Random Thoughts

Where Freedom Reigns Thomas L.Friedman of NYTimes writes an interesting article on differences between India and Pakistan. ( Thanks to savitha for the link. )

#posted by [ sathish ]

Teaser advertisement is on a rise in and around Bangalore. A recent teaser advertisement that I noticed popping up in many boards in Bangalore goes like this - in black words on white background.

"If you are planning to invest in an apartment"
"Dont."

I wonder what product or services this advertisement would churn out?

#posted by [ sathish ]

Arun Shourie after being voted the ET Business Leader says - "Another aspect of the Award that strikes me is that faith in the institutions of the state has fallen so low that if a government, or any wing of it, does whatever is announced and is, therefore, expected of it, that is regarded as leadership.” He added: “There are, therefore, two lessons in this (the ET Award) - one, don’t make announcements of what you are going to do, and two, do what has been announced and there is a reasonable chance of you winning an Award!”

Yeah, I would love the government that does what it has announced.

#posted by [ sathish ]

Hey I am penning a blog article after so long a time ! Let me narrate how my lifestyle has changed after the baby is born :-).Sooraj keeps us all engaged full time at home...so no question of anyone idling away their time !!

His sleeping patterns are still not predictable.Some nights, he wakes up from his sleep at 2.00 a.m in the morning and from "that" look on his face I know he is going to be wide awake for another 2 hrs or so ...oh no ..! He keeps looking at the night lamp and enjoys people talking to him constantly :-). I try in vain to put him back to sleep by rocking him, cuddling him etc...but he is not to be outsmarted ! I keep literally dropping down from sleepiness.

I keep going through various mood swings.In the initial days after he was born, when my health was also not so good, I used to feel so frustrated bcos of the lack of sleep and my tiredness and think "Oh God ..Is this what I have to look forward to for a long time to come ?".

After all these self-cribbing sessions, when I used to look at Sooraj's innocent and tender face while he was sleeping it would fill me with immense happiness and pride.A feeling like "Hey ! This is my blood ...the baby whom I have carried for nine months ...a bundle of joy for me and Sathish " ! And I would feel guilty for having scolded him in my low moods.

Now things are a lot more cheerful....u see I am a one month old mom :-). I am getting used to his routine now.

It is a real surprise for me that I have been able to sit and type this now without any interruption ;-).

#posted by [ ranjani ]

Yesterday, walked down to the photo-shop nearby to get a card scanned. The guy taking care of the scan told me that it would cost Rs. 20/- for scanning and Rs. 20/- for downloading it into my floppy!!

Can you beleive it? He wanted Rs. 20/- for copying the jpeg/gif from his file to my floppy disk. I rubbed my eyes a few times and asked him what other options are there if I did not want to download ( his language for copying to floppy ). He blinked at me. Enquired further if he can send it as an attachment to some email address. Another blink again from him.

After that, I walked out and went to a cyber-cafe further down and got the scan done for Rs. 10/-.

I wonder what he will do if somebody said that they only wanted to do a scan. Will he just scan the photo/card, save it in his hard-disk and get Rs. 20/- from the customer!!

A friend of mine, who did a scan, at the same place did not face this problem. I probably looked like a guy who can be taken for a ride... ;)

#posted by [ sathish ]

President Abdul Kalam is featured in an advertisement.

Today, I noticed a large hoarding near Richmond Circle. -
The left hand side of the hoarding is a caricature of President. Abdul Kalam.

The right side contains these statements -
Nuclear Head. (Yep!. The letters 'nu' are struck on purpose in the advertisement )
Congratulations.

The next line contains - 'Clear Policies from United India Insurance'.

#posted by [ sathish ]

K Chandramouli is writing a 16 part series on Bangalore in The Hindu. Five out of sixteen have already appeared. Some of them are City of Boiled Beans and Diwans. I was not able to retrieve the other three links from 'The Hindu' website.

Lookout for the rest of the articles in the Metro Plus of Bangalore edition. It is getting pretty interesting.

#posted by [ sathish ]

Happy Independence Day.

Interesting note: I am in Chennai today. I came in the morning train from Bangalore. All the entrances of the railway station (except one) were closed in view security conditions on Independence day. All passengers had to leave-out through a security metal-detector in the main entrance. It was manned by two policemen and women. What was surprising though was the fact that the metal-detector was switched off. All though everybody was asked to pass through it, it was not on - at least for my eyes. The light indicators at the top of the detector were in off state. Am I missing something?

#posted by [ sathish ]

Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel is the story of Indian freedom struggle dressed up with the garb from the Great Indian epic - Mahabharatha. Although, the dressing is pretty neat in most places, the gaps show at times. This book might be hurtful to a few, but, it shows out the idiosyncrasies of our erstwhile leaders and their whims and fancies. If one had not noticed these idiosyncrasies while reading on the freedom struggle, reading this book will bare it all. Take for example some of comparisons in the book - Bheeshma is M.K.Gandhi (for their celibacy experiments), Dhritharshtra is Nehru, Pandu is Subhash Chandra Bose, Jayaprakash Narayan is Drona and so on.. The titles of the chapters are also equally interesting - An example that comes to mind right now is - 'The midnight Parents'!.

Although, the writing is interesting, I've been hit by something like a book-block - I've closed the last few books half-finished. It is the same story with this one too. I hardly feel like reading it till the last pages. Hopefully, this phase of book-block would go soon.

Read this book if one does not mind satires about Mahabharatha and Indian freedom struggle. It is highly entertaining.

#posted by [ sathish ]

Yesterday evening, I rushed out from the office for taking the photograph. The photo-session for voters-ID was being done in a school at the end of the next street in our colony.

An Ambedkar statue met us at the entrance of the school. A small rickety gate was entrance. There was a queue of around 30-40 people before me. The queue moved pretty fast and within 15 minutes I was in the room where the photographs were taken. It was an classroom for probably the first class or much below. The room was decorated with charts depicting the alphabets in Kannada, English and Tamil.

Two guys sat infront of a computer system. As soon as I handed over my notification slip, he entered in the notification number and all the details regarding me shot up on the screen. I even got the spelling of my father's name corrected at that time. He asked me a few question to verify the contents. Then he asked me to look at a digital camera that was propped up on a small wooden piece. The wooden piece was tied to the stand that threw mercury light on us. A pretty neat arrangement. I looked at the camera for a few seconds. The digital camera was connected to the computer and my face appeared next to the details. He did a few selections and finally sent it to print. He thanked me and asked the next person in the queue to sit down.

A few minutes later, the card-printout was laminated and handed over to me. Inspite of the crowd, the whole process took less than 25 minutes. - The wait in the queue took the major chunk of it. Pretty fast.

The efficiency and speed was the hallmark. I was extremely happy and so were the rest of the people who had come to take their voters-ID card. Everybody went back home in a happy frame of mind.

Now, I have the voting rights in Bangalore. :). Sadly, ranjani will have to wait till December for taking her photo-ID card.

Also, not all chases have such happy ending. Check out Kanurite's own saga for the search of her elusive voter-card in Grand Treasure Hunt.

#posted by [ sathish ]

Today our family has to go the school near our home to get our photos taken for the election photo-ID card. We got the notification a few days back and it was in Kannada. I managed to understand, with my poor understanding of Telugu script, that the notification was itself the identity card! :). This formula of reading Kannada with my understanding of Telugu script helped me in a way or two - especially for reading bus-stop names, but, not this time.
Thankfully, I brought along that card to the office and a few Kannada-knowledgeable folks enlightened me that it was a notification for us to get our photos taken. Now, here is a reason why one should start learning the local language properly. Hopefully, I will make a beginning soon.

We already have our election ID-cards issued in Trichy(I think ranjani got hers in Chennai). Should I get another one here in Bangalore? Hopefully, I will have an answer by the evening.

Another interesting point is all our names have an extra 'a' at the end. My father's name has become Ramakrishnana. In Andhra Pradesh, they used to remove the last letter. My father's name became Ramakrishna. (no 'n' at the end). All my Telugu and Kannada friends talk of letter 'n' being added at the end of their names in Tamil Nadu. For example, a telugu guy with the name gopalakrishna will become gopalakrishnan in Tamil Nadu.

I wonder how it would be transformed in Kerala and other Indian states?

#posted by [ sathish ]

E. W. Dijkstra the famous programmer and computer industry pioneer passed away on 6th Aug, 2002. He was one of the reason behind the abolition(or atleast non-usage) of 'goto' statement in programming languages.

His writings seem to be very interesting. Read through A Humble Programmer to get an idea of his writings. An interesting anectode that I came across in this article -- Dijkstra attempts to mention that his profession is programmer in his marriage certificate. But, the Amsterdam municipal authorities in 1957 turn it down by saying that there is no such profession. Hmmm... We have come a long way.

#posted by [ sathish ]

FLOWERS by Katinka Matson.

#posted by [ sathish ]

Gattu, the common guy mascot on Asian Paints advertisements and boxes might be laid to rest soon.
He’s a regular at business quizzes — almost every rookie on the quizzing circuit knows that the creator of Asian Paints’ mascot is cartoonist RK Laxman. But that question’s due for retirement: along with Gattu, which Asian Paints is phasing out from its logo and corporate image, in a comprehensive brand overhaul.

I have some great memories of Gattu. He helped me in clinching a prize in an inter-school painting competition(infact, my only prize in painting!) and also helped me a few times in scoring an extra point in quizzes.
I will miss that character. But, the good part is he will still be present in some corner of the Asian Paints boxes. Hopefully!.

#posted by [ sathish ]

My BlogTree.

#posted by [ sathish ]

Paul Tibbets - the man who piloted the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped THE BOMB! on Hiroshima ) talks about his mission-unforgettable.
We were ready to go at about four o'clock in the afternoon on the fifth and we got word from the president that we were free to go: "Use 'em as you wish."

I just hope the world never uses 'em as we wish again.

Paul W. Tibbets also has an official website on Enola Gay.

#posted by [ sathish ]

There are more Indian blogs that you think there are - For eg., check out 86400 dollars a day by Chandramouli Mahadevan and Radhika Nathan's Corner. ( src: Kishore Balakrishnan )
Also, check out Prasenjeet Dutta at his Chaos Zone. (src: Suman Palit )

#posted by [ sathish ]

"In one initiative, dubbed Fake Tourist, 60 trained actors and actresses will haunt tourist attractions such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle. Working in teams of two or three and behaving as if they were actual tourists, the actors and actresses will ask unsuspecting passersby to take their pictures."

This advertisement campaigning is unique and a pretty neat way of getting attention. I wonder how long it will take for this kind of advertisements to come to India.

But, the only problem is it is highly deceptive and I will no longer admire any one walking with the latest gizmo. The line between an advertisement and real life persons who bought the gizmo can become very hazy...

#posted by [ sathish ]

The elections dates are announced in Kashmir and it makes me wonder why Indian government does not want international observers. If we are doing a fair and good election job(without any malpractices), I don't see why we should not use this situation to leverage it. If the elections are to be conducted fairly, the presence of international observers will only add weight to India's argument that Kashmir people beleive in India. When we continously want United States and other countries to warn Pakistan, I think we should also show what we are capable of as an democratic state.
But, the Chief Election Commissioner - J.M. Lyngdoh's comments shook me --
"The day of white man observing what the native does is long past. He cannot determine what the coloured man does and whether he is doing it right or wrong. They are not superior to us.''

Uh...Oh! Where does the question of superiority come in? I am not convinced of this argument.

#posted by [ sathish ]

National Geographic made its first feature film called K-19: The Widowmaker based on a true life story. Hopefully, with NG's backing, I expect the movie to be realistically made.

Has anybody already seen this movie?

btw, I have added another short story in mamatha's online writing group.

#posted by [ sathish ]

After a few days of headache and water dripping down my nose, I woke up today fresh and bright. And immediately broke in a song - 'Everything I do, I do it for you'. God knows who had plugged in that song in my sleep - I had not heard that song for ages, but, for some reason, I erupted out with it as soon as I was awake.
My brother watching me sing(read it as bray!) remembered some long forgotten work and left to office in a hurry - But, not before, he put on the original Bryan Adams song. I grinned sheepishly and decided to shut up!.

I have been looking for a book for the last few weeks in my library. Some person had taken that book and not returned it at all. I don't feel like reading anything else. So, I am sending across a warning to that person --
You know who you are.. Better return back that book or else I will unleash my own brand of revenge!! ( Imagine a guy with spectacles and two horns slowly growing over his head). Here are various things that I can do..
- Make every tap in your house drip. Drip incessantly. No matter how hard you turn it, it will continue to drip.
- Turn the signal to red everytime you pass one. And the signal will stay red for 3 minutes. The moment you try to beat the signal, a cop hidden will corner you.
- Make you into Gen. Musharaf and turn the Blog Gen. Suman Palit on you.
- Donate your credit card to /.\nand's new paypal account!
- Make you read my blog 1000 times everyday.
- Unleash the Kadi Master ( I won't name him - those of you who know him will know! - hmmm, what a philosophical statement ) on you.
- I will get you involved in an argument about pros and cons of Illayaraja vs. Rahman.

and finally, if nothing works -
I will buy a radio that can't be turned off, dump it at your place and will continously sing through it.

#posted by [ sathish ]

I recently read the English translation of Sivasankari's 'Betrayal and other short stories' from Tamil. The short stories are comtemporarily and women-based. I enjoyed all the stories immensely, but, the translation could have been a lot better. What is not surprising is that most of the great writers, including her, tend to use the normal day to day activities and write elegantly about them. What appears to be mundane and dull to my eyes become enchanting when it comes under the pens of these writers.
Is it their writing that creates this enchanting aura or are our lives actually enchanting and we come to know of it only when someone shows it to us?

#posted by [ sathish ]

The Sidhu Paradigm - This is Dawinder S. Sidhu - a law student in George Washington University and his weblog. ( link via - Sajit Gandhi ).

#posted by [ sathish ]