Defining life with ....

Quest for an iPhone

2008-08-02T20:05:00.000-07:00

Only an iPhone could get me back to Blogging!! It's really been a while...life's not easy with too much at work and nobody at home :)...
I am not a big gadget guy, but an iPhone just grabbed my attention..that was it, the gadget I was unknowingly waiting for ages with almost everything...a sleek phone, internet tablet, toy and show off all rolled into one :P..now they have a camera and gps too :)..endless are it's virtues!!

Being a guy that believes things have to bought at the right time for the right price at a right place, I just had to wait (1st wait) for 4 grueling months to get to the new 3G version..there were talks, rumours, theories, inside news and what not and then it was announced and when it was announced the hype was so much that people just weren't enough satisfied :)..I was though...faster internet is a great thing to have!!...I didn't want to buy it during the mad rush, so I just "waited" for a month (2nd wait)...ATT increased the rate plan by $10, so I just "waited" a week longer (3rd wait)...well, then I decided enough was enough...no point planning for nothing and then went with my wife to a ATT store to get my iPhone..The guy at the store looked at me funnily and said I would have to wait for 15 days if I ordered for one....I was in no mood to wait any longer (just wanted to buy it that day!!!) and took my wife to the Apple store and obviously things didn't go too well...when I asked the guy at the apple store for an iPhone, he told me that there was no stock and I would have to "wait"...apparently people waited outside the store before it opened to get an iPhone!! He mentioned that I would have to wait (4th wait) and check the availability status on a website every day and then come over....very funny!!

Ofcourse, I had no choice but to wait and so I did the obvious.."waited"...waited for 2 days...third day, stock available but there was a problem at work that I had to attend..so I had to just "wait" again (5th wait)...that next week had been with issues at work, but I kept checking availability status every single day..strange pattern in availability....every single day, stock is available in the morning and stunningly vanishes in an hour...next morning all stock is back...I think this is just a ploy to create an "aura"...how else would you justify stock availability every single day :) :) :)...they have the stock in the godown but they aren't allowed to sell!!! What else ???
On the advice of the shopping assistant at Apple, I went and removed my business discount from my rate plan. I found stock today and then went for it at 8 in the morning :)..yeah, I was finally going to get it!! WRONG!
There was stock when I went there..they handed me a coupon, I had an iPhone in my hand and when they tried transferring my ATT account, there was a problem :( ... apparently, the only way I could buy an iPhone was at a ATT store ... unfortunately that's where I started earlier and now that's where I had to go...so to do the unevitable, I went and ordered an iPhone at the ATT store next door...and ofcourse now I have to wait for 10 - 21 days (6th wait) ... it's all paid for but I am not counting on it!!! Need all the luck in this world////////

IPL controversy

2008-04-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

What do we all fight for, live for? Let's take the case of a sportsman...well, the biggest honour for him is to wear the national crown and the happiest moment is to win a World Cup! Sportsmen are worshiped so much that they are sometimes seen as soldiers..soldiers fighting for national pride, soldiers sounding the victory horn, soldiers showing our supremacy over many other menial competitors...Sportsmen become our channel through which we see our frustration expressed..For example, I become a Sreesanth, you become Harbhajan and together we beat Pakistan in the world cup :P...we cheer our team, our team works as a unit and trounces the enemy and declares victory and then there is euphoria all around us :)...Our great team has achieved what we have been longing for and WE are just the best .. (atleast for that momemt)..

You know, all that has changed with IPL! Now, everything is ether...players are drafted from just about anywhere in the world and play for any team within India..in fact they were auctioned! Indian players don't necessarily play for the regional teams they belong to...they just play for the highest bidder...so now, everything is for money...very very clearly money. A big chunk of IPL as you would have expected are players from India...everybody in our national team is playing for one team or the other and most interestingly against each other along with members of teams they used to plot against, play against! Well, a very interesting concept, but it has even more interesting results....now our players cannot get along well with each other and are ending up fighting with each other...Where's our "team India" spirit? Gone, all gone for money? Latest on this is the Bhajji slaps Sreesanth controversy! Harbhajan couldn't take Sreesanth taunting our own players and slapped him! What comedy :)..he is the same Sreesanth we liked when he did the same to our opponents! He was a representation of "aggressive" India..so was Harbhajan....and look at this MESS now!

Now, after all this, when team India plays for national glory, do you think the camaraderie will be back?

Look at this video for a few laughs...media is taking this issue to the extreme...this particular coverage from TV-9 is in Telugu and dramatizes the whole thing, doing some background song mixing for every event that happened/is happening during this controversy...wonder how the world cup would be for India this time with all this going on...do you think all this is due to IPL or are we just seeing some innate human tendencies being exposed?

Communication Revolution?

2008-04-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

Really, internet has brought lives closer, but closer the way we like it or just closer? Well, for now, I think it just brought lives closer, thats all..
Mom and I were talking today and we thought...so much to do, so many people to keep in touch with...wasn't it better when we stuck to our families...deeper bonds, lasting relationships and more fun...Are we draining CPU cycles in friend based context switching? Still saying "good old days?"...maybe it's time for communication evolution and not revolution?

Harakiri in style

2008-04-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Craigslist is great! A free billboard for just about any place and for just about anything. My wife found a job in Columbus and we have been depending on it for quite a few needs..right from a roomate to tickets to finding a used car...Nobody can match it's openness, the fact that is free and the fact that it has such a lot of "visibility"..Ask anybody anything and the first reply you hear is, "Have you looked at Craigslist?"....Great thing, ain't it?

It surely is!! But for every system that has a lot of benefits, there are abusers. There will be! Otherwise, this world wouldn't be interesting. In our pursuit of finding a new old car, we met one such. We saw a post in Craigslist that looked very promising, so promising that the deal looked deceptive :P...a honda for $4000 less than market value! Interesting, very interesting....

So, we couldn't hold our greed and ofcourse contacted them..my wife did...we got back a reply a day later from the seller asking for more details and mentioned a company that could do our transaction "online"..somebody like an escrow agent. She said we could try the car for 7 days and return it back if we didn't find it good...sounded too good to be true :)...So, then started our investigation...

We asked her for the VIN..she gave us the VIN and also a carfax report...Well, we ran our own check and that report was wrong :P..too bad for her..

Just for the heck of it, we contacted the escrow company..with great difficulty we got their e-mail address and sent an e-mail to them. We got a response in 5 minutes! And the response said that this lady was trustworthy etc etc...Great, somebody was vouching for this lady! How very silly on their part :P...

So, we said, lets humor ourselves a little more and then we went and looked up this new third party escrow company's DNS "easyasales.com"...for our amusement and yours, that DNS was created the day before!!
So, this lady or man, whoever it was did all this and all in style! Tried to look professional...maybe somebody else would've believed them, but luckily for us, we didn't and it helped :)

We went a filed a complaint at http://www.ic3.gov/ about this scam...so, if you are buying something on Craigslist, better be sure or gEt ReAdY fOr ThE rIdE !

Did I go to Pittsburgh?

2008-04-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

Did I really go and meet my sister in Pittsburgh or was it just a dream? Even if it was true, it sure does seem just like a dream...nothing seems to be patient in life and neither am I :)...I just seem to be in a railway junction and trains are just whizzing past me! Wonder how I can make a few moments stick in my life! I know I will remember our trip to Columbus and especially to Pittsburgh because that was the first time I ever surprised somebody so unexpectedly :)...but, it happened so fast that it just seems like a dream.

Feel bad every day that I am paying lesser and lesser attention to friends and family who are more and more important to me...can't call this a conscious or an unconscious choice...all that I wanna say is this is something I have "fallen" into and I don't like it! Living a life and leading a life are just two different things!

Shrinking world

2008-03-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my BIL from India asked me about the Clinton vs Obama duel going on and I was pleasantly surprised...It's like somebody here asking whether Manmohan Singh/ Sonia Gandhi would/should be our next Prime Ministerial candidate...well, they might not even know Manmohan, but that's a different issue :).

I have never ever followed the presidential campaign so closely myself and for the first the whole process of a presidential election is clear to me...don't know what pricked my interest, but something surely did...what pricked my BIL's interest? Why does this whole process have such high visibility this time? You know, there was a headline in Rediff that said "Obama wins Mississippi"...Obama wins Mississipppi and we have it our biggest portal in India!! He didn't even win the nominee :)..and Mississippi is a small state that almost doesn't count towards the tally (well, if the race weren't so close ...)

So, why do you think this sudden surge in interest? Is it the result of an extremely close race or the case of an economy in doldrums or Obama's charisma and the fact that he will really be "from the people" or just a lack of other interesting things going on in the world or is it because the "World is Flat and Shrinking"? Me thinks that it is a mixture of all of those but most importantly the last one! We are in a truly globalized world and any significant effect anywhere will have deep connotation s to other parts of the world!!

Btw, Obama and Clinton have been very actively campaigning on the web! Have we ever seen that...social networking too and it is taking all this a step higher!!

A Father is born

2008-03-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

This week was so eventful for all reasons good and bad..never have worked so hard in my life, India has never won a tri-match series in Australia so convincingly, Hillary beat Obama and SSG, the product I work for is almost beating me down to death...but between all this, a shimmer of light glowed brightly...a father was born and it was so pleasant to see this one. My friend Prasad had Sneha, his baby join his life...all looks different now from his eyes..a father is truly born!

Here's a picture of him with his kid. Such pure expression of love is truly divine. Feelings at their unadulterated best! Wish Prasad, Neelima and Sneha all the very best and it was really touching to see this :)

My Grand Central

2008-02-23T08:11:00.001-08:00

Grand Idea! Atleast for small businesses! Enroll into Google's grand central from blogger.com/home and have the liberty of people calling you from a web page without exposing your number! You can have all calls forwarded to a voicemail if you would like, block callers, listen to voicemail as it is being recorded and more! A real boon for businesses on the web and a lot of flexibility for people on the run (you can have a fixed number that can forward calls to home, cell, work or any other number ;P)...and all this from the Google stable!! that's why they say "paisa talks"...(Google acquired GrandCentral for a decent sum :P)

The 54 million dollar lawsuit

2008-02-17T07:42:00.000-08:00

$54 million is what Raelyn Campbell wants out of Best Buy for her missing laptop, personal data, and her time. The Washington, DC, resident filed a lawsuit against the company after Best Buy allegedly lied to her for months at a time about the status of her machine, then offered her an insultingly low compensation once it acknowledged the loss.

As ridiculous as it seems (you can make many laptops in gold for that price :P), it still makes sense to me! Sometimes corporate America just needs a caffeine jolt. Not treating your customers well is just unpardonable. I have been going through a few rough spots myself with Citibank (credit cards, checking account, interest payments, bill payments...everything!). Screw up and then don't even own upto it and after that treat your customers like shit...truly despicable. If any of you have/want NRI, NRE accounts, savings/credit cards etc, please look elsewhere..Citi is only for people with a lot of money and a lot of time!

As far as Campbell is concerned, she says that she knows $54 million is outrageous, but it's apparently the only way to get media attention and put enough pressure on Best Buy to do the right thing. I really sympathize with her and truly hope she is paid her due!

Invisible Cloak?

2008-02-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

Saw Jodhaa Akbar today...quite good, dragged a bit and at times made me feel that they should have just called it "Akbar" and introduced Jodhaa as an aspect...haan aspects..have been deep into AOP lately...

Anyways, in the midst of watching the "magnum epic", there was a particular shot that made me ponder for a little while...it felt weird too...Akbar, to understand his people better seeps into the mainstream as a plainclothesman...no disguise, nothing, just a cloak (not a Harry Potter one) and some normal clothes. He goes into the markets, talks to people, learns their concerns, all this by being one of them and the best part is "NOBODY RECOGNIZES HIM!"...it didn't make sense for a second, but later it did..no cameras, no pictures, no TV, no Internet..what else do you expect! not everybody is allowed into a palace...there might have been paintings but Artists normally "glorify" kings in their paintings...they cannot afford to do otherwise :)

So, what would Akbar do if he had to do all that around 500 years later? Being a king, he would have a lot of media coverage, picture splashed in every newspaper almost daily, publicly private life, love-hate groups in Orkut, Facebook, MySpace...so basically even with a very good disguise, people would RECOGNIZE him! What would you do if you were Akbar? Wear an invisible cloak and go around? How would you talk then? Even Harry Potter had problems with the cloak...good like with that :)...what would YOU do??? food for some thought ----???

Obama's challenge

2008-02-02T22:06:00.000-08:00

Battle for the next democratic Presidential candidate is hot, sometimes even overshadowing SuperBowl XLII (What the hell does "XL" mean)..just figured out that L means 50 in Roman Numerals and XL = 50-10 = 40. Man, have to wrap your mind around to read a number...don't like it!

Back to the political battle, the underdogs (no longer) Obama's are doing great, in fact they seem to lead the pack now and all this attributed to Charisma and ofcourse the "Black" factor...Hillary plays the "woman" card...reminds me of India ... politics everywhere seem to focus on dividing people into favorable sectors to pander to whereas it should actually be focusing on a unifying theme... I guess it is very difficult to win that way :(

Coming back to the Obama's, although the race factor might be helping them a little, a big part of their showing is their charisma. Both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are great talkers and they just seem to be talking common sense with a vision and are very committed towards it. They really want the job. A combination like this has every chance of winning the race. I listened to Michelle Obama today and was just left with a sense of awe! What a speech that was! Never a single moment of dullness and never a second wherein you felt there was pretense. She was speaking her heart out...Barrack is lucky to have her on his side! All the very best to this couple.

Elements of Nature

2008-01-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

Are you smarter than a Fifth grader?
Can you tell me how many elements of nature we have? Is your guess 4 like most of us smart people who are not smarter than a fifth grader? Well, bad news. You still stay in that category :P...

Water, Fire, Earth and Air. Isn't that what you were thinking? Well, you forgot one like I always did till about a week back :)...A voltage surge in our apartment fried our desktop and the famous windows blue screen hugged our laptop and there we were....clueless, speechless and thoughtless....no Internet connectivity just threw our lives out of rhythm...we relied on internet for jobs, movies, news, recipes, friends...everything....taking that out of our lives and leaving us with the other 4 elements still made it very difficult for us to sustain a normal life.....I haven't been born with internet, but my reliance on internet has grown exponentially over the years so much so that life stopped during it's absence :(. Isn't it rightfully a fifth element? :)...

Anyways, I am back ofcourse and blogging while watching "Jab We Met" for the second time in 4 days...for those of you who haven't seen it, watch it! It is a very sweet movie.

Take a Guess

2008-01-12T07:47:00.001-08:00

**** is a happy-go-lucky guy in **. He falls in love at fight sight with ** who visits from xx. ** is the sister of *** who is a popular builder and mafia man. * is another mafia don who wants to marry ** against her wishes. The film is all about how **** puts an end to * and marries **.

Now, that's the story. Can you tell which movie this story is for? Take a guess!
Count 100, 99, 98 .... 18 ... 8,7 ...2,1...

YES. YOU ARE RIGHT.

I didn't know you were that bright! I never knew you knew Telugu movies this well. Hats off to you...Well, if you are gloating, beaming or blushing you have no reason to do so :)

This is the story of every Telugu movie, no matter what you picked! I wonder how we watch the same story again and again and again...and again....can't exactly blame the director because a formula "as long as it works"... if we show some resistance, the directors will open up their creative juices....Tell me if you purchase a stock (say Goog) and it consistently works very well, makes your money manifold, would you dare sell it? I wouldn't !!

But that is true as long as it works...same with an idea...as long as we like it, we will see it :)...creativity is actually in the heads of a viewer not a director...if we can open that out, it ends up being viral :). Anyways after saying all this, you will kill me for saying this :)...I want to watch a "proper" Telugu movie now :P....been a long time....maybe I will choose something that is slightly different :P.....

Enjoy your lives, however you live it!!!

Baaaaaaaaaccccckkkkk Aggainn

2008-01-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

Back Again! Well, maybe that's the umpteenth time I am saying this, but this time I am serious! Life has/had become very busy with me picking up two different jobs within the company, but that is a bad excuse for keeping quiet! All my five senses were deeply drenched in Sabre (a very bad thing!), but my sixth sense just had it's own mind. Well, that's what brought me back because it told me if I don't live beyond my 4 walls, I don't have a life. So here I am and here's where I will be.

WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2008 WITHOUT RECESSION, TERRORISM, STUPIDITY

Gone are the days when we wished that something nice would happen...These days all our wishes are towards having status quo or maybe wishing that something worse wouldn't happen. Feels weird, but is that far from the truth?

Time Warner Sucks!

2007-09-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

I am exasperated after India won the World 20-20 cricket championship...can't believe that myself!! All credit for this goes to Time Warner for their :|.....they ruined my special day!

Monopolies suck and companies that misuse their power suck even more.. I really don't understand how FCC even allows monopolies like Time Warner to exist..they don't care for their customers, hardly fix any problems (They send technicians who are no good :( )...and they make you wait forever on the phone call...their internal departments dont talk to each other...customer service and complaints are "totally alienated" from each other (wonder how they can even exist separately!!)...and moreover no proper channel for escalation..so if you have a problem, you shout, vent out your anger and then curse your fate for having fallen into Time Warner's domain..Unfortunately for me, I live in an apartment and use a VOIP phone making it difficult for me to elect FIOS/DSL .. one not possible and the other doesn't make practical sense..if I had the option, I would have left Time Warner a long time back....

I just have a very simple erratic problem!!! Time Warner drops my cable modem signal intermittently every afternoon...duration for drops sometimes run into hours...imagine yourself VPN'ing into your office network..all you will see in the afternoon is HELL!!! I have had atleast 10 tickets open in the last 2-3 months and no resolution yet...After talking sweetly, sternly, angrily, pathetically and now madly, no resolution yet....All kinds of people were supposed to call, but nobody really does...I have no special equipment at home..don't even have a flat screen TV!! and yet have this problem...no digital cable ofcourse...shouldn't it just be simple? Come over, check wires, modem (already replaced by them), external wires and then fix? Wonder where they get all their service agents from...nobody has a clue...I am writing out of frustration and realize that there will be no resolution because I live in a MONOPOLISTIC world!!!!!!!!!! People say all kinds of things about Microsoft..call them all kinds of things...but, what about Time Warner? I think they deserve a lot more hatred...they surely have all of mine!! Hope FCC wakes up and does something about this..this is not how businesses are run...

To hear more rants like mine, look at this

StuffleFagus Rants

Boycott Time Warner

A really irate Vijay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hyderabad hell

2007-09-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

Hyderabad was jannat, a paradise to me...it still is, will always be, but people are hell bent upon breaking hell into the hearts of the dwellers in Hyderabad :(. They are hell bent upon breaking the back bone of a city that gets better and richer every single day. Richer in cultural diversity, heritage (preservation too) and all it's ethnic roots...It's a place where pizzas and Hyderabadi biryani are equally savored (well ofcourse Biryani is the best!!)...panipuris and puffs are guzzled in the millions every day...it is so cosmopolitan, modern and still very "traditional"....I am a Hyderabadi and love my city, but I really wonder how these "few" others couldn't! Wonder how they can live a life of murder and chaos after being an integral part of something so divine....

Personally, I have very fond memories of going to Gokul Chaat and Lumbini (both these places were targetted). I have some very strong memories associated with them. Gokul Chaat was frequented all throughout my Engineering days..infact, it was on my way home and I remember going there atleast a 1000 times! We used to sell textbooks and eat in Gokul chaat...such was our liking for that place! And now, somebody does this? People new to the city wouldn't know about Gokul Chaat because it is not a pompous place and nothing to be talked about in terms of interiors etc..It was and is a little known secret for "city dwellers"...anybody targeting that place has to be from the city...how sick!! you inflict an injury on your own mother! how very sick!!!!

So what can we do about such attacks? cower in fear? well, that would spell success for the terrorists, isn't it? What else then? Well, all I can say is that it is time to responsible and aware of your surroundings....look out for suspicious people, suspicious activities and for heavens sake SPEAK UP!! atleast, folks from Old City where all links to this terror seem to be emanating from....and please don't make my city a POLITICAL selling point!! Hear it, Congress, BJP, TDP! Work together and save the city..Do one nice thing in your lives and give my jannat back to me :(...was really hurt when my mother who has almost lived there forever said that people including herself were living in fear....that's not how I saw my city and that's not how I see it...Please be conscious and let's all play a role and nab these wrongdoers !!!!

Kumbhakarna wakes up

2007-09-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

To those of you that don't know Kumbhakarna, Kumbhakarna is a very interesting character in the great Hindu epic Ramayana. He was the brother of Ravanasura (asura meaning a rakshasha, a demon). Being the brother of an asura, he was an asura himself, but that's not what made him interesting...he had this special lifestyle of sleeping for 6 months in a year on the stretch and eating for the next 6 months! That was his life :). I am sure it sounds interesting now...He was powerful and had was devoted to his brother (this eventually brought him down when he had to fight Lord Rama who was fighting against Ravana).

The name Kumbhakarna itself appears to be cleverly coined as karna means "ears" and kumbha means "pitcher". The name Kumbhakarna, therefore, is symbolic of man at the end of kaliyug, when his motive is to simply eat all day and sleep all night without any motivation or remembrance of God. It means that when God descends to impart the knowledge of the Gita, most people would be in the deep sleep of ignorance as illustrated by Kumbhakarna. The knowledge given will be heard with their ears, but they will not be able to imbibe and inculcate the same. The knowledge will reverberate as it did in the pitcher-like ears of Kumbhakarna and not be absorbed by those who receive this knowledge. Mythologies are good, every story has a deeper meaning associated with it..unfortunately not many (including me) have read them enough!

Anyways, back to my title...well, I called myself Kumbhakarna but am really not as bad as him....I had taken a "lonnnnnngggg" sabbatical from Blogging because I was trying to show more devotion towards my brother, my work...Food, I always love, don't eat for 6 months but sure do dream about it for that long :P...nyways I will cut down my devotion for my brother (Good excuse, huh!) and get back to the Blogging world..I really haven't been doing a lot of things that I would like to....high time I get back to this world..

Life always gets busy, but it's up to oneself to make it better!

The Joy of Buying ....

2007-08-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

Can truly be realized here in America! No wonder why it is so Consumerist...people buy without fear, fear of things going bad, fear of quality of service and fear of the product not matching our expectations! A big part that plays into every purchasing decision anywhere is this fear and here in America professional product firms and credit card companies have taken away that fear from the equation! So, more wealth, more enjoyment and more enjoyment! circle of life keeps going on and on and on.....

Recently, I have had a few good experiences to share...some direct and some almost direct and all of them have been good! Sunrocket pulled the plug one fine day without proper notification and there is pandemonium right? Actually no, although there were a lot of people on yearly contracts, lost connectivity, they didn't lose everything....credit card companies have been refunding these disputed transactions (just call them and say you want to dispute a charge because you haven't got the service!)...I am getting mine back and a couple of friends have got theirs! Lot's of companies have offered to connect us back almost immediately after they heard the Sunrocket news..in fact I received my new equipment from JoiPhone next day and I got connected that same day :)..can this happen in India? I was trying to shift my broadband provider to BSNL and there was a never ending wait..I got tired and then opted out and continued with my miserable existence....btw, credit card companies here quite a bit...they are almost a parallel insurance body *with no minimum from our pockets...Friends have got back money for rental car disputes (so very common!!) and have used it as an extended warranty for big ticket electronic items very effectively :)...

Going to a Credit card company is not necessary too sometimes...if u r under warranty, just call the company and you will be surprised that some of them will deliver replacement products to your doors for no cost! Sometimes just taking your word for it :)..I just can't believe it...Life and some prickly decisions are out of my plate now...All I need to concentrate on is the product :)...

Almost reminds me of a parallel in the software world...every product/technology is moving towards making developers life easy by abstracting/separating concerns forcing them to concentrate only on the "business" logic...same in the consumerist world...buy things by looking at what the product has to offer, not on anything else :)...Art imitates life, Technology imitates life...is Technology an Art? love to think about it that way...will be using my "full" brain that way :)

An ideal beginning

2007-07-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

Waking up on a Sunday morning, sipping a hot cup of tea, reading an O'Henry tale with occasional glances to see flowering trees, industrious bees and wading ducks (destination nowhere) is as fresh as opening your eyes to see children playing and getting lost between long lustrous green blades of grass on a hilltop where morning dew hangs onto the leaves as the sun coyly tries to make conversation with the trees.

O'Henry's tales are true to life and are just pure and full of emotion. His characters are pure in thought and almost seem to be sitting there with you on your couch and talking about their delightful experiences in life. They take you to a politics-free, technology free world where anything and everything is in the form of unadulterated basic human emotion. Very vividly described, I can almost see the seasons roll by my very eyes as I become a spectator to a world beyond mine...
And the ending...always the best with a twist! O'Henry stories always leave you with a dilemma...you want to reach the end because it is special but on the other hand, the story is so well written that you just want to read on and on and see no end!

Let me get back to my other world now...I could have relished a few more O'Henrian moments if I had not written this, but just couldn't stop myself today...Everything seemed so perfect :)

Is stardom infectious?

2007-07-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

Surely seems so whenever I watch Indian Idol and whenever I think about it..Or is it grooming? Can't say which one or whether it is both!

Indian Idol 3 is the only I watch regularly (Well, Everybody Loves Raymond and Family Guy are creeping into that space) and I must say watching it itself has been a growing learning experience for me. I see every participant grow as a singer, performer(hate that word...overused) and as an individual..Maturity they say grows with responsibility and being responsible for winning 1 crore is no easy deal and that really shows. Every participant has been singing better(Amit with his choice of Aamir songs excels himself every time) and they seem to enjoy what they are doing which actually reminds me of Peter Collins book "Good to Great"..he talks about companies that were good, but shot up to be great beating market and competitor averages by huge margins. It is definitely an interesting read, so lay your hands on it! One note in it says that great companies

1) Do what they are passionate about
2) Do what they are good at
3) Do what is beneficial to their bottomline

The above three criteria are not a "OR" thing...they are an "AND" thing! He calls this the hedgehog priniciple...no reason why we have to attach this principle to only a company...Every individual is a company within himself striving for his mission in life! Taking this principle to Indian Idol, I feel the contestants meet all the criteria...so no matter who takes the money and the car, if they keep pursuing their passion with discipline, they will all be very successful!! I wish them all the best!

Sunrocket speechless

2007-07-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

A meteoric rise and a meteoric exit! That's how I would sum up Sunrocket as a company..Out of blue, out of nowhere, it came out there to challenge Vonage and it's likes and ended up coming second in the VOIP with an impressive customer base and forced other VOIP providers to cut the cost of their plans...Impressive, marketing genius or just another foolhardy endeavour?

Yesterday came a loud thud and a sudden demise. SunRocket was no more...founders decided to pull the plug (or atleast that is what it seems)..no notifications to customers, no hints anywhere...almost like it died in a freak accident. Surprised, shocked and enlightened...maybe this is how corporate America is like!

SunRocket's website is still alive, but they no longer answer their helplines, their service works in spurts now. My wife had this clever idea of using up our remaining Sunrocket funds to make calls in India, but well for that our phone should work :). Anyways, competitors are poaching SunRocket's huge customer base..i have fallen prey to JoiPhone, another VOIP company (am still optimistic on VOIP)..As long as SunRocket was alive, their service was good. I just feel their exit could have been more graceful.

Curiosity gives me the cat?

2007-07-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

We will see!
I was doing my daily ritual of browsing aimlessly in search of that something that can catapult me high in my friendly circles...(atleast for a day...ok, maybe an hour...come on 10 min atleast!!) and I chanced upon this thing called "Pownce" which people seem to be going gaga over..Pownce is a new Social Networking site (yes, one more)...something like twitter and better and has this "limited invitation" concept meaning you can only be invited to Pownce by members of Pownce...This makes perfect from a company and a users perspective...

Company can see traffic grow gradually and can accommodate for the hardware/software growth required in a planned manner...very difficult if the user base sky rockets in one day...in fact dangerous too, because if the interest shoots in one day and your product cannot handle it, you end up with the potential of annoying that many prospective customers...very difficult because you be confused with mixed feelings :P..Seems good from a users perspective because in this age where social networking sites seem to be going up and down like mushrooms, something that comes in via an invitation from somebody trusted makes sense..
1) Because it is from somebody you trust.
2) Wouldn't have come to you in the first place if the people above you in the chain hadn't liked it, you wouldn't get this invit. Basically, they kinda did your homework for ya..

nYwayz, coming back to Pownce, I read that invitations are on sale on eBay! I won't pay for a cat, never! People are crazy..in fact, that craziness has sparked some curiosity in me and now I want my invitation and so have been meandering around blogs advertising Pownce and have begged for that one Pownce invitation that can give me my 10 min of stardom. Hope I can get it :). I promiz, I will give away my invits for free if I get clawed.

Herez a blurb on Pownce just in case you are interested...

"Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You’ll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast."

Pownce is the brainchild of the founder of Digg, so this interest :)

Fold your T-shirts

2007-07-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

Every problem has more than one solution...Well, all solutions need not be right :D :D

Folding my t-shirts and putting them cleanly in my racks has always been a big problem for me and I always end up spending more time scheduling this event than actually doing it :). Somebody else thought otherwise and just did it...looking at how fast they did it, I think it is time for my scheduling algorithm to see the recycle bin.

Fold your T-Shirt

You probably will have more fun if you understand Chinese....

Didn't that look easy? Go, try it out!!! It works!

Aamir Khan's blog

2007-07-04T05:55:00.000-07:00

Aamir is a great guy! Not just for the kind of films he chooses, but also for the way he plays his part to "perfection". You never get too tired of Aamir except for a few movies like Fanaa....interesting, I can't think of anything beyond that except for a couple of movies that he did before reaching prime time.

Fanaa was a bad movie by Aamir standards..just like Raja Hindustani (one more name comes out :)), but they were both big Blockbuster hits in Bollywood, re-writing records that were in place at that time (this whole records thing is a sham...we can probably have a record for not having a record :))...anyways, looking at the success of these movies and my pathetic views about them, I should probably re-phrase what I said in Aamir's words..these movies "didn't work for me". Apparently the movie "Memento didn't work" for Aamir, but he doesn't consider it a bad movie because everybody is entitled to his/her perspective. I sincerely agree, my opinion is mine and your opinion is yours and so the movies didn't work for me :)...And where do I know this from (given the fact that Aamir is "media shy")...welll, his own personal blog that seems quite recent! I was doing my daily morning routine of checking on updates from Movieland and chanced upon this :)

No matter whether you are a ardent, die-hard fan of Aamir or not, this is going to be an interesting read. Aamir's Blog. Interesting to see him read all comments and even reply to them :). Aamir Khan is just too perfect!

What is truth?

2007-06-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

Truth -- a very simple word, but does it really have a meaning? Merrian Webster summarizes it as a "the state of being the case, a fact"...
But, aren't facts seen, interpreted, reported? What I see is probably not what my neighbor wants to because he is biased, doesn't like that truth? Well, in making that decision, am I not being biased?

So, given a situation -- WHO can represent/report the truth? Human brains are surrounded by clouds of cognizance. These clouds are made up of droplets of information (biases) as imparted by our education, society, friends, parents and our own cognizance(yes, our own so called knowledge)..For example, I have an impression that Gandhiji was really a Mahatma, but he had this "-ve political streak" in him. The more I see things about him, read about him, this truth seems to be true. I am on a truth consolidation mission and interpret truth within my boundaries. So, does that make these things true about Gandhiji???...Well, only in my perspective and maybe a few others who have come to "accept" this as the truth....

So, back to the question, what is truth then? Is truth the cause of all evils in this world? Perhaps yes, because there is no single truth!! Every conflict is a conflict of perspective..I know you might not agree with me, because that is your truth. Are we all living lives of falsehood then? Who can really get me closer to truth? A soul untarnished by the effects of society, culture or truth? Do you think such a soul is truly available?

I live my life in a dream
A dream seldom comes true
But I still live a life to dream a dream
A dream that will just look like true

Life is not about finding truth. It is about the journey that gets us to a path leading to it. It is not just tough to erase our impressions...it is IMPOSSIBLE!

Controversies galore

2007-06-11T17:35:00.000-07:00

Cricket and controversies go hand in hand, atleast in the Indian sub-continent (as defined in yesteryears). One coach dies, charges of murder float around, conspiracy theories float around AND everything ends in a whimper? Why the big drama, why all those allegations, resignations and why this dumbness now? Bob Woolmer was not murdered, really? Even if that were true, I really don't want to believe it after all those forensic reports, video recordings, interrogations -- Whatz the scoop !!!!!!

Bangladesh does well, upsets a couple of big teams, reaches quarter-finals AND then loses it's coach Whatmore :)...If I were him, I would stay with the team and get them to win the cup! Whatmore saw BLUE, but only got the blues when India decided to "ignore" him for the big coach position and decided to interview Graham Ford and Micheal Emburey..They offered the job to Ford who politely declined it saying that he preferred coaching Kent to India (what a shame!) and Micheal Emburey didn't want the post either...people should really hate team India...wonder when we will understand on how a sport should be played at an international level. Team decides who it wants the coach to be and BCCI does some futile chases...I wish I could decide who my manager should be :P..

Btw, Whatmore was not called for political reasons apparently...Sharad Pawar has his eyes set on the ICC chariman post and he needs support from 6 of the 11 test playing nations. Asking for Ford, a South-African to coach the Indian team could possibly get that country's approval and Sharad Pawar, his seat...Well, Ford stumped them (pun intended) by refusing it making it a (x+iy) equation for team India to solve...Wonder what our next move is going to be...whatever it is, I think people really have lost interest/ are losing interest in the game.

Indian Idol Googlies

2007-06-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

Don't know if I can call it controversial..It almost seemed so. I was surprised when a new girl "Jolly Das" suddenly joined the top 10 Indian Idol contestants to take a shot at winning the much coveted title. Apparently she had contested last year, came to the finals (almost) and had to retract because of a chicken-pox attack. So, the Indian Idol TEAM considered this and gave her a free entry to the final round as "promised". Well, don't recollect if anybody except the Indian Idol "TEAM" remembered the promise. Even the judges weren't too impressed with this sudden development. I can understand it if all this happened as planned, but it hardly seemed so. Why, Sony would do this all of a sudden is quite un-understandable. It is like somebody clearing the CAT exam, then the GD and then coming down with chicken-pox. Would he/she get a free ticket into the selection in'views next year by virtue of this? Comparison might be bad, but both are national level competitions !!

If the above was surprising, shock yourself this time :). Indian Idol decided to bolster this team of 11 contenders with 2 more "promising" contestants from the previous rounds. Don't know if Sony is just too unhappy with the quality of singers on the floor currently or if it just wants to add unnecessary suspense/surprise or if the judges really hate the junta opinion...whatz final is that the list is growing and these two new contestants from a pool of 6 who would perform on stage -- another surprise, judges will choose "one winner" :P...junta will choose the other..Btw, the list of candidates vying for the two spots are
* Shantanu
* Ankita
* Amit Paul
* Ayesha
* Bhavin
* Shifa

In an age where "Wisdom of the crowd" is the mantra for success, we see that Wisdom from a few sometimes overrides it :P..Don't know what to say, but feel that when the contest is about what India wants, it should be that way!!

Henry Ford once said, "Any color as long as it's black"...is that what Sony is saying...any winner as long as it is "?????"...Please feel free to fill the question marks :)...

Btw, for those of you who want to ramp up on Indian Idol 3, http://indianidol.sify.com is the site for you! Enjoy and let the suspense unravel!!!

Yahoo WooHoo's

2007-05-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Never seen Yahoo playing with Logo's like Google..maybe Googler's have a lot more time to spare(the luxury Thursday's ?), a better sense of humour (remember those April fool jokes, pretty fun actually :)) or just an attitude that reeks of college... maybe I didn't see it in Yahoo because they never seemed to do things differently till their recent pipes idea or their hack day concept...my respect for Yahoo has grown by leaps and bounds after their "Pipes" ... Yahoo Answers is pretty good too actually...anyways what perked me to post this was actually their "doodling" which almost seemed like a google thing...

I thought their Mother's day doodle was far better than Google's ... time for more comparisons in the future...hope Yahoo offers some stiff competition to Google in areas beyond Doodles (read Search :P)...was talking to a friend of mine from Yahoo a couple of weeks back and he mentioned that if Yahoo "retained" it's market share, it could almost double it's revenue from Search...Well, my friend doesn't represent Yahoo totally, but might be reflecting some thoughts from inside ... That ain't the way to win, is it?

Anyways here go the doodles :)...Enjoy! HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!

Can't show you the animation that was present in Yahoo's doodle...even without it, it looks far better than what Google has :)

Habit of winning

2007-05-05T06:54:00.000-07:00

Mavs are gone. They exit from the first round of playoffs! All this after

"The Mavericks won the most games in franchise history and might have had more victories if Johnson hadn't backed off after clinching the league's best record. They lost only 11 times after an 0-4 start.

They did it with a roster designed to win in a variety of ways. That's how they strung together streaks of 12 and 13 wins in a row, then a franchise-best 17-game run. No other NBA team ever has had three streaks of at least 12 consecutive wins in a season."

Unbelievable, isn't it? They did have a bad streak against the Warriors, but that is no reason to lose a first round playoff battle! This has been a "habit" of the Mavericks.."Glorious victories followed by shameless, gutless defeats"...remember last year's run against Miami in the finals? That was heart wrenching :(

Mavs have a playing style very similar to what India has in Cricket...a playing style that leaves fans exasperated....do we celebrate their victories or mourn their defeats? Fans can never answer that question and that will soon get them to be indifferent toward their teams...but what is it that makes kings paupers in no time?
Is it false bravado?
Don't think so because I can never see an iota of confidence, leave bravado in those teams..
Is it bad luck?
Luck might decieve you once, but not every time!
OR is it just the lack of guts to win?
Don't know this one, but I can surely say that they have beaten mighty teams in crunchy situations earlier...
so WHAT IS IT?

I personally think that it is just the habit of winning in big games/tournaments etc..or just a false sense of accomplishment for their achievements (Best season record/ beating Suns, Spurs etc to reach the final is enough, isn't it? Well, they think so) :)..If you have to win, you have to thirst to win..you should be used to it..Look at the Australian dominance over world cricket..I can see their thorough professionalism (very irritating) and their determination and confidence to win as their weapons...

Guess we can extend that to ourselves too...people who succeed are the ones who want to...our successes are limited by our vision and our drive..lose the drive and you ain't going nowhere!!!

End of the trauma...

2007-04-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

A traumatic finale to a traumatic world cup...right from India, Pakistan's eviction to Bob Woolmer's murder to the insipid performances from England, WestIndies and the likes to today's final, I cannot think about days that were interesting...the only guts displayed were those of Bangladesh (occasional flashes) and Ireland...One should really appreciate for their gutso...their first stint in the world marked the end of Pakistan and they never went down without a fight! Maybe because they had nothing to lose :)...The only matches I can remember this world cup are the ones between SriLanka, Pakistan ; Srilanka, SouthAfrica and England, WestIndies...everything else was s**t..

Today's final marked the end of the worst world cup ever and what a way to do it! A world cup final ends in a rain curtailed match (36 overs) and after setting a very stiff target to Srilanka, Australia had the rain God and the "light" god on their side..Srilanka had to chase a rain curtailed match in dim light and rain!!! And this is a world cup final...can't rant less...Srilanka lost, but it was never a great cup to win!!

I really hate the Australians (not their fault)...

Google acquires again

2007-04-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

I know there is a lot of talk about Google buying DoubleClick for $3.1 billion pipping Microsoft who were eyeing the same for around $2 billion. Google did this as the deal will extend it's online advertising reach even further, combining it's ad platform and publisher monetization services with DoubleClick's ad campaign management skills. More importantly, it did this to prevent Microsoft from getting an easy entry into this space. Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon have been left with sour grapes..but was it a wise price to pay?

Well, me thinks so because whenever you see Google make an acquisition, it's stock price shoots up (happened during all the big, publicized acquisitions) and the rise in price more than compensates for the price it buys the companies for :)..Jab bhagwan deta hai, chappal phad kar deta hai (When it rains, it pours :)). The last I saw regarding Google's stock price rise today was 1.7% which is almost equivalent to what it paid and still going up...Sorta like a very fast mail-in rebate?

Hold those dollars

2007-02-10T03:14:00.000-08:00

Rupee has been steadily appreciating against the US dollar...Almost 10% up in the last few months..The increase is high enough to raise some alarm bells in the Finance Ministry. As has happened in the past, RBI might intervene soon and mop up a few dollars from the market making them pricier. It can build up it's dollar reserves (already over 100 billion) and maybe use it payoff some it's loans? Apparently, money in Reserves fetch just a meagre 2% return (I do much better :)) and our loans eat up 5% interest.

An increasing rupee makes things all the more costlier to companies outsourcing work to India. With salaries rising (growth best in Asia), infrastructure costs rising and the Dollar falling, India will no longer be a "preferred" offshore destination if the dollar languishes at it's current level against the rupee. So, RBI will come in and bring a little more sanity to our more than by 9.2 percent overvalued rupee (JP Morgan Chase statistic). So, hold that dollar in your pocket. Sending dollars home at the wrong time is as bad a decision as say putting all your money in a saving account (some have it in checking!!). I have been guilty of both and have just learnt it the hard way !!

Want to know more about rupee dynamics..take a look at the sites below

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India_Business/Rupee_in_sight_of_fresh_one_year_high/articleshow/1571722.cms
http://www.swaminomics.org/et_articles/et20031001_currencyappreciation.htm

Nithari Killings

2007-01-12T05:25:00.000-08:00

Life is so cheap when you are poor and when you are not in power. What else can explain 'Nithari killings', our full of life (well, death actually) Hannibal version! Gruesome and unbelievable to say the least and to imagine that these cannibals were just 500 ft away from the people that they killed is unbelievable..They didn't kill 1 or 2, but about 40 women and children and possibly even more and were still "unnoticed"? or rather were unnoticed by choice!

Inspite of several pleas from the villages, our Hannibal Lector was not brought to justice. Perhaps because of their financial clout or maybe a lack of it..no political support? After all, who cares for a small village of labourers! Even a famed politician's brother termed these deeds as 'ordinary'! Maybe if these guys had taken up a fast onto death and succeeded, police or politicians would have cared less..Mamta got a letter from the President and PrimeMinister!

If this was and is gross injustice on one side, Saddam's execution was no less. All I can say is that he held his pride even when death was smelling him. A leader who led the whole country and had a big share in world dynamics executed (in the first place) and executed in this manner (secondly) is just shocking!

Well, I hate to say this but it seems that to be on the winning side is what matters in this world! Money and Power, are they not dirty vices we live our lives for!!

Good Quotes

2007-01-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

Whenever I read a good quote, a good tagline, there is a certain glimmer in my eyes..something that makes me realise how deeply that somebody would have thought about that issue! My sister had a book of quotes with her when she was half her age and I had fun going through it at times. Hopefully, she still has that habit and can make this list below richer! Here are a few quotes I find inspiring and interesting. A very small list for now..go ahead and make this list even richer!!

Live Simply, Love Generously, Care Deeply, Speak Kindly

As I said before, I never repeat myself.

There are 3 kinds of people in this world...those you want things to happen, those that make things happen, and those who just wonder what the hell happened!

It takes both sunshine and rain to make a rainbow.

If you are willing to admit faults, you have one less fault to admit.

You cannot get to the top by sitting on your bottom.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is."

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."

If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Happy New Year!

2007-01-06T07:29:00.000-08:00

Life sometimes comes to a standstill and you really don't know what to do because you have hardly much to focus on. It can also come to a standstill because you have so much to do and you really don't know what to start with and how to finish them all! With me, it was the second case. We moved to a new apartment nearby and it almost seems like a whole new world! Right on a canal, closer to nature this time and every morning greeted by pleasant sights of ducks wading through water and squirrels scrambling for nuts. Mornings look so much better and days seem to go by peacefully. Never knew such a small change could bring such a big difference! Our new found peace was preceded with a storm of activity right from bringing our old apartment back to it's own shape to shaping this new one in accordance to our tastes. Kudos to Sharmila for being very picky on things she wanted/didn't want in the house, because it now seems to have some character finally :). As if this wasn't enough, we were on a holiday season shopping spree keenly looking for and grabbing opportunities to buy gifts for ourselves and folks back home. Life has change and this change was entirely due to our old apartment management who just decided to almost double our rent! Thanks to them, I have this now...

Anyways, although I am late I wish you all a

HAPPY NEW YEAR .

My resolution for this new year is to lead a more peaceful and organized life. Be good, stay good and do good and to sport back the smile that I probably lost in the latter part of last year. Take care everybody and bring in the smiles :)))))

Airtelcallhome, where r ya ?

2006-12-17T20:29:00.000-08:00

Two giants - Reliance and Airtel come up with prepaid phone cards to India to milk the NRI market and follow two different approaches to make money.

Reliance :-
Workable website with very little jazz.
Good customer service.
Good communication.
A tad bit expensive after offering cheaper fares earlier.
Call quality awesome.

Result :- 3.5 stars. I would have given it more if it was priced better.

Bharti Airtel :-
Jazzy website with almost nothing working.
Customer service number provided wrong.
No communication from the team. No e-mails.
Cheap, but they are crooks.
Cannot make a call inspite of them taking money from my credit card. I lost around 20 bucks, but my SIL lost 150!

Result :- Can't give it a star. I want to shove a rocket up their ass and send them into orbit, never again letting them to interfere in my life!

Tell me...have you seen any website taking money from your credit card (very promptly) without even creating an account for you! To make it worse, they leave no doors for you to knock. All this coming from a giant in Indian telecom, Bharti Telecom is just unbelievable. If you want to remotely feel my pain, try accessing airtelcallhome.com. It will take you an hour to load it!!

BEWARE EVERYBODY! AVOID THEM ! 7.9c is a deal very difficult to resist (initially 4 c !!), but some companies just don't deserve even a cent from you!

Kabul Express

2006-12-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

We were on a mission to see Dhoom-2, D-2, DI-2, whatever they call it these days, probably to tout it as manna MI. We left our offices in time, checked with each other constantly, picked a restaurant close to it for dinner, finished our food at the right time and finally reached the theater 2 minutes before the movie started to realise that Dhoom2 was NOT PLAYING that day! So much for our planning :P. They were not running it that day to give room to a new movie Kabul Express that released this weekend.

With so much planning and almost no choice, we picked our tickets for Kabul Express and our journey from then on was eye-opening. We came out of the movie with a spinning mind and some of us came back with a different perspective on the happenings in Afghanistan, actually elsewhere too..

Kabul Express is about the journey 4 strangers(actually 5, but I feel the American had no part to play!) embark on, the poignant part being their composition. One of them was an Afghan, another a Taliban (a Pakistani settler) and the other two reporters from India and is a tale that talks about the current scenario of Afghanistan post-9/11, post Pakistan abandoning them. What makes the tale interesting is the different perspectives brought into the tale from it's protagonists. Here are a few things illustrated..

1) Not everybody from Talibans buys into it's ideals. They just consider themselves as a part of the army and follow what is told. Their aim is to have an intruder-free country.
2) There are a lot of Pakistani fighters in the Taliban.
3) Pakistan is caught in a weird web where it has to kill it's own citizens for its survival.
4) America sucking out oil from the territories it occupies replacing it with Coke and Pepsi :)
5) Mutual hatred between Taliban and the rest of Afghanistan and how ruthless and unforgiving they are towards each other.
6) How a town in Afghanistan lets of donkeys on the road with the hope that somebody will run them down after which they can stake a claim over the "precious" donkey and squeeze money from the offenders :D..Don't know if this is true, but I found it profoundly funny!!!

The ending was striking where a Pakistani soldier had to kill his own (a Pakistani in the Taliban army) under American pressure inspite of totally being against it clearly showing the pressure under which Pakistanis are in and the fact that American friendships last as long as they are in "their" favor. Kabul Express is really thought provoking. Go and watch it!

Btw, just saw Big Fish for the second time..While Kabul Express is a 'real-life' movie, Big Fish is really full of life. A movie about adding color to mundane life making it colorful and exciting for self and for everybody else :)

"Common" cold

2006-12-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

"Atchoo..AAattchhooo!!" sneezed my manager. Me was passing by and after the customary "Bless you's", I asked her if she had a cold. She denied and said she had allergies. Frankly, the way I was brought up, anytime I sneezed, it was always a cold, atleast that is what I thought it was. Allergies were only for the skin or maybe the stomach. So, when I heard my manager say allergies, I was amused and thought .. "Ok, this is one more American thing maybe out of their paranoia, out of their indulgence with health". But, I was proved wrong eventually..

A couple of days back, I was trying to get rid of a few mildew spots in our bathroom here and out of brash ignorance/arrogance did all that with bare hands, sometimes going to the extreme of rubbing/scrapping some of it myself..I am the healthy one right...What would happen to me? After all, we had rolled in dirt as kids. We can almost take anything...But so wrong was I..A couple of hours after the 'clean', I had allergies, YES allergies. My nose was dripping like a stream, eyes had spokes in them and I was a little dizzy. I thought I was sick, the fever kinds and popped in a paracetemol in the night. Woke up the next morning with the same symptoms becoming worse, had tea and just for the heck of it started reading about "allergies". It was interesting to see how our human body generates histamines to battle against harmful intruders like mold, viruses and that allergies were sometimes due to their continual generation by our body under the assumption that the intruder was still active.

Now that I realized what it was, I went to Walgreens and bought some non-drowsy anti-histamine tablets and took one..Lo and Behold! my cold was gone..I mean my allergies vanished. It was really interesting to see how programmatic/mechanical our human body behaved. Just because the "intruder" flag was not set to false, histamines wouldn't stop. Set the intruder flag to false with a anti-histamine tablet and you are all set. Thank God, I know atleast now. I have been popping in Paracetomol for just about everything :D..

India's pathetic display

2006-12-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

India has really entered the digital age now. Gizmos, gadgets, new-age technologies have become an accepted part of life. Cell phones have become necessities..companies are building business models around them. SMS, VOIP, Skype are mentioned in the same breath as cable TV. Our digital revolution has become so ubiquitous that our sportsmen have embraced it with open hands. I know sports and technology had a few associations but I never knew their relationship was so deep. Our cricketers are so enamored by this digital revolution that they have taken to it literally!!

Our performance in the current South Africa series has been pathetic, sub-par, dismal for lack of worser words...Batsmen mainly to blame for the shame what with the competition going on to score the lowest score possible...unfortunately they cannot score less than 0 which kind of is the reason why we haven't seen anybody emerge victorious...0's, 1's all around. Score of 20 looks awesome and personifies an Indian player with great determination, courage and mastery! Such is the plight!! Pitches and unfamiliar conditions were blamed for our misery, but for how long? We are going to play our world cup in similar conditions. Are we accepting defeat there already just because conditions might not be conducive? International standard players sieved from a population that is almost touching 2 billion which reminds me of one thing...Quantity never matters, it is quality that counts and we don't really come anywhere close...Our players are great on the books and better for excuses. Our current woes are attributed to our wretched coach (I don't like him a lot personally but blame him for this). We need a scapegoat, a reason to justify everything..in life and so in cricket.

What irked me the most was that even though we made rough weather of winning a 4-day match against a second rung team in South Africa, we were really celebrating it! I would actually curse our performance..In 2 innings we had around 400 runs and Pathan and Ganguly accounted for more than half of that!! Can it get worse? It sure can, but not a lot...Wonder who is going to talk some sense into our players and get them out of this rough patch, most of which I feel is self-inflicted...Indians (including me) have a confidence problem in general, we are self-conscious, evaluative and maybe a little submissive. Inspite of all this, the best part about us is that we have the power to shake all this off with our endless determination as is evident from our long freedom struggle. No other country could pull that off. In the same vein, I think our cricketers have the power to break their shackles, to play their natural game forgetting how pathetic they are and just start on a fresh slate. Give merit to every match and play it to the best of your potential.

All the best TEAM INDIA. Show us what we can do. Some of us draw encouragement, courage from your performance. Don't disappoint us. Show us you can fight like a tiger and WIN one for all your fans!

New Lamborghini

2006-11-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

I am in peak holiday mood now and have given away all my eyeballs to it(2 2b presize, isn't this how kids write these days! Acronyms are a part and parcel of life now, not limited to software any longer :). They are used so much that simple spellings have become difficult to remember).

Coming back to the case in point, there is a new Lamborghini in town...How about calling it a LG? Ugghh, that removes all class from it! This new Lamborghini is affordable and it can actually be driven without a license. Believe that? I am sure you don't..but if I tell you that this new Lamborghini is actually a laptop and not a car, you will and you will be disappointed too. Lamborghini and laptops? What a combination! Ferrari did something like that sometime back, don't know if it was widely accepted..but to think that the world's sportiest car(almost the costliest?) is getting into computers is just not acceptable to me..and their ads on Buy.tv are even more preposterous..

The ad says that this new Lamb embraces all the qualities of a Lamborghini that include speed (dual core processor), power (2 GB RAM) and looks (same colors, sleek finish including the Lamborghini signature at the back of the laptop) and reliability (good warranty). Every laptop worth it's salt offers this today, nothing special in this Lamb. Maybe some racy design with sleek features like a touch panel screen, outstanding audio, video quality (how about bose integrating some speakers into a laptop..speakers from it's stable seem to be getting smaller and smaller every day) can possibly give it "that" distinction..

Oops, in my excitement to share this with you, I forgot to mention some important details to you. This Lamb is called a ASUS Yellow Lamborghini VX1 and it is currently priced at around $2500. Take a look at ad here.
Lamb computer ad

Playstation3, just a game console?

2006-11-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

Playstation3, just a game console?

Doesn't look like that to many as is apparent from the long queues at various BestBuy stores across USA, kind of reminiscent of the queues lined up for a new Chiru movie in India or the queues for StarWars here or maybe the line at the US consulate in Chennai! Demand for the Playstation this time has been exaggerated because of short supply. Sony has had several production issues and has only supplied 300,000 consoles for the holiday season and has restricted all imports from Japan! After the battery recall, these new production issues for the Playstation add to it's long list of woes..Nothing seems to be going right for the company. It is also facing litigation charges against it's video website Grouper.com. Blame it on stars! Sony's loss here is Microsoft's gain. XBox 360 is rocking now. They are actually making a profit on the console now! Sony is going to make a 200-300 dollar loss on each console they sell which they "hope" to recover by selling games on these consoles...200 bucks more for Blu-Ray and all..tccchh..My eyes cannot discern any difference now. The next thing in digital entertainment..People will walk out of television screens aka "The Ring", or maybe Holograms?

Coming back to the Sony Playstation fervor, gamers just seem to be bunch of passionate nerds. How else can you explain long serpentine queues built up over a couple of days with people camping out near stores! Heights of stupidity, a pregnant woman trying to ignore her contractions to just stay in line! Madness, what else? Riots, a drive-by shooting and several vulturous glares have been reported. Sounds like a crazy place to be in. People are hiring 10-20 'temps' to just stand in line to get a console. Don't they have anything better to do in life? How about donating that money to charity?

Look at how much they are selling for on eBay. Unbelievable! 2-3 times the normal price. Maybe, Sony should silently sell some here and make up some of it's losses :).

Sony Playstation III on eBay

Pre-emptive military strategies

2006-11-12T17:56:00.001-08:00

Bush just lost half of his personality! After suffering a drubbing defeat in both houses of the parliament, he had to appoint a new defense secretary. Donald Rumsfeld, who had a stranglehold on the flawed American military strategies (all based on a bed of lies and assumptions) had to step down and give way to a more moderate Robert Gates. Even while stepping down, Mr.Rumsfeld was his belligerent self advising the government not to relax on it's pre-emptive military strategy against Iraq because of "moral and intellectual confusion". Come on Mr.Rumsfeld..we all know the facts.

Iraq was attacked on the basis of a few satellite reports that "showed" fixed/mobile centers for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I still remember that report in TIME that talked about why Iraq was a potential target and how cliched the usage of WMD had become then..and after so many years of digging, searching, excavating :), what do they find? Zilch!! and what happened next? Tune changed citing that the war was to oust Saddam, the terrorist mentioning that he was the worst thing to happen to this world, caused genocide etc etc ...and they do find him..Where? In a hole. I actually expected to see him on the top of a nuclear warhead from the din that was going on..and did anything change? Yes Yes, it did..New "heroes" like Al-Sadr emerged and Iraqis started coming across as a united bunch, well actually two bunches and what happened to Saddam's genocide? Well, it continued .. only change is that the numbers are bigger now!!.. Attacks between Shias and Sunnis have increased and hundreds are dying every day..much worser than what happened during Saddam's reign. I don't have much respect for Saddam, but he atleast had the country in control! WMD's are gone, Saddam will soon be history and the latest tune is that the administration is striving to bring in democracy to an oppressed, anarchy-driven nation and of course this is being forced upon them...Huh, you are targetting oppression, but trying to suppress common sentiment at the same time?

Democracy with force/pressure. Can't get worse..

I am very happy to see Rumsfeld step down. I wish Cheney does that soon too. That leaves Rice and Bush. I had the impression that Rice counted for policies here, but now feel that she is just a puppet with an attitude, a very bad one..That leaves us with George W.Bush Jr. Well, he will just be a kid with no personality. Let's him play. Let him compose his silly poems and let him make a fool of himself as always...We chose him, so we bear the consequences!!

Break the complexity

2006-11-07T18:35:00.000-08:00

Analogies demystify life. They help us to simplify the complex, and/or make the abstract concrete. Human minds can accept arguments much more easily when comparisons are drawn with things they already know about. You can use analogies to disseminate information to an audience that hardly knows about what you are talking or to an audience that knows/but doesn't agree with your viewpoint or use them to explain some abstract principles to yourself. Life becomes very difficult when we cannot explain why facts are facts and why some popular theories are accepted as facts. Some of our greatest theories in science came into light because scientists drew analogies with what they saw(Newton's laws of gravity, Archimedes principles ..).

I don't have the sharpest brain, take time to understand new ideas and concepts, but make a great attempt to typecast a new idea/concept to something that I already know of. I like drawing parallelisms between life and what I see. I explain life through work and work through life. One such thought struck me today on my way back home. I am usually a "left-lane" guy (although I don't drive that fast), but today on my way back home, I was stuck in the "right lane". On a 60mph speed limit road, I was driving at 40 mph. Try as hard as I might, I couldn't get to the faster lanes. Cars were whizzing past me and I was just looking at them. This reminded me of something that I was always told when I was going to kickstart my career. People advised me to join a company that was in a growth mode, a company where I could learn a lot and move forward. I took the advice and went and joined a startup where I gained some very valuable knowledge apart from a direction for my career. The company I was in when I moved was a "big" company and I was just an employee lost in the crowd out there. If I had carried on with that job, I would have been in the "right lane" forever. It would have become increasingly difficult for me to go forward or move to a faster lane as I would have been restricted by the growth of the company. Faster lanes are always good if you are 'within the limits' (read 10%/10mph higher than displayed :)). Easier to shift to a slower lane if you ever wanted to..You can go(grow) fast, reach your destination faster. Ofcourse, it is fraught with the risk of an accident/burn-out, if you go just too fast! Slow lanes are good if you want to play it safe and enjoy your journey without much concern for going fast/rising to the top. I would strictly advise people starting their careers against it...

I am in the middle lane now and am trying hard to get onto the left..The going is tough, but I am tough too. I know I will be there soon, but had I been in the left lane, things would have been so much easier. Life and it's spectrum of choices. We have to be careful about what we choose and what we don't!

A perfect escape

2006-11-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

Life's happiness lies in some of it's most silent moments. Far from our deafening world, there is a sea of tranquility where every ray of light, every drop of water, every whiff of air and every smile on a face is fresh and pure. Every single moment spent gets you closer to yourself. The only noises you hear are the chirping of the birds, noises from leaves rustling and water moving. Life in a city distances us from all this and obscures us from enjoying nature in it's naked beauty. Cacaphony and Monotony have silenced our lives and have taken us away from our roots.

I had a tryst with nature over the weekend and realised that this new world was not really that far away! Just 200 miles from here, a wooden cabin in Broken Bow, Oklahoma was the perfect retreat for our tired souls. Every moment I spent there seemed very ideal. The trip was even more endearing because the fall colors had just set in making the atmosphere tranquil, beautiful and colorful. We even crossed a village that had just 300 occupants, 20 of whom we met in a gas station. Even our apartment complex here has more than 300 residents!

Am just waiting for our next trip now :).

Blogging ?

2006-10-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

An interesting article in Time and a poignant comment by my wife activated my gray cells again. They are generally in a deep slumber or in a state of mechanical motion till they hit something like this.

The article in Time that I liked was about how women joining the Workforce in big numbers starting in the 1980s changed family dynamics. Men started contributing more than earlier and women started contributing lesser toward household chores. This fact was not surprising, in fact it was quite understandable. What was interesting was that parents(working parents) spent "more time" with their kids than others by cutting down on their sleep. Maybe, it was their guilt making them do more than normal. Another fact that came into light was that there was a considerable drop in the amount of time people spent with their near and dear(apart from the family).

And now for the comment by my wife..She said that, "My husband spends a lot of time on the internet (around 18 hours) and I get to know his feelings through his blogs!"..What she didn't realize was that she said this IN HER BLOG :D..

Now what do these two seemingly different things have in common? What struck me when I encountered these was the fact that in both these cases, the attempt has been to socialize (women going to work / blogging to reach out to the blogosphere), but what is weird is that this very attempt is probably making us spend lesser and lesser time with our "quality" circle. Is this good or bad ? I really cannot say. It all depends on how your friends perceive you to be and what they have to say :). For now, it is status quo for me, except for the fact that I am quite conscious about all the time I am spending on the internet!

How I wish a day had more than 24 hours/ I could co-exist in different places at the same time ...

Boom Boom, shake a leg or ..

2006-10-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

Real Estate has become the de-facto investment standard in India for everybody. Growth has been stupendous in most markets and people in general are thirsting for more which in turn is fueling this market. Wonder if all this demand is inflated..How much land does one need? I have seen people buy acres and acres of land. Do we really need that much? As a kid playing Monopoly, that is what I used to do. Get onto a square, if I had the cash and if the rent/return for that place was significant, I just bought it. Well, now I am no longer a kid and I am not playing Monopoly. The equation is a little different too. When I played Monopoly, I had opponents to play against and bought places with an anticipation for rent.

But now, if everybody owns properties and nobody runs on the monopoly board, how would I earn my rent? Most investments in RealEstate are from NRIs who "most probably" will not come back. Prices are really not affordable for RIs and will totally get out of reach soon. It is a scary thought that most of this "new" land is going to be owned by people not residing in India(I am an NRI myself and have nothing against them). Think about it. Real Estate is an asset and you are making a profit out of it. What if our government decides that there is enough of a bubble in Real Estate and starts taxing us for the big gains we make in Real Estate? What if they impose a ceiling of some kind? And what if aam junta (common people) decide that enough is enough and stop participating in the market? Demand would slide, so would prices!

Globalization has made people reach out beyond Geographical boundaries, but our demand for land is still very localized. Technology is increasingly making internet a more collaborative environment. Telecommunication is getting faster and cheaper with VoIP, WiMax, Broadband, Fibre Optics etc. Employees are increasingly WFH (working from home), companies are formally introducing Green days (working from home for employees) and still our demand for land is extremely high in and around hi-tech city in Hyderabad and other similar areas in other cities which in my mind should and will change.

For now, banks are keeping our feet hot by encouraging us to invest by providing loans with very low interest rates, but unrealistic demand cannot hold itself for too long. I personally feel that investing in and around these "high-tech" areas is not the best of ideas at the current moment and that channeling all your assets into real estate is not good too. At the same time, you don't want to lose out in this booming market unrealistic/realistic. So, what do you do? For one, Invest in land but don't make it your investment ....and well, how about not making it localized? Steps in that direction will make the demand curve more realistic and investments a lot less riskier!

You get what you haven't paid for ...

2006-10-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

My hair has been catching up with my height lately..not a very difficult task considering the fact that there is very little between the ground and my eyes, but still requires effort that can only be mentioned in months..well, quite a few months actually. I had been avoiding a haircut partly because I was busy or acting busy, partly because I was lazy and mostly because I had to cover a quite a few bald spots. One fine evening things changed ----

I opened my mailbox as I normally do and skimmed through the contents. I tore apart quite a few marketing/promotional mails voraciously (had a bad day@work) and then saw a small card that stood out like a cherry in a bowl of vanilla ice cream (hate vanilla ice-cream, feels so insipid!). $3 off on a hair-cut that was already priced cheaper than the rest. I frankly don't understand why hair-cutting salons charge that much here. Extremely disproportional to what they do. Well, only doctors can beat that here :) and of course a nails salon. My eyes light up when I see a deal and this deal really had my eyeballs. Ta da! I could finally have a haircut and pay reasonably for it. Couldn't refuse that !!

Seeing that this coupon would expire soon, I dragged myself to the salon today. I was going there with mixed feelings..happy because it was a deal and wary because I just couldn't trust this. But, USA is a land full of deals. You can buy the same thing here for 1c and $1. Right day, right time and you might even get it free here! At least, that is how I convinced myself and dragged myself to the salon.

Finally, I was there .... I was greeted by a guy with a long pony-tail who seemed to have taken a bath at least a couple of days back. He had a wicked stubble, but his smile was gentler. I greeted him and proceeded to the desk. To my surprise, he said that he was in-charge and asked me if I wanted a "trim?"..trim my hair? Was surely shocked noticing the fact that my hair was going to be ravaged by a savage looking person. He was an antithesis to a barber, who in my opinion should look a lot more prim and proper. Imagine a plumber coming into your house with a blazer and tie. That is how this was! I could have controlled my greed and got out of the salon, but for this guy whom I really didn't want to annoy. I had given up even before the massacre started.

I wanted a clipper 3 on the sides and back, but needed my hair to stay a little longer onto the front to cover my broad forehead :). This guy ripped through my hair and cut it in all directions in whatever way he could. He showed me an initial version and asked me if I was happy. I was shell shocked. Gathering up all my courage, I asked him to cut my hair in a few other directions and make it even. He did that and the end-product was still not satisfactory. After a few iterations and a few feedback sessions, my mane was cut very short and it finally was in some reasonable shape(there was hardly much left, so was easy!). I paid this guy and then vowed to myself that I would never run after deals, at least for things that would have a long-lasting effect.

I got what I hadn't paid for, a bad haircut that shocked my wife. Now I know why people pay that much to get a hair cut. A lesson well learnt!

Every moment is precious

2006-10-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

There are times in life when you feel absolutely speechless, down, beaten to death and just out of control. You question the very essence of life, your existence, purpose and ofcourse your helplessness! Introspection surely helps one answer a few questions, try new things out, but what if a person has no time left in his/her life. What can he/she do?

All these thoughts sprung up out of deep emotion and sympathy for a friend of mine who had been diagnosed of brain tumour and he has less than a week left in his life. All he can currently do for a conversation is hear and "bat his eyelids". So much for a person who was just too boisterous and whose voice boomed in all the conference calls that we had! Bat his eyelids! That's all he can do. And what can he do now apart from waiting for death to embrace him with both his hands! He was a healthy guy, ran 6 miles every single day. I don't what I can do in this world to help him, if there is anything, I will surely do it.

How can you re-write your fate or can you not and if you cannot, why can't you? I am sure Ray had a lot of plans for his life and none of those can be fulfilled now!

This really bothers me... What are we here for? If we don't know the purpose, shouldn't we strive for one (I am not taking about a career) and work towards it? Poor Ray, my friend cannot do much now, but us all, who have all the time in this world (atleast, we are lucky to have that feeling!), should make use of our lives in a more worthy fashion and do the best we can every single day to achieve that very purpose. Hopefully, with that, when death delivers us a striking blow, we can turn back, smile and kiss life goodbye ...

I really wish Ray well wherever he is and wherever he is going to be. I believe in miracles and hope God bestows one on him...He surely has sparked something in me and I won't let that die. Think about it. Live life as if tomorrow is going to be your last day.

Friday, the 13th

2006-10-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here we are! another Friday, wonder why life is running out so fast. Weeks seem to be flying past. I can't keep track of days any longer, birthdays are hard to remember and tough to forget...but this friday is a little different, because it is the 13th today.

People deem 13th unlucky and Friday, the 13th especially so. I saw a few initial effects already. I was on schedule today to present Fitnesse, an acceptance testing framework to a few teams here@work and felt very queasy yesterday when I realised that today was Friday, the 13th. I am a little superstitious myself and felt that something was not going to go right and sure enough, there were problems. Right after I sent the presentation to everybody that was going to attend the presentation, I had atleast half of them asking for a reschedule and I had to cancel it :). Don't know if it was the fear of attending my presentation or something else :)..

Having nothing much else to do, I went to Yahoo and dug out reasons why Friday, the 13th is considered bad ...Here are some :

This superstition stems from the events that took place on Friday, October 13, 1307 when the Pope of the Roman Catholic church, in combination with the King of France, sentenced the "the Knights Templar" to death and ordered the torture and crucifixion of their leader.

Some say the number 13 was purposely vilified by the priests of patriarchal religions because it represented femininity. Thirteen corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year, and the number was revered in prehistoric goddess-worshipping cultures.

Hindus believed that it was unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place. This conviction was shared by the ancient Scandinavians.

Many biblical events of negative import supposedly occurred on a Friday, including the ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, the start of the Great Flood, and the crucifixion of Jesus.

Like many legends and superstitions, the origin of Friday the 13th will always be subject to speculation. In the end, we take all the theories with a grain of salt, but well it is always better to be safe than sorry, so go wrap yourself in your blankets and escape from this dangerous Friday, 13th. Good excuse...You can already see me tuning in for the weekend :)

Live and let Live

2006-10-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has been trying very hard to get into the "search" business and recently came with a new version of it's search engine which looked quite impressive. It looks a lot like Google, but a little richer and boasts on providing very 'relevant' results...everybody does it these days :). The results page is similar to Google's and even the ads are unobstrusive. Google surely has set a precedent with user-friendly ads. You can take a look at www.live.com to see what they have to offer.

Don't know if most of you have seen this, but Google surely has! Just go and search for search on Google.com and check the results. Microsoft search shows up first, even before it's own..Now, we know what's playing on their mind, don't we ..

Live and Let Live ?

What can technology do?

2006-10-10T19:18:00.000-07:00

What can technology do? Well, it can almost do anything..even enable people to play games with neurological signals as was recently proved by a group of scientists from Washington University who translated neurological signals from a young man and then connected an Atari Video game to a computer that could process these signals. Amazing, isn't it?

Getting subjects to move objects using only their brains has implications towards someday building biomedical devices that can control artificial limbs, for instance, enabling the disabled to move a prosthetic arm or leg by just thinking about it. This is surely interesting, but there is something else that happened in our India that amazed me even more!

Ever wonder what technology does for a farmer in India? If you are a part of that world, you would surely know that technology and farmers are never even talked about in the same sentence. Setting up e-Seva service centers in villages was a big thing...Farmers didn't despise technology, they just didn't know it...But, so is not the case in

Raigad district (Maharashtra): Roughly 140 kilometre from Mumbai, farmers are turning to technology to fight for their rights.

Four months ago, the farmers of Pen taluka in Raigad district were told the state government was acquiring their land to help build the 25,000 acre Maha Mumbai Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

That's when an activist of the SEZ Hatao Virodh Samiti, Arun Shivkar, logged on to Google Earth and used it to prove to the authorities that the land was fertile.

Shivkar says initially state authorities claimed that only a small portion of the earmarked land was fertile and that some parts of it was submerged by salty creek water, meaning lower compensation for the farmers.

But Google Earth came to the rescue and its satellite pictures clearly indicated crop areas. This helped the farmers back their claims for higher compensation.

This technology has also brought together farmers from 45 villages to put up a common front and protest the acquisition of their land.

The ingenious ways in which farmers in Maharashtra are using Google Earth to fight for their rights is perhaps a testament to how technology can really help us in more than obvious ways.

Well, I have used Google Earth to see satellite pics of my apartment, pics of Eiffel tower etc, other saner people have used it in local weather forecasts, traffic congestion reports, discovering hidden ancient villages etc, but using it to settle a dispute with the government is a masterstroke, and this being done by villagers just adds to the delight!

More gadgets!!!

2006-10-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

I am not a gadget freak, but these gadgets are just too fascinating :). I like the "alarm light" thing, but I guess it can get a little annoying if you are going to take a short nap and this thing starts emitting light right from the word go :). Well, I am sure Phillips would have thought about it, and has something that can turn this off!!

Philips showed off its latest free-thinking ideas for its annual 'concepts' show at the ExCel Centre in London's docklands this week. Here's one: The Light Spectrum - Run your finger along the touch-sensitive device to adjust the colour of the ambient lighting in your tastefully appointed crib.

read more | digg story

Lovely Kids -- Kids I love

2006-10-04T21:55:00.000-07:00

Any tiring day seems effortless when innocence in kids strikes you. A smile on a face comforts your heart, but a smile on a kids face can just melt it...Here are a few near and dear ones..Enjoy!

Elegant design

2006-10-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of design with attitude..Sheer elegance!
This is what I was talking about when I said that Sony's readers could be a lot better if they used Apple's design :). This offering is from Apple and this is their latest iPod shuffle. It carries a competitive price tag with it too..just $79 for a 1GB player..Apple claims that it is into "green" technology with this product, but I don't really buy that argument..Their claims are just based on the idea that their new shuffle is just half as big as the old one! I work for Sabre and our headquarters are in "green" buildings which is why, I very well know that making a green product is much bigger an effort than slashing its' size to half...I am surely not complaining about this product though...It's great and I love it!! Only disadvantage --> Even if you lose it, you will never know! Well, until you try to dig it out for your next song :).
Neighbours envy, owners pride!

What happened to Firefox?

2006-10-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

I have been very loyal to Firefox, right since I picked it up around 3 years back. My bond with it started out of my hatred for all the malicious adware, spyware problems prevalent in Internet Explorer at that time. Adware/Spyware had such great determination that inspite of installing, running all kinds of toolbars, anti-spyware software, they just came back with a vengeance. To beat them, I abandoned ship, and then started using my new geek toy, the Mozilla firefox browser!

My honeymoon period with Firefox lasted quite long (all of 2.5 years!) and I have been very satisfied with it, but now, I am seeing cracks in our relationship! At times, I just hate it and almost have taken solace in it's enemy's lap...Yes, I have started using IE, but luckily it is still not a routine.

Firefox seems to have various problems now..I have extremely high CPU utilization issues, the only recourse being that I have to shut down the process, lose all my work, kill firefox from my task manager and then start all over again....Well, I hate this even more if this happens when I am blogging.. If this alone were not enough, it has great problems running Adobe files (wonder why it cannot do something that simple), and sometimes it just disappears..it almost seems like magic when that happens..I have complained, I have installed newer versions, I have put in fixes, I have cried, I have prayed and now the only option for me is to hate it and so this rant..This could well be a problem that firefox is not able to accommodate newer, AJAX-driven, content-rich websites, but well, that surely still is a problem because the whole world is going towards them!!

Just felt like comparing this to our traffic problems in India...I think we are doing a better job there..we atleast build new highways that atleast try to accommodate our increasing traffic....don't know (actually cannot see anything) if Firefox is actually doing anything handle this! In such a scenario, I almost have nothing else to do...but hell, there is....get back full-time to IE or maybe pick Opera?

Sony Reader!

2006-09-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

Sony came up with a fabulous idea and I found it very intuitive.. A e-book reader!! This probably is not as big a breakthrough as a walkman, but I am sure it addresses a very big need. I will surely go out to a Sony store and check it out. Books have always been a pain to read on a computer! First and foremost my computer screen is too bright..all screens seem to affect me no matter what I do with the brightness and secondly I really cannot carry my desktop monitor to my bed, not even my laptop (thats where i read most of my books).

This book reader from Sony is surely going to be helpful, but I will wait for the rate tag to dip a little bit or should I say byte :)..It is around $400 which is a ridiculous price for this! If it had been from the apple stable, I would have probably paid that! ( It would atleast be aesthetically stimulating :)). Being from Sony, their UI sucks big time..The only good design I saw from them was their VAIO. Actually, I would love it if Apple could give us a book reader..Somehow PDFs and iPODs share some common area in my brain as Apple just seems to make "sleek and organized" products at the same time :) and that is what a book reader should be...sleek, organized and light.

Here is the link for Sony Book Reader just in case you want to see it! It looks ok on their website but looks a lot more clunkier in the picture above. Hopefully it is atleast as beautiful as on the website and hopefully it has a light in it so that I can read a book on a flight or well .. without disturbing my wife in the night :). I know if Apple had come out with this, it would have all this and even more.

Successful = Confidently Ignorant

2006-09-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

All you need in this world is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure

-- Mark Twain

I didn't say that, but I surely believe in it! "Ignorance is bliss", not because not knowing makes you a better person but because the fact that you don't know it allows you to learn it..allows you to grow as an individual. But, learning can only come when we are confident about what we "don't" know! It is so very easy to stay confident or act confident about something that you know thoroughly, but exercising the same composure in times of duress i.e (when we almost don't know anything about something) is not too easy..but, the fruits of doing so are just very sweet. I just remembered something from a movie I was watching last night.."If you want to enjoy the rainbow, you have to withstand the rain" (Well, I like both rain and the rainbow .. I guess rain is not too high on everybody's list :))

Well, to end this I will say embrace Ignorance with both hands and more if you have more than 2 ;)..flaunt your ignorance because it will make you more comfortable with it and then go ahead and learn! A little after that pick up something else, flaunt it and learn about it..that is the recipe for success!!

What would life be without learning..A growing body without a growing mind is the worst disease for anybody...

Creative ?

2006-09-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

Advertising never stops to amaze me!

Some are funny, some are creative, some have a very good feel to them, some you remember because you hate them so much and some of them are just very creatively located !!

I was browsing and ran across this one. Hope you guys like it too! This is a German Ad for a job website and is located on vending machine. I have never seen anything this creative on a vending machine. All I see is an occasional splash of letters in different colors!

Btw, if you have time and if you are in a setup where you can laugh loudly, do look at this website. Some ads here had me in splits ::D :D :D

http://veryfunnyads.com/

Enjoy Life when it seems too short :). When it seems too long, just get some good friends around!

Howzzat??

2006-09-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

My wife sent me out on an errand to get her some "anti-dandruff" shampoo and I happily trotted out of our small, humble apartment. I went to Walgreens that is almost nextdoor and went to their shampoo section and I started looking ... looking, I am still looking ... and then found her a shampoo! and then I looked, looked .... .. to see if I could find something better i.e a better "anti-dandruff" shampoo! The whole process probably took me 10-15 minutes which is a lot considering the fact that I live in an internet age where product listings are made on the click of a button! I wondered for a second if I was spending my time wisely? How would it be if I could do execute my manual searches the way I did them on the internet..
For my current scenario, I would have searched for dandruff shampoos on the internet on any site like Amazon.com and I would get back a set of results.
This is possible because products are associated with attributes before being stored as inventory on the internet, but that is not the case in the real world...This made me think...
Can we make our real world as convenient as the e-world? I think we can! RFIDs can be used to do this...Product manufacturers when they make a product can associate it with attributes and product displayers at the retail outlets should be able to read and understand them. Attributes can be classified as one major, 4 or any other wise number of minor attributes. Retail shops can have search assistants alongside products and customers can use the search assistants to enter what they want. If the search criteria matches with the "major" attribute of the product, it glows in red and if it matches with a minor attribute, it can glow in green. If the search criteria doesn't match anything, then of course status quo! no glowing or anything...

This whole situation would be a win-win, if done efficiently. Customers would ofcourse benefit from superior service and would have a lot of extra time in their lives to invest on something better (hopefully they aren't couch potatoes!!). Manufacturers can differentiate their offerings better and gain over competition..They can introduce a product and play with the product attributes and see how they can position their products better. Having a fixed number of attributes is important because product manufacturers would end up advertising their offerings for everybody...(Everything for everybody would make life even more confusing..)
Search providers like Google can get into this space and provide personal search assistants and kind of extend their Adwords program to the retail world..i.e take a commission from product manufacturers for selling a product through the device!

Hope this idea catches steam some time, and some day, some time, we will have this world somewhat better...But, what will people do with that extra time they save??..Now, that is a question to ask :)..Maybe, think about making life more efficient and sensible? Life surely changes..Thoughts of today might be norms tomorrow!

Write Right ;)

2006-08-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Boy!! Isn't English an interesting language and ofcourse confusing too :)...well, not if you know all the rules ;), I mean the unlimited ones !!!
Meanings for words in English vary based on the context they occur in. Sometimes, they might be mis-interpreted because the context is not propogated clearly. I am a daily subscriber to WordSmith and I am quite into it. Anu Garg, the editor for this "daily"(;) see see see) sends a word a day(with it's origin, usage etc), based on topics which she defines at the start of the week. Topics covered are very interesting too..for instance, this week he has "There is a word for it" as the topic in which talks about words that convey a rather complex idea.
Coming back to what prompted me to write this...I was sending out a few e-mails to people when suddenly I realised that I was using "was/were" as my verb, both for a singular form..Well, I was using them correctly but couldn't really explain why I "was" using what I was using (I had a slight idea) and if my assumptions "were" true..Normally speaking, I would use a was for a singular form and a were for a plural form but in a few cases I was using were for a singular form...

After doing a little research on the internet, I found that were should be used for singular forms when the "mood" is subjunctive (sounds complex :))..
Subjunctive - a statement contrary to fact, a wish, a mandative statement. Now, this makes better sense. If the context is a wish, the verb takes a 'were' form for singular..in all other cases, it is a 'was'!! Well, one more rule ;0). I am sure there are more that negate this!

Enough about mood, let's change it! Let's advance forward .. Oops, I just used a pleonasm here .. Aarrgghh, now what's this...Pleonasm are superfluous words..A pleonasm consists of two concepts (usually two words) that are redundant..For example, in "advance forward"...advance is to move forward, which makes forward just redundant! Each and Every, Exactly the same, final showdown, free gift etc etc all come under this category and all this is common usage!

Now for some fun with words :)...Look at these sentences !!!

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18. After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22. I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.

Enough of this..now back to work !!

Lasting peace ?

2006-08-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

Long, long, long ago, this whole human civilization started with just a few people. It evolved, grew, adapted and has become the most powerful species on this earth, so very powerful that the negative energy contained within might blow the lid off this earth and erase a drop called EARTH from an ocean called UNIVERSE.
Does this affect anyone? Well, hell! YES!! To me and many like me, Earth is my universe!

What are we upto? Destroying this world, killing each other, splitting our souls based on geographical boundaries, religion (that was meant to unite), money, language (that was meant to get us closer!). Every single day there is an attempt to divide people, an attempt to strain this earth and an attempt to self immolate ourselves! Politicians exploit us, divide us with the aim of capturing their "share of the pie", little realising that what they are upto would only destroy the pie. Never will I see one more species that cannibalizes so much. Never ever!

Wars do no good. They flatten buildings, people and destroy dreams. They bring the worst in us and bring us closer to the end! They etch bad memories and rupture tender hearts. And people talking about " Lasting Peace " through a war have their souls in deep slumber. How can there lasting peace when the earth is bleeding..when the earth is shedding tears of blood :(
My heart cries for one and all affected by war and hopes for the best. Helpless moments like this make me fear. Fear with a hope that the world would be left atleast with a sensible few who can start on a clean slate again. But, will the world be the same for them ?

Calvin, the genius brat!

2006-07-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Calvin n Hobbes is my favorite comix strip. Calvin's imagination has no bounds!
Calvin is an impulsive, imaginative, energetic, curious, intelligent, self-centered, and often selfish six-year-old :). Despite his low grades, Calvin has a wide vocabulary range that rivals that of an adult as well as an emerging philosophical mind.

Calvinistic predestination as a philosophical position basically entails the idea that human action plays no part in affecting a person's ultimate salvation or damnation. Calvin's consistent gripe is that the troublesome acts he commits are outside of his control: he is simply a product of his environment, a victim of circumstances. Well, don't we all do that :D..I really envy Hobbes, how I wish I were him :|

Calvin can relax a weary mind, bring a smile to a troubled heart and he just evokes loads of laughter out of me. Let me share a few smiles with you :| :) :L

Calvin's encounters with Susie, his mild-mannered, diligent, civilized classmate are hilarious...
Just take a peek ----------------->

Stay tuned to see some more and control that laughter :D

Calvin, the genius brat!

Our shot at limelight :D

2006-07-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

We recently attended a "50 day Tollywood movie celebration party" here in Dallas and this held on a private yacht on our own Lake Grapevine here. The title of the movie was 'Godavari' and most of it was shot on river Godavari in Andhra Pradesh...so having the party on a yacht had a nostalgic significance to it. We were invited by Manohar Reddy, the CEO of Touring Talkies, the distributor of the movie in USA. He is a person full of focus, dedication and a man that understands risk very well. Well, we attended the party without even watching the movie and we were quite delighted to have the company of the director and the hero of the movie. The director asked one of my friends who shares my name and the boat that we were in (he didn't watch the movie either), if he had seen the movie and ofcourse he embarassingly told him that he didn't!!
But, you know what, he ended up with a story for his lifetime. I have seen him repeat this incident to atleast 10 other people :D. Here are a couple of links! Enjoy

http://www.greatandhra.com/movies/gallery/2006/godavariyacht/yacht.html
http://www.idlebrain.com/news/

Movie Mania?

2006-07-21T19:27:00.000-07:00

Art is a form of expression, an expression of what lies within us, an expression of what we want the world to hear, what we want the world to see, an expression of how we see the world and what we see in it. When expressed clearly, it can affect more minds than some, it can burn down boundaries that it was built within, anger some but inspire many!
Indians have been deep into art for ages and have expressed it in their sculptures, paintings, scriptures, poetry, literature and many other ornate forms but the power of expression through media is a recent happening. "Art" movies haven't been uncommon but they were watched only by an elite few. Expression without reach is like a blog that is read only by the author :). Serves no purpose, I might just write stuff in word documents and store them safely!
I watched "Rang De Basanthi" for the second time today and I ended up with moist eyes, not because the patrons died at the end of the movie! I was sad because I have not been able to give anything to my motherland, have criticised it a few times and at a point when I have decided to join it back, I am not very comfortable! So little for so much from my side. I am sure that there are more people from India who share my sentiments and am sure that this has shaken their very heavy bodies. People who cannot go beyond the self are people who can never make a difference to this world. Rang De Basanthi has inspired many a people..a group of students from IITs have started Paritrana, a political party leaving all their hefty salaries. Demonstrations against terrorists and other offenders have been carried out in true 'Rang De Basanthi' style!! Kudos to Rakesh Omprakash Mehra for having directed such an excellent movie. Some pieces will never leave my mind

Koyi bhi desh perfect nahin hota, usse perfect banana padta hai!

Sue's grandfather saying " I always thought there were two kinds of people, people who died in silence, people who died crying and shrieking" and here he saw a third kind (basically dying in happiness!)

Everybody can be pushed so far, and after that they reach a limit. There, they are calm and are at peace with oneself and see and find the energy they never dreamt they had.

I have surely been moved. Let us see what I can move :).
Jai Hind!!!

Perception is not Reality!

2006-05-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

Well, that's the impression I was left with after I read Steven Lewitt's Freakanomics!
Life is defined and played with Perceptions. Everybody, especially people in Marketing use it get people hooked! We pat ourselves when we realise that our perceptions are right. We take pride in it! But, is reality as seen by us always the truth? Some things stare you in the eye and maybe that's the reason they blur the truth..
Steven Lewitt delves into this theory and illustrates this with some hard numbers. Perceptions may lie, but facts and figures cannot! Atleast, that is an Economists perception :D

There were quite a few examples in Freakanomics where Steve shows this! There were a couple of examples that I really liked though, things that happened counter-intuitively!
Well, I am sure you are quite curious to know what they are, even otherwise I will say what I want to :)..Take a look at this.."Effect of Increasing a fine.. what does this bring to your mind".. more compliance? Generally yes probably, but not in all cases..For example, a daycare center in Israel increased the fine levied onto parents for picking their children late and it actually resulted in more violations! Totally against our perception and the reason was that parents actually felt "less guilty" about picking their kids late and actually did it more :) :)..
Decreasing crime rate in New York was one issue that was broached..common perception is that this is because of Giuliani's great leadership and reforms, but facts and figures show that it was on a rapid decline even before Giuliani took up office. Infact, the real reason behind the whole decline was "legalised abortion", which came in very handy for downtrodden, poor families! It was observed that children from such families were more prone to take up crime..less children of this kind, less crime! simple formula :)...

There's a lot more Steven talks about and I think it is better read than said..my hands are already aching :(..His book is surely worth a read!!

Dubya's other side

2006-05-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

I am sure most of you have seen this already :|. I am the unfortunate one :(. I got to see it just about recently when a friend of mine casually mentioned this when I was talking about my poetic instincts :P. I laughed, laughed and laughed and am sure you did too. For all of you who can afford a few pounds of laughter, read the rest of this blog...This comes from one of the biggest poetic geniuses of this century, probably even the last one :).

In her prefatory remarks at the October 3, 2003 National Book Festival Gala, Mrs. Bush told attendees:

"President Bush is a great leader and husband—but I bet you didn't know, he is also quite the poet. Upon returning home last night from my long trip, I found a lovely poem waiting for me. Normally, I wouldn't share something so personal, but since we're celebrating great writers, I can't resist.

AND HERE IS THE FUN PART :P (btw, this line was by me ;))

Dear Laura,

Roses are red, violets are blue, oh my lump in the bed, how I've missed you.

Roses are redder, bluer am I, seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.

The dogs and the cat they miss you too, Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe.

The distance my dear has been such a barrier, next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

"I'm happy to be the inspiration behind this poem!", said Laura Bush...

Well, well, well! I don't know if I would really be proud of such a thing! And being an inspiration for such ridiculous things, I would curse myself. I don't know if this was really a George Bush poem, but that is what Laura had to say and even if she was joking, it surely gives us an insight into what she thinks about Bush Jr.."SUCH A JOKER!!"

But knowing this new side of Mr.Bush put me in a big dilemma ... Now, I don't know which side of Mr. BUSH I like better...His 4 Ps stink (Presidential, Personal, Poetic, Public). I am sure most of you are in the same boat !!!!!!!

V-lead!

2006-05-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

My mind wandered today thinking about managers, leadership and how it applies to our world and particularly the world of software I am associated with.
I read about the Hitler's, Mussolini's, Stalins, Lenins, Gandhis and learnt that some time in total isolation could do wonders for a person. (Many of these leaders were incarcerated..I want to be a good leader, but well can avoid being jailed :)). All these leaders had different ideologies, but what tied them together was their conviction and their unadulterated dedication towards the goal they set out for themselves and the people following them. They had the goal and the vision to take them there (The path leading to the goal)!

But, leadership although it emanates from an individual is a collective effort. Leaders cannot follow through with their committments if the followers do not show diligence and diligence can only built by collective ownership. You do it when you own it! Responsibility is something that can motivate people think about great things and responsibility with power makes them do it. When leaders share their burden with the others on their team, the journey is effortless..

Leaders always learn from things big and small and nature I feel is one of our biggest teachers! Ever looked at flocks of birds flying in the sky? I am sure that is a common sight every evening. There is something else that always happens. They always fly in a "V-pattern"! And this is because of a reason.

Scientists discovered that the heart rates of the birds were lower when flying in a V than when flying solo. Migrating birds use the "squadron" formation because it allows them to glide more often, conserving energy. The aerodynamic V shape reduces the air resistance, allowing the geese to cover longer distances. In fact, a flock of geese can fly 70 percent farther by adopting the V shape rather than flying in isolation.

The V formation may offer other benefits as well. Each bird has an unobstructed field of vision, allowing flock members to see each other and communicate while in flight.
The goose at the head of the V is not necessarily the leader of the flock. Apparently, geese take turns leading. As one bird tires, it drops to the back of the formation and another takes its place. Now that's what we call teamwork with a vision in sight and collective ownership!

Humans, like geese, were created to work together and to support one another. When we encourage each other and support our leaders we can accomplish amazing things — much more than trying to work alone. Learn from nature and contribute towards it!
I am off for my cup of tea :)

Horseshoe here !!!

2006-05-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

Well, greedy you came in for a horseshoe and all you see is

" 13 13 13 Friday Friday Friday 13th 111 222 Friday 13 13 13 Friday "

Wellllllll...there is probably nothing wrong with Friday, the 13th or with the Nelsons or for that matter anything else and carrying a horseshoe in your pocket might not bring you any fortune or goodluck but might surely tear the seams of your pocket! But, superstitions surely bring in a zing to life. They can bring in variety to an otherwise mundane life :). I am quite superstitious myself, but only for the fun part..I surely shudder when a black cat crosses my path (especially when I am in my car) or when Tendulkar is on 111 ( Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be getting near 11 these days!). Infact, during some crucial world cup matches, I locked my sister in her bedroom because I had a feeling that if my sister commented on a cricketer (an Indian cricketer) while watching cricket, his time was due. He was out the next ball! Unfortunately, this happened quite a few times and my sister was restricted to solitary confinement quite a few times in our childhood. I am quite sure she is very glad that she is married :)...

Btw, I started thinking about all this when I read an article here in 'Star-Telegram'. The title said "Skyscraper curse strikes 3 companies". One of the three companies is the company I work for and I surely can vouch that the skyscrapper curse is true in our case. They have an interesting picture to illustrate it too! Skyscrapper came into being in 1999 when Deutsche Bank researcher Andrew Lawrence identified a link between the construction of the world's tallest buildings and the onset of an economic downturn :). The three companies I am talking about here are Sabre, Radioshack and Pier 1 Imports.

Sabre Holdings, RadioShack and Pier 1 Imports were hitting on all cylinders when they hatched plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build their corporate headquarters.
All hyped growth ambitions and the efficiency to be gained from new office configurations. They also said the right thing about not being distracted from their primary businesses.
That turned out to be wishful thinking. Each company's stock price and profits headed south not long after they moved into their new homes. Pier 1 and RadioShack are struggling so much today that they've become the subject of takeover talks.
BIG BUILDINGS CRASH BIG DREAMS!

There are quite a few other examples to the Skyscrapper curse -- EmpireState Building, Sears Tower, InterFirst Bank (the neon-lighted skyscrapper seen in the dallas skyline) are all standing tall with this curse...

Btw, I just heard there is one other curse. The curse of associating a company name to a sports facility spells doom for the company. AA, UA, WorldCom, US Airways are amongst many other companies that had to bear the brunt of this curse...Now, isn't life interesting :)

Hopefully, you guys are not cursing this post !!!!!! :D :D :D

Globalisation, losing party ?

2006-05-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

Globalization has long been considered a silver bullet that could propell a country's economy to great heights, but is that always true ?
There have been arguments that it is a relatively new phenomenon, but that is not true too!

In reality, we are in the midst of the world's second era of globalization. The first great globalization occurred from the middle of the 19th century to the eve of World War I, fueled partly by liberalized trade and immigration policies and partly by steep declines in transportation costs. This earlier era has been studied extensively by economic historians. What these investigations have shown is that by 1913, globalization—whether measured in flows of goods and people or in the convergence of national economies' prices and wages—had been realized to an extent never before seen.

I can see Globalization invading our quarters right in the 19th century, actually even earlier when the British started tampering the minds of Indians and eventually conquered them. They surely gave us their language, institutions and communications networks..well, they took just too much in return. Globalization, that is normally talked about is more about trade crossing national boundaries bringing in economies of scale, improving quality wherever it permeates. It has been there for a long time but has received a lot of attention recently because of an explosion in communication technologies.

Globalization is not only about seeing a Walmart, McDonalds or a BurgerKing in your country. It is not just confined to the retail sector. It was widely seen in the Mfg sector (Remember those "Made in China" labels :)) and now there is explosive growth being witnessed in the Service sector, all because of one thing 'Communication'! A good communications network makes geographical distance a moot point for the service industry..

So, what does all this mean for us. We are surely shifting our focus from a more reginal, national mindset to an international mindset when we do anything (True for all entrepreneurs). We have let other countries invade our space in almost every sector and at the same time we can reach out and serve a bigger audience. But, serving a bigger audience, is that possible for a company with low finances? I surely understand that "bigger" corporates would surely have the financial muscle and the mettle to deal with this (in fact, like it), but will a poor farmer/poor equipment manufacturer be able to compete against the cost efficiencies that these huge multi-national companies have realised? Probably not! Will it kill entrepreneurship at that level, surely! But, will it make better entrepreneurs, SURELY. So, what do we do as a country? I surely see this as a evil necessity :), but we can sing a happier tune adopting it, if the government policies are conducive to do that. If it can grant loans more easily for these "small" players and arrange for programmes/bootcamps of how to compete against such influx, talk about the benefits of consolidation and then competition, it would make it a lot more easier for these players.

Globalization has also been alleged with increasing pollution and "encouraging" child labor in poorer countries. But again, there are flip sides to this too. It surely increases the per capita income of people in poorer countries making it easier for them to buy vehicles that increase pollution but at the same time "imported machinery" used in manufacturing is a lot less polluting! And coming to child labor, well since the per capita per household increases, there might not be any necessity to send children to work! But forces of need for more labor, greed for money might foster it. All this again can be averted with "good government policies".
I guess I can go and on and on about this thing, but to summarize my thoughts (as if you care about it !), I think Globalization is not something to jump in, it should be done with a plan..adapting to it while adopting it!!!

2 minute wonder

2006-05-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

Life always seems very short. When I look back at mine, I am quite amused to see I spent more than 30 years, around half the average lifespan of an Indian male almost doing nothing. That is how it seems when I look at the "bigger" picture.
On the flip side, I was just pondering about how much one could do/ one could accomplish by spending 2 minutes wisely.
Let us try to illustrate this using a hypothetical task, actually let's take a real one :). I wake up every day at 7 30 am and try to be at work by 9 am. My daily routine between these 2 hours includes brushing my teeth, making/drinking tea, the DAILY RITUAL, taking my bath, dressing up and driving to work. It takes me 30 minutes to get to work, so I have to start driving my car at 8 30 am. You can obviously see that 1 hour is a very short timespan to accommodate all my other tasks considering the fact that I HAVE to browse/check my e-mail for atleast 10 minutes out of this hour! I really had to cut corners, cut some sleep to really squeeze this in. This went on and on for a few months till one fine day, I decided to spend 2 minutes to think about this and then my life underwent a metamorphosis......Before you start speculating what happened in those 2 minutes..

I analysed my situation and realised one thing. I was spending atleast half an hour making tea and drinking it and saw it as the "big" bottleneck to better sleep and devised a plan to execute this task in parallel. Everyday, after I get up from bed, even before I open my eyes I go to our stove and start boiling our tea leaves. Then, I brush my teeth and shave during which the water on the stove has enuf of the tea leaves. I add milk to the concoction and then go about doing my MORNING RITUAL. By the time I am done, the tea is done and I am ready with a big cup in my hand. I can now have tea, read my morning journal, browse, do whatever in peace and one hour now sounds just too much.

Just two minutes spent wisely seems to have changed my life! I am in time to work and never late to meetings and that morning stress is gone. Extrapolating this to other aspects of life, I feel planning for just about anything in life is crucial. A simple plan can make a complex task look simple and what more can it can make you fulfill it with happiness. I am a happy man now, do you want to be one ?

Not even a tear ?

2006-05-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

Pitter Patter, Pitter Patter..drip drip drop drip...smell of drenched earth, pleasant music of flowing water and dripping rain, animals and birds scampering for shelter, some enjoying it, God using the sky as a canvas and painting a rainbow in the sky, taking pictures from the sky and playing loud thunder...and ofcourse me in the center of it all playing in the rain!!

"Vijay, wake up!!, wake up!!", shouted Sharmila and shook me up from my sleep. I was in my dream world enjoying every bit of it when i was forced to come back to reality. Weather reports this morning forecasted thunderstorms accompanied with "large hail" out here and I was really hoping for a good time. Well, whenever you anxiously wait for something it never happens (atleast with me :()...and so it didn't this time too..Leave alone thunderstorms, there has been just no rain here! I really doubt the weather reports here. They were much better back in India where the weather were not very precise but were surely accurate! I do not doubt the technology here but surely doubt the over zealous technologists who might be more than interpreting various cues from nature. You can tell that this is not the first time this happened :). I doubt if there are "many more" unknown parameters while predicting weather here....

Latest reports say that it is going to get wet later on in the night...how i wish i could prolong my dream and continue it till the night..For now, there is rain in sight anywhere except for the moistness of my eyes. How I wish God could shed a tear for me :|

COMPROMISED!!

2006-05-03T13:31:00.000-07:00

I read so much about it and I had seen people talk too many precautions against it. I always wondered why the world was so skeptical about things, why it was no negative, doubtful and always suspecting. I thought some companies made a killing out of this fear from people by providing protective blankets and I always thought this was really unnecessary. I am not talking about bird-flu that apparently has fewer victims than people killed by lightning.....

My credit card has been compromised! Somebody used it fraudulently. I never knew why people were so skeptical about using it on the internet, but now realise that there is surely a reason behind the fear. I live in Irving, Texas and somebody used my card from Montreal, Canada. I am sure this was during our trip to California! There were two transactions on one day and nothing eversince! Don't know if it is the calm before the storm. I just realised these today and had my card cancelled! My card company, Chase said that they cancelled it, but now I don't believe anything. Atleast for the next few weeks after which my heart might catch a positive beat!
Be careful, everybody..exercise caution. There is always that somebody lurking around that corner looking out for that card of yours to do that dirty transaction! Agony, pain, despair all written over my face now.

A stitch in time surely saves nine

Innocently Yours :)

2006-04-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

Krithika and Raj invited us over dinner yesterday. There house is quite a distance from our apartment here and we had just finished our afternoon siesta. It was a really arduous task for us to break our slumber and press the gas! I had to plead with Sharmila to get up and after we sat in the car, the car took over and we were back to our standard bickerings :)..all harmless ;)
The drive seemed quite long, but after reaching out there, our stay surely seemed short! Cortesy little darling Saatvi and ofcourse Aditi, but Saatvi was the boisterous one and tingled many a nerve. Every few minutes with her taught me something new.

A few minutes into their house, I asked Saatvi if she could do hula hoops and she tried and tried and never gave up. Finally, she managed to hoop along for almost a minute :). Failure didn't daunt her, it only encoraged her to try once again!
She seemed exceedingly happy doing almost nothing, smiled around, bounced around, ran around and laughed, laughed and laughed...and here we are, "seeking happiness" when it can be so easily found around us, in small things, small nothings! World from a kids pigeon hole seemed so nice !

And then came her innocent candor, when she asked us "Do you have kids?". We were both startled and amused at that (atleast I was), but we knew that the intent behind the question was just new playmates for her :).

Kids as I see them are simple, innocent, uncomplicated, candid, inquisitive and above all happy! And, we adults are called grown-ups and all that we do is seek out happiness that seems to come so naturally to them :D

United in Diversity ?

2006-04-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

Few countries in the world have such an ancient and diverse culture as India's. Stretching back in an unbroken sweep over 5000 years, India's culture has been enriched by successive waves of invasion and migration which were absorbed into the Indian way of life.

It is this variety which is a special hallmark of India. Its physical, religious and racial variety is as different as its linguistic diversity.

Modern India presents a picture of unity in diversity to which history provides no parallel. Good, great! Well, thats the best place to live in..atleast from what I said, it surely sounds like that. But, wait, we Indians are finding new ways of staying diverse and are unabashedly exhibiting it! If that's not enough, we have our politicians doing it for us. I don't know the educational qualifications of our politicians but their marketing arsenal seems to be pretty destructive. I majored in Marketing for my MBA and every class that I had taught me one thing.. "Create a need and then serve it!". Segmentation was the way to go! Well, our shameless politicians are following the book by the word. They surely are creating many segments in our population based on the "need" for new states, educational reservations, reservations in jobs, urban-rural divide and well they will come up with more (I must have missed some too). Was there a need? There wasn't any till these guys broke our tolerant mindset! And now, people cannot but stop thinking about this. Kudos to our politicians for being so successful!!!

As if all this was not enough, I saw something on TV that quite saddened me. We have a talent search competition called Indian Idol in India (similar to American Idol) and the winner this time was from "North-India". I never had this demarcation in my head but had to say this for the sad way that it ended this time. Karunya, the guy from South India inspite of obviously being much much more talented than Sandeep, the north-indian guy lost the show. In my wildest dreams, I wouldn't have dreamt that! But, people ruled otherwise. The percentage of people watching hindi programmes in South India is much lesser, but that shouldn't be a reason for the best talent losing. I had reports of Sandeep having better attitude and so winning the whole show, but from what I witnessed, I really didn't see much of a difference. Infact, when I heard him croon a few times, it reminded me of me and I am a very bad singer :). Poor Karunya had to forgo 1 crore, but that's just Karunya. If we do not find ways beating these thoughts and stay united as INDIANS, we are going to lose much much more!

Ga Ga GooGool !

2006-04-23T05:25:00.000-07:00

Dreams make people larger than life. Some dreams change many lives. One such dream was born in 1996 and took shape in 1998. Then on, the world changed. World seemed a lot closer, information became a lot more accessible. I remember my good old altavista.com and askjeeves.com days when I used to search for hours(sometimes) and never got what I wanted in the first few clicks. A phenomenon called Google changed all that and more!

I have been silently following GooGools footsteps to see where it is headed and all I can see is that every twist and turn in it's path has offered new services most of which had not been dreamt about. If they were not new, there was something new about them. For instance, Gmail, a free mail service offered 1GB of free mail storage space when mail providers like Yahoo were charging $$ for just using 25MB?? Or say Google Search itself that got back relevant results in just a few seconds with no disrupting ads, pop-ups that I had to battle with! Every offering has been simple, sweet and different and it has pulled the market in it's direction too. Many companies seem to have big hearts now and realising the truth in "Service to manking is service to God!" and ofcourse service to their money coffers! A leader steers everybody, shows direction and that's what Google is!

Google recently entered the software applications market releasing a bunch of applications under the name of Google Pack, and is expected to enter into other internet services, including online word processing. With this purpose in mind, they acquired Writely and entered the ODF alliance. Let's see how Microsoft is going to react to this!

I can go GaGa over Google for a long long time, but I will end it here. My personal favorites in Google are the search engine, Gmail, Google Earth and Google Maps. I am sure you are saying "What the heck, why do I need to know?", but hey you are reading my Blogs and I couldn't resist from saying that ":D

I am sure we will all see "Google all around us" and Google will see "All around us". People in SFO will soon see Google in the Air :). Let's wait and watch for that next step, that next turn. For those enthusiasts who do not know where to look, Google Labs will be a great place to start!!

And...Before you say "GO GO --->", I end my Gaga over Googool here. AdioS!

Relationships, Temporary ?

2006-04-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

Rowena, a friend/colleague of mine left our group to take up other opportunities and it suddenly seemed like a big change to me! She just sits right across and we exchange quite a few pleasantries every day. So, her exit all of a sudden breaks a rhythm I am "used" to. It looks like a permanent change but I know it will seem that way till I get used to a new tune.

Ever wondered how everything in life is so temporary ?
It seems permanent as long as it lasts! I have endured endless summers, prisoned winters :) (that almost how it feels) and they seemed never ending..

Arrgghh, I am going in circles here..I think temporary/permanent is how we see things! My friends will "always" be there for me. There will be personal, professional and geographical changes required in their lives (ofcourse mine too!!) that might bring in some distance. 'Seasonal changes' are permanent although seasons are not. I have this weird habit of correlating practical experiences in life to what I see in nature. Well, there are other weirder habits. I will probably mention that on a different day when I undergo a different experience.
For now, I will call it quits. It is Spring here but it almost seems like summer here in Dallas. Temperatures have been loitering around in the 90s and the 100s. Oops... there goes my theory about "seasonal changes" for a toss !!!

Well, what the heck!! Life itself is temporary!

Linked in ?

2006-04-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

Well, not the best of topics to start a Blog with but then, I am a starter :). I have a long way to go before I really get "linked in"to this new culture. That's how I see it as, yes cultural..We never had the opportunity to express ourselves freely like this before. Expression was more a gift that belonged to the loquacious but not any longer! Freedom of expression is here for us to savor but at the same time it keeps us bound to our "dumb-machines"! Freedom with confinement, how does that sound !!

Now coming to what I wanted to talk about in this Blog...I am sure most of you are already linked to "LinkedIn". For those of you that this is still a mystery, LinkedIn is an amazing piece of software more conceptually than technologically! It helps a user develop and expand his professional network which in turn helps him enhance his career and discover inside connections. Well, that's what they say about themselves. To me, it meant a lot more. More than just a "professional network", it gave me the opportunity to connect back to people I had worked with a long time ago and with whom I had lost touch. Connecting to people is such a nice thing! It makes the world look a lot more secure, a lot smaller and our existence a lot bigger. That's what I see..Yes, SECURITY and an increased self-esteem. Linkedin is now a habit to me, an addiction ! I log onto this even before my e-mail. If you have not LinkedIn, you should!
Sharmila, my wife came over and asked me if this was what a Blog was meant for and I had no answer. Maybe it is, maybe it is not..who cares! I have my FREEDOM ;)