to notice the fact that you cannot breathe; or if you are Bruce Willis in Armageddon, the field can ensure that you do not realise that the asteroid you
are standing on does not have enough gravitational force (thus you can successfully stand on it and plant the nuclear bomb and save planet earth (not before
delivering a sentimental speech to Liv Tyler via video conferencing facilities)).

I have been observing this in real life over the last few days. There is a large green plastic orb with a lid (that is locked) just outside my local tube
station. Since this orb looks like a large dustbin, every now and then enthusiastic neighbours carry their daily trash on their way to work only to realise
their folly. And not knowing what to do with the bag of trash (given that they are already running late and this blasted lid is locked), they end up dropping
the bag next to the "bin". And so the bag stays there all day. And the next few days, and in certain cases whole weeks go by - I suspect it stays their till
London is hit by one of those cold windy-galesy days that make Wimbledon and cricket here especially enjoyable, to be blown away and deposited in the next
non-windy location, say, Antarctica. And then it is time for another neighbour to drop a similar bag in the vicinity; through all of this a million
travellers walk by (including me) but this bag stays on. A classic SEP field problem.

In one particular instance a banana peel stayed outside the bin for such a long time that it ultimately became indistinguishable with a dried maple leaf
casually floating next to it, in search of a mate, perhaps.

But the unresolved mystery is this - why on earth is this green orb lying there and why is it
locked? I have seen contraptions like this all over - for instance at the railway station when you desperately need to drop your 3/4th empty cup of
hot-chocolate-gone-cold - and THERE ARE NO DUSTBINS but there are these large black boxes on wheels with enormous lids and, yes, giant locks. I also remember
a box next to my first house in London which said "GRIT" in a large embossed font - it was not a dustbin but something with a lot of cobwebs and a secret
opening in the bottom.

I wonder, therefore, why are there such few dustbins in the world? Well, maybe thats someone else's problem.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem_field

Parasite of the Day

2007-01-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

The Gordian Worm (also known as the horsehair worm) is, as a toddler, parasitic upon cockroaches and the like. Fully grown, it is free living, growing at an average to a length of 1 metre with a thickness of 1-3 mm. Pause for a while and imagine this - 1 m long and 3 mm thick - thats essentially something that looks like your hair but actually survives and partakes in the pleasures of conscious life.

The exciting part is the period of transition - when the larva is old enough to leave home. At this stage, it effects the host's brain in a narcotic fashion, and causes the host (assume, for the sake of illustration, a grasshopper) to believe its Nirvana lies in locating the nearest source of water and taking a dip. Unfortunately, the grasshopper does not realise that it did not learn swimming as a child and duly drowns. The worm then escapes from the body into the water and lives happily ever after to a life of debauchery and orgies, giving birth to numerous juniors that go on to provide future generation of grasshoppers with that amazing high.

Check out this quick footage of a cricket committing suicide in the interest of the Gordian community.

Are you an 80s kid?

2006-12-13T03:12:00.000-08:00

Barbapappa
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

The brain is a collection of memories; you temporarily forget some but the most endearing and the most embarassing invariably re-emerge as part of conversation and idle dreaming.

Amongst the ones that pleasantly haunt me from my childhood (and I trust any indian childhood of the 80s) are the gems of Doordarshan. In fact I am tempted to claim that the 80s were probably the golden era of Indian television watching from a nostalgia point of view. Well, maybe not - I can quite imagine a group of 30 somethings fondly reminiscing about the Power Puff girls 15 years from now...

In any case, let me see if I bring tears to your eyes with the following-

1. Barbapappa , the name apparently is a corruption of the French word for candyfloss; The story of Barbapapa, Barbamama, Barbalala, Barbabright, Barbabelle, Barbazoo, Barbalib, Barbabeau and Barbabravo.

Check out the title song here and look around for a few episodes

2. Johnny Sokko and his flying robot - video here

The story of a little boy with a giant robot that could destroy the strongest and evilest. Combined a Hitlerian army with a collection of spectacular monsters. Sample the following

Globar - The Giant Devil-Ball

Gargolyle Vine, A Space Plant

Gangar - The Colossal Hand

Spaaki - The Electric-Current Monster

Terror of the Man-Eating Sand

Opticorn Must be Destroyed (Ganmons - Eye of the Devil)

The Monsterous Flying Jawbone

The Mummy Mutants

Hydrazone - The Germ Spore

3. Ek anek aur Ekta - Who can forget this? video here Anyone know the Raag? Anyone know the Raag?

4. The Mole - Video here . Czechoslovakian animation with molar morals.

And while you are all thanking me through tearfilled eyes and wishing to kiss my feet (for being so jobless), I shall reveal that I actually tried searching for a few more - Tree of unity, Swimmy - but could not find these.

And specifically for DD Calcutta watchers - anyone remember Chiching Phank (especially the opening doors?) or the title track of Telescope? No videos were found, sigh :)

BTW - if you have an opinion on Don (the old or the new) then check out my cousin's blog - he suggests an interesting alternative

Adept Adaptation

2006-11-27T04:55:00.000-08:00

Bill Bryson in his book "Mother Tongue" laments about that little complication called the
English Language. While the premise for the lamentation is to try and explain what makes
English the premiere language in the world today inspite of its quirks, to me, it seems like
one long list of cribs. While all reviews seem to insist he's in love with the language, I
get the feeling he's actually a bit fed up. (Also, I do not agree with reviewers who call
the book humourous for it is not, and actually is somewhat unstructured for my liking.) He
talks about easy to spot complications like illogical spellings and pronunciations, as well
as more unknown complications (at least to me) like the almost ad hoc mixing and acceptance
of words and roots from foreign sources.

In other words, he draws our attention to the fact that English is a truly pulverized
language.

This fact gives me a lot of confidence, personally. From now on, I shall not feel guilty
about using terms that would be thoroughly unacceptable to the purist, but which would
explain the situation far more aptly and economically than otherwise possible (e.g. "A good
manager needs to possess the skill of Jugad"). I shall not feel guilty about making
spelling mistakes, like forgetting the number of s's or l's in "successfull" (succesfull?
succesful?), and having to use shift F7 every now and then. I am now a lot more at ease with
people hopelessly stuck on sms lingo and acronym usage (rotfl?). My heart now swells with
pride at the sight of Inglish (e.g. "Chappell ko sack karne mein significant benefits
hain"). I no longer lose it when someone constructs a sentence in the past continuous
imperfect future tense or whatever (I am refering to sentences like "In this film there will be a
boy whose father will be dying etc." Hmm how many r's r thr in refering?). I feel confident
because I realise I'm only in the midst of an evolution, and every one of these instances is
actually helping to create a deeper and more enriched language. And in fact, by modifying
the language significantly enough, maybe we will finally arrive at the language Indlish
which will become known as the Indian of Indian languages and will be spoken by 50% of the
world's population, and finally unite our country on linguistic grounds. Who knows.

Another source of confidence is the realisation that when I pulverized Hindi during my
school exams, I was only honing my skills, though in a different context, a bit like testing
a new cancer medicine on mice before testing it on humans. My teachers didn't see this, of
course, but we all know that the smartest things are rarely appreciated till decades after
they actually happened (Van Gogh, Copernicus, Azharuddin etc). Thus, I proudly proclaim some
of my experimental geniuses via this forum in the hope that I may receive some appreciation
- I singlehandedly derived alternative spellings, new approaches to genders, radical
interpretations of unscientific couplets (e.g. taruvar phal nahin khaat hai -
obviously a tree cannot eat its own fruit, in fact it cannot "eat" anything, unless you
include osmosis and diffusion in which case a tree does indeed eat its own fruit if you let
it decay into manure), lateral approaches to essay writing etc.

My father tried really hard to suppress this creative streak of mine. He made me attend
private tuition (3 different tutors have tried their hand at me), made me subscribe to Hindi
newspapers (of which I would usually read the comics section), forced me to include a daily
Hindi lesson in my timetable (this hour was usually spent day dreaming, another talent
required for true creativity), even gave me "homework". The homework part was quite
interesting because he, being rather creative himself, would come up with tasks like "Chalk
pe nibandh likho" and I would write a nice few sentences on the chemical composition of
chalk (all the time trying to figure out what Calcium would be called in Hindi) much to
everybody's chagrin. The crowning glory, of course, was the 3 month period before my Std X
board examinations when I spent almost all my time memorising essays, answers, spellings,
authors etc. (The rest of my time was spent memorising essays for my History paper, which of
course, is yet another story). All of this effort was very useful from an examination point
of view - these months of effort resulted in a 38% increase in my scores, which is rather
significant by any standards.

Thus, if you've not realised by now, the point I am trying to make is that there is actually
no point.

Passing thought:Reading through the quirks of English makes me realise that the reason it is the premiere
language in the world is that it is actually very colloquial. English is happy to adapt and
be adopted, and that is what makes it so widespread, a bit like strains of viruses that
share the exact same characteristic. Also humans.

Mandi on my Mundi

2006-11-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

A rather typically excellent article by Gurcharan Das has got me excited momentarily. Here he talks about the inefficiencies in the Indian commodity market (in other words, Beck Bagan Market or your local sabzi mandi) and the impact of the entry of professional retailers.

There are a number of insights in the article, but the one that excited me most was this - in trying to answer why is it that in India farmers themselves receive such a small fraction of the actual price that the consumer pays (in other words, why is the farmer's bargaining power so low compared to the traders), he points out the following

"A typical farmer harvests his crop, loads it on his bullock cart, travels 30 km to the mandi, where he is often forced to sell at distress prices. Once at the mandi, he cannot return without disposing his produce. He needs the money and the trader knows it. Had he known the price before he left, he might have waited a few days. Where e-chaupals have arrived farmers are happy because they get to know mandi prices via the Internet."

He goes on the lend support to the entry of professional retailers (which would benefit consumers and farmers alike by reducing the middleman), communication mechanisms like the internet, mobile phones and specifically tickers set up by the national commodities exchange in local languages, bank loans hedged against future prices (which currently the RBI doesn't allow them to do!) and crop insurance.

Thus he successfully lends sophistication to the ancient subject of farming so that overintelligent people like you and I can understand.

Q. How many Panjus does it take to fix a light bulb?

2006-11-19T06:52:00.000-08:00

A. 308 (to say nothing of the dog)

6 family members to frantically organise the celebrations
15 close friends to get drunk in celebration
15 dads of drunk friends to get drunk in celebration
30 cousins and their family (CFOs, lawyers etc) to look their best and go on nostalgia trip
10 cousins and their family from vilayat to roam around with handycams and digicams and go on nostalgia trip
3 dudes to man the bar
15 dudes to roam around serving tangdi kabab, paneer tikka etc
15 more dudes to man the buffet table and carefully label each dish
20 cooks
3 DJ and sidekicks
20 members of mahboob band (Yeh desh hai veer javanon ka specialists)
3 dholak walas (Baari barsi specialists)
20 dudes to carry the bright electric lanterns
30 dudes to dart at pieces of change thrown around by revelers
100 random guests (neighbours, business acquaintances, other welldressed good looking people who everybody imagines is known to somebody else)
1 to actually fix the bulb (accompanied by horse, horse owner and 2 children of the family)
1 petrified labrador that stays under the bed through the occasion

*Note for CFOs/lawyers: numbers are guesstimates and not to be used for audit purposes

AT LAST!!!

2006-10-20T04:28:00.000-07:00

Those who know me well should have seen this coming - I am absolutely thrilled with the recent developments in the Azhar case!

Completely agree with Lele - ""The BCCI has committed a great injustice towards Azhar by imposing a life ban without any solid evidence," Lele said and blamed the then Board president A C Muthiah and K M Ram Prasad, members of the 3-member Disciplinary Committee, for taking the 'wrong' decision."

On the other hand I don't want all this to be overdone either - please leave Azhar in peace, media!

From my point of view, Azhar is a legend and he deserves to be treated that way.

Retail - Boom!

2006-10-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

There was a news article today which estimated that 767 Mn GBPs worth of shoplifting took place last year in the UK (there are many reports that mention a much higher number, and this seems to be the smallest number floating around).

To comprehend what this means, I tried the following:

If I ask you, how many people do you know that have a serious shoplifting problem, what would your guess be? And I am asking you about a serious problem, not a one off picked-a-chewing-gum-without-paying kind of incident. I am talking about someone who routinely shoplifts.

Well, if you assume that an average shoplift is worth GBP 50 (an incredibly high number, for surely no one shoplifts a refrigerator, or does one?), you are talking about 15.3 million incidents of shoplifting a year.

Now if you assume that a routine shoplifter shoplifts worth the above amount once a week, you are looking at 295000 incidents of shoplifting everyweek.

Given that the population of UK is 60 Mn, you are talking about 1 in every 203 people that have a shoplifting problem - guys who shoplift worth 50 GBP every single week of the year.

Which would imply that, in If I were to extrapolate that to the population of an organisation the size of Infosys, i.e. 60000 people, you have roughly 300 shoplifters that shoplift worth 50 GBP every single week!!! Compare that to our weekly grocery bill which is typically 35 pounds (and we think we are extravagant).

Who on Earth are these people and where are they???

And this seems to be the smallest number I have come across..

Hmmm try doing the same math with the number of retail outlet in UK... Say 1 outlet for every 50 people...

Evolution revelation

2006-09-16T01:07:00.000-07:00

Next question - what makes an assymetric brain a better evolutionary result than a symmetric one? i.e. why do we have a right half and a left half instead of two of every segment and lobe? Is it because the benefits of a compact brain outweigh the benefits of a brain with contingency redundancies? In other words we could not have managed with a brain twice its current size (even at its current size it makes childbirth the most dangerous amongst all living creatures, especially because we also wish to walk erect). In fact why have some organs evolved with redundancies (kidneys, lungs) while others have not (heart, liver)?

Is this only true of humans or do any other creatures indeed possess redundand brains?

Weigh to go

2006-09-14T05:59:00.000-07:00

Seems my previous question was not clear enough. Let me be explicit. My question is more in terms of biology, ignore minor physical effects like change in center of gravity :) and you are not in a closed system!

I extend the scope of the question - how would your weight vary during the day if you were to take a measurement at various points.
Specifically, consider the following:
1. Just before you sleep - say you weigh W1
2. Immediately after you wake up W2
3. Brush your teeth and take a dump
4. Eat Breakfast5. Coffee Break at Office
6. Working Lunch at office
7. Post lunch coffee break
8. Evening pack of chips
9. Go drinking with friends
10. Dinner back home

Place readings W1-W10 in ascending order (i.e. lowest to highest). And of course, provide reason :) Please think about this hard because I suspect the actual answer is not as straightforward as it may seem - I have tried this experiment to an extent but the results haven't exactly been what I expected.

Munch and Crunch

2006-09-10T04:17:00.000-07:00

You have a highly sensitive weighing machine. You weigh yourself and an apple independently. Then you weigh yourself and the apple - and then start eating it. What will be the effect on the reading as you continue eating (if any)? Will the reading after you've finished by the sum total of the individual readings?

Pluto (and Inzy) Under trial!

2006-08-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

Pluto sentimentalists, guess what! Pluto is on the verge of demotion, and news reports indicate the likelihood of this happening is very high indeed! This is the subject of a ballot tomorrow, where democratically elected representatives of planet Earth (I am being sarcastic, if you didn't get it!) are going to determine whether Pluto is indeed worthy of its planetary appellation.

The story so far - Pluto was discovered in 1930 and hastily (as we know now) recorded as the 9th planet in our System. Mankind rejoiced in its brilliance and updated school books - which is what we read, and memorised.

All of that was, of course, premature - for a question bugged everyone in the know - how, goddamit, do you define a planet?

Pluto is extremely eccentric - if you follow the solar system radially outwards starting at Mercury, you come across rocky hard planets till you reach Mars and then you hit gassy giants Jupiter onwards, all with a large number of satellites and indeed, rings! And then you suddenly hit puny little Pluto - cold, tiny, hard, and with one solitary satellite, which, interestingly, is about the same size as Pluto itself (relatively speaking, on a galactic scale). And as if that were not enough, while the rest of the planets revolve around the Earth in one single plane, Pluto the deviant follows a completely different ellipse, at an angle to the rest (which has the interesting side effect that Neptune holds the record as the "farthest planet" for 20 years and then passes on the baton to Pluto for the next 200).

So Pluto is different. But is that enough to dethrone Pluto? Well, what do you know, two other bodies mysteriously appear in the Solar system, Xena and Ceres, which stake a planetary claim, similar to the irritating classmate who runs after the professor in the hope of getting an extra 0.5 marks simply because roll number 22 wrote exactly the same answer and scored more. And if you listen to Xena and Ceres' bickering, and include Charon (Pluto's mega satellite) in the bargain, then you actually have 12 planets in the system!

So, here is the conundrum - starting tomorrow, the solar system will possess 8 planets or 12 (maybe 11 - who knows?) . In either case, you will need to reorient the piece of information ingrained in your neurons for the past 25 years (estimate subject to your age) starting tomorrow, or run the risk of being labelled ignoramus.

Its your choice which way you want to go.

In the meantime, my complete support goes out to Inzamam - Darrel Hair should be fired or at least put on a performance improvement plan for the next one year.

And if you feel this post bears resemblance to this one from the NYtimes, well, I admit that was the inspiration - but this topic has been exciting me for a few days now, and so I claim this was long coming anyway!

Good Pittance - Bonds Soar as weak data point to slowdown

2006-08-17T03:22:00.000-07:00

Being a human, is clearly laden with a whole lot of pressure. For one, they live longer than
most other creatures on the planet. They are born completely useless, and remain so for
long. In fact, this phase of uselessness goes on for longer than most creatures care to
survive. And then, briefly, they are really useful to their species. That is, they are fit
to reproduce (after all, that is the aim of a species, is it not?). And how do they end up
utilising this phase?

For completely unfair reasons, humans have been provided with a brain way larger than is
actually good for them. And it is this brain that tells them that actually, this brief phase
should be utilised in other ways, like studying and working and conducting research and waging
wars and whatever, everything, but effectively reproducing. And then before they know it,
this phase is gone, and now their oversized brain makes them jealous and tells them that
they should advise the next generation to study and work and wage wars and whatever. And so
the cycle continues.

"If you ask me, humans should live in caves and die at the age of 23," FM had once remarked
to Hyper.

And so here, in the sewer world, Hyper met souls who had already been through the terrifying
human lifetime. And souls no longer had unnecessarily large congregations of proteins in
their heads. And because of this, Hyper and his friends could actually take an objective
view of things.

Consider Hyper's conversation with Over Engineering, who used to work in an investment bank
when he was human.

Hyper: Hey whats eating you, OE?

OE: Just recalling some of my days at the bank

Hyper: What about them?

OE: I used to be what most people would call a hardworker. We were growing double digit
every year, entering new markets, devising exotic options and I was managing the entire
backoffice operation

Hyper: Wow that sounds really cool and important!

OE: Yes, you are right - feeding so many people was not easy

Hyper: Huh? Feeding? I thought you were an I Banker?

OE: Oh yes, I used to work in an I Bank - I ran the cafeteria. Did I not tell you?

(monologue from OE follows)

I loved the challenge then - I was awarded at the I bankers guild for the most exotic option
ever created - the Triple Schezwan clam Pulao garnished with mildy smoked tarragon sauce.
Anyway, that was the good part. What bothers me today is how we ended up making everything
so complicated when really it should have been so much easier.

I remember the time we were trying to introduce a slice of tomato into the already popular
aaloo patty burger which we had been making for years (a quick insight - while the exotic
options sound nice, the real volumes are in the commoditised products - the tomato slice was
our way of providing value added service).

Well, the idea came from our client facing team, who quickly dumped it onto the
implementation team. The implementation team put a project team together. (A typical project
is conducted in three phases and we had a pretty robust approach to it - requirements
gathering, development, testing.) The team filled in the specifications template and
obtained approvals from Legal, tax, frying risk, industrial relations, production and so
on... Before we started, of course, we prepared the plan. And before we could deploy anyone
on the project, we had to create a project code and then upload the information in the
budgeting system, the revenue projection system and so on. And then we created the inventory
list which had to be approved by finance.

And then, well, the project had to stop because the appraisal cycle was drawing near and
everyone was busy conducting discussions, defining targets, and uploading information into
the Hr system. And when this got over, as luck would have it, a team leader put in his
papers (he had a lucrative offer from a rival i bank - we had a tough time safeguarding our
intellectual property, but we ensured he served adequate gardening leave). This obviously
put the project (and hence our revenues) at risk and so our team started working overtime.

We were in the process of developing a really stunning product, when the project blessings
committee decided we had actually overlooked three pieces in our project plan. They advised us
to involve the process quality, biochemistry and marketing departments before we could move
any further. This obviously threw the entire budget off track. So we all took massive
paycuts because we had to justify all the expenditure to the shareholders (who incidentally
had made a mere 2000% capital gain over the last 3 years).

Anyway, we worked harder than ever before - quality conducted a failure mode analysis, the
biochemist declared they were not satisfied that the EColi concentration in the tomatoes had
been tested by a dependable laboratory (and sent samples to a non profit organisation which
did not say anything about E Coli but said that pesticide levels were unacceptable), and
marketing decided that they needed more budgets for an effective launch campaign.

In the end, of course, the project did conclude and we did manage to add the slice of tomato
- but now I am royally depressed at how stupid we were.

(end of monologue)

Hyper: Yes I see what you mean - these corporate processes and departments really get to
me.. why were things so complicated I wonder..

OE: Oh no, thats not what I meant - i am depressed because we actually missed out on taking
approvals from the Pollution board - who promptly slapped a lawsuit on us.. I eventually
committed suicide which explains the bluish glow that you see on my now.. Pottasium Cyanide,
you see.. A bottle I had flicked from the lab of the non profit organisation when they were
giving us pain...

The hottest July since 1659!

2006-07-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

This has been the hottest July (in the UK) since records, with the mercury hitting a scorching 32 deg C quite consistently. Any of you that has spoken with me over the last few weeks has heard about the discomfort - and while it might sound pretentious coming from someone who has spent his life in Calcutta/Mumbai/Chennai/Hyderabad kind of places, it remains a fact that 32 deg here feels a lot more oppressive than it ever did in India (in fact in India it never felt oppressive). The reason, of course, is simple - fans and windows that open.

But this post isn't about me - it is about the impact on the rest of the British public - and I shall shamelessly quote from the BBC article -

The hottest recorded July day has emerged to have been in Wisley, Surrey, where temperatures hit 36.5C (97.7F).

The highest UK temperature recorded was 38.5C (101.3F) in Faversham, Kent, on August 10, 2003.

In the heat:

Several schools chose not to open on Wednesday, while others closed at lunchtime and many school sports days were cancelled.

On the roads, emergency measures were brought in to protect surfaces with gritters spreading gravel after the asphalt began to melt. Ambulance service bosses urged drivers in jams to stay with their cars after crews had difficulties getting through to an accident.

Heat caused railway lines to buckle in the Midlands on Tuesday and many services from New Street Station in Birmingham were cancelled. Speed restrictions were in force on the West Coast Main Line.

Unions called for employers to keep staff cool and called for a change in the law to create a maximum working temperature.

Water tankers have been drafted in to top up reservoir supplies in the Midlands and a surge in demand for power for air conditioning systems continued to put pressure on electricity supplies.

Water supplies were affected in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Cardiff while in Shrewsbury 70,000 residents were urged to cut water use as filling pumps failed at a reservoir.

Animals also tried to cool off. At zoos, keepers tried to make life more comfortable for the animals, handing out fruit or blood-flavoured ice lollies. The RSPCA issued warnings about leaving pets in areas without cover or water and said two dogs had died of heat exhaustion.

Visitors to the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire were banned from venturing off footpaths by officials fearing fires in dry woodland areas.

Haircuts and close shaves

2006-07-26T01:58:00.000-07:00

I am an immensely relieved man. I have just had a haircut. While I have been usually compared to unflattering things following a haircut (plucked chicken, large egg etc) I find it quite comforting to get rid of unruly strands. These strands absorb the sweat around the neck, forehead and ears when it is hot and humid and stay that way for a long while; they tickle the ears when it is dry and cold; small particles often seem to float into my nose when I am in need of a haircut giving me a bad cold; etc.

Thus, I am immensely pleased today. It is not an entirely painless exercise, though. It has cost me 25 pounds everytime since I've landed here, though I have now settled at one place where it costs 17 (allowing me to tip a further 1 pound if I feel like it). All of this is evidently a little bit too much for me, having lived my teenhood on Rs 8 haircuts (Rs 9 if you go to an airconditioned place) which gradually increased through college (Rs 10-12 along with a good dose of mosquito bites on your calves and smell of armpit) to old age (i.e. a year back - Rs 30 owing to Bangalore's high cost of living, at a non-airconditioned place next to a dug up road awaiting the completion of the great Kormangala drain for the last 4 years now). At the most extravagant, I paid Rs 60 once before placements in IIMC because I was under the misconception that the economic downturn could be countered with a good haircut (incidentally it was so far from campus that I had to pay a further Rs 100 on cab - which I duly shared with another gullible classmate - all of it was not in vain, though, for we discussed a great business plan for a Vada Pav chain on the cab).

So you can imagine my nervousness when I stepped into the "hairdressers" for the 25 pound haircut. First question - do you have a bath before you go to such a place? In India having a bath before a haircut is futile and indeed stupid. Nevertheless, I decided to have a bath (without a shave) and walked into this place. The routine started with an offer of coffee which I accepted, but struggled to catch a sip thereafter since it is incredibly difficult to bend over to your left and take a sip while someone is trying to snip off parts of your primeval covering - not to mention the threat of micro-strands falling into the cup and then scratching through your gullet. A mint shampoo was a part of the routine, too - but the most challenging part - I am coming to that only now - was answering the ultimate question - "so what would you like today?".

In India, my answer would usually be short and quick - "cut it small, not too small" - and the barber would immediately attack my head with ferocity and I would emerge in the end the same as I would have emerged had I said "cut it like Anil Kapoor". This answer was obviously too basic for a place like this - but I had no other answer! So I said the more abstruse "I would like something simple, very corporate" expecting to find an "ah of course, I know just what to do" kind of response, after all, I was going to pay 25 pounds - that was not to be. The interrogation went on for a further embarassing 5 minutes during which multiple suggestions were thrown at me as my coffee grew cold in the side. During the actual session, the interrogation continued, though on more personal things like "so what are you doing today" which is quite an uncomfortable question when in reality the only thing you have planned for the day is a typical Saturday in front of the TV with many cups of tea. And really, what do you care what I am doing today??!

You have, by now, predicted the turn of events, for sure, for the eventual outcome of all this jazz was a haircut identical to the one I would have got had I said "cut it like Anil Kapoor".

Egg, plucked chicken, "so you've had a haircut" and "your account has been debited GBP 25" were not quite the reactions I anticipated when I first stepped into this place. And when I was stepping out, a smiling lady asked me "so should I book your next appointment now?" - while I responded with a firm no then, i was back at this place 8 weeks later, going through exactly the same experience. And, umm ahh, I must admit, my exit folly was agreeing to buy a hair product which promised to make my hair fluffy for a further unmentionable amount - I religiously applied this white cream from an orange bottle till it ran out - but my hair didn't look much different from what it was when I used to apply Dabur Amla hairoil as a kid - though it certainly smelt better, I grant you that.

Now, of course, I have found a cheaper place, which still delivers the same results, the comments continue, but at least I can now afford a tip as well and walk home feeling good.

Good Pittance - Humans will not learn

2006-07-14T02:15:00.000-07:00

"Slugs, bipeds, tripeds, arachnids, centipedes, millipedes, winged creatures, rodents, reptiles and fellow soulmates, we have gathered today, as always, to contemplate, ruminate, masticate and in some cases flatulate in our own respective capacities.

Many thanks to Comrade Centipedus Litmus, for his sparkling insights last week on affirmative action for the disabled - I was personally moved to tears with the tragic tale of our comrade's young cousin who lost 40 left feet and today lives in disbalanced misery.

Today's topic for discussion will be introduced by someone who himself has faced unfair competition in the archno-rat race since he lost 3 eyes in a fearsome battle in his youth (i.e. 3 days back), ladies and gentleslugs (and gentle-others), please welcome Comrade Spidey Zimmerman!"

Widespread applause was heard as Spidey made his way to the speaking arena, stumbling more than once - not because of his missing eyes, in fact his eyesight had actually improved since he lost his 3 eyes - his brain had to now coordinate a markedly lower number of eyes (5 as opposed to 8 for those who are unaware of arachnid physiology) - but because he had cleverly adopted this clumsy gait to gain sympathy from his watchers. In fact the fearsome battle that Hyper referred to a minute back wasn't really a brave battle - Spidey had actually been engaging in voyeuristic pleasure (outside of the sewer world) when he was caught unaware and a rather larger Tarantula poked him in the eyes with a single tap of his claws.

"For generations, we have suffered at the hands of nature. Today humans have made it worse. Consider the events of the last few days - We started with rain - We lost entire families. We spent hours shivering and dripping, homeless. The sun never came. And then we lost our dear friends, the Ticks, who were stuck in the resultant slush - I will never forgive the human that so sloppily plastered them onto, what do they call it, a statue? And then came the bombs. We were truly shocked out of our shells what with sparks falling on us in buckets.

Are we to be constant sufferers? Are we doomed to live through this for generations? I urge you, dwellers of the sewer, to stand up against this misery, against this exploitation, and make yourself count! Change the way we live our lives, we cannot be held to ransom by nature and humans, wake up!"

At this point Jackie the lizard lapped up Bubbles the cricket who was deeply engrossed in the stirring speeach and was at the point of inspiration.

"Crunch. Crunch."

Stunned silence combined with mild mayhem in the ranks.

"Oops. Sorry guys" said a visibily embarassed though gastrically satisfied Jackie.

Days of extreme boredom

2006-07-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

These are outstandingly boring times.

Work has deteriorated into an insipid period of mindless rigor while home is unsettled ever since we shifted last week. Can things get worse? Days are spent preparing for meetings and
minuting actions thereof, with the promise of returns as great as two drops of fermented buttermilk at the end of a long and tired day in the Hyderabad summer sun. Evenings are
spent trying to figure out what program the waching machine in the new house is set to, given that you can take off the knob and put it back reading another program without really
changing any setting.

To top it all we havent had TV for months.

We moved out of the previous house for various reasons, one of which was a TV that was stuck on one channel and one volume for the longest time with the landlord refusing to move an inch. We solved the issue by moving into a new house with no TV. Now we've ordered a TV over the net which will be delivered only next weekend because we won't be home during the weekdays (busy with insipid work at office). During this period, of course, an entire World Cup has come and gone, India has beaten west indies after 35 years and an entire wimbledon has ended.

And I won't bother about mentioning internetlessness at home.

There are, of course, intermittent moments of excitement. Guess where I was at the anniversary of the 7/7 bombings? At Liverpool Street station, that too at 850 am which is
the exact moment the bomb went off there last year. (I may have been there at exactly this time last year if only my visa had arrived on time). Needless to say, it was the most
anxious tube ride I have taken. While a reasonable soul would pooh pooh my nervousness, I can assure you it was a very uncomfortable feeling reading the first page of the local paper
describing the terrorist threat while the train pulled into liverpool street station at the very moment. I eyed every person with suspicion, trying hard not to make a prejudiced
judgement on anyone with a beard or carrying an appropriately large bag. I heaved a sigh of relief when I stepped out to discover a large team of policemen waiting to welcome every person who emerged from the station. I duly observed two minutes of silence at 12 noon. Which of course, was a welcome interruption to an insipid meeting I had just got into to discuss the status of the various contractual documents that were awaiting signatures from 300 authorities of note.

In the midst of all this, if you're wondering what became of FM and hyper, well, for sure they are not hanging around in the sewers of central London. But who knows, perhaps it was
one of them that consecrated the famous "bust" in Mumbai?

Good Pittance - Fundamental disconnects

2006-05-30T03:33:00.000-07:00

Hyper sat gazing at the plumbing works under a mobile phone company. He was suffering from a mixture of depression and confusion. His intentions had been good, to bring an element of critical review in this dark town. He had selected a particularly favourable spot which allowed a large crowd to gather in discussion. He had chosen fairly interesting topics. But the crowd had just not been receptive. The 12 sessions so far had been disasters, or at best, lukewarm.

He also missed FM's presence.

I must not get exasperated, he said to himself. The creatures here have never been exposed to something like this. Its just a matter of time, and once I have a faitfhul following, it should get easier.

What he did not take into account, which he may have if FM were around, was that it is difficult to form a faithful following when most creatures living in underground sewers have lifespans lasting a day or two, or at most a few weeks, or at the very outer limit, a few months. It was obvious that he would see new faces every single day.

As he sat ruminating, his mind drifted towards the 3rd topic he had selected as part of this series. The subject was reservations in India and the particular debate was does reservation make sense?

He felt he suffered from a fundamental disconnect with the logic of the concept and the related protests. He ran through his thoughts in his mind.

Reservation, most skeptics argue, is a politically motivated tool. It is driven by the political desire to win elections. The disconnect is this - aren't elections won 0n the basis of majority votes and not minority votes? In which case, politicians should actually favour majority reservations. Which doesn't seem to be the case.

The deeper argument, then, must be one or some of the following (which FM had pointed out when they had discussed this 20 years back)

1. The majority of the country does not actually vote when it comes to it while minority groups are far more diligent at this

2. Majority votes are governed by very complex mechanisms which politicians do not understand (like economy, roads, globalisation etc.) while minority votes are easier to garner with easier to appreciate grassroots issues (like hunger and unemplyment)

3. Majority votes are roughly equally split between the leading parties, and it is the minority votes that actually make the difference between winning and losing

4. It is easier to break up the voting population into contiguous groups that vote in a single direction. In other words, the returns per unit effort are much higher.

Hyper ran these through this head, and also noted that FM was not aware of the numbers that would support any of the above arguments, and thus only qualified as intuitive hypotheses.

All this confused him even further till he screamed out loud - someone please shed some light on this!!!

Good Pittance - But it wasn't going to be easy

2006-05-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

There was another flaw with Hyper's plan. Sewage dwelling creatures aren't well known for their capacity for deep intelletual debate.

Consider, for instance, the following episode in the life of Charles MMDCXXIV (a member of the sewagus centipedus species). Charles MMDCXXIV was an energetic youth and was often reprimanded by his dad Charles MMDCXXIII for his anti-social behaviour. A typical conversation between the two would go like this

Charles MMDCXXIII (furious): INGAT SPEENY WAKJAZAKHOO LEEM??

Charles MMDCXXIV (uncertain of the cause of fury): plak stlak makl noboo

Charles MMDCXXIII (Now bubbling to the point of bursting): GLOGGY SPlAT PLANKTON?? MAKAWEEKEE SOCKKO DRUAKA MEEENO??

Charles MMDCXXIV (still defending himself, when he should have kept quiet): peepa sattt.... oogon tak... glap...

*SPANk* Ow! noogoo glap...

*SPANk* Ow! noogoo gl...

*SPANk* Ow! noogoo...
and so on.

As you can see, not a very intelligent conversation at all. In fact, this was a case of complete misunderstanding because CJ (Charles junior - we'll call him that for convenience) was really not up to any mischief. In fact he was a very clean person, but had a nose for danger. In this particular case he had been exploring narrow tunnels and found himself in the commode of the biggest celebrity in the city, a man whose private collection of beatles had created mass hysteria. (the beatles eventually broke up, of course).

CJ was obviously very excited with his discovery and came running back home to announce this to his 97,000 siblings. He bumped into CS (the senior guy, obviously), unfortunately. The above conversation took place at this point and roughly translates into the following (grammatical erros reproduced for honest representation)

CS (furious): SO WHERE YOU THINK YOU BEEN ALL DAY

CJ (uncertain of the cause of fury): been doing pot, thats all

CS (Now bubbling to the point of bursting): POTTING AGAIN, YOUNG FELLA?? YOU NOT UNDERSTANDING A THING I SAYING??

CJ (still defending himself, when he should have kept quiet): but I went really high this time... and saw stars.. dad

*SPANk* Ow! but dad...

*SPANk* Ow! but da...

*SPANk* Ow! but...
and so on

Evidently, Hyper's plans were not going to be easy to execute. And now that FM was not on his side, he felt he had to plan very carefully.

Good Pittance - where it all started

2006-05-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

Frequency Modulation was discussing the futility of discussing Armenian politics with his good buddy Hyperinflation when magma became too hot and burst out into the open. This was not a good thing for FM and Hyper since both of them died. It was even worse for Terminal Velocity since FM owed him a large sum of money.

The souls of FM and Hyper realised this eventually but could not find a way out unlike magma. Hey Hyper, said FM, I'm stuck! Me too, replied Hyper. And then there was silence because they weren't used to talking too much.

(If there would have been a human there at the time, he would not have realised this silence because he would not have realised that the two souls were talking before the silence because souls don't talk the way humans do.)

Hyper soon had a doubt. Hey FM, he asked, which way's up? FM was the more astute of the two and should have known the answer, but he did not.

Curious, he said, we should be able to tell, not by sight since we are stuck without reference, but by weight, and I could have sworn reading about an experiment by this guy who claimed the human soul weighs about 20 g. Perhaps he was wrong, after all. And besides, it is quite evident in here that, if you think about it, the eventual outcome of going in the wrong direction, that is, down, and not up, would be to emerge on the other side of the planet, that is, there really is no down or up after all.

Hyper was very impressed with FM's analysis and offered all his savings in return for this deep insight, which did not mount to much since he had not paid attention to his investments which he found far too confusing.

In due course, the bodies rotted and were gnawed at by various underground creatures and bacteria. The bones slowly turned to dust and finally there was nothing left but a family of very satisfied rodents. The souls, in this manner escaped and headed outwards, and after encountering exciting territory somewhere deep inside the earth's mantle, emerged in an underground sewage system.

That did not matter too much since they could not smell very well and they had become rather fond of creepy crawly underground creatures over their many years attached to the rotting bodies. They played around in the muck for years together, and mastered all manners of underground sports and arts between them.

Hyper contemplated introducing a form of literature in this new land. Hyper was a sensitive soul, and he felt this place could do with a bit of introspection and critical thought. He thought the best way would be to call for a townhall, raise a topic for discussion and allow his creepy crawly friends to react. He would then document the discussion and eventually after many such events, he would have volumes of critically
thought out, well, thoughts.

FM was not impressed and insisted this project was doomed to failure because he did not believe in volumes of arguments. He supported the existence of an elegant universe and believed there was a fundamental truth to it all, a simple and logical fundamental truth, which can be written on the back of a matchbox, and can be used to explain everything, even the things that Hyper wanted to introspect about. This truth, then, would make introspection redundant and a waste of time.

Hyper did not understand any of the above and went ahead with his plan in any case. He decided to call his book - Reviews from Deep Within: Souls Speak (With Support From a Million Other Creatures).
***

Not for the tender hearted

2006-04-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why sausages look the way they do? Perhaps the following definition will answer that

A sausage consists of ground meat ... and possibly other ingredients, generally packed in a casing (traditionally the intestines of the animal, though ...), and ...

Now that I have your attention, let me warn you, this post is likely to put some of you off. Honestly, that is not my intention, since this post is actually a socio-psycho-puko peek into the world of certain delicacies which, in other cultures, would be downright offensive. Unfortunately, I don't have a complete answer to the obvious question that must crop in your scientific mind; why is it that one man's meat is another's shoe. I aim to share my observations that have led me to ask this question in the first place.

Carrying on from the sausage example, if you thought that was a creative leap in the history of mankind, think again, for the sheer number of experiments performed by man on animal body parts will convince you that man intrinsically is a pervert, or from another point of view, curious.

Consider Haggis, a traditional Scottish dish.

"Although there are many recipes, it is normally made with the following ingredients: sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately an hour."

I am not quite sure which preceded which, or if indeed they were independent inventions, but I would really like objective research to be conducted on which is the more hideous concept - sausage or haggis. Interestingly, Haggis isn't the only one of its kind, there are variations available from different parts of the world. Drob from Romania, Balkenbrij from the Netherlands, Pölsa from Sweden, Saumagen from Western Germany, Švargl in Croatia, Kokoretsi in Greece all prove Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel theory about culture easily spreading across a continent that is wider spread on its east-west axis.

If that isn't gross enough for you, how about Þorramatur from iceland which consists of many different types of food - sour ram's testicles, rotten shark, burned sheep heads, sheep's head jam, blood pudding, dried fish (often cod or haddock) with butter and many other courses that are considered delicious among some Icelanders.

And if you were a vegetarian and were thinking in your patronising heads that "these philistines will be treated appropriately in the ultimate court of law," well, think again. For offensive cuisine is not restricted to meat alone.

Durian, a fruit, is to the Indonesians what the mango is to the Indians - it is considered a most outstanding delicacy and is often quoted as the king of fruits. But there is a problem. It stinks. A much quoted description

"A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes"

may be considered gentle when compared to some other descriptions

"its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away."

It possesses such a strong smell that it is officially prohibited in public places, even if you try to break the law by carrying it completely wrapped in a bag into a hotel, well, you've given the cleaners a good month long employment. The general belief is that it is very difficult to provide an accurate description, thus comparisons with sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray, used surgical swabs. But in the end, it is a delicacy, and locals swear by it.

But don't let the above cloud your impression or kill your appetite. It really is a cultural thing. Its all in the mind. Why, there's even a coriander haters club with a strong presence on the net. Its quite shocking, really, for coriander rates amongst the top few spices/garnishes used in Indian food, it adds such a spectacular flavour to simple food, its astonishing. And here are people that call it "smelly/stinky grass."

And thats it for just now. I haven't included some of the really "gourmet stuff" on purpose - like cobra blood in wine laced with leech hormone to stop it from coagulating - since these are not commonly consumed by people across an entire region/community. If i did that, you would really send me hate mail.

Footnote:
The above would realy not have been possible without the contributions of discovery channel, wikipedia and lonely planet. Many thanks.

Azza Bhi Hota Hai!

2006-04-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

Azharuddin leads India Seniors to exciting win against Pakistan seniors by scoring 82 off 78 balls. "Azhar's innings was a treat to watch... as he played with poise and comfort"

Azhar is also hopeful of clearing his name from match fixing and while he "refused to comment on whether he was made a scapegoat by the BCCI", I am quite sure he was. I would like to start a petition online to support his case. I have always been a huge Azhar fan and I am very very disappointed to find very few pages on the web dedicated to him.

It is disgusting that such a large number of people seem to have accepted his "guilt" when nothing has been proven whatsoever. I am not sure if we are addicted to sensationalism or to cynicism but in either case we are likely to accept the more perverted point of view as truth unless proven otherwise. Hence even though a great man like Kapil has come out in support of Azhar in the past, we refuse to give Azhar the benefit of doubt.

I think it is shameful to convict an individual before his crime is proven.

Quote of the day

2006-04-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

"People who enjoy eating sausage and obeying the law should not watch either being made" - Otto von Bismarck

Cricketers Reporting and Cricketing Reporters

2006-04-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

The Indian cricketing community is an extremely colourful community, and that is well known. Yet, I cannot stop being amazed by what comes up once in a way.

Sample the following from today's article on cricinfo -

no man, not even Jonathan "two thirds of the Earth is covered by water the rest by Jonty" Rhodes, can hold a place in a team on the strength of fielding alone. Kaif's numbers are dismal. 8, 5*, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 5, in his last eight knocks, an average of 22/7, 3.142857 ... If he remembers his high-school maths, Kaif will recognise that as the value of pi, the magic number that makes so many complex things so much simpler.

But nothing can ever beat Mr Sidhu (That is also well known). The following is what he had to say about the miss India contest

Beauty is worse than wine. It intoxicates both the holder and the beholder. Grace will last but beauty will blast. I would die for roses than live for bread. Beauty is eloquent even when silent.

And suggestions to the potential winners and participants

Fear clogs and faith liberates. The Indian girls need to be more self confident, articulate and adept at using the English language. The girls should be adaptable like chameleons; change colour according to the situation.

Truly, unbeatable.

Are you one of them?

2006-03-31T12:11:00.000-08:00

place of birth?!
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

Was filling a form online.. Found this!

May be a point

2006-03-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

Hawkins
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

A posting (Pictures that are worth a thousand numbers) on this blog describes an interesting anecdote. I was left wondering what common day-to-day situations could benefit from a ppt.

Situation 1: Politics
Apart from the Gettysburg address as mentioned in the above blog (it would certainly be handy if Lincoln distributed copies before his famous speech), perhaps the national constitution should come with a ppt attachment for quick reference. Perhaps even an excel based checklist.

Situation 2: Advertising
The ad world could use ppts to provide one slider summaries. E.g. the famous Hawkins ad (lyrics from here ).

There are of course, situations where this might not be possible e.g. the Swagat Baniyan Ad. While the message is very amenable to bullet points as shown below, I suspect the slide would suffer from lack of adequate content beyond the slide header:

(Since) Isme Rua nahin Uthta

(Hence) Swagat hi lena chaiye

Another example is the Dollar Baniyan ad. In this case, the message would be too obfuscating

Jasba Ho Andar

To Dikhta hai Bahar

Or how about “Yes, Mera Best friend, friendly wash.”

Situation 3: Weddings and religious events
These would be a lot easier to follow if priests prepared presentations to let the audience know what section they were going through.

Situation 4: Medical Prescriptions
Rather than provide a badly handwritten piece of paper, doctors should provide one sliders in the following format:

Slide header: [name of illness] as suffered by [name of patient]

Summary of Illness

Prescription including: Rationale, Dosage, Cross-product Relationship (e.g. refer medicine 4 in case urine turns orange)

Footer: Disclaimer
Annexure: FAQs

Etc…

Phrase for the day

2006-03-18T14:23:00.000-08:00

Goldilocks Economy - Not too hot, not too cold

The Inertia of Expertise

2006-03-15T03:24:00.000-08:00

I have observed on a few occasions that a great deal of knowledge can actually hinder performance. Rahul Dravid realised this in '98 and became the legend he is now by consciously forgetting* some of the classical knowledge that he possessed then. Imagine the Dravid of yesteryears coming in at no. 3 in a one day match chasing 435 for victory.

I have seen instances of this sort closer to home, too. The virtuoso pianist who was never to be found for practice for PAF** is an example. I quite see his point, for the rest of the team was probably so substandard that he would necessarily cringe at the final output. I am sure you don't, as a star, feel particularly appreciated when an uneducated audience goes wild at the end of an average performance. Perhaps this is the expert's dilemma.

This is obviously a challenge when a team is working to achieve a certain result, which does not quite require an elegant solution but a quick dirty one. How do you handle such a situation? Do you take the expert aside and request him to forgive the inadequacies of the team but to not lose the bigger picture? How do you deal with the bad blood and stress that the rest of the team suddenly finds itself in because the expert is refusing to contribute as the information available or the timelines are unrealistic? Do you do away with the expert unless he mends his ways?

*Forgetting here is to be interpreted as ignoring elegance based on context.
**PAF - The Wikipedia article is truly a stub. Request all impacted participants to contribute and improve the quality.

Pret-a-Manager

2006-03-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

Stumbled across the following website..........................

Now, "The Portal has been conceived and launched by ** who is an Engineer from IIT Delhi and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad with vast Senior Management experience with reputed.." blah blah blah.

What caught my eye, though, was the following comment on the site -

"During his career, he has interacted with over 1,00,000 professionals at all Management Levels."

Now, the site does not mention which year he started his career (though I did not scan the site in detail), but I could not resist trying to calculate how voracious an interacter he is -

Assuming he has 30 years of experience, he has at an average interacted with (more than) 3448 new managers (professionals at all management levels) every year.

i.e. 9.447 new managers every day of the last 30 years assuming he has met new people every single day.

i.e. 1 new manager every hour of every single day of the last 30 days assuming he was met people for 10 hours every single day.

Hats off to you, sir!

I have also heard a similar story of a person who has apparently taken 15,000 flights in his lifetime. In this case I know for a fact that he is in his early 30s. That makes it 500 flights every year.

Hmm.

An Interesting Article here.

Tiffinbites

2006-02-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

"Jamal grew up in north London surrounded by a highly prosperous family business that provided local stores with tasty, wholesome Indian food.

His mother imbued him with the joy of excellence in the kitchen, choice ingredients, freshly ground spices, combined and cooked at home.

Bored by the daily work fare of sandwiches, Jamal fantasised about launching a new proposition onto every UK High Street that would offer exciting and tasty, home-cooked, quality Indian and Asian cuisine.

Hence the creation of tiffinbites: A new concept in urban fast food dining"

Arroz Negro

2006-02-11T11:39:00.000-08:00

This is a Spanish dish which quite fascinated me. The following is the google translation of the recipe, and the translation itself is a riot - gets better 3rd paragraph onwards.

Sepia below refers to Squid and "Red" refers to squid ink below (I think)

------------
To put the clams in a dipper, to cover them with water and a little salt, so that they expel all the sand. When they are clean, putting them in a dipper to the fire and when they begin to boil and they are all open to separate them, to reserve the clams and to strain the broth with a very fine strainer and to also reserve it.

To clean the sepias well, to cut them in squares of 2 centimeters and to gather the red in a glass. In order to prepare the red, to place on a glass or a small bowl, a very fine strainer and to make pass through him the red of the sepias, removing constantly, in circular form, with a teaspoon and adding little by little, over the strainer, up to two spoonfuls of water, to facilitate the strained one of the red.

To put a paella to the fire with the oil and when he is hot to throw the peppers cut in small cuadraditos, to rehogar them and when they are tier to add the rallada onion to us. When the onion is glaseada to add very perforated garlic. To give returns him with the wood spoon, to mix, to lower the fire and to add the sepia pieces, to rehogar them and to move it everything well, to avoid that one sticks. To throw the rallado tomato, to remove all good and to leave to untimed fire during about 15 minutes.

To throw the rice, to give returns him, so that all good is mixed, to throw then the water to him to cook the clams and if outside necessary to add something more, maintaining the proportions classic of double amount of rice water that. To raise the fire and when it breaks to boil, to throw the salt and the red removing so that everything is mixed very well. To maintain to strong fire during 5 minutes, trying that the fire is distributed of homogenous form. To lower the fire and to maintain to untimed fire during 15 minutes. When they lack 5 minutes to place the clams. Passed east time to separate and to let rest during about 4 or 5 minutes.

True Stressbusters

2006-01-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

stratocumulus
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

I always find looking up at the sky relaxing and humbling. Its when you look down that you believe life is serious when, really, nothing is.

Hence my advice to all who need it - look up to the skies and see (Because I'm easy come, easy go!!!).

For a glimpse check the following out

http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery/

You really are small fry, don't forget that!

Diarios de mountain-cicleta

2006-01-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

Please to check out http://24.6.88.3/7summits/7summits.nsf.

Website describing a junior's attempt to climb the 7 highest peaks (i.e. highest peaks in each continent) in the quickest time. Awesome story around his trek to Aconcagua.

News Flash - he's climbed Vinson Massif (Antarctica) two days back or so.

Little full of himself, but hell, if he can be so focused, then why not?!

Sania Mirza is into the 2nd round of the Aussie open*

2006-01-17T14:05:00.000-08:00

I think she is really cool. I have unfortunatel not seen her play in a long time, but I distinctly remember her forehand. It is quite brilliant. I really hope she does well and that her current rank (32) is not the highest she ever reaches.

However, even if she doesn't, she has definitely done what I had never expected to see. A woman Indian player thats worldclass - nothing against women, but a lot against India. Women and Sports are two areas that don't quite qualify as India's strengths. India has a fair number of things it should be ashamed of, and these are two of them.

We have clearly not improved much in sport in the last 20 years (thought a silver medal at the last Olympics is quite an improvement over the last many!), and India has not improved too much on the women front either. The male female ratio at IIT (undergrad category) was some 350 to 15 in 1995. Not sure if its improved too much since then. The director at IIMC had expressed disappoinment at our welcome meeting in the year 2000 on the same issue - a male female ratio of 210 to 30. But I sincerely doubt if anything has improved since then. Or if anything has been attempted to improve that at all.

If anything, I believe the BPO revolution and the western influence should help improve this in the next generation. Should I check for stats 5 years from now? Will the gender ratio in the country improve in this time? Will female foeticide reduce?

It is exasperating, but what does one do?

* Venus Williams is not

The Great Crossing

2006-01-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

Missing Links
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

The winter of 2005 has thus been declared the season of brotherhood - when two warriors were united by the quirk of fate known as the credit card.

It was a massive celebration - Entire nations declared it a national holiday, entire peoples celebrated it with their families - with wine, turkey, brussel sprouts and pudding.

The Christmas Weekend comes to an end

2005-12-27T13:43:00.000-08:00

Four days of holidaying just whizzed past. I do not feel rejuvenated - it was all too quick, too tiring. Now I need a break to overcome this fatigue!

Thankfully the New year weekend is coming up. It doesn't last 4 days, but 3 days should be sufficient, since I am now aware of what I need the 3 dys for.

Its been a long long time since I took a vacation. This weekend has probably been my longest period off in 2 years now. Shall apply for a proper vacation shortly, and shall try to stick to it. phew.

The road outside the house

2005-12-09T10:56:00.000-08:00

The road outside the house
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

A bright and sunny day is not to be missed. It is simply amazing how everything can be so beautiful!

How to be a star photographer

2005-11-18T12:38:00.000-08:00

Lewes Nov 6 2005 012
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

Visit Lewes Castle on a windy day. Tie your camera to your wrist. And click at random.

Not Enough Time

2005-10-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

If you do return to this site after so many days of silence on my part, I must thank you very much. I am honoured.

I am also very tired. I have been working really hard. There is just so much to do when you start working hard. And well, the more you do, the more you find to do.

My calendar looks like a crowded tube station when the line's running with severe delays, and I just don't seem to find the time to be by myself.

Interesting concept

In India one does not think much about working till late in the night. Here in London, I work till 7 pm occasionally - yet, I feel completely run down when I do that. And of course, i never work weekends.

One would have thought such a lifestyle should be relaxed and easy on the nerves. But thats not true. I am as tired and stressed (hate to admit it though) as I have ever been.

Is it worth it?

It is not. Hence my suggestion (to myself, and anyone who needs it) is to forget! My Hindi teacher in school could not teach me much Hindi (not his fault) but he did teach all of us to forget and be happy. When he'd ask a question and somebody would say "I forgot", he'd say "Shabaash! Sab bhool jao, sukhi rahoge." (well done! Forget everything, you'll be happy that way). He'd say that a million times.

Hence I will forget everything for just now. The weekend is upon me. I must enjoy.

Strange fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter cry.

Brand Baj Gaya

2005-08-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

Emami has launched a new product, a fairness cream for men. This has been touted in at least one article as "creating a new segment in the country."

Incredibly, the chosen brand name (arrived at, presumably, after immense research, cluster analysis, psycho-socio analysis, Maslow's heirarchy etc.) is....

Fair and Handsome!

In my final semester at B school i had done a project on "Brands that failed to take off". It was incredible to find brand managers committing the most basic mistakes. Most failures were due to reasons that any human with common sense would see clearly. Yet, brand managers seem to be blinded by their research and "insight."

Another example that comes to my mind is "Nirma Salt" which was launched sometime back in a packet that looks exactly like the detergent.

Maybe I am announcing doomsday for the product too soon - After all, the fairness market in India does seem to defy logic - Maybe the market is so huge that tapping 0.01% of it would be significant enough- But all I can say is lets wait and watch.

Rural Delights

2005-08-01T04:36:00.000-07:00

Went for a drive yesterday evening to take advantage of a boring cricket match and great weather, the kind that makes Bangalore liveable inspite of all the damage inflicted upon it by the explosion (not of the "bomb" variety, though many areas in town resemble exactly that) of the economy coupled with a "d-uh what happened" administration.

The destination was unknown, but the general direction was arrived at after minor deliberation. The decision turned out to be a good one, as we hit reasonable amount of vegetation and open land within about 5 km of leaving home. The road also boasted of an "inventure academy" and an "Indian high school" which, apparently, has taken upon itself the challenging task of "creating leaders for tomorrow". There were also a few boards claiming to be "rejuventation centers" and this appeared to be the most believable of the claims we saw on the road; it was truly rejuvenating to be roaming around in these parts - various shades of green in various shapes and densities surrounded us, with dark rain clouds and a grey sky above.

The road itself, was a disaster, and I could hear the car suspension emitting a heart wrenching squeak at irregular intervals. The topography of most roads in and around Bangalore appears to follow a very unique pattern - maybe its a hidden message. Could it be the solution to the reimann hypothesis?

Approximately 10 km into our drive, we found ourselves at crossroads. One led towards an approximately similar terrain, the other two led to smaller lanes. It was a unanimous decision to head left, one of the smaller lanes (the other smaller lane creepily seemed to head in the direction of Hosur Road, or so I thought). A pony was tied to one side and chewing. And we were sandwiched between two tractors.

Of course, we were in no hurry, hence we drove at tractor top speed. Eventually the tractor noise became too much to bear and we had to overtake the one in front. The road, miraculously, improved a while later, and so did the scenery.

By now we were fantasising about hot jalebis and chai, but since you do not find hot jalebis in rural Karnataka, we decided to fantasise about rural Karnataka sweetmeats. This was quite a surreal exercise, since we weren't really connoiseurs of rural karnataka cuisine. Eventually a "civilised" clearing appeared, announced by a "venkateswara bar and family restaurant" and a small market place. A shop was identified, and we picked up some local crisps. No tea was available, though.

As adventurous as we were, we roamed around the area till we arrived at (hold your breath) an "Annapurna Bakery" and observed a kettle on a flame deep inside. We asked for two cups and for some (unbranded) local biscuits that looked very inviting. Also for 50 g of local (unbranded) twisty wafers. The biscuits were slightly warm, soft and tasted like the most delicious cookies you can find. We promptly branded them "australian cookies" in honour of the first floor of the Forum mall.

Tea appeared in tiny plastic cups, and we warmed our gullets as any religious tea drinker would.

And when we were ready to pay, Mr. Annapurna bakery man said "Rs. 9.50". My cousin, Aditya, philosophically announced "India is great" and paid our provider. The village was called Gunjur. (Entirely different from Gunjur)

Thus an extraordinary evening was spent, and the drive back was spent chewing over the economic state of India - the beggars on Airport road look far more wretched than anyone we saw, and clearly earn more than the shopkeepers at Gunjur; what prompts the security guards in my building to live with family in the generator room or a makeshift room under the staircase? So on and so forth.

Anyway. It was fun. Will definitely go back, and further next time.

Cartoon laws of physics

2005-07-27T02:08:00.000-07:00

Cartoon Law I
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.

Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second takes over.

Other laws at
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~hartwel1/humor/MISC/CARTOON_PHYSICS.HTML

Phrase for the day

2005-07-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

Non-Trivial Zero.

Makes me furious

2005-07-11T23:31:00.000-07:00

I usually don't pay attention to petition mails and similar mails simply because I don't know the authenticity of the mail and how long the mail has really been in circulation. In addition, I really don't know how effective petition mails are in achieving anything.

However, when I receive mails from people I know are not addicted to the ctrl-forward disease, I sit up and notice. One such is the following. And it makes me FURIOUS.

From: "Rasleen K Sahni"
Subject: FW: Bonsai kittens....disgusting!!!

This is so terrible. A site that we were able to shut last year hasreturned. We have to try to shut it down again! (www.bonsaikitten.com).
A Japanese man in New York breeds and sells kittens that are called BONSAICATS. That would sound cute, if it weren't kittens that were put intolittle bottles after being given a muscle relaxant and then locked upfor the rest of their lives!! The cats are fed through a straw and havea small tube for their faces. The skeleton of the cat will take on theform of the bottle as the kitten grows. The cats never get theopportunity to move. They are used as original and exclusive souvenirs.These are the latest trends in New York, China, Indonesia and NewZealand. If you think you can handle it, go to this site www.bonsaikitten.com and have a look at the methods being used to putthese little kittens into bottles. This petition needs 500 names, so please put your one name on it!!! Copy the text into a new email and put your name on the bottom,then send it to everyone you know!

To be honest, I am amazed that this petition is required at all. I am hoping this is a prank, in the end!

So much to do so much to read

2005-07-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

As if wikipedia was not enough, google has now emerged with the following

http://print.google.com/print?ie=UTF-8&q=superstrings&btnG=Search

How much to read, I ask you!

The sun revolves around the United States of America

2005-06-21T23:14:00.000-07:00

Overheard in an elevator in Bangalore - two international women chatting.

Person 1 (aghast) : "Oh no is it raining again?"
Person 2 (knowledgeably) : "Hmm the monsoor season has started."
*image of neural activity inside the head of person 1*
P1 (one up on p2) : "Hmm.. Is it monsoor or is it monsoon?"
*confused slience*
P2 (genuinely confused now): "Hmm.. Is it monsoon or is it tsunami?"
*Shock on the face of the other individual. Shock on my face too.*
P1 (almost punching victory fist in the air): "NO!! Tsunami is not here."
*relief on my face*
P1 : "Tsunami is what happend in Iraq"

Any guesses which country the women were from?

Phrase for the day

2005-06-17T03:21:00.000-07:00

"Sensibly provocative"

And then there were students

2005-06-14T01:51:00.000-07:00

Pl check out the review for the book at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0849317096/qid=1118687568/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/103-1328974-5584647?v=glance&s=books

More comments..

Abominable said
Though 'crap-weasel' is like the best new noun i'veheard in a long time LOL,I actually think waterboy is right...all you guys who'reraging at TSR should stop to think whether wecompletely misjudged him all these years. I think thefact that some junta retained the books shows a deepfreudian admiration of the book which perhaps peerpressure is not letting them admit to. And as maladpointed out it helped some of us learn a lot (e.g. ADgot an AA)...maybe chau you should change the rightworth of the book to 0.000002 (i didnt keep track fothe 0s but you get the drift...or should i say current:)As Farhat's signature says 'don't think twice beforelistening to your heart.'PS: Also I suggest we all go and click on yes i foundchau's review helpful :))

Waterboy said
Enough with the grades suckers.
PS: I flunked the lab

Malady (w) said
We have hope I am still regretting the fact that I didnt buy more of his books and increase my net worth And I am also enlightened to know that King, Kalashnikov, Abominable and myself didnt have a different IQ level after all. All of us got CC in Digital Measurement Techniques course.
Thank you all

Waterboy said
To refresh your memories from amazon, these are the most used phrasesin the book not used anywhere else..:Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)auto ranging circuit, voltage ratio meter, reciprocating curve, zerophase condition, sampling wattmeter, minimum total resistance, phasecompensation method, hybrid multiplier, ith comparator, widthconverter, shunt reduction, digital ratio, digital phase meter,counting time interval, inverted ladder, shunt method, unknowncapacitor, voltage transfer characteristic, programmable gainamplifiers, programmable amplifier, minimum spread, voltage transferfunction, null frequency, converted gains, clockwise hysteresis

Waterboy said some more
" The only way to recoup your $4 is to take those circuit diagrams and pitch a> couple of diodes and triodes here and file a patent on your name. You can then try to sell the patent :)"

If you change "try to sell the patent" to "stick it up your ass" it sounds really funny

Once there was a prof

2005-06-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

The prof wrote a book, took a course, announced the mid-semester exam an open book exam, and that the only book that was to be "open" was the book he wrote.
In the end he gave 14 Fs and other similar grades to the batch that had purchased the book with such fondness.

7 years down the line, the book has found its way to an international audience on the net - available for a whopping dollar 60 (and a bit more). This has led to discussions among the sufferers. A snapshot follows (with names masked). I am hoping for a few more such messages. I'll keep adding if there are.

Vivacious C. wrote:
Guys XYZ's book is available on nile.com for only $6x.yy. Please review this book on nile so that the world can finally knowwhat a masterpiece it was

Dynamic J wrote:
I saw some fine books by Feynman for 10 bucks on amazon..And this one is $6x? I dont think we need a review,the price puts it down already.. I cant believe I read this trash (more than one time) onlyto get a CC. N its such a shame that this 175Rs (orwas it275?) book made it as one of the 3 books that i boughtinwhole btech..!
cheers,
Dynamic.

Kalashnikov wrote:
I remember that one fine day when I, Botox and Kingsy got kicked out of XYZ's class for goofing up during his lecture... I cant believe the 3 of us actuallywent over to his house to beg for his forgiveness (read that as to prevent a FF).. Botox, Kingsy: i swear on my BC "its payback time :)".. what say we knock his b&lls out when we go to IITthe next time .. :) .. ..

Abashed stop grinning :)
Cheers
Kalashnikov

Shakin' A wrote

Probably every book that sells has a signature and a personal note on 'how to make a trivial amount ofmoney (275 x 80 = Rs. 22,000)' from the author which makes it so precious. I invested 275 to pass the course by reading it duringexams. Midsem let me read it up to page 55 but to mysurprise the end sems were closed books. I kicked myself to not sit with good ol' Harrison S to read it properly during the end sems. But it was a blessing in disguise because eventually the author summoned some of our mates who read thebook very well ... I was lucky because I did not.

Nile Rodgers, Bernard Edwards, Tony Thompson

2005-06-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Raj's purchase, and the show on soul music on BBC, I went ahead and purchased a Diana Ross album called, well, Diana. There were a number of albums, and the reason I purchased it was that it was not the most expensive and it was not the cheapest either. I had a budget in mind, and I did not have any particular album in mind, and hence I bought it.
And then I heard it. It was quite cool and now I know what "groovy" really means. And then I heard it a second time and a third time. And slowly it dawned upon me that it wasn't the vocals, nor the songs, but the accompaniment that was really kickass! And so I looked at the sleeve - and there it was! Composed and written by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers. Produced by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers. Bass by Bernard Edwards, guitar by Nile Rodgers. And since the drumming was cool, I noted the drummers name too - Tony Thompson.

And what do you know! They were a band that "helped propel disco to new levels of popularity." They were the funk/disco band of the 70s, "Chic"! I've never heard of any of these before, but I sure am excited by the prospect of checking them out.

Nile Rodgers turns out to be one of the most influential producers of all times, having produced albums for David Bowie, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Diana Ross (of course) and many others, including the "We are Family" album by Sister Sledge (honestly I have only heard the title song, but if these are anything to go by, there is a minefield waiting to be explored out there!). In fact, he was honoured as the "top producer in the world" in 1996.

Bernard Edwards - wikipedia has the following to say about him

Bernard Edwards is considered one of the most important bass players of the 20th century. His bass line from Chic hit "Good Times" has become one of the most copied pieces of music in history, and had a huge influence on musicians of all genres when released.
The bass line was used without credit or royalty for the first rap hit in history, Sugarhill Gang's "Rappers Delight" in 1979, and copied by Queen's bass player John Deacon for Queen's rock hit "Another One Bites The Dust" in 1980. The following twenty-odd years has seen it sampled inumerable times by artists of the most diverse genres, from Rap to Punk and Techno to Pop. Duran Duran bassist John Taylor often played the song in homage during his solo performances, and cited Edwards as his primary influence.

Tony Thompson - apart from a lot of the above, he performed with Led Zep for Live Aid, and was ultimately invited as a replacement for John Bonham during their reunion attempt in 1986.

Man, the things you find by chance :)

Large part of the credit above goes to, once again, Wikipedia! *Applause*

Back home

2005-06-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

Escaped a week early. Flight back was a nightmare. Took 26 hours to reach home from the time I left my room. This included a 6 hour wait at Colombo airport - of which the last 3 were spent amongst hoardes of people returning from "Gulf." Unbelievable set of people - the belt at the airport gave up after some 200 televisions and other electronic gadgets had appeared. At this point I got to know that their were another 8 such loads waiting to emerge.

Hardwork punctuated with loud sounds

2005-05-18T01:25:00.000-07:00

As evident, work has kept me busy.

(One man is speaking on the phone very loudly right across my seat. VERY VERY difficult to focus when someone speaks at 100 dB and at a baud rate of 1000 bits a second. On top of that he bounces about when excited and the few words I manage to hear convinces me that the discussion is not particularly critical to world peace/global warming/world security or anything important)

It has now been almost 4 weeks since I came here. Homesickness is catching up very strongly. Wish to be back home on my bed/sofa with remote in hand/car with music & AC.

I have done very little of note apart from work in these 4 weeks. (Must document the fact that work has been particularly "note-worthy". I have made notes like never before - not even when Nandy Miss would dictate her classic notes during history class when I was in class IX.) I have roamed around a little bit here and there but it has mostly been the circle line or the Picadilly/Central line combo from South Kensington to Liverpool Street.

One of the noteworth aspects has been the shows on TV.

This includes one terrible rerun of a 1970s sitcom called "Married with children" which cannot be watched beyond 5 minutes, a rather boring series directed by and starring Mira Syal based on her novel "Life isn't all ha ha hee hee", strange reality shows "Playing it straight", "the Farm", "Celebrity Love Island", comedy talk shows "FAQ U", modern brit comedy show "The League of Gentlemen" which was particularly gross last night, wierd shows about plastic surgery (there were a couple of them - one was almost exclusively focused on genitalia and one called "brand new you" in which a person goes through a complete makeover - tummy tuck, new teeth, new skin, recoloured hair etc). The one on genitalia caused quite an uproar with the media screaming "its voyeuristic" and was eventually pulled of the screen. ) etc.

However, there have been some remarkable shows as well. This includes the top 100 no.1 hits of all times (that wouldn't be my top 100, but it was fun nevertheless. The top few include Imagine, Bohemian rhapsody, hey jude, dancing queen etc), the top 100 war movies of all time (top few - saving private ryan, platoon, schindlers list), some tongue in cheek humour shows the way only Brits can be (this statement added for effect), and my favourite, a show called "Deep Jungle." To be honest, yesterday was only the 2nd episode of deep jungle and it wasn't really great, but it was good nevertheless and the first episode was simply outstanding. It is hosted by the voice of a man with an amazing scottish accent (or so I think - its a quaint accent nevertheless) and the two episodes have been about things I've not seen before (though I've seen a lot of shows on animals and jungles in my life :)). The ones that stood out were the manakin bird with the most outlandish courting ritual of all (including a moonwalk - it is really mesmerising), the Moth with the 12 inch tongue in Madagascar (predicted by Darwin 150 years ago) and the Brazil Nut tree which towers over the Amazon forest, has a fruit that cannot be broken into by a drill or an axe, and requires a special rodent to break into and scatter the seeds around for germination and stops growing nuts the minute the nearby forest is converted into, say, a farm.

Please check out http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/deepjungle/episode1_bostwick1.html for some more stuff on the manakin bird, and navigate the site for some more interesting stuff.

This weekend will be used more fruitfully - shall meet Raj at the airport at *brrr* 730 am, do some shopping (at last) for family and friends and maybe take a train down to Cambridge as recommended by one person here in the office.

P.S. Other success stories here have been Twinings English Breakfast tea and the cookies at office.

Warmest day of the summer so far

2005-04-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

4. Now I smile
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

Like I said, most of Britain is vacationing this weekend. It is a "Banking holiday weekend" and there are a number of super discounts available in a lot of stores right through the weekend (including Monday).
But more important than that, is the fact that the sun is out! And when the sun is out, all of Britain is out as well. People in strappy clothes enjoying themselves in the parks, eating icecreams, having a good time.
This was my first weekend here and I decided to cover the basic stuff. Unfortunately, I could not feel Wordsworth's sense of romance upon westminster bridge. I was also accosted by a woman in her middle ages (I am being kind here) to donate a "little" for "children". Honestly, I was scared with the way she put her arm around me and said all of this. Yet, I gathered my wits and said "How little is little?" I guess this was not a question she was used to, especially since she had started the transaction with a lovely little flower. After exchanging a couple of similar statements, I dished out 5 pounds (Boo Hoo) and gave to her. Now I am wondering if she meant her children or some other children. Of course, she also blessed me with "Jesus is watching you" or something similr.
Anyway, walked about for 3 odd hours and clicked a few pics. You can click on the pic here to see some more.
Thats all for now!

These brits are crazy (tap tap tap)

2005-04-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

Especially on friday evening. Massive crowd outside every single pub starting noon.

Also, the weather's supposed to be awesome this bank holiday weekend. Could touch 25 deg! Hottest day this summer! Hence approximately everyone's on vacation. Have been warned to expect "lots of us in ridiculous attire turning pink"

What can I say.

Plan for weekend - shift from hotel into studio apt and mark attendance at the important spots.

Mostly in transit

2005-04-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

Spring time and its getting warmer. The temperature could hit 20. But high temperature implies rain. Do not worry I have adequate warm clothing and have bought an umbrella.

What about people who compulsively mark every mail with "importance: high"?

2005-04-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

Insecure or plain dumb?
Ever heard of an insecure dolphin? Can't remember Douglas Adams having mentioned one.

I would like to share the following criticism of DAdams:
Douglas Adams forgot to mention which species of dolphins he was talking about. Talking about dolphins is like talking about apes . A statement like "dolphins eat sea weed" is like saying "apes eat termites" without taking into account variations in the culinary preferences of gorillas and orangutans (and George Bush).

Mankind, Ah!

2005-04-04T02:38:00.000-07:00

Outside Rear View Mirror
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

An observer of mankind will find numerous instances of logica absentia.
(There is no such term. I just invented it. But the meaning can be derived.)

Consider for instance, the existence of a certain sect of people, united by the fact that they do not use their side-view mirrors while driving; i.e. they keep it "shut". The reason, apparently, is to keep it intact, and not expose it to potential homicides who believe in driving within 2 mm of the next car, and are abundant on Indian Roads.
Somebody tell me, if you are not going to use it anyway, why the need to protect it in the first place?!

Another example is from the movie "Anari" starring Karishma Kapoor. Karishma Kapoor's (elder) brothers are told by astrologers when she is born that she would marry against their wishes. So they ground her at home till she is ready to marry, apparently with the intent that she does not see a man (other than them and an innocent servant, but thats a different matter).
I ask, why bother? Either you believe the astrologer in which case she would elope no matter what you do, or you do not believe the astrologer in which case it doesn't matter anyway!

In my opinion, Astrology in itself is an ignoratio elenchi (this word does exist and I just encountered it and I felt I must use it somehow. I might be stretching the definition, too, but you get the idea. It means the logical fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but which proves or supports a different proposition than the one it is purporting to prove or support). For, even if you were able to genuinely predict your future, there would be no advantage in knowing about it. Yet, mankind spends hours musing over this issue.

Another example is my experience when I lost my debit card. Everytime I told someone about it, I was asked "Really, where?" Now, if I knew where I lost it, I wouldn't call it lost, would I?!

I wonder why. Do you think Dolphins do the same?

Something to mull over through the weekend

2005-04-01T02:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you hear songs that make you think.
Some songs make you wonder why the singer ever sang the song (e.g. summer of 69) and some make you wonder why the singer ever sang (e.g. summer of 69).

Some artists, however, write songs deep enough to make you think about the subject. Phoebe from Friends is one such artist. Smelly cat (lyrics provided in Appendix 1) is the best known of the lot, but some others are equally thought provoking. For instance:

Blackout
New York City has no power.
And the milk is getting sour.
But to me this is not scary,
'Cause I stay away from dairy.

Weird Al is another one. Sticking to the theme of fermentation, I reproduce the following, sung to the tune of a famous Aerosmith song:

Livin' in the fridge
There's somethin' weird in the fridge today
I don't know what it is
Food I can't recognize

My roommate won't throw a thing away
I guess it's probably his
It looks like it's alive...

And livin' in the fridge...livin' in the fridge

There's somethin' gross in the fridge today
It's green and growin' hair
It's been there since July

If you can name that object
In that baggie over there
Then mister, you're a better man than I

It's livin' in the fridge
(You can't stop the mold from growin')
Livin' in the fridge
(Can't tell what it is at all)

Tell me do you think it should be carbon-dated
Fumigated or cremated and buried at sea?

You try to save a little bit of your home cookin'
Couple weeks later, got a scary-lookin' specimen
It always happens, my friend

Again and again and again and again

Somethin' stinks in the fridge today
And it's been rottin' there all week
It could be liver cake or woolly mammoth steak
Well, maybe I should take another peek...

etc.

But if you thought Indians were incapable of producing such poetry, you are terribly mistaken. Some songs can be highly philosophical. For instance:

Ande Ka Funda
…
Omlete Ke O Mein Anda Chocolate Ke Cho Mein Anda
Tohfa Ke To Mein Anda Coca Ke Co Mein Anda
Toilet Ke To Mein Anda Voilet Ke Vo Mein Anda
Hotel Ke Ho Mein Anda Botal Ke Bo Mein Anda

Fashion Ke Show Mein Anda Ration Ke Row Mein Anda
Arrow Mein Bow Mein Anda Come And Go Mein Anda
King Kong Mein Bhi Anda Ping Pong Mein Bhi Anda
Ding Dong Mein Bhi Anda Sing Song Mein Bhi Anda

Is Mein Chupa Hai Jeevan Ka Fal Safa
...

Please note that these songs are vastly different from other classics easily mistaken to be thought provoking, e.g. We didn't start the fire by Billy Joel, Subterranean homesick blues by Bob Dylan (and indeed a whole lot of Dylan) etc.

Some readers might argue that "Oh Manjula" belongs to this genre, but there is a subtle difference. Manjula misses a very important point - songs of the category in question can be delivered with a straight face and sans emotion and yet drive the message home. Manjula necessarily requires the performer to distort his face (and/or possess a distorted face as is the case with the original composer) to drive any sort of message home. In the case of Manjula, specifically, the message was "please switch off the television".

Anyway, I hope the reader will have something to think about this weekend, thanks to this intellectual post.

Appendix 1: Some other classics by Phoebe

Shower Song
I'm in the shower and I'm writing a song,
Stop me if you've heard it,
My skin is soapy and my hair is wet,
And Tegrin spelled backwards is Nirget.

Chorus:
Lather, rinse, repeat,
And lather, rinse, repeat,
And lather, rinse, repeat,
As needed.

The Animal Song
Oh, the cow in the meadow goes moo,
Oh, the cow in the meadow goes moo.
Then the farmer hits him on the head and grinds him up,
And that's how we get hamburgers!

Nooowww, chickens!

Smelly Cat
Chorus:
Smelly Cat, Smelly cat what are they feeding you?
Smelly Cat, smelly cat it's not your fault...

They won't take you to the vet.
You're obviously not their favorite pet.
You may not be a bed of roses,
And you're no friend to those with noses.

Smelly cat, smelly cat what are they feeding you?
Smelly cat, smelly cat it's not your fault!

Broadly speaking

2005-03-29T20:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was quite a successful day. Consider the following:

1. India did not lose a test match.
2. Ganguly did not get out playing a horrible shot after having scored 2 runs.
3. I found a parking slot at office.
4. I did not drive over a canine carcass on Hosur Road.
5. Nobody tried to sell me a lifetime credit card or a home loan.
6. My house was not burgled.
7. I heard, for the first time, the gult version of Pyaar Bina Chain Kahaan Re sung by SPB.
8. I received another priceless Mallu contribution - an ex colleague of one person. Please read on:
Apart from work it is only the kalari thing happening in life ... My guru is priceless ... he comes out with these gems in a complete malayalaee accent (or should I say 'cumbleat'!!) ... "Raagesh", he INSISTS on calling me that, "You're horse is note jembing (translate: the movement for the horse is all wrong!). and yet, three times a week I faithfully emulate the wild-boar, elephant, lion, snake, cat, cock, peacock and the non-jembing horse!

What more can one ask for?

"We just wanted to give the band a little more thrust than most other bands."

2005-03-25T00:22:00.000-08:00

- Donald Fagen's explanation on why they named themselves Steely Dan!
Fantastic stuff on wikipedia...

The song Black Friday (1975) contains one of their most fascinating 'namechecks', a surprising reference to the town of Muswellbrook in northern New South Wales, Australia:
"When Black Friday comes
I'll fly down to Muswellbrook ...
This reference has startled and amused many Australian fans, but is believed that Becker and Fagen in fact selected the name from an atlas, primarily because it worked effectively with the next rhyme:
"I'm gonna strike all the big red words
from my little black book ...
and also because it allowed them to create the amusing couplets in the next stanza:
"I'm gonna do just what I please,
Gonna wear no socks and shoes,
With nothin' to do
But feed all the kangaroos."
It is typical of their wry sense of humour that the reference to kangaroos makes no particular sense unless one knows that Muswellbrook is located in Australia.

Coconut Fish Massage Water Lots of Water Vacation Communism...

2005-03-20T20:29:00.000-08:00

Forgive me for the stereotyping. But all of the above unite in Kerala and make for an amazing group of people. On top of that, some of them can actually be quite bright.

My good friend, Vishnu, is one of them. Sample the following piece. In Vishnu's words, "Took out my frustrations of travelling in Mumbai into a thousand odd words.... " If you thought Mumbai was packed 5 years back, think again.

Smile Please, The Joke Is On Us
They talk of the light at the end of the tunnel. They talk of how you should, in your deepest hours, stuck in your darkest tunnels, seek out the light and find solace in it. For me there is nothing at the end of the tunnel. I see only a traffic signal post somewhere out at the horizon, beyond wave after wave of three, four and six wheeled automobile animals. I have glimpsed heaven thrice as it shone green. Each time the auto rickshaw crawled ten meters ahead. Each time the BEST bus by the left of the auto blew a fresh burst of warm, noxious fumes as it attempted to bring itself into motion. I am still waiting. At this rate I should get to the light in another fifteen minutes and twenty odd rupees.

By my right is a Merc E Class. Inside I find a prosperous looking gentleman talking on the phone. I give him my best smile of sadistic complicity. It says, “You might have a thirty lakh car. You might earn twenty times as much as I do. Counts for zilch. You are in the same shit as I am.” I sit back in the auto and smile.

Mumbai is perhaps the world’s only communist city.

Here, unless you stay at Seawind and commute by a helicopter to the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge center or you stay on the footpath in a makeshift tin cupboard, you are just about the same as everybody else. You stay in similar houses, drink the same sewage, eat similar food and spend one quarter of your existence traveling. And you never arrive.

You start off your life in a two bedroom apartment. As you move up in life, you move south in life. But almost always the cosmic space allotted to you stays 2BHK. Some of the ones who really make it in life jump three suburban stations southwards in five years. Some others get to see the sea. Once you reach the absolute cream of your profession you jump the three or four stations and get to face the sea.

At that point feeling good about yourself you wake up to catch the first rays of light and the early morning sea breeze. A cup of coffee in hand you open your windows to the let the first wind of the day blow against your face, when you realize that what you have bargained for is a ringside ticket to the biggest excreta circus in the world. All those early mornings, the late night excel sheets over cups of machine coffee, the throbbing pain in your fingers, the Microsoft bags under your eyes; after all that, the first wind of your day does not have the smell of distant waters and far off shores. It has intestinal origins. It stinks.

They say Australia has thirty million people. If they call Australia a continent, Mumbai, with seventeen million, should at least be a country. I have a national sport to suggest. It can be called The Locomotive Marathon. Or better still, The Suburban Steeple Chase. The laws are simple. Fifty thousand people can play it at one time. The game starts when a suburban train crosses the first brick of the platform at an originating station. The first person to get onto the train gets forty nine thousand points. The next one gets one point lesser and so on. For every person you hold off with your shoulders you get a thousand points. An elbow poke into the advancing stomach behind will earn you five thousand bonus points. If you can do both the above, get a seat and then turn back and smile at the standing guy and ask him to please switch on the fan for you, you get a full ten thousand point bonus. Inter line playoffs can feed into a Mumbai level finals and the winner in the final round should be made the ring master of the earlier mentioned circus.

Another sport I would like to propose can be called the Andherian Screwall. Though named after Andheri, that sweetest bitch of all Mumbai suburbs, it can be played anywhere in the city the only condition being that you should follow strict timelines. The game is played in two halves. In the first half, played between 8:30 and 10:00 in the morning, the action occurs in the direction of South Mumbai and in the second half, played between 6:30 and 8:30 in the evening, the reverse holds true. Every player has to buy a three wheeler for himself, with both passenger and goods versions being permissible. During the above mentioned times you need to drive against the traffic on any arterial road and poke the front wheel into the traffic that is trying to move ahead. The points you win are calculated based on the following formula:

Tp = ∑ (Pn/ 10,000) for all non-monsoon months

=∑ (2*Pn/ 10,000) For monsoon months

Where Tp – Total points earned in one attempt
Pn – Purchase price of the nth vehicle caught in the jam for all n in the range 0 (l.t.) n (l.t.) infinity

All figures will be translated into INR and for imported vehicles the relevant import duties will also be applicable. After all, we are not a communist city for nothing. Any player who manages to trap a ten-ton hauler truck on a pleasure drive in the city will be awarded a flat 1000 point bonus. The winner in this game gets one gas mask and a government job as the traffic policeman at the junction where he crafted his victory.

They say London has a seamlessly integrated transport system. The train and bus timings are coordinated so that you can switch between the two modes to travel to any corner of the city. I’ll say we have gone one level better. You want to go to Marol and you are in a train passing Vile Parle. All you have to do is stand up and the crowd pushes you on and on, incessantly, towards the exit even as the train is moving. Soon, with zero effort on your part you are deposited on the Andheri platform. And Lo! You have already joined the queue for the bus to Marol. They have a seamless system? Big deal. We have a cloth-less one.

The car ahead moves half a foot towards the light and a space the size of half a coconut opens up. Every hole in the road attracts a wheel. And then I am reminded of the professionalism in Mumbai. Yes, I feel like congratulating the gentleman on the scooter who has moved the front wheel into this hole on the latest conquest in his life. Keep it up. May this be the precursor to many more such victories in life. I wonder; if only Mumbaikars had it a bit easier in getting to office where would they use all their professionalism and competitiveness. For now I give the guy on the scooter a Thumbs-Up. He is surprised but accepts the greeting in all grace. As he moves ahead I read the caption on his spare tyre cover. “Amchi Mumbai!”

More of the above available at http://stonecutter.rediffblogs.com/

David Livingstone, I presume?

2005-03-08T20:49:00.000-08:00

"I think he's trying to communicate" - Jim Carrey, The Mask.

Of late, one (Mr.? Ms.?) Anonymous has been appearing on the website. An anonymous who hates posting, but finds it irresistible to provide insights.
So who is this anonymous person, anyway?
I turn to, who else, but google to answer this intriguing question, and find an even more intriguing answer: 46 million hits and numerous anonymouses.

Dear Anonymous, thou who haunteth this page, pray, identify thyself.

Alcoholics Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous
Gamblers Anonymous
Nicotine Anonymous
Marijuana Anonymous
Overeaters Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous
Debtors Anonymous
Families Anonymous
Emotions Anonymous
SCA - Sexual Compulsives Anonymous
Recovering Couples Anonymous
Roleplayers Anonymous
Parents Anonymous
Lip Balm Anonymous
Messies Anonymous
Co-Dependents Anonymous
masked and anonymous
Dual Recovery Anonymous Fellowship
Gamblers Anonymous in the UK
Crystal Meth Anonymous
group hug anonymous
Survivors of Incest Anonymous
Garbo Anonymous
Anonymous Lawyer
Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous
Food Addicts
Homosexuals Anonymous
Trauma Anonymous
Depressed Anonymous
GreySheeters Anonymous
Riot Anonymous
Remailer Clutterers Anonymous
Consumers Anonymous
Atheists Anonymous
Clotheshorse Anonymous
Cocaine Anonymous

"Are you one of them?" - The Beatles, Within You Without You.

Cow Flatulence - Addendum!

2005-02-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

Cow_Analysis
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

The world is complex. Consider the following.

The economies of Bihar and New Zealand are pretty similar. Largely agricultural, with (apparently) a huge focus on dairy.

Yet, if NZ were to ever take over Bihar (going by population, of course, thats like TVS taking over GM), there would be a civil war immediately.

Take, for instance, the move on part of the Wellington government to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Its called the "flatulence tax"

What next, snot subsidies?!

"ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE"

2005-02-17T00:40:00.000-08:00

Do you feel frustrated when you hear this?
Does it wake you out of your slumber when it appears in the midst of a speech?
Does it make you violent?

Well, it bugs me extremely!!!

Can someone kindly tell me what exactly can be considered rocket science?

Thankfully, at least Google believes there is a difference - pops 6,620 sites for "its not rocket science" and 491,000 for "rocket science" (even if you account for the fact that the former is a subset of the latter, it does imply a larger no. of the latter)

Some examples:

... Mobile Marketing - its not rocket science!
[DOC] Its not rocket science that helping people overcome drug problems ...
Penmachine.com: It's not rocket science Derek K. Miller, Writer ...
Synesthesia » Water - it’s not rocket science!
... You cannot dispute the fact that STT is densely populated and due primarily to that fact has higher crime, its not rocket science. ...
... Its not rocket science to move it, so I'd have to do something really ...reconnect the shit, its not rocket science. the day that someone cops a 10 ...
... Lets face it, its not rocket science. Most engineers just dont have the interestto do it. Having 'design specialists' who consider the 'human aspects' ...
... its not rocket science ,basic tools, rotronics + AGM ,BEAUUUUUUUTIFUL. ...Self installation $0 as someone has mentioned its not rocket science, ...
... its got themes, wallpaper, ringtones, games... everything... next time tryusing Google hun, its not rocket science to do a search before you post. ...
... Anyways…now I can build my own dive plans incorporating years of deep diveexperiences and its not rocket science at all with all the information freely ...
... The Modellar photo, very small, seems to show eight different sizes. IP Logged.Its not rocket science ... IP Logged. Its not rocket science ...
... Does anyone have any pictures? IP Logged. Its not rocket science ... Its notrocket science. Komet_fan Plentiful Poster * * Jetex lives! Email Posts: 19 ...

Cow flatulence

2005-02-11T00:30:00.000-08:00

cow
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

It has been estimated that 9 to 12% of the energy that a cow consumes is turned to methane that is released either through flatulence or burping (Radford, 2001). A huge number of factors affect methane emission, including diet, barn conditions and whether the cow is lactating, but an average cow in a barn produces 542 liters of methane a day, and 600 liters when out in a field (Adam, 2000).

This, apparently, makes commercially farmed cattle a major contributor to the greenhouse effect.

Hello testing 1..2..

2005-02-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

Plunged in darkness
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

Kindly do not misuse this photo.

Sting came

2005-02-07T07:17:00.000-08:00

It was a traumatic experience to start with. We left office at 5:15 to attend the concert which was to start at 7. We picked kind samaritan Seemant on the way (6:30 pm, M.G. Road). Seemant picked up some wraps, a packet of Lays, a Coke and many Cadbury's Perks for Aarti and me.

Now, I am very notorious with losing my way everytime I head towards that side of Bangalore (and indeed, most sides of Bangalore - for instance, we reached Kalasipalayam once, when we intended to reach the airport. Notes: K'palayam is 25 km away from the airport). This time I tried to ensure I got it right, and took directions from someone and kept a printout of the map that had appeared in the papers that morning. The map gave what I thought were clear instructions - reach Cauvery Theatre and follow the arrows for the Rs 900 entrance.

But long before we reached Cauvery theatre, we spotted a young lad standing by the roadside with a large placard saying "Sting concert. Rs 900 this way." This, of course, was not what the paper said.

Who were we to challenge the placard holding boy?

So we followed his directions. Till we reached another crossing - and no placard holding boy this time. Panicstricken, we turned left. And then I noticed from the corner of my eye another placard holding boy on the opposite side of the road, obscured in the dark. But I had turned left, and the placard wasn't visible from the distance and there was no way to take a U turn.

So I assumed, as a matter of convenience, that I had taken the right turn, i.e. the left turn. We went straight ahead and later were advised by a kind gentleman to take the first left turn and drive straight ahead. (Seemant at this point made a prophetic statement - "I am very wary of these take first left instructions. It is impossible to determine if first means first or if it means a higher dimension)

We took the fist left and went straight ahead. The lane narrowed slowly. I assumed this was a one-way. It was not. This fact dawned upon me only when I noticed a large bus heading towards me.

I skillfully negotiated the traffic.

It was 705 by now. And then an auto overtook me. The auto contained (besides the driver) a shiny woman and a clean shaven boy screaming into a phone and moaning "O shit he has already sung desert rose." (We later realised they were wrong, evidently one of their brighter friends was taking their trip). But thats not important.

What is important is the following error in assumption: "Shiny girl, shaved boy in auto evidently means Rs 900 ticket, hence we are going in the correct direction." At 715 we reached the Rs 2000 entrance. Seemant's prophecy was bang on. The first left actually meant the second left.

Turned around, negotiated the traffic, (Seemant reminded me of my earlier observation that this was not a one way and that we should be thankful for that).

At 745 we reached the venue. Ours was the 8, 638th car in the park. Or thereabouts.

I had just driven 2 and a half hours, if you failed to notice.

We picked up two Perks to eat at a later point in time. We knew no eatables/drinks were allowed inside, but come on, how can someone stop you from carrying chocolates?!. Unfortunately the cop outside frisking thought otherwise and confiscated the chocolates. The choice then, was between eating the chocolates pronto versus donating it to the Bangalore police force. Unfortunately we had just eaten those wraps.

So we entered the scene sans two Perks (and me desperately needing to urinate).

In that sorry state we caught our first glimpse of Sting. Sting was the size of a peanut. Rs 900 ticket meant the dregs of the society. We were a cross-country track away from the stage. We tried various stunts to catch a better glimpse. Finally we went and stood under a tree; it was growing on a mound and we thought we could see over everybody else's heads.

Now trees are virtually inanimate, but can be very deceptively serene. This one in particular was playing host to a gathering of large black ants, who in turn assumed I was a part of the tree. The next 5 minutes were spent jumping around trying to get rid of the menace.

(Somehwere in between I went to the "gents". It was a posh, outsourced urinal. Western style, plush, flush, air-freshner et al. However, there was one drawback, which is so representative of Bangalore's infrastructure. The organisers assumed two such loos were enough for a crowd of 25,000. Since I had no choice, I contributed to the stink.)

Back to the show- Sting yells "Namaste India! Namaskara Bangalore!" Crowd goes ecstatic. Then he bursts into music. Thankfully, super. Old stuff, new stuff, experimental stuff, popular stuff, jazzy stuff. The rest of the show was spent atop a table (improvised from a nearby HSBC stall), smelling whiffs of grass (Please note irony: Our Perks were confiscated at the entrance.) and in front of a romancing couple.

The show ended 945. We ran, and found our way back thanks to Seemant's brilliance.

All in all, great show, too short, though.

And if anyone knows the way to that part of town, please send me a map.

Still...

2005-02-02T01:53:00.000-08:00

This has been a long period of silence. I have been busy, busy with boring stuff.
Many things have happened in the meantime, of course.

- Sania Mirza, PHL, Narain Kartikeyan: very cool.
- Election in Iraq, Nepal politics, Bihar elections etc: not so cool, perhaps.
- Also Indian businessmen ki VAT lag gayee.

None of it really matters, of course.

Indecision?

2005-01-10T22:09:00.000-08:00

A Psychological Tip

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.

No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping
-- Piet Hein

WARNING: Do not try this if you're diffusing a bomb.

Shudder

2005-01-06T04:01:00.000-08:00

A G Sachs report claims that there are 5 million cars in India (2000 figures) and all things going well (i.e. assumptions coming true), this will go up to 610 million cars in 2050.

Guess the implicit assumption is that there'll be 100 story flyovers to accomodate these cars, and 100 story parking lots (With petrol pumps at floors 20, 40 , 60 and 80?!).
Alternatively, the average width of cars will come down a 100 times, i.e. to about 2 cm wide each. Hmm are we talking cars or (motor-powered) roller skates here?!

Well, OK, to be fair the US has 135 million cars (2000 figures) and they don't need 27 storied flyovers.

The article here. See page 23 for the table on number of cars.

Genndy Tartakovsky!

2005-01-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't seen Samurai Jack, but Dexter's laboratory and Powerpuff girls are awesome.. Now I just have to watch Samurai!

"Tartakovsky was hand-selected by George Lucas and Lucasfilm Ltd. to create Star Wars: Clone Wars, a one-of-a-kind 20-episode "micro-series" that continues the saga where the live-action feature film Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones left off. His new cartoon creation -- the first-ever animated property involving the leading Star Wars characters -- will cover the beginning of the Clone Wars, an epic civil war that pits the old Republic against a vast Separatist movement led by the forces of evil.

In addition, Tartakovsky created the critically acclaimed animated series, "Samurai Jack," as his follow-up project to the massive success of "Dexter's Laboratory." "Samurai Jack" originated from his desire to create the best action-adventure cartoon ever. With "Samurai Jack," Tartakovsky created an animated action television show that is cinematic in scope and that incorporates action, humor and intricate artistry. A two-time juried Primetime Emmy Award winner for layout and production design, "Samurai Jack" is currently in production on a total of 52 episodes.

Named one of Variety's "50 To Watch" as a future leader in the entertainment industry, Genndy Tartakovsky served as creator/writer/director of "Dexter's Laboratory" and co-creator of "Dial M For Monkey" and "Justice Friends." "Dexter's Laboratory," Tartakovsky's first professional cartoon creation, has received four Emmy nominations and an Annie Award. Tartakovsky has been called "one of the industry's rising stars" by People and was tapped as one of the most creative people in entertainment when he was named to Entertainment Weekly's "It List" in 1999. A total of 78 episodes of Dexter's Laboratory have been completed.

Tartakovsky also served as a producer and director on Cartoon Network's Emmy-award winning series "The Powerpuff Girls" and as animation director for The Powerpuff Girls: The Movie.

Tartakovsky was born and raised in Moscow, Russia, until his family moved to Chicago when he was seven years of age. After high school, Tartakovsky studied film at Chicago's Columbia College before moving to Los Angeles to study animation at Cal Arts. At Cal Arts he wrote, directed, produced and animated two student films. One of his student films, which was selected for the Cal Arts Producers Show, was the basis for "Dexter's Laboratory."

Another interview here

Partition - W.H. Auden

2005-01-03T00:03:00.000-08:00

"Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.
"Time," they had briefed him in London, "is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.
The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you."

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget
The case, as a good lawyer must.
Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot."

(About Radcliffe's unenviable task...)
P.S. See Krishna, I promised to make this blog serious and deep ;)

Hey but that was my business idea!

2004-12-29T04:11:00.000-08:00

Binu has been to Japan. Hence Binu knows.

Traditional Japanese toilets are a lot like traditional Indian toilets

But,
" Just as many foreigners had finally mastered the traditional Japanese "squatter" with no seat, they are being confused anew by the latest generation of Japanese toilets -- super-high-tech sit-down models with a control panel that looks like the cockpit of a plane...
...The toilets basically look like a standard American model, except for the control pad, which sometimes comes with a digital clock to tell you how long you have been in the bathroom. Some of the buttons control the temperature of the water squirted onto your backside. The bottom-washer function, combined with the bottom blow-dryer, is designed to do away with the need for toilet tissue. Other buttons automatically open and close the lid; the button for men lifts lid and seat; the button for women lifts the lid only. Some toilets even have a hand-held remote control: a clicker for the loo."

My favourite of course:
"The noisemaker button that makes a flushing sound to mask any noise you might be making in the john"

Click here for the complete article.

The most amazing part, of course, is something that very closely resembles my long standing business idea -
"They have expanded that market with the Travel Washlet, a portable hand-held bottom washer. Going on a trip where they might not have top-of-the-line toilets? No problem: Just fill your "Travel Washlet" with warm water at home. Then after nature calls on the road, unfold the little squirt-nozzle and wash your behind just like at home. "

Check out washlet for more information!

"He appears to have an interesting history"

2004-12-22T00:54:00.000-08:00

My cousin Mani said so about Raju.. but insisted "Raju the Tribal was all gobbledydook to me. Maybe a little explanation of the background would help. He appears to have an interesting history. "
And so I gave him some background...

"Engg classmate of mine - coffee soulmate, most amazingly warm person, with a complete external locus of control.. I am quite sure he'll die saving someone from a running bus.. Always has a lot to say..

And, apart from the serious stuff, occasionally comes up with things like the following..

November 10, 2004
Going organic?
So I bought some 'organic' eggs. Now God knows who gave that label....but ideally if they were organic .... 23 days later I should have an 'organic' chicken. Guess what? No chicken. Egg was still an egg. So what kind of natural intervention stopped the egg from hatching?
Posted by raju at 03:27 PM in Laugh-riot!! Comments (8) "

In our final year, I wrote his profile.. I thought it would be the easiest profile to write.. After all, he is such an exciting person.. Unfortunately couldn't do justice to him then.. And failing miserably now.. Hopefully along the course of similar posts I'll be able to give him a fitting "obituary"!

Atul, same problem with you. Will keep trying.

[I was quite proud of the one I wrote for Taps and Sumit Agarwal.. Anybody have a copy?]

Yeh jo Des hai Tera...

2004-12-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

When I listen to this song, I can't help but think of Raju... I picture him listening to this in his apartment in Boston on a cold wintry night with the lights switched off, a single T shirt and a light jacket, and a tear in his eye...
Yet again, Raju leaves no doubts at http://www.rajasekhar.com.

Bulleh Shah!

2004-12-16T05:13:00.000-08:00

Recently heard a Punjabi song called "Bullah ki jaana main kaun" by a guy called Rabbi Shergill.. Quite interesting (No kudi, soniye, rabba, balle balle etc), with an exciting video.. Searched and found the following:

"The highlight of his self-titled debut is undoubtedly first single, Bulla Ki Jaana, a captivating tune based on a kafi by 18th century Sufi saint Bulla Shah. But of each of the nine tracks leave a lasting impact. Thankfully, English translations have printed alongside the Punjabi words, and lyrically, both the originals and the interpretations impress. Musically, acoustic and electric guitars, drum n bass beats, dholaks and flutes all contribute to creating an undeniably folksy feel on this genre-busting record"

"Bulleh Shah’s style of writing is called Kafi (Refrain) – an established style of Punjabi poetry used by Punjabi Sufis and Sikh gurus (from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh)...Sufi poets generally did not adapt the courtly languages of Persian and Urdu, and tended to write their verses in Punjabi, Sariaki, Sindhi etc. – languages of the common folk, amongst whom they lived. Though the number is disputed, Bulleh Shah is credited with authoring anywhere from fifty to one hundred and fifty Kafi, one Athwara, one Baramah, three Siharfi, forty-nine Oeodh and forty Gandhan... The simplicity with which Bulleh Shah has been able to tackle the basic issues of life and humanity is extremely appealing. Everyone has, thus, put his kafis to music - from simple street-singers, to the folk-tunes of Wadalis and Abida Parveen, the synthesised techno qawwali remixes of Nusrat Fateh Ali, to the electric rock guitars of Junoon."

A sample from the song:

Na maen andar ved kitaabaan,
Na vich bhangaan na sharaabaan
Na vich rindaan masat kharaabaan
Na vich jaagan na vich saun.
Bulleh! ki jaana maen kaun.

[Translates roughly to:]
Not in the holy Vedas, am I
Nor in opium, neither in wine
Not in the drunkard`s intoxicated craze
Niether awake, nor in a sleeping daze
Bulleh! to me, I am not known

http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00004026&channel=leafyglade%20inn

Raju the tribal

2004-12-13T04:23:00.000-08:00

There are a few people in the world that can be mistaken for gentle teddy bears and wild pirates at the same time. Raju is one of them. Loves his five star chocolate and is violent when someone irritates him.

But thats not what makes him a tribal. A close description of Raju is provided by the following description of the tribes of Chhotanagpur:

"Munda, Oraon and other tribal communities of Chhotanagpur region have lived in harmony with nature. They propitiated land, water, wind, plants and animals... The general practice is that the clan must protect the object that forms its totem and abjure from eating or killing, destroying or injuring or otherwise using it. Nor must clan members use anything made of it or abstracted from it. It is also ordained that they should prevent others from indulging in such activities...

...The practice of forest protection was implicit in their cultural elements and cult practices. A portion of the pristine forest used to be consecrated and named Jaher or Sarna, sacred to the community’s principal deity. The tribal customs prohibited felling of trees or lopping of branches in the sacred grove..."

(from http://www.pcedindia.com/peoplescomm/tribes_2a.htm#a1)

Raju leaves no doubts at http://www.rajasekhar.com.

Blame it on the lymphocyte!

2004-12-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

I have a large ulcer on the tongue. I attribute it to Atul's hidden martian forces since the evidence is too compelling. Happy budday Atul!

Meanwhile the net seems to suggets I suffer from a case of "recurrent minor aphthous ulcers" and the causes are the following. Clearly in my case it is emotional/psychic stress caused by Atul's psychic powers.
[ http://www.animated-teeth.com/canker_sores/t1_canker_sores.htm]

What are canker sores?
Canker sores are a type of mouth ulcer. Some of the medical terms used to refer to canker sores are "recurrent minor aphthous ulcers" and "recurrent minor aphthous stomatitis" (thus differentiating canker sores from other types of aphthous ulcers or aphthous stomatitis). Canker sores are the most commonly occurring type of mouth ulcer.

What causes canker sores?
The precise mechanism by which canker sores form has not been definitively determined [drat!] but it is likely that their development is related to a reaction of an individual's own immune system. Canker sores are thought to form when, for unexplained reasons, a person's immune system identifies the presence of chemical molecules that it does not recognize. The presence of these molecules activates an attack by the immune system's lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell), somewhat like when a person's immune system attacks a transplanted organ. The carnage [feels like carnage alright] of the lymphocytes' attack on these unrecognized molecules results in the type of mouth ulcers we term canker sores.

What triggers outbreaks of canker sores?
Several factors that seem to trigger outbreaks of canker sores have been identified. Any one or a combination of the following items may play a significant role in the formation of canker sores for any one individual:

1. Toothpastes and mouthwashes that contain sodium lauryl sulfate
2. Mechanical trauma
3. Emotional stress / Psychic stress
Psychological stress has been shown to adversely affect the health of people in a number of ways. Many people who suffer from canker sores will frequently report that the timing of their ulcers coincide with periods of stress.
4. Nutritional deficiencies
5. Allergies and sensitivities
6. Hormonal changes
7. Genetics
8. Infectious agents (both bacterial and viral)
9. Medical conditions
10. Medications

Other characteristics of canker sores.

Canker sores can usually be expected to heal within 4 to 14 days. Usually this healing is uneventful and with no residual scarring. [you bet, uneventful!]
Once a person has initially experienced an outbreak of canker sores the probability of recurrence is high, although the rate of recurrence is quite variable. A recurrence rate of one outbreak every 1 to 3 months would be considered typical (encompassing 50% of people who get canker sores). 30% of people who suffer from these lesions deal with their presence on a monthly basis. [Haven't tracked, but sounds reasonable!]
Usually a person's first canker sores will appear between the ages of 10 and 20 years and then decrease in frequency and severity as the person ages. [MY FOOT decrease in frequency!]
Some studies have suggested that women are more likely to experience canker sores than men (but not all studies have confirmed this fact). [Well, even if they were to confirm it wouldn't make me feel any better!]
Its been estimated that roughly 20% of the general population experiences canker sores. [Now that gives me some comfort!]
There is no evidence to suggest that canker sores are contagious. [Congrats, humans!]
The presence of canker sores appears to be unrelated to race. The occurrence of these lesions does seem to be more common in people who live in North America as opposed to people who live on other continents. [Huh?!]

Phew

2004-11-29T06:55:00.000-08:00

Life is tough.

Resume
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-- Dorothy Parker

You can see where I found it.

Errata

2004-11-25T01:47:00.000-08:00

Martian is a subset of tribal. Hence Atul is a Martian tribal. Also there can theoretically be demented tribals. And demented urbans.

Tribals
Urbans
Balance

Also another group needs to be defined. Am thinking of a name currently.
Thus the groups need to be defined as a matrix (3X5 should be fine). Rows as above and columns as tribals, martians, dementeds, unnamed and balance.

Also trying to define these so that no confusion remains in the minds of the reader.

Groupies

2004-11-24T05:53:00.000-08:00

I have a large number of friends. As every intelligent being my mind works best if I group the enormous amount of data residing there. Hence the following.

Group A: Tribals. Raju is one.
Group B: Dementeds. Dgr is one.
Group C: Martian. Atul is the only one.
GroupD: Balance.

I must admit the balance is tilted in favour of the disbalanced. Please provide your respective views. And preferences.

Lose more than just weight

2004-11-19T05:44:00.000-08:00

Raju, since you asked for it ... Some amazing weightloss plans across the years...

500 B.C: Vegetarianism: Pythagoras
Diet not to lose weight, but to ensure you are not eating your grandmother or another relative, whose soul could have transmigrated to your neighbour’s pig!

45 B.C.: Puke-ism: Romans in the time of Caesar
There were special rooms in which to expel their feasts. They would purge between courses to make room for the next round! Doesn't make you thin.

1 AD-2000 AD: The Jesus Diet
Almost all diseases and pains can be healed by prayer and fasting. (refer www.jesusdiet.com)

The Middle Ages: Bulimia or ox-hunger
Eat and purge through vomiting. Again, eating a lot is believed to have been a sign of wealth and status.

1800’s: Feverless consumption or hysteria
Victorian form of anorexia- Literally starving oneself to embody the Victorian fad of frailty, which was associated with spiritual purity and femininity. At that time, the aristocracy romanticised people who had tuberculosis.

1910’s: The Mega-Bite Diet
Book written by Horace Fletcher: Chewing each mouthful at least 32 times until it becomes a thin, liquid paste, and any food that can’t be broken down to a gruel consistency has to be spat out.

1920’s-2000s: The Hollywood, 18-day Diet or Grapefruit Diet
Consume only 800 calories a day through eating barrels of ‘fat-burning’ grapefruits so as to kick-start your metabolism. The BIG plus: you can have as much black coffee as you like.

1920s-2000: The Tapeworm Diet
A number of famous women, including supermodel Claudia Schiffer, are alleged to have tried this. Take a pill, get infected by tapeworm which will consume all your food. Ensures you remain thin, no matter how much you eat.

1980s – 2000s: The breatharian diet (also known as the air and sunlight diet)
The Hawa-Pani diet!

from http://www.ivillage.co.uk/dietandfitness/wtmngment/diets/articles/0,,235_176831-1,00.html

The Vampire Fish of Brazil

2004-11-18T06:36:00.000-08:00

Saw the following on TV a few days back. Traumatic. Do not miss paragraph 3 of Food.

Candiru

HABITAT
The candiru is found only in the Amazon and Oranoco Rivers of South America. They do not like the sun and tend to burry themselves in the mud and sand of the river bottom underneath logs and rocks.

FOOD
The candiru has a voracious appetite for blood and will parasitize fish, mammals, and humans. One scientist, while holding a candiru, accidently let it enter a small cut on his hand. It could be seen writhing under the skin towards the vein.

To find a fish, the candiru first tastes the water, trying to locate a water stream that is coming from the gills of a fish. Once such a stream is detected, the candiru follows the stream to its new host and inserts itself inside the gill flap. Spines around its head then pierce the scales of the fish and draws blood while anchoring the candiru in place. The candiru then feeds on the blood by using its mouth as a slurping apparatus and while rasping the long teeth on its top jaw.

When candirus parasitize humans, it is usually only when they are skinny-dipping while urinating in the water. The candiru tastes the urine stream and follows it back to the human. It then swims up the anus and lodges itself somewhere in the urinary tract with its spines. Blood is drawn, and the candiru gorges itself on both the blood and body tissue, its body sometimes expanding due to the amount of blood. This is all said to be very painful for the poor person who has this happen to him or her. Unfortunately, they are almost impossible to remove due to the spines. Amputation of the private areas is the cheapest, and most life-changing, way to remove the fish. Actual surgery is extremely expensive and involves inserting the Xagua plant and the Buitach apple up the urethra. These two plants kill and even dissolve the parasitic fish. If surgery is not done in time, the blockage of the urinary tract will prove fatal. The candiru is the only known vertebrate to parasitize humans.

From http://www.angelfire.com/mo2/animals1/catfish/candiru.html

And you thought your job stank

2004-11-17T02:52:00.000-08:00

Believe me, this is the pits..

"The cosmetics industry goes to great lengths to ensure that you smell good. The effectiveness of both deodorants and antiperspirants is still tested in the old fashioned way, by the human nose.
Volunteer 'sniffers' smell the pits of up to 60 subjects an hour, taking three sniffs per pit, and rating offensive odours on a scale of 1 to 10."

from http://www.wcsscience.com/armpit/odour.html

I am concerned too

2004-11-16T04:10:00.000-08:00

A true incident.. Mail received by the head of my group..

Dear XX YY
Sub: Study project

I am introducing my self. my name is zz.s. My daughter would like to do the project in your esteemed concern. I know :INFOSYS in a big concern. But my daughter future guidance i am asking this requistion. I have so may times contact in your concern. But no body giving better result for me. This project will help us my daughter future. She will study well.
Hence, please take my requistion & give a chance to do the project.
she is studying B.E final year C.Sc.

my office address
zz.s
Blah blah CORPORTION PVT LTD.,
dhichkaon ROAD,
etc-5
Your favourable reply in highly appreciated.
Awaiting your call.
Best regards
s.zz.

Went to toilet 3 times today lost 2 inches and 4 kgs.

2004-11-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

And I am hungry.

A world where all is free

Retiring on 92

Al-imentary my dear

Rediff-ining news

A Disturbing Trend

Market re-search

Not Mine *shrug*

Parasite of the Day

Are you an 80s kid?

Adept Adaptation

Mandi on my Mundi

Q. How many Panjus does it take to fix a light bulb?

AT LAST!!!

Retail - Boom!

Evolution revelation

Weigh to go

Munch and Crunch

Pluto (and Inzy) Under trial!

Good Pittance - Bonds Soar as weak data point to slowdown

The hottest July since 1659!

Haircuts and close shaves

Good Pittance - Humans will not learn

Days of extreme boredom

Good Pittance - Fundamental disconnects

Good Pittance - But it wasn't going to be easy

Good Pittance - where it all started

Not for the tender hearted

Azza Bhi Hota Hai!

Quote of the day

Cricketers Reporting and Cricketing Reporters

Are you one of them?

May be a point

Phrase for the day

The Inertia of Expertise

Pret-a-Manager

Tiffinbites

Arroz Negro

True Stressbusters

Diarios de mountain-cicleta

Sania Mirza is into the 2nd round of the Aussie open*

The Great Crossing

The Christmas Weekend comes to an end

The road outside the house

How to be a star photographer

Not Enough Time

Brand Baj Gaya

Rural Delights

Cartoon laws of physics

Phrase for the day

Makes me furious

So much to do so much to read

The sun revolves around the United States of America

Phrase for the day

And then there were students

Once there was a prof

Nile Rodgers, Bernard Edwards, Tony Thompson

Back home

Hardwork punctuated with loud sounds

Warmest day of the summer so far

These brits are crazy (tap tap tap)

Mostly in transit

What about people who compulsively mark every mail with "importance: high"?

Mankind, Ah!

Something to mull over through the weekend

Broadly speaking

"We just wanted to give the band a little more thrust than most other bands."

Coconut Fish Massage Water Lots of Water Vacation Communism...

David Livingstone, I presume?

Cow Flatulence - Addendum!

"ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE"

Cow flatulence

Hello testing 1..2..

Sting came

Still...

Indecision?

*Shudder*

Genndy Tartakovsky!

Partition - W.H. Auden

Hey but that was my business idea!

"He appears to have an interesting history"

Not Mine shrug

Shudder

Phew