Ravings of a Nomadic Mind

Friendship

2010-05-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

The degree of one's friendship is determined by seeing how stupidly one behaves in front of his friend... !!

How Google is changing the way we see the World

2010-02-09T02:14:00.001-08:00

Press the backspace key on my Nokia E63 and Google Search pops on screen. It has icons for Mail, Maps, Picasa and other Google apps. Hold the call key and say what you are looking for and it will search it for you you don’t even have to type. Switch to mail and you can read your mail on the go. Now you don’t have to even know what you are looking for, just type ‘Near me now’ in the search window and Google lists the most obvious choices starting with restaurants.

Google’s corporate moto is ‘Do no Evil’ and the search start-up doesn’t seem to know where to stop. So its taking over the world. Now it has a stake in medicine, renewable energy and even energy distribution. Larry Page and Sergie Brin would never have dreamed how their little search algorithm would change the world we live in. from providing free search, free alternative to all the GPS provided by giving turn by turn navigation Google Maps with Android 2.0 phones, to browsers that work smarter and cloudier than the others, to trying to catalogue all the books every written. Oh and it is not as if all of Google’s ideas are ground braking, free web mail was Hotmail, search was Archie in 1990, online maps was first done by Xerox Parc in early nineties, and the first browser was Netscape. The difference lies in the fact that their engineering mentality and the dedication to open source. Every that isn’t absolutely required isn’t included instead it is provided as an app or an extension. They have understood it better than most that most users don’t need or understand the bulky and often complicated features that most software come bundled with, and those who would like to use additional features will know how to use the add-ons.

Maps is one of the best example of how things work with it comes free as a download tailored to most middle level and high end phones, is easy to use and has a simple interface, when it was first launched, most place in India were nothing but high resolution satellite imagery. Not much detail was available, today if you take the pointer on the any landmark, say the Chinasawamy cricket stadium, in Bangalore, the pop bubble shows link to a Wikipedia entry that lists the famous matches that were played at the stadium. A friend of mine planned his Istanbul to London ride using Maps and it helped him track budget B&B’s rest stops and petrol stations. The shares of Tom Tom and Gramin dropped a few points when the service that they provide for a substantial fee, and still makes people drive into ditches, was offered free by Google on the Android 2.0 phone for no charge at all. With RFID tags on most products, barcodes that help in download a brief to an unknown place, with just a picture, Google promises to change the world. And it is inviting us to change with it too.

ruins

2010-02-02T01:53:00.000-08:00

I look at the ruins around me, and realize that the future has to rise from it.

I have a confession to make, some days the world around me scares me enough to want to roll up in a ball and die. it takes time a effort to rebuild. The wreckage of the decade around me leads me to dispair and i wish i could ask for help. But fear of being pittied stops me. Once i believed i was invincible and now every step is a challenge. its funny how one careless word can drain your world of all the light, joy and happiness and leave you an empty shell of your former self.

Chances

2010-01-05T05:06:00.001-08:00

Life, is all about chances. Some people get more than others. Some dont see them, others throw them away. My take has always been to grab whats been issued, run with them and never look back. Some thing might catch up with you.

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists

2009-12-31T04:06:00.000-08:00

by Chris Hedges

Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.

This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.

The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.

Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.

“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.

“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.

“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”

Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.

“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”

Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”

The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.

“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”

Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.

There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.

Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.

Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.

2009-11-05T06:54:00.000-08:00

I tried to keep an open mind, but i was collecting a lot of dirt.

2009-11-01T09:13:00.001-08:00

Have you ever noticed that there are always more people on a railway platform than those who are there to take a train. Its true for any form of transport. Its not just
People working at that bus depot or station or even air port there are people who have nowhere to go, the homeless to find these spots tempting, there are the aimlessw loiterers and others of the same inkling. I guess mankind has never ever really lost its wanderlust. We were wanderers and nomads long back and we still are. We came down trees because it was difficult to get to the next tree. Then we had to what lay across the berry bush, on the other bank of the river, the other side of the mountain range, across the sea n then the ocean. Now we want to go across space. Every time some one says we have become decadent, i tend to dissagree. The longer we have this urge to leap over the headge, we are safe we might need to be more circumspect and gentler to the new places but our urge to learn will always keep us safe.

Bombay Diaries

2009-10-05T21:19:00.001-07:00

The Flight landed in the middle of a tropical storm, it was raining cats and dogs and a few other species at the airport. Bombay had sent me off with rain and welcomed me back with a downpour. The contrast between Bombay … oops Mumbai and Bangalore is stark, the cities are a studied contrast in growth cycles.

While, Bangalore takes pride in its middle class status and is very clean and green with fresh coats of paint and a new wash, this city at the same time shouts its common man existence, in its grimy ill kept and badly maintained exterior. There are patches of gleaming buildings amidst dirty high rises. When the people of Bangalore are self important and proud the typical Bombay resident is polite nice and help full, but then if you spend two hours a day with your face stuck to some one else’s armpit and another persons ass plastered to you groin personal space and pride become bookish notions. The work space is swanky and has an open plan setup the team charming and friendly with an undercurrent of school yard mischievousness. When I’m with these people I have a constant itch between my shoulder blades expecting a paper taped to my back asking any passerby to “Kick Me”. This veneer of fun and games that overlays every thing hides a truly professional and dedicated work gang. With the number of people working and the outlook Normal Indians have towards BPO’s the task of rebranding and creating an image where by working for us is desirable not just convenient is big and the team has taken it as a challenge.
Signing off, Homeless wet and soaked to the bone, but with a big grin on my face: Shanu

Advertising explained (by Calvin)

2009-09-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

Calvin : You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes : What mood is that?
Calvin : Last-minute panic.

Moron Nation...

2009-07-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

I have a faint suspicion. If Genesis, yes the first book of the Old Testament, from the Bible, is correct then we are a huge genetic aberration. Bear with me, the detriments of inbreeding have already been proven by science. Then if Genesis is true, we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, so the entire world's population is one inbred population. we are all marrying and procreating with our distant cousins, well except for redneck America, where its mostly first cousins and brothers and sisters still. OK so as we inbreed, there are more and more genetic issues and decreasing intelligence.

Even if evolution is true, the current reserch says, thru the study of mitocondria (something very complicated) that we are all descendents of eight female originators. so there too we are inbred, if a little less, degenerates.

OK by now you must be fuming, at my deductions, well i have positive proof. look at youtube, or any other video channel, and you can see the antics of our species, people standing over airbags while trigering them, running with the bulls, trying to stop cars with sheer will power, and many more. Oh and i have a way of detecting such people too. When ever you hear people utter the statements below, make sure you witness the following from a safe distance.

"I have a great idea"

"I wonder what happens if.."

"You know what, we should do.."

"What can go wrong?"

There are others too which im sure you can add to the list.

Oh and my contribution to the worlds general knowledge, trying to see what a cracker does when put in a beer bottle. That was the closest to a fragmentation grenade i have ever come.

Que Sera Sera

2009-06-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

Its been 13 years now, a climb up a cliff face ended in a broken back, i wasn't sure I'd walk again, even sitting up again was distant. looking at the first few days wen the realisation dawned that this was it. at sixteen i was a vegetable, or real close. but it is not the injury i want to talk about, it's what came after. Life for the few years after was always rose tinted. nothing absolutely nothing could go wrong, i was invincible, high speed crashes, climbing the same cliff again, falling in love every day, taking a sabbatical from school, going down a 45 degree slope on a bicycle with doggy brakes, taking apart a scooter, nothing and i mean nothing could hold me back. i had realized that life is fickle it looses interest in the blink of an eye so it was never going to get that chance, again. money was never an issue all that mattered was the next escapade. For example when the first time the doctor told me i could walk, i took off from the bed, that very evening, that had been my prison for the last 6 months, when no one was watching me. The spirit was there, so was determination, but my legs had other ideas after resting for so long they didn't really want to do any work. oh and my nervous system was still drunk. I ended on the kitchen floor with a broken glass and water all over. The noise brought the whole family down on me, listening to them you would have thought i was paralyzed again. so as they yelled at me, i had this stupid smile on my face, as i came off my adrenalin high. Mission accomplished. till 2005 i was a tornado and nothing absolutely nothing could stop me. college was to be conquered. I wanted to leave a trace in every place, every life that i touched. Big bold letters that proclaimed that "Shanu was here" my graffiti on life. Indelible and forever.

Some where along the way i forgot the lessons i learnt, life became a series of accomplishments instead of the high. i forgot that i had a respite, a second chance. then came the MBA and the pursuit of the golden career. Everyday anxieties, worries and frustrations came back. Wants and needs grew. Where i was happy careening around on a 100 cc bike i wanted one with a 1000 cc. Backpacking and hitching around Rajasthan wasn't enough, i want to drive around the world. then, Life happened, again. The glowing grades and accolades from my professors turned into biting remarks, the healthy back, turned troublesome, and the glowing some times telepathic relationship turned into a burden, for her. Ridiculed by batch mates, reviled by the professors, and sympathized by my friends. I closed up on my self, i couldn't understand what had gone wrong. I knew or thought that i knew i was one step ahead of life. This couldn't happen. Self pity and recrimination meant that i sat there looking at my life disintegrate with morbid fascination. Family aghast, friends horrified and the rest of the world went on while i sat there, closed up in a room for six months caught up in the view. Treatment for depression followed, transforming to lethargy and every thing attendant. I was still not ready to concede that there was some thing wrong with me. All i knew was the world was out to get me, what had i done to deserve this? Then one day a friend came and yelled at me, it was not recrimination, it was not anger or disappointment. she yelled because being the way i was, was hurting her and my other friends. Seeing her yell and cry was an eye opener, pity turned into disgust. I realized that i had lost sight of my life, lessons learnt at a great price. My reprieve all those years back was forgotten. I stopped taking medication, went out for a ride. cleaned out my closet both literally and mentally. I wanted a job, i wanted to work.

It was a second shot, i was wasting it. MBA was gone, done, over. Now i had to move on. I wanted to believe THE FALL was life changing, it gave me insights that would let me enjoy life more. But i returned to the emotional base line that i had taken off from. Career, money, the next bike, the next acquisition and the next material high was all i was worried about. Life and Vini pulled me back to earth. Its been 3 years now, i started at the bottom, Getting payed in peanuts for free lance jobs, then small firms and higher, Ive grown and Ive grown to respect what life was teaching me all those years ago. It is my life, i am the only one who can find happiness, its sitting on the rocks with a friend, its a drinking binge after four years of alcohol free existence and talking stuff over, its the birth of your best buddy's first child, it's talking to some one after ages and feeling like you had never been away, Its a travelling two nights and a wasted afternoon, just to spent a morning on the beach with a friend, its going on a shopping binge with your niece and not worrying about the rest of the month. There has been a house in between, furniture, and assorted other stuff, oh and i wouldn't have survived if it hadn't been for handouts and loans from friends. but I'm getting there. It's my life I'm going to live it my way, I'm going to wake up every day and be happy for it. There is crazy taxi driver or a loose cliff stone around the corner ready to take it all away. I'm determined, not to loose sight of the lessons that my second chance, my grace, taught me, and if i do you are welcome to knock me on the head.

Que Sera Sera.

My ghost

2009-05-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

I talked to some one from the dark mists of my past. she was a real good friend once long ago. She still is. She taught me some thing real important.

"Every one has ghosts that haunt them. failed ideas, stupid decisions, things we could have done differently, people we hurt, people who hurt us. these ghosts chase us through life and every day. My ghost made sure that i didn't have a normal relationship the last four years. today i learned

Ghosts will only haunt you if you let them haunt you"

I bury her today, its over finally.

A Very LArge Funeral

2009-05-11T21:39:00.001-07:00

There are only 2 reasons that a person has a large funeral gathering, either he was really loved, or people are there to make sure he is really dead.

2009-05-08T01:59:00.000-07:00

Image : Sunshine

Of Icarus In ancient days two aviators procured to themselves wings. Daedalus flew safely through the middle air and was duly honoured on his landing. Icarus soared upwards to the sun till the wax melted which bound his wings and his flight ended in fiasco. The classical authorities tell us, of course, that he was only "doing a stunt"; but I prefer to think of him as the man who brought to light a serious constructional defect in the flying-machines of his day. So, too, in science. Cautious Daedalus will apply his theories where he feels confident they will safely go; but by his excess of caution their hidden weaknesses remain undiscovered. Icarus will strain his theories to the breaking-point till the weak joints gape. For the mere adventure? Perhaps partly, this is human nature. But if he is destined not yet to reach the sun and solve finally the riddle of its construction, we may at least hope to learn from his journey some hints to build a better machine.

From "Stars and Atoms," by Sir Arthur Eddington (Oxford University Press, 1927, p. 41)

2009-05-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

During his twenty years on television, Homer Simpson has pursued some interesting business endeavors. But most famously he has made a name for himself as a hapless, but big-hearted, man who always seems to stumble through life by a combination of good luck and compassion from others. And there is another humanistic quality that he always seems to illustrate: a child-like naivety that expresses his good-nature and his undying love for his family. Unfortunately for many, these qualities are not enough to get by in the world - especially during these tumultuous economic times (Note: we are also not cartoons). If we look at The Simpsons, and its main character, we can find some economic guidance - if only by accident. In most cases, practical lessons can be derived from Homer, in the form of ‘what not to do’:

On the Stock Market:
“Buy low and sell high; that’s my motto”.
Sounds easy right? Well, if this were the case, someone as simple as Homer would be able to navigate during the precarious times. But it goes without saying that he has sometimes failed to execute. During one episode, Homer exclaimed (in regards to his involvement in the Pumpkin business):
“This year I invested in pumpkins. They’ve been going up the whole month of October and I got a feeling they’re going to peak right around January. Then bang! That’s when I’ll cash in.”
Obviously, the humor in this situation is apparent, but the message it conveys could not be more timely: study the market as best as you can; take into consideration the associated aspects of the companies and commodities you invest in; and don’t look at the market like a get-rich-quick scheme. Simple enough, right?
Incentive Based Employment
“Son, if you don’t like your job, you don’t strike, you just go in there every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”
“Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They’re about to announce the lottery numbers.”
Unemployment rates are the highest they’ve been in decades and it seems that employee productivity is more closely scrutinized than ever. Many people point to American industry (automotive, specifically) as less competitive and innovative than foreign companies. This, coupled with an overall lackadaisical approach to productivity has been pointed out as a major contributor to the poor state of the American Economy.
In the Episode “You Only Move Twice”, Homer is recruited by a ‘Mr. Scorpio’, a nice man that is the head of a secret organization consumed with world domination. Unknowingly, Homer helps Scorpio build a nuclear reactor that is used to power the latter’s weapons arsenal. From this episode we have this little gem:
“Mr Scorpio says productivity is up two percent, and it’s all because of my motivational techniques. Like, donuts. And a possibility of more donuts to come.”
In today’s economy, the employment marketplace is extremely competitive. Individuals are less likely to compare prospective employers based on incentives, but rather continued employment has itself become the incentive to hard work.

Enterprise
“All my life I’ve had one dream, to achieve my many goals.”
“If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.”
It’s no secret that a lot of wealth is created during a recession. The winners are those enterprising individuals who take calculated risks, work hard, and stay focused. Consequently, they succeed while those around them fail or struggle to stay afloat. These are those times. Homer, according to his above sentiment, would fail - flat on his face. But when you least expect it, from the vault of ‘Homer Genius’ comes this:
“All right, let’s not panic. I’ll make the money by selling one of my livers. I can get by with one.”
Sacrifice: an important virtue in enterprise and in personal finances. Much of the literature that has been created on finance in the last year has stressed cutting out unnecessary spending. Of course, this might be a stretch, but Homer shows that sometimes personal sacrifices are warranted, especially when the well-being of one’s family is at stake. Even, if we only have one liver. (Note: Mint does not, under any circumstances, endorse the selling of vital or semi-vital organs).
Business and Personal Ethics
“Marge, don’t discourage the boy! Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.”
This first quote would be less funny if Homer were able to weasel out of anything. The bottom line, however, at the marketplace or in your personal finances, is to live up to your responsibilities. This will help to curtail any need to weasel out of dodgy situations, ie: collections, bankruptcy loop-holes, foreclosures, et al.
“Oh no! What have I done? I smashed open my little boy’s piggy bank, and for what? A few measly cents, not even enough to buy one beer. Wait a minute, lemme count and make sure…not even close!”"
Homer’s curve is less than steep. There must be an easier solution! Perhaps it requires thinking to oneself, “What would Homer do?” Then, do the polar opposite.
Understanding Cash-flow
Homer: “Look at this Marge, $58 and all of it profit. I’m the smartest businessman in the world.”
Marge: “Its food bill today was $300″
Homer: “Marge, please, don’t humiliate me in front of the money”
Many will remember this episode as the one where the Simpsons have a elephant living in their backyard, and with which Homer has the less-than-brilliant idea to sell elephant rides at $2. After only one day, Marge wisely pointed out that the food bill for the elephant was $300 - more than the day’s total revenue. After realizing this, Homer upped the price to $500/per ride. Consequently, his customers decided to go elsewhere.
Economics 101: If a company continues to lose money, it will eventually go out of business. Marge’s explanation of the cost of food was enough to pull the plug on this business (that likely did not have a business plan anyway). This principle can be applied to an individual’s finances - if you spend more than you make, you’ll eventually be in debt. The longer you keep spending, the more you’ll be in debt.
Innovation, Marketing and Adapting to a Changing Marketplace
“Oh they have Internet on computers now?”
Part of staying relevant, is staying on par with the development and adoption of new technology. For many businesses in the last decade, this has included developing an online portal through which goods and services may be purchased. For others, it may simply offer information and a way to contact businesses. In today’s world, this may mean an immersion to sites like Twitter, where individuals can interact with businesses and each other in new and unconventional ways.
“How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?”
With learning new technology comes learning new skills. They may be one and the same, but in all circumstances, businesses, as well as their employees, continually need to evolve. For the former this may be necessary for growth; for the latter this is necessary to remain employed. The fact of the matter is that individuals across the board ought to always be on the lookout for ways to make themselves more competitive than others through their skill set. For prospective workers, an employer will likely be interested in hiring someone who can take on multiple responsibilities and is well-rounded.
Financial Solvency and Living Below Your Means
If not at home, the Simpson patriarch can often be found at Moe’s Tavern, drinking with his buddies. In fact, it seems that Homer is at the pub daily or almost daily. This begs the question: “Is this affordable for the head of a single-income family with four dependents?”
Of course the more Homer blows as a percentage of of his paychecks on Duff, the less he would have to spend on necessities for the family, such as: housing, food, clothing, a retirement fund, insurance and so forth. This is not rocket science, but if this type of behavior became the norm, frustrating intra-marital discussions (intervention) would likely be inevitable. Homer is unabashedly blue collar, and does not likely have the means to a life he is illustrated to be living.
“Bart, with $10,000, we’d be millionaires.”
Obviously not knowing the value of money can set oneself up for financial insolvency. Of course, this is not surprising to hear from the man who drinks daily, finds donuts rewarding, and steals from his own children’s’ piggy banks…
Debt Management
In a recent and timely episode, titled, ‘No Loan Again’, the Simpsons are facing foreclosure. Not surprisingly, Homer’s understanding of a Home Equity Line of Credit is far from comprehensive, and is the primary source of his financial woes:
“It’s a secret thing called a home equity loan. I get all this cash…and the house gets stuck with the bills!”
And, later when discussing the foreclosure with his mortgage broker:
“When you gave me that money, you said I wouldn’t have to repay it ’til the future. This isn’t the future. It’s the lousy, stinking now!”
All good things come to an end. And Homer’s feelings are not uncommon, especially with the credit and real estate markets where they are at. While it may be too late for others, this illustration of mindless spending can serve as a reminder, that debt does not magically go away, and tomorrow will one day come - as will the debt collectors.
Source
Homer Economicus: Using The Simpsons to Teach Economics” Joshua Hall, WVU, Journal of Private Enterprise. 165-177. April 2005

Playing For Change

2009-05-03T15:51:00.000-07:00

Smile, its good for you.

well all the wars, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and a dozen other and then there is the recession and we haven't even got to our own little turf wars. but you know what i don't care, i really don't. Life goes on it will go on. Every time some one says we have to do this or that to save the planet i can't help laughing at them, you know why, because the planet will be here no matter what we do. It was here before we arrived and it will stay after we have gone or left, what ever the case may be. Its life is going to be measured on a scale that we can never comprehend. So bullshit to you kind sir, what we need to know and do is that if we don't stop and change we blow our legacy to dust. OK rant over.

i want to show some thing to you guys, I've been listening to these songs for some time and every time i do it makes me smile.

http://playingforchange.com/ check out this project. For lack of a better word, its beautiful in its simplicity, some street artistes, a few laptops and a little equipment and we can still create magic. This has to be our legacy, when we leave the planet or fade to dust, this has to be our legacy. its beautiful. I might have exaggerated a little but tell me if these songs don't put a smile on your lips.

the First video is my favourite, happiness is where you find it. oh and second questions why arent these guys

signed up with big studios.

PEACE LADIES AND GENTELMEN - SMILE. NO MATTER WHAT IT IS THAT IS BOTHERING YOU.

IT WILL GO AWAY, TRUST YOUR FRIENDS YOUR FAMILY AND EVERY THING WILL GO AWAY.

I WENT TO CHURCH TODAY, AFTER ALONG TIME. REALLY LONG TIME. I'D SAID I WONT GO TO CHURCH

TILL I SORTED THE SHIT IN MY LIFE AND I HAVE, I STILL HAVE A WAYS TO GO, BUT IM OUT AND I'M GRATEFUL

TO YOU GUYS, TO MY FAMILY AND TO THE BIG GUY UP STAIRS THANKS, REMEMBER

SMILE ALWAYS

The Brown Miracle

2009-04-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Browny Died today, She was 13 years old. It was cancer and it was getting worse but she fought it with the same vigour as she approached life. but it had gotten so bad that we had to put her to sleep. she was proud and a little snotty but she was mine. Im going to miss her.

Ode by Man's best Friend

2009-03-24T04:12:00.000-07:00

I rescued a human today.
Her eyes met mine as she walked down the corridor peering apprehensively into the kennels. I felt her need instantly and knew I had to help her. I wagged my tail, not too exuberantly, so she wouldn't be afraid.

As she stopped at my kennel I blocked her view from a little accident I had in the back of my cage. I didn't want her to know that I hadn't been walked today. Sometimes the shelter keepers get too busy and I didn't want her to think poorly of them.

As she read my kennel card I hoped that she wouldn't feel sad about my past. I only have the future to look forward to and want to make a difference in someone's life. She got down on her knees and made little kissy sounds at me. I shoved my shoulder and side of my head up against the bars to comfort her.

Gentle fingertips caressed my neck; she was desperate for companionship. A tear fell down her cheek and I raised my paw to assure her that all would be well.

Soon my kennel door opened and her smile was so bright that I instantly jumped into her arms. I would promise to keep her safe. I would promise to always be by her side. I would promise to do everything I could to see that radiant smile and sparkle in her eyes.

I was so fortunate that she came down my corridor. So many more are out there who haven't walked the corridors. So many more to be saved. At least I could save one.

I rescued a human today.

Earth Hour: Power down for 60 minutes on March 28

2009-03-23T00:08:00.000-07:00

On March 28, if the lights go off in your Cape Town hotel or, close to home, a Seattle hotel restaurant switches to candles, do not be alarmed. It's not an electrical-grid meltdown but a global show of support.

During Earth Hour, citizens of the world are asked to turn off their power for one hour, starting at 8:30 p.m. local time, in a symbolic stance against global warming.

The World Wildlife Fund started the event two years ago in Sydney, with 2.2 million people and thousands of businesses going dark. The next year, more than 400 cities on all seven continents participated. Some high-wattage landmarks even got involved, including the Sydney Opera House and, in New York, the Coke billboard in Times Square and the Empire State Building.

For 2009, so far nearly 1,200 cities — including Chicago, Guatemala City, Vancouver, B.C., Mumbai and Bangkok — in 80 countries have signed on. Group organizers aim for 1 billion people to flick the switch, an achievement they hope to present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Copenhagen this year.

Some cities and travel businesses are turning the statement into a celebration.

In Seattle, the Fairmont Olympic hotel will host a candlelit dinner in its luxury Georgian restaurant. In Melbourne, the Australian city will host a people-pedal-powered concert. In Athens, a conductor will lead a percussion circle as the Acropolis dims its lights.

Want to join in on the road? Kill the hotel-room lights and TV. Switch from plug to battery at the Internet cafe. Details: www.voteearth2009.org.

Look What I Found ...

2009-03-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

This is simply speaking advertising at its best ..... im not a see-scarlet-foaming-at-the-mouth Ferrari fan but for some reason this ad reminds me why i watch formula 1. this just made my day.

I Am Free

2009-02-16T22:19:00.001-08:00

Go to work,

send your kids to school,

follow fashion, act normal,

walk on the pavement,

watch TV

save for your old age,

obey the law.

Repeat after me : I am Free

Bugs Bunny Quotes

2009-02-09T05:59:00.000-08:00

Eh, what's up, doc? - Bugs Bunny
Jumpin' without a parachute? Kinda dangerous, ain't it? - Bugs Bunny
If it's the Captain's Mess, let him clean it up. - Bugs Bunny
Hey, I found Nemo! - Bugs Bunny
Shhhhhhhh! I'm about to defy you. - Bugs Bunny
And remember, 'mud' spelled backwards is 'dum'. - Bugs Bunny
Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive. - Bugs Bunny

Ah, your brother blows bubble gum! - Bugs Bunny
I'll be scared later. Right now I'm too mad. - Bugs Bunny
The way I run this thing you'd think I knew something about it. - Bugs Bunny
Well, it's 5 o'clock somewhere. - Bugs Bunny

OOH! Look at four-legged airplane! - Bugs Bunny
Carrots are devine... You get a dozen for a dime, It's maaaa-gic! - Bugs Bunny
Eeeeeeh, watch me paste that pathetic palooka with a powerful, pachydermous, percussion pitch. - Bugs Bunny
What an embezzle! What an ultramaroon! - Bugs Bunny
I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque! - Bugs Bunny
Don't think it hasn't been a little slice of heaven...'cause it hasn't! - Bugs Bunny
Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending? - Bugs Bunny
Do you happen to know what the penalty is for shooting a fricaseeing rabbit without a fricaseeing rabbit license? - Bugs Bunny
I wonder what the poor bunnies are doing this season? - Bugs Bunny
Oh, well, we almost had a romantic ending! - Bugs Bunny
My, I'll bet you monsters lead innnnteresting lives. - Bugs Bunny
Of course you realize this means war! - Bugs Bunny
Gee, ain't I a stinker? - Bugs Bunny
Here I go with the timid little woodland creature bit again. It's shameful, but...ehhh, it's a living. - Bugs Bunny
I bet you say that to all the wabbits. - Bugs Bunny
For shame, doc. Hunting rabbits with an elephant gun. Why don't you shoot yourself an elephant? - Bugs Bunny
I know this defies the law of gravity, but I never studied law! - Bugs Bunny

when he passes Underneath next ill jump and steal his lunch...

2009-02-05T03:12:00.000-08:00

The Ode

2009-02-03T23:05:00.001-08:00

They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them,

Nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun,

And in the morning

We will remember them.

LEST WE FORGET

Rules to Life

2009-02-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

I found these rules to life by Avi sez, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, gadfly author of The Black Swan, I found the Rules pretty intersting and simple. So here are his "10 rules for surviving an unpredictable world with dignity."
1 Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2 Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
3 It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
4 Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
5 Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
6 Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
7 Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
8 Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
9 Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
10 Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom (Thanks, Avi!)
Via Boing Boing

The Orange Sweater

2009-01-21T22:57:00.000-08:00

I have an orange Sweater, it was brought in a different age, in happier times, but the thing is i love the sweater. it was slightly large for me when i brought it and then one of my friends borrowed it. She is one of the five people on the planet that i will do any thing for, absolutely anything. well she sort of on the heavy side and when she borrowed the sweater it grew even larger for me. but i still wear it the most because it gives me a protected feeling. well one reason was she was very defensive about me, she was always there when i needed some one and hence it keeps reminding me that im cared for, wanted. silly and stupid, may be.

There have been days when i wake up in the morning and wish that the world would turn it self off and go away, never happens, i know, and days where i wish life had a pause button and on those days just picking up the Orange sweater is like a warm hug its been my sole companion on the days when Bangalore seems about ready to bite my head off. is it a very silly feeling? dont know dont care.

:D Deeps miss you babes and stay safe.

Th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks!

2009-01-20T21:59:00.000-08:00

OK the Inaugration is over and Bush is out, every one must feel like coming down from a big hangover, right. all that excitement and happiness. now its back to business, there is a new man in the most powerful and recognisable home in the whole world and im sure in private he must be really scared. After all he is human just like you and me and the mess he will have to deal with is a big one. So what happens when tommrow when he is not able to straighten it out and this drags on for another 4 years? most importantly in so many interviews so many americans said that the last eight years were a mess. so i have a question, why did George Bush get a second term? more importantly when he marched into Afganistan, and Iraq and launched Tomahawks at Sudan why didn't some one say some thing?

When The WTC was attacked the people of his country wanted him to do some thing, so he went ahead and did it. Im sure every one involved realised that it wasnt going to be easy, and as i remeber correctly the man in question wanted to follow an isolationist agenda, said America didnt need any one and when 9/11 happened every one said "serves you right".

After the Bombay attacks we all wanted a stronger reaction from the government and howled when we didnt get one, some people i knew bandied about the fact that there were no attacks on US soil after 9/11, but at what cost? and the man who did all that leaves office willified threatened with legal action. So tommrow if and when the Indian leadership went after every suspect with a stick, waded into Pakistan and Bangladesh and may be even Nepal with a big gun, will we want Manmohan Singh tried in court. I dont think Bush deserves the flak he is gettting he was forced into situations by national mandate, the enitre country that is villyfying him now ellected a second time. So Mr Obama all the best of luck to you, i hope you can straighten the mess you inherrited, the entire world is watching with baited breath and to all those booing Bush shame on you.

Sanity

2008-12-29T22:01:00.001-08:00

"Sanity is the last refuge of the unimaginative"

To Dreams

2008-12-15T01:17:00.000-08:00

Picture By National Geographic.

I saw this image while trolling the net a few days back. I dont know about you but the image says a lot about the Ray and i believe it shows degrees of intelligence and the need to step out of the box, that most humans lack. the Sting ray is one of the most graceful creatures of the sea. but apparently this ray is not happy being the king of the domain it surveys. haven't you ever felt the urge to step out do some thing different break out of the rat race. I think i understand waht made this magestic creature do what it is doing. here is to dreams and their fullfillment. :D

Wanted

2008-12-11T05:25:00.000-08:00

Need One Night In Bangkok by Murray Head.
Its Desperate... any one please

New Lid

2008-12-05T05:15:00.000-08:00

I am Getting a new bike next week and to mark the occasion i got a new lid. oh and thats tubby next to it. :P ciao its a Cross GP X

TO Do List

2008-12-03T01:45:00.000-08:00

U got to bold what u have done
01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula (Not a tarantula but a spider about an inch big )
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise(with friends Parathas and Thumbs Up)
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger (Two days back, she turned me down)
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb(helped deliver two- about two years back)
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment (Happiness walks right beside you)
39. Had two hard drives for your computer (four was the most )
40. Visited all 29 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends (Have them even now - the best)
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country (danced with an Irish girl, and a British girl - 31st dec 2005, in Rajasthan though)
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign (yeah, I have stolen teh sign of peace from many peoples heart ;) )
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach (11:30)
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs (MP3s and cassette tapes)
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day (almost all teh day - had to get out for food)
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theatre
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight (not D&D, but NFS and Counter Strike )
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party (walked into the wrong wedding )
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days (two maggies, coffee water and a bannana)
77. Made cookies from scratch (was aiming for cup cakes, ended with cookies)
78. Won first prize in a costume contest (when i was three- for a rajput bridegroom costume- had to share it with the bride)
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo(temporary one, A Dragon on my chest)
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on a television news program as an “expert” (does newspaper count? )
83. Gotten flowers for no reason (gave them too )
84. Performed on stage (Taming the Shrew, Midsummer nights dream, and a few other plays)
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music (LIVE!!! )
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking with the windows open (seven of us in a little santro)
103. Had plastic surgery (had reconstructive nasal surgery after a accident)
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived (Got hit by a bus while riding the bike )
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth (a goat, the two kids i mentioned above)
112. Won money on a TV game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period (actually longer, except for bathroom breaks)
123. Visited more foreign countries than India (UK, Nepal, Sri Lanka)
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read (not one, but many)
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts (love doing that)
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head

Tired

2008-12-01T03:00:00.000-08:00

I'm tired. Tired of defending my self against people, I'm not a peace dove, and i hate all those people who snicker when i profess the inherent goodness of the human soul. War is not a solution, it never was. Its become difficult defending your view point when India's most beloved city is under attack. It wasn't a bomb blast and it wasn't a few hoodlums shooting it out, it was as if we had be all shifted to Beirut (Lebanon) or Jaffna (Sri Lanka) we were at war, all of a sudden and out of no where. We were struggling to keep our jobs, we were worried about the stock exchange falling and we were worried that the global recession might take chunks out of the Indian economy, we never thought that we would have a war at our doorsteps when we woke up in the morning.

What riles me even more is the sheer waste of human life. The victims as well as the terrorist, so much human potential lost down the drain. emotions boiled when the media broadcast the images it was horrifying.The entire nation jolted in our seats every time a blast went off. The attack was so bold and dramatic in conception that it went on and on and on. As we looked on in horrified silence and the world stared with its mouth agape, we kept repeating to our self that it was a dream, it shouldn't and cant happen to a tolerant and Democratic country like India. Now half the country is still in shock and the other half wants war.

The Question i cant find an answer to is war with whom, where is the proof and if we go and attack the said city or country what difference does it make, wont this just prompt another attack, let alone a debilitating and a crippling war. I don't want to or cant blame our leaders, we choose them so i presume they are doing exactly what we want them to do. I wont question the intelligence agencies and the security forces the NSG, MarCos and the Bombay Police did an exceptional job. No matter what any one else says i say they went beyond and over the call of duty to put an end to this attack. charging into a building when you know that on the other side are people armed with guns and ready to shoot using humans as shields and ready to die. It takes a lot of courage to shoot some one, it takes even more courage walking into a room with a maniac with a automatic rifle who doesn't care if he lives or dies.

When it comes to our intelligence agencies, they receive more than 1000+ threats a day for cities like Bombay and Delhi they have to wade through all the nut jobs who called in a bomb threat because they didn't want to go to work that day or didn't want to miss a flight to find the real threat. it some times becomes impossible and shit, unimaginable shit happens. The intelligence agencies have to be lucky every time, but the terrorist have to be lucky only once.

Some of the best memories of the darkest period of my life were spent on the road in front of the Taj heritage wing, sitting on the wall facing out to the sea spray with my best friend. I will never be able to walk that road with the same carefree attitude, the scars of the attack and the ghost of the dead will not let us rest as a country until we find a permanent solution to this. So many dead so many families broken. Life is never going to be the same.

To the Moon

2008-11-19T04:34:00.000-08:00

Chandrayaan 1 is going round the moon now, it set me thinking, its been more than 30 years since the last man stepped on the moon. lot of things have changed. i remember one of the moon astronauts saying that "It was a Bold and Dangerous move, it was a risky decision but then it was the time when bold decisions were made". I think he knew what he was talking about. we live in a meek world. We are so scared of even stepping out of the norm, doing some thing different.

We have more than doubled the population of the world, technologically the stuff that exists today makes the moon lander look like telephone booths with attached oxygen canisters. But compared to the fifties to seventies era, when all the technological advancements where giant leaps of human endeavour, today we are just moving forward at a pace even a snail would blush at.The Europeans came up with the Concord, Lockheed Martin with skunk works that produced technological marvels like the U2 and F14 the culmination of which was the SR71 Blackbird. We sent probes roving the solar system, the Voyager missions are still working and transmitting data far away from the solar system. We built submarines that could disappear into the sea for years and we landed on the moon. the Space Shuttle was a step back and costlier than the big Saturn rockets that took us to the moon, so was every other air liner built after the Concord. We still don't have any thing to even compare with the BlackBird let alone surpass it. socially to we were making big advances too, being a hippie was acceptable, people were getting involved in the main stream. we had visionaries like JFK, Martin Luther King, Indira Gandhi who changed the world with their vision, broke down barriers with the sheer force of their persona and leadership. When they said some thing the world listened. Today the political leadership takes credit for every small achievement. We forget that most of the times we are only trying to make up all the backsteps we took.

I'm not trying to downgrade or down play the advancements of the today's generation, but every time we celebrate any small improvement on the International Space Station, i cant help feeling that all those people who worked on the moon mission would feel cheated. Every time we talk about fifth generation aircraft and their super cruise abilities, Kelly Johnson and his SR 71 are still untouchable. Similarly the Concorde sits in a class of its own in toady's plethora of Airbus mammoths and Dream-liners. Where has the will to take steps over the edge of the known, to step into the dark and strive to create light gone. The ability to take bold decisions seems to be lacking in today's generation. James Quinn at Wharton called the baby boom generation as "Shallowest Generation" i would add the Least Imaginative generation epithet to that too. These people who created marvels did so with imaginative and one line briefs, and in Kelly Johnson's' and the moon teams case, with slide-rulers, most often than not they were called into an office of some one who did not care about waht conventional wisdom said, what challenges these people faced and told them to create some thing never seen before, most probably in one line. I can think of only two people today who would dare to do such a thing today, Mr Ratan Tata who called his team of engineers and asked them to create a Car with all the basic modern trappings in Rs. 100,000(Nano) and the former Volkswagen boss Mr. Ferdinand Peich who gave one set of engineers the challenge to make a car with 1000 bhp (Veyron) that could do 400 kph and a second set of people the challenge of creating 100mpl car(1 Litre Car). All three of these creations are a realty today, two in or nearing production the third a working prototype that formed the basis of VW's brilliant Blue Motion engines.

These two men weren't dreaming or smoking weird stuff they understood technology and they understood where those limitations lay. They also knew when pushed, envelops tends to tear, and everything beyond becomes achievable. They weren't scared to dream and more over were ready to back the dreams with their resources. Tata gobbled up Land Rover and Jaguar, and when the entire worlds auto industry is in trouble, tiny Porsche(headed by Ferdinand peich) is slowly but steadily gobbling VW who is also in the rudest of health. These two have had to keep up with famous ancestors too, Ratan Tata is the nephew of JRD Tata, visionary extraordinaire and the founding father of Indian Industry, Piech is the grandson for Ferdinand Prosche who had a hand in every great car to emerge from Pre WWII Germany, so may be its in the blood.It is said that during 400 hundred years of Dark Ages Europe produced geniuses like Rembrandt, Galileo, Michelangelo, and many others and Switzerland in the same period isolated from all the turmoil gave us the Cuckoo Clock. Times are bad and we need similar visionaries. We meed people who can step up and proclaim that "I have a dream..." and then follow it up. We need to go to the Moon again and beyond.

Many things to many people

2008-10-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

Reproduced here with the permission of the author.

[This is a piece I wrote for India Today but the version that has appeared in the magazine is an edit that I did not agree to. It's not clear to me how that happened since I edited the longer article down to this final version and sent it in to them. But the magazine is out and I am both angry and saddened at their careless editing of ideas that are particularly under siege at this point of time.

So, here is my edit and I would be glad if it was circulated widely on the net - more widely than the magazine!

Samina]

Being Muslim means many things to many peopleby Samina MishraNot far from L18, in the posh part of Jamia Nagar, is a house on a tree-lined avenue that will always be home to me. But my life, with all its easy privileges, could not be more different from Atif and Sajid's, the two young men shot as alleged terrorists at L18. I contain multitudes, Whitman so eloquently said. But we live in a time when even multitudes are forced to lay claim to a singular label. And so by writing this, perhaps, I will forever be labelled the voice of the liberal secular Muslim. A voice that is accused of not speaking up. Ironically, it is this very tyranny of labels that grants me this space in a mainstream national magazine.

As someone with a Muslim first name and a Hindu surname, I suppose I have always swung between labels - a poster girl for communal harmony or a confused, rootless individual, depending on who was doing the labelling. I went to a public school and have never worn a burkha. I might escape being thrown in the big cauldron with "Islamic Terrorists" but I will certainly be added to the one for "misguided intellectuals" . While there is no mistakingthat it is zealous nationalists who seek to light the fire under the first cauldron, the other is a bone of contention between those who seek to define for me how to be Indian and those who seek to define for me how to be Muslim. My condemnation of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Imrana's rape or the media circus around Gudiya will always be seen in the context of myprivileged background, my gender, my religious identity. Perhaps, it can be no other way.

In this rhetoric of binaries of "us and them", it is difficult to find the space to create a new paradigm of discussion. And so, in conversations that throw up Islamic terrorists, rigid religious beliefs, Pakistan and madrasas, the response is inevitably another set of questions - why is the Bajrang Dal not labelled a terrorist outfit, why is the growing public display of Hindu festivals like Navratras and Karva Chauth not considered rigid religious beliefs, why should Muslims in India be answerable for what goes on in Pakistan, what spaces other than madrasas are available for thousands of believing Muslims who choose to get educated and still retain their Muslim-ness. As a Muslim in India today, not only are you fighting to shrug off the label of fundamentalist- if not terrorist - but you are also succumbing to a paradigm of dialogue which has been set for homogenous communities with clear markers of identities.

But how does one fight that when shared cultural spaces, other than those created by the market, shrink? How does one speak of the diversity of being Indian when Diwali is celebrated in schools and Eid just in Muslim homes? How does one avoid a singular label for experiences that are diverse and yet have a common thread running through them - the experience of a tailor inAhmedabad whose Hindu patrons have stopped giving work to, the butcher in Batla House who couldn't get a bank loan, the software professional who will now have to watch every single byte that leaves his computer.

Being Muslim in India today means many things to many people. But how easy it is to forget that one fundamental reality. How easy it is to say, as someone said to me after the Delhi blasts - "These are all educated Muslims. Don't they know that their bombs can also kill their own?" As if everyone with a Muslim name is a terrorist's very "own".

In the India Today

About Samina Mishra

2008 Summer Paralympic Games - The Big Picture - Boston.com

2008-10-03T00:06:00.001-07:00

2008 Summer Paralympic Games - The Big Picture - Boston.com

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A suitable girl

2008-09-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

When you are an Indian male and rushing 30 at warp speed, mothers tend to go into a kind of apoplectic hyperactivity. Pictures of strange women start to surface all over the house, strategically placed to catch your eye so that you might pick them up and enquire as to the identity. I come from a pretty liberal family, liberal enough to introduce the girls I was dating to my parents as my girl friend. My parents always kept a distance from the way I ran my life and its affairs, while still keeping an eye as to how my life was carried out. But from the time I finished my education it always became a question of when and not if I would commit to the girl I was dating at the time. Sadly there have been no relationships worth mentioning to my mother, this has put her, my mother, in a spot. She has always maintained that as long as I finished my studies and had a strong career she would not interfere on who I married or when. But as one after the other my contemporaries and more importantly my friends fell to the charms of marriage. No she is in a tizzy, I refuse to commit to a girl and she refuses to let me force her hand and arrange a marriage.

So all my fast dwindling no. of single friends have come under the microscope, going as far as to propose a South African single mother, who I met on business, if I so choose. What is difficult for me to state is that I do not have any precondition as to who I want to marry. 28 for me is not a bad stage in life to be single, having just got out of college two years back I have got comfortable with life just recently, committing to a marriage and my life to a girl seems a scary thought. Second is having some girl's life tied to mine is scarier still as I really don't trust my own decision making skills. But ok, this is about what I would be looking at in a prospective partner.

The most important factor is it should be a person I can have a conversation with, see my biggest fear is I would end up marrying someone whose entire repertoire begins at makeup and ends with the neighbor's daughter. This thought gives me living nightmares. So it has to be someone who tries to at least understand what I am spouting, from F1 to global finance to dogs. More so she should be able to stimulate conversation, listen as well as talk. Oh and she has to agree to adopt a child. That is all I would ask a girl who agrees to marry me, now what she needs to know about me would fill an encyclopedia, in brief. How we would get around that, is something I dare not tackle here. May be it would be better if she were a lawyer or a doctor because then lawyer/client or a doctor/patient privilege would protect me.

P.S. when I came up with this blog it was much more funnier and interesting to read, but I was on a train with zero battery and no pen and paper, and half asleep. This is what remains. Ciao and happy hunting to all the singles out there.

Blinging chrome

2008-09-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

we had a saying in University, "Google is God" when you had partied too hard and there was a last minute assignment, paper or project and we had only one night to complete then it was only Google that came to the rescue.no matter what the topic was, no matter how big the assignment it was always there. now we have Chrome beta, the newest and for some the most important factor, Google's browser.

well first the look it just looks like a very mature and grown up version of Google search page. Google has always kept the design simple be it the Google search page, mail or chat u can see the simplistic design philosophy there. I'm a FireFox fan, always have been. there are a bunch of browsers i have been using over the past six months. ranging from Firefox, Flock a browser based on the the FireFox platform, I've used apple's famed safari and then there is IE and now Chrome. now the big difference between all the others and the new kid on the block is again the minimalist user interface. it lets you make the best use of your screen size by removing all the other knick knacks from the interface unless you need them. then its got two modes. one where it keeps track of all the pages you use and displaying the most used every time you open a new page or tab and displaying the most viewed on the new page or tab. and then there is the incognito window with a suitably darkened window where "Pages you view (in this window) won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however."the best feature is that the address bar becomes one with a search window it uses predictive software trying to complete the phrases you input and coming up with the best combinations. Tabs which are the best innovation of the 'Fox and now have been included on all other browsers, have been integrated into the title bar of the page and shifted to the top of the page. basically its an innovative approach to the browser which as Google trademark approach to design. a friend of mine recently wrote some thing about the design philosophy of apple where there products have a really clean look and when it comes to other products stuff just gets complicated until you come down to individually designed products where the user simply drowns in a swamp of fields and check boxes. in the end all i will say is that Chrome is an ironic name, chrome, normally is bling, its all about attracting attention while Google has gone the other way and made it minimalist. My University moto said "Knowledge is Empowerment", by that standard Google has just reinvented itself as Internets New God. i cant wait for Google's phone, the i phone must be looking over its shoulder.

Road Rage

2008-09-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

Every time there is a new car or a bike launch self righteous social defenders go up in arms protesting that we don't have the facilities or the infrastructure to support the amount of traffic that our country is starting to see. when big luxury cars and sports cars costing an arm and a leg come into the country there is another hue and cry. no one protests when fifty year old relics from the two world wars ply our roads daily. no one protests when people die in there tens when some pre historic bus first driven by the Flintstones family dives in a gorge with all aboard. neither does any one protest when a tractor with a trailer attached does a very good imitation of the titanic. sure when some good-for-nothing poor rich boy crashes his BMW all the social activists come out of the wood work like termites out of the wood work.

I'm not complaining about the activists or protecting the poor rich sods. my problem with the whole system of blame games is that no one really really tries to correct the real problem. the problem that no on in the country really wants to face that we Indian have road manners better suited to the bullock cart era. even then we might have the highest road fatalities in the country. the majority cant read road and highway signs, no one understands the different lines on the road. most of all people don't have common sense or observe common curtsies on the street. rage is more prevalent than than good Samaritans. part of the problem is insignificant infrastructure, but i believe that that too is not that big a problem, at least for now. we are the Seventh largest nation on the planet so there is no shortage of space, its not efficiently managed but there is no shortage. we still have the largest and the fastest growing road net work so that too is not a problem. the quality is a little suspect, that will improve only with time and with creating solution for a lot of different problems like corruption and red tape.

but again the biggest problem is still one no one really focuses on. people don't have Road Ethics. pedestrians walk on the road, jay walking is rampant, not just in the cities but on expressways. people jump the Aramco barriers with impunity and walk across high speed lanes with no regard to life or property. people hawk animals on city roads. slow moving vehicles hog the fast lane. well no one knows the concept of lanes so that is that. overtaking from the left, right and over other vehicles is accepted. driving down the wrong side of the road is also accepted instead of going the right way and traveling the extra distance. geriatric gentle men and women drive at 5 kph on busy street intersection on mopeds they were gifted when they were 20 years old. teenagers drive at high speeds and some times rashly to endanger there lives as well as others on the street. bus drivers and truck drivers are more ignorant of road ethics than any one else and majority women drivers drive as if they are about to fall off. and don't even get me started on drunk driving.

now this rant is not against, senior citizens, women or teenagers nor is it against poorer sections of society from where most of our drivers come from. this is against the system. oh and on the whole i learnt driving and riding on my own too no one told me the road rules, and i learnt by hit and miss. i was one of those teenagers flying around on light weight moped and scoots as if i had wings. well the biggest problems as i said earlier is road ethics.

here is my solution.

1. reduce the minimum age for riding ungeared two wheelers to fourteen and make them off limits to the busy sections of the city.

2. for geared two wheelers to 16 years

3. for cars to 17.

4. make driving a subject compulsory for graduating in to the next section in the eight the tenth and the twelfth standard. which are the classes for boards in many state boards. the subject will have both theory and practical. passing in both separately being mandatory for earning your license. this will have the advantage of exposing students to road rules at and early age and most of which is picked up in classes is never really forgotten.

5. make a minimum IQ level or some other way of accessing intelligence a requirement for getting your license.

the above two rules will have the added benefit of attracting people from lower levels of society to school as that is the only way they will gain access to a means of lively hood.

6. there should be a maximum age limit for drivers.

7. all drivers have periodic health especially eye sight and hearing checkup.

8. better and more frequent public transport system. a system which is adequate for the population density of the country. the present system is generally inadequate and over crowded.

9. stricter punishment and higher fines for rule breakers.

now this system is a slow process, and initially will bring more riders and drivers on the roads but they will be better behaved and more over better drivers both male and female. and again this system will not over come corruption and misappropriation of funds from infrastructure projects but that is another story for another time.

Swift Dezires

2008-09-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

(The Present)*&&^^@*&#^(&*(*. &^%&$@^* its not until my lungs start to scream that i realise i am holding my breath. i let out my breath slowly, then i realise i'm parked 90 degrees to the residential lane i just came on to.

(roughly 45 seconds back) The Maruti Swift is a good looking car, i always thought it was what a modern Mini would have looked like and it was very new on the road then, Jaipur barely had a handful at the time. so it was fresh in and looked extremely cute and Handsome at the same time. OK so my friend had bought a new one in red and as i was visiting him he said he'd take me for a drive. as we were about to get into the car he threw me the keys to his day old car. I get in the car and move to start it as he walks towards the gate to open it. get in turn the ignition, "oh, nice throaty burble" i didn't know it was this loud. i found it a trifle too loud for a family hatch. shifting in to gear i think to myself be nice and gentle you don't want to trash a brand new car. i ease my foot of the clutch because the thing i feared more than trashing the car was stalling it, in front of my friend. i was a relative novice to cars at the time, and didn't want to show that. May be if i had been a little more concerned with the car than saving my face i wouldn't have done what i did then. looking back the clutch was a little heavy too. i ease the foot of the clutch the engine note rising as i ease onto the accelerator pedal the little red car jumps of its rockers, like a rottweiler leaving hell, i miss my friend and the gate to his house by inches as i hold onto the steering wheel for dear life.

(back to Present) i look at the rear view, and reach for the ignition and then change my mind. i get out of the car on wobbly legs, look at my friend who sees my face and doubles up laughing. i feel like murdering him, well if i hadn't almost run him over with his brand new car i would have killed him. what Had happened was with a subtle body kit and spoilers he had got the engine changed with a Baleno unit and the unit that was peppy in the heavy set Baleno was out right snarly in the lill car. the point of the little anecdote is that lill cars with peppy engines are way more fun than big burly cars which we don't have space to run around any way. secondly it would be a good idea for auto makers to introduce cars with souped up engines in limited quantities. there is no sporty choice in the affordable segment. so a flagship model in the range would be a nice idea. i think it would need less money and make more money than creating hedious little monstrosities like Swift Dezires and the logan, as i later found out a little later when i stopped shaking and got back in the car that even after the aftermarket job the ill car just soaked up all the power and reveled in the new freedom.

God Bless After market Tuners

2008-08-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

Not many pickup trucks have melted headlights and turn indicators, so I figured it had to be my buddy'sSilverado that appeared in a Chevy commercial during the Olympics coverage.

Sure enough, there was my pal Firefighter Craig Monahan beside the truck he had driven in fromStaten Island on 9/11. One of the two off-duty firefighters with him had leaned out the window, imitating a siren.

"He's doing, 'Whoo, whoo,'"Monahan recalled.

They parked near the south tower in time to survive the first collapse and then the second. I watched Monahan immediately afterward crawl into the ruins to search for the 11 missing firefighters from his firehouse, Engine 24/Ladder 5.

When he finally returned to his Silverado, Monahan saw that the falling debris of the south tower had stopped inches short of his front bumper. The surrounding vehicles had been gutted by fire and the truck's front lights had melted into what looked like huge tears.

The steering wheel had also begun to melt and the interior of the cab was singed. Monahan reached in to turn the ignition key and was astonished to hear the engine start right up.

Somebody operating a wrecker helped clear a path for Monahan to pull away. He changed a front tire that had been bubbled by the heat and he headed for the firehouse.

"The first victory of World War III," Monahan announced.

Somebody salvaged the oversized nameplate from Ladder 5's destroyed rig and affixed it to the side of the pickup that ferried them to and from The Pit over the days that followed.

The sight of them going by in this burned and battered truck with "Ladder 5" bolted to the side always drew a rousing response from folks in the street.

"Every time we got in the truck, they were just cheering," Monahan said. "It was American spirit at its best. ... 'You can't keep us down!'"

The recovery effort ended and Ladder 5 got a new rig and the firehouse suffered a new tragedy when it lost two members in the Deutsche Bank fire last year.

The Silverado was back in Monahan's driveway when Chevrolet called to ask about using it in a commercial to be shown during the 2008 Olympics.

Monahan was leery of cashing in on a tragedy, but he figured it could only be a good thing for people to see this pickup-turned-symbol. He gave the check to anFDNY family.

The commercial aired Sunday during women's gymnastics and Chevrolet proved capable of more restraint and good taste than our politicians have with regard to 9/11.

The most overt reference to the attack was a silent shot of Monahan standing before the Manhattan skyline absent the twin towers. There was a closeup of those truck lights turned to huge tears and a shot of the truck with its "Ladder 5."

"If that truck could keep going, we could all keep going," Monahan continued, ad copy converging with truth.

The Olympic coverage continued to men's swimming and the U.S. team swam the greatest relay race ever. The winners stood with their gold medals as "The Star-Spangled Banner" played and I thought of the survivors of Ladder 5 rolling by in that battered pickup.

"You don't give up and you keep moving forward," Monahan said. "It's a beautiful thing."

The Silverado is still in his driveway.

written by Michael Daly. original story here

tag mosiac

2008-07-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

I nicked it from anoop

the rules are:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

2. Using only the first page of results, and pick one image.

3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food? right now?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. What is your favorite drink?

7. What is your dream vacation?

8. What is your favorite dessert?

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. What is one word that describes you?

12. What is your user name?

and the resultant mosaic is:

59 years and counting...............................

2008-07-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Let me tell u about my self, I'm an Indian. Ok I know what u are thinking hyperbole, and its attendant extremities are going to land now. But it’s true, I think of my self of as an Indian first and last, and I feel proud about it too. We did a lot of things wrong since the first steps taken on that fateful night in 1947, but we must have got at least one thing right that we got so far. You’ll agree I hope(if not, who cares). We stumbled, we tripped, we fell, but every time we got back on our feet with a promise to make it right, when the whole world waited with baited breath for us to stumble and fall and stay there. I mean this mish mash of geographical, religious, ethnic, caste aggregate should have ended as a collection of homogenous and independent entities, not the existing melting pot which maintains a love hate relationship amongst itself.

We went off in to space, (at least two of us did, though a lot of us are high at most times), we conquered the mighty atom (oops........ I didn’t know it could do that) built the worlds most efficient rail network (it goes where?), created a postal system that even though it mails letters to wrong addresses with a scary consistency or misplaces them altogether, will deliver a letter addressed to Darkness, Bombay, India to Andheri in Mumbai (not kidding), and the amazing thing is we show flashes of brilliances and a mind boggling range of idiocies at the same time. And we still manage to overcome all expectations and hurdles laid in our way. We borrow technology to make commercial grade automobile steel from other nations but we have managed to build a mach three capable cruise missile, Bhramos(the tomahawk's history) get the gawky and laughably light 4th generation fighter Tejas off the ground. Built a satellite launch system that even the Chinese can’t beat for price, and oh least I forget the world’s largest shanty town that even the Brazilians can only look at and envy. We try to scam on the coffins we buy for our soldiers, but we still have cab drivers who return bags full of money to their rightful owners.

we quibble about quotas in higher education, but still have the highest rate of school dropouts, but still manage to educate so many people that the world comes to us for managers, doctors and engineers. the best brains in the world in research, the best surgeons, the best scamsters too, amongst the countries with the largest growth with the most untapped potential too, we quibble, and quarrel amongst our selves about who sits in a stupid chair, but still the world sits up to take notice when we tend to even whisper some thing. with cities that have a history and a past older than the combined history of the Americas, we have developed welcoming guests and hospitality to such a fine art that even though we turn from grateful hosts to hooligans or plain criminal (cricket in Eden gardens any one or how about touts in Agra, or coolies of Delhi), people come here and fall in love and remain here for ever. we look upon sex and any and every discussion concerned with it with wide eyed disbelief, but procreate with amazing consistency and what’s more a country that holds some thing in such a taboo we breed like rabbits(you heard me right). But we take care of each of our brood with the same affection. The great Indian joint family has become an institution the world over and a savior for parents who both work at the same time. The support system it provides pulls people thru the direst of disasters. Yet some thing is always never right (did some one say female feticide?)

We specialize in beating the world in obscure games (cricket, chess), but can’t manage a gold at the showcase Olympic events. 1 sixth of the worlds population and we still can’t kick a round leather bladder efficiently enough to go to the world cup. at times we generate so much hatred in our selves that we are ready to kill former friends and neighbors (Godhra, Ayodhya riots etc) and brothers (Praveen Mahajan) and at others we give every thing we have and more just to rescue another soul in distress (Mumbai floods, blasts, Gujarat earthquake, tsunami) the entire gamut of human emotions course thru us within the blink of an eye.

We are good, we are bad and most important we are every thing in between because we are human beings, and in spite of our fallacies we built a nation, of greats. Sure we have a large number of impoverished people in our country, sure some of us look at the females of our country as secondary, sure villages are rampant with the evils of casteism and communalism, sure we haven’t been able to feed all our citizens even after record grain production, sure even after 15 years of reforms our system has more red tape than used in all the gifts they pack for Christmas and sure the levels of corruption we see in our system is mind boggling.

But you know what it really doesn’t matter and the reason is no matter what the status of woman in our country we were I fact the second country to choose a female Prime Minister, we were also ones to have instituted a program to fast track food grain production, as well as milk production. and what ever the evils of caste and religion we are still the worlds largest functioning democracy, our army has always stayed staunchly apolitical and our soldiers so good that they some times border on superhuman. We have defied aggressor after aggressor internal and external. We have given the world so much, CV Raman, Amartya Sen, Gandhi, kautilya, chess (there's that game again) Buddhism, Geetanjali and Zero (0, zilch, nada, naught)

The most important reason of all no matter what is wrong with her India has always stood firm, Gia, mother, Mata call her what u want she has always been close to perfect for me and given me my hearts desire, sure there are lots of things to be done, but then if things were perfect, wont you and I get bored living perfection

Jaisalmer in 1.3 MP

2008-07-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

Jaisalmer is one of the western most Indian Cities. I went there for about 12 hours on the 25 th of April. dont ask me why i went but ill tell you some thing, it was hot, some thing around 45 degrees in the shade. I have been to the city earlier too when i was in the ninth standard and it was during the desert festival held in february. i was in school in those days and we went from the station directly to the desert camp made at sum and since we arrived at night and left two days later again at night it wasnt much of a visit to the city proper. so ... well i knew the city was small but it was still a shock to step out of the station and see nothing in front of you. yeah i mean its a desert out there. and and then the heat started to run its course and it got unbearable as the day went on. i was there to deliver some stuff to a client and i had to get out. but before that i had to visit the fort. then i realized why the city looked deserted. because every one still lives inside the fort or within touching distance to it. it must be the proximity to the pakistani border i guess any way these are some pictures of the fort from the inside ciao. its vienna next.

A thousand Apologies

2008-07-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

i have been gone, busy as hell and travelling the world. dont believe me we what can i say. job hunting was on then grandpa fell ill and i was the only one available to do any thing so i was off with him to london and then vienna. there was jaisalmer in between there some where, so was jaipur, jodhpur obviously and then there was delhi, Mumbai, chennai and some other middle of no where out of the places life was hectic but now i am back with lots of stories so i will post them one by one over these days. the first one will be obviously pictures of jaisalmer taken on my cell phone but i guess they will ahve to do.

taggedtag

2008-06-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Shruti tagged me with the love tag but i just dont nderstand that one so i will do this one instead as i dont thing any one esle she has tagged will do it :D

1. Last Movie You Saw In A Theater:
Iron Man, what can i say im a comic book fan.

2. What Book Are You Reading:

Moving Pictures By terry Pratchet :P

3. Favorite Board Game:

Scrabble. and chess

4. Favorite Magazine:

readers Digest and National Geographic, top gear, BS Motoring

5. Favorite Smells:

Methi Chicken, petrol, tandoori chicken, nivea deo dry, Addidas Sport, Gillette Power surge

6. Favorite Sound:

MY NIECE singing, a good engine at full chat

7. Worst Feeling In The World:

having nothing to do

8. What Is The First Thing You Think Of When You Wake Up?

whats the time ??

9. Favorite Fast Food Place:

Mc Donald's.

10. Future Child's Name:

:) well i dont know if i will name my kids(if and when i have them) but i really like Eve, Andrea,

11. Finish This Statement. "If I Had A Lot Of Money I'd...”:

Invest. buy my beach house, buy a few liter class bikes, may be a porsche

12. Do You Drive Fast?

what do you think?

13. Do You Sleep With A Stuffed Animal?

nope

14. Storms-Cool Or Scary?

cool

15. What Was Your First Car?

Fiat. Palio 1.6

16. Favourite drink:

Appy, Real Pineapple, pepsi.

17. Finish This Statement, "If I Had The Time I Would .....”

take a trip

18. Do You Eat The Stems On Broccoli?

who eats brocoli

19. If You Could Dye Your Hair Any Color, What Would Be Your Choice?

brown or may be dirty brown frost tips

20. Name All The Different Cities/Towns You Have Lived In:

Jodhpur, Mount abu, bikaner, barmer, Suratgarh mumbai, bangalore kottayam.

21. Favorite Sports To Watch:

F1 Moto GP Basketball, Football

22. One Nice Thing About The Person Who Sent This To You:

chirpy, funny with a inteligent attitude.

23. What's Under Your Bed?

My shoes. air bag, laundry bag

24. Would You Like To Be Born As Yourself Again?

Yes.

25. Morning Person Or Night Owl?

insomaniac.

26. Over Easy Or Sunny Side Up?
Sunny side up.. or french

27. Favorite Place To Relax:

Mehrangarh fort

28. Favorite Pie:

apple pie.

29. Favorite Ice Cream Flavor:

Butterscotch, chocolate. banna splits,

30. Of All The People You Tagged This To, Who's Most Likely To Respond First?

None cause i wont tag any one

I wish ...

2008-05-29T00:33:00.000-07:00

Got tagged by Anoop a with instructions to update the blog, been traveling a lot and hence havent had time to sit and blog, so here goes...
10 THINGS I MISS IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW:
Ride: well this is important, rides are a good way to take my mind of stuff and its not been happening
School days: the district tournaments, crushes in sunday school in church, idolizing teachers, falling in love with them and the whole uncomplicated life :D
my friends : we are all spread in different cities and its kinda difficult doint stuff with out them.
Kingfisher babe : miss you lots be good a be nice

well thats it for now i guess

10 things i want to achieve within a decade:
01. Retire and live like a beach bum even for a short while.
02. rebuild a internal combustion engine, ive done single cylinder engines but i want to do a really complex v8 or v 12 and restore a classic even if its a VW Beetle
03. Climb the Everest.
04. Learn to cook, i can bake a decent cake, and do mean fried fish, but i want to be able to do a whole 7 course meal.
05. buy my aunts beach front property. build a home there.
06. drive and hitch hike across the country north to south east to west.
07. drag race on the Bonneville salt flats.
08. pilot a supersonic jet. and a formula 1 car
09. Race on the Nuremberg ring in the snow in a Porsche 911 turbo.
10. learn sailing.
now i wont tag any one but you are welcome to take it up
ciao

Broken hearts and unsent Love Letters

2008-04-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

Sakshi is getting married today, the six months I went out with her were amazing, we have been good friends ever since. today when i saw her dressed in her bridal dress she looked so amazing and beautiful. we had a fight, a few years back and we didn't talk for a while then i wrote a letter for her to say sorry and how much she means to me but i never sent the letter. i post this email here now for her.

Life is not simple choices any more we have to make complex decisions all the time and life gets crazier the more we try to simplify it. Believe me it was crazy i wanted it all to stop and had picked the worst way possible to make it stop too, then i forgot all the things i would not be able to do any more and all the things that i have still to do and so i changed my mind, i realised that you dont have to be all conquering and all winning. There were some battles we can do without an some from we can retreat from but i would have missed doing all of the following things
i would have missed brightenning your mood when you feel down and not being there when you need me, if you need me badly may be give you a hug and if i feel naughty may be flirt with you a little or may be pinch your (i knw you would have been surprised) butt, it would make you laugh i would miss taking long walks and chatting and , (dont tell any one this) gossip with you, how can i forget the rides tht we took, especially in the rain. i would race you back to the place we came to and let you win and see you laugh and tease me because you won. i would miss the fact that when ure angry at any one and every one, you would shout at me because you trusted me enough to show me your true feelings, i would let you bitch about your boss, ure work and the girl who sat next to you on the train. and listen without ever grumbling. I would miss shopping with you and the way you would turn the whole market upside down for just the right thing and and i would make you buy that dress you so much liked then we could share tht pastry you sooo much like I would miss listening to your dreams and aspirations and your confessions no matter how silly they are, i would miss being the partner in crime with you, and i want to stand with you while you reach for the stars or try your hand at all those things you want to do no matter how absurd. I would miss singing with you to your favourite song and laughing with you because we were both singing off tune, i would stand by you when you did some thing completely silly like running thru the sand and mud as you did on campus. I would always let you eat whtaever you want to eat and never say you look fat because for me you will always be just right. I would always say i love your hair even when you are having a bad hair day and never tell you that you have a little chocolate sticking to the side of your mouth because it looks so cute. i would love to make you brakefast on holidays and wake you up with coffee or tea jst the way u like, in the evenings we would go out for dinner like we used to on campus. I want to take you for long drives hold your hand in mine and tell you how much i love and care for you. and if some day you decide to marry some one esle i want u to be proud of the fact there will be two people tht love you so much and then you can come to me n tell meall your problems, cuz i will listen to them. i will sit with you n dream when your in the mood to do so i will hold ure hand through your difficult times and never say word i will stand by you no matter wht happens tommrow i know we will have fights and dissagrements but i promise i will do my best so that they can be solved nicely and fast i will tell you how beautifull you look every day i will tell you how much i love you every day i want to be their by your side at all your triumphs and victories, hold your hand when you loose a fight and help you fight another day i will thank you every day for standing by me, for being there when every thing was going wrong, for holding on even when i was rude and angry and said things to hurt so that you will leave me alone, i will thank you for the previladge of letting me tell you how much i love you every day i will be proud to show you off to my friends and there a lot more things tht i want to do with you and hold your hand and tell i have to do all of the above and i would have missed doing all of that and that is one reason i live today and another is tht you are still be by my side.

i wish she finds every thing she ever needs and her married life is happy and full of the best things in life.

Midnight cookies and milk

2008-04-21T01:44:00.000-07:00

It’s fascinating to see a human being self destruct; especially when you are looking in the mirror and the person you see self destruct is you. It becomes an obsession, you stare and stare, feeling that there has to be something you need to do something, you have to do but you can not move a muscle. For the life of you, you become a spectator in your own funeral procession. Burnout was a new word, every one was going through it, high profile executives in every field were going through it. At 25 he was one, most people went thru it after they finished their MBAs and have worked for a few years helping multinational corporations go places and then they have a spectacular blowout, He burnt out in the middle of his MBA there were days when he was afraid to sleep in the night and times when looking in the mirror was painful. Diagnosed with clinical depression he had blown a potentially rewarding education and career with nothing to look forward to.

His family was distraught and his friends were disappointed, and there were days when he wanted to kill him self, but even there he was caught between the argument that it was very cowardly or very brave taking his own life. Some days he thought it would be brave of him giving up his life, and shield his family and loved ones from the trauma his life had become. On other days it felt cowardly because it was taking the easy way out and living the rest of the world to deal with the ordeal. Anti depressants weren’t much help either, because for them to work the stress would have to go away and for some reason it came up in every conversation, secondly it drained the life from a person and there was no energy to do any thing.

Life gets complicated from time to time. Today he heard the two people he loves the most argue about money. They were people he gave examples of when asked what the ideal marriage should be like. Today they argued over the amount of money they were spending over each other, the current argument was the fallout of another one that as usual had started over his burnout or failure and spilled over into their personal lives, he had poisoned the love between two of the people he cared for the most. Love that gave hope to them and carried them through enough trouble to make most couples look mediocre and now a stupid little metal breakdown looked to tear them apart. Life never did play fair.

The funny thing is he never wished he could rewind life, or redo it all over again, but some times it just feels like it would just be better with a pause button or better yet, push a button and erase your entire past. The past is like an inebriated ghost who wouldn’t let me sleep and neither would it let me put it to rest. He would work himself to into exhaustion so that he could get a few precious hours of sleep, but since he had over heard the argument between them he couldn’t sleep it had been two days he would lie awake at nights and sit in front of the television like a zombie. He had been trying to patch together the pieces of his life for the last few years and it was ridiculous how every thing he had done against so much opposition and heartache could be undone by a silly argument between two people. Relationships can be one person’s strength and their biggest weakness as well.

Try

2008-04-18T23:23:00.000-07:00

Spread your wings

Jump off a cliff

Cause until we try

We are never going to fly

Just like Icarus did

Of course he flew too high

And died

But how do we know

How high is too high

How far is too far

How fast is too fast

Cause until we do

We wont get there

Its true we cant win them all

But first we have to try

Stand and Be ...

2008-04-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

As the sands of time flee

I stare into the eyes of destiny

Fate tempts me to sit and rest

Destiny dares me to stand and be

I am tired, I am sleepy

Rest looks tempting as can be

The sands of time are

Scattered with the brave and hard souls

Resting till eternity

No I will not die

Fade away silently

I take the next step

So that one day I can stand and be – stand and be

Wish I’d Said that

2008-04-14T23:56:00.000-07:00

I read this piece in the Readers Digest, a few years back and i like it so much i copied it onto my scrap book. (yes i kept a scrap book.) and today as i was going through it i saw the piece so im posting it.

For most of us life is less than dramatic than the movies. Few of us will get to deliver the really cool lines, like “Charge!” or “Sponge, Clamp, Suture” or “I’d like to thank the Academy” I suppose that most people at some point have imagined them selves saying “take her down to periscope depth” or even, “fire Torpedo tube number 1”

When I was on jury duty recently, I got to say something I never thought possible. The judge was asking us about our suitability to serve, not wanting to share the particulars of one of my answers; I meekly stuck my hand into the air and asked, “Your Honor, may I approach the bench?” “Approach” he said. I approached feeling puffed up and important.

The next day I recounted my thrill to a friend Geoff, who happened to have served with US Special Forces in Vietnam. He shared my excitement, “its like the first time I got to say ‘Cover Me’”. This put my rhetorical moment in perspective.

Along the years, however I did get to utter a few other big lines. I’ve said, on my knees “Will you marry me?” A few years later I said until I was hoarse, “It’s a girl!” I’ve said, from the top of a ship’s mast after crossing an ocean “Land Ho!” Melodramatic, I admit, but it sounded better than “Yo Spain!”

A friend of mine tells me a story about a magistrate in Scotland. When the town drunk was hauled in before him for the umpteenth time, the magistrate looked down at him and said, “It’s the sentence of the court that you be taken from here to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until you are dead”

The drunk fainted. As they were reviving him, the bailiff looked up quizzically at the judge, the judge shrugged and said, “I’ve just always wanted to say that.”

I know exactly how he felt.

Christopher Buckley

Mind your language

2008-04-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

Well my parents and every one I’m related to, except for one of my uncle, is Mallu, but I am a fraud Mallu, I mean I was born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. So I’m pretty good with languages, I mean, before I was three I was replying to queries from all my relatives in English or Hindi. They would shoot stuff at me in Malayalam, and I would understand what they were saying and reply back in the languages I was comfortable in. The same went for my neighbors they would shoot stuff at me in marwari and id try and twist my tongue around it and it all came out gibberish. So before I was three I was teaching people new languages and making my own language every second day. I was that good.

Any way my point about languages is this, people change, that’s constant. But the thing is as people and things change tolerance levels narrow, and keep narrowing. Zee Café shows “Mind Your Language”, an old British comedy about immigrants’ learning to speak in English, its pretty hilarious, I used to watch it as a kid and so I enjoy watching it now too. There is an Indian lady, in a sari and a big bun, a Sardar, a Muslim, all with south east Asian accents and mannerisms, them there is a Mao spewing red handbook carrying Chinese girl, two Romeos, one Greek and the other Italian two steaming hot females from Italy and France, the Japanese is serious and extremely polite, and the Russian female looks like she is the warden of a prison. It feeds your stereotyped appetite and it’s funny and hilarious in parts. The Indian impressions are true to home remind me of my aunts and cousins abroad.

But dare if you try and make some thing like that today. You children would learn to spell the words “Law Suit” and “Racism” before they say “dada” or “Mama”. I was watching a Russell Peters DVD, he is a stand up comic of Indian origin from Canada, and he specializes in racist jokes. Well and people pay so that they can sit in the auditorium and he will ask you where are you from and make jokes about you and your country, he doesn’t spare any one Indians, south east Asians, Chinese, whites, everyone is fair target. But try and make the same joke around your office water cooler and you would probably end up taking a sanitization seminar in the best case scenario, or get fired in the worst.

The classic movie Casablanca ends with Bogart’s character telling his friend the police chief “you Know Louie this could be the start of a beautiful friendship”. Put in a line like that in the most chick flickest of chick flick’s today and it would be called gay especially if it’s two men walking into the sunrise. Its not racism I guess, because as far as I am concerned racism is the hatred of one type of people completely and utterly. But is calling a black guy, black, racist? He is black, calling him the politically correct term African American or a brown dude Indian American is stupid, it implies that even though he is American by citizen ship they are not entirely secure in their identity as Americans they want another label to segregate them. We create these politically acceptable labels to describe our selves and end up segregating our selves. The funny part is, we do tend to do stupid stuff we as a community segregate our selves and stereotype ourselves, Indian will talk a particular way, so will Chinese, so will British and so will Americans. The Scots or the Germans are no better nor are the blacks, we try to differentiate ourselves in the way we dress, talk, eat food and even in the way we walk but will leap into flying rages if some one points it out to us. The British create the image of the mindless, beer chugging hooligans, the Germans of humorless, technical stars. The Americans will pretend to be bourbon chugging hot dog eating obese football fans, but dare any one poke fun at them.

The case is similar in India no matter how much we educate each other, the Tamil will loath to speak any other language, even if they know them. Malayalee’s, have the most complicated political intrigues going on even if its managing a simple church group, Bengalis will spew over vowelated English words while discoursing on the finer points of Marx, Lenin and Mao still if some one points that out you would probably be shot at. I am not saying that there is not racism, branding every Bihari a thief is probably bad and or calling every Australian, murderer at that is not good either, but for a moment don’t we think we are dragging it too far, today people take offence at being called “Monkey”, but “Son of a bitch!” or “bastard!” becomes an admiration. We do weave twisted webs and then we cry when we cant step out of them.

Oh my latest attempt at learning a language was at Kannada, my friends used to tell me that listening to any south Indian language was like hearing stones rattling in match box and I, being exposed to Malayalam and Tamil, felt defensive and irritated. But the moment I landed in Karnataka I realized that eating rock candy or rolling dice in a plastic container was a bad idea, the people around me might think I was swearing at them. It is really odd how a language comes across to some one else when they don’t understand the nuances of it. The word for hanging in Malayalam and sleeping in Tamil is the same, so when I heard some one tell me that they were going to sleep in Tamil for the first time I asked why was he compelled to hang himself and where was he going to do that? Good that I did that and got a clarification, my second instinct was to go get the police, boy that would have been an uncomfortable conversation, had I done that. I hope you get what I mean. The world would be a lot better place if people laughed at them selves a little more and stopped taking offense a little less.

Broken

2008-04-14T23:44:00.000-07:00

Broken Dreams, broken hearts,

Walking in the shadows, looking for love,

Missing the freedom of needing you,

When I want to.

Wishing that the nightmares go away and

My dreams come true, if tomorrow comes true

Good things in life….

2008-04-14T04:41:00.000-07:00

Someone I had been very good friends with in school died on 30^th March and it made me sad, and reminded me again that life can be a very disloyal companion, but It's not the people it's the moments. This is dedicated to him. There are a few people who have made my life worthwhile and worth living.

Cycling to school in the rain.
Running in the rain, oh and football in the rain too.Dancing in the rain. I was never good at dancing but in the rain who notices
Chicken Run with leena,
The old house we lived in had a small depression, which when filled with water would create a pool about three feet deep. I and my sisters used it as a pool, some of the best days of my life.
Returning home from school racing against each other through the railway colony stunting on our bicycles.
NLU campus lawns, one April morning, parathas from Chamunda and two liters of Pepsi and some very teary and funny goodbyes.
A case of beer, Kaylana lake and my best school buddies.
Dinner on top of Merangarh Fort with the boys.
Jaswanthada some friends and a big bag of Popcorn and peanuts.
Driving through southern Rajasthan in the middle of the night with Daughtry belting on the CD player with my cute cousin and brother curled up in the back seat of the Accord.
Aunt's Gajar ka Halwa on a winter evening.
Rainy night with my sisters and mom's plate of pakoras.
The first time I saw Top Gun, a pimply teenager's epitome of raging male hormones and superheroes all rolled into one.
The first time I saw Pretty Woman and fell in love with Julia Roberts.
Chai at three in the morning at Chamunda.
Lots of Cold Drink, two in the night, Lost Boys and an abandoned bus stop.
Deeps and I, a pre historic archeological dig site, and an Indian summer sunset.
Second year freshers on NLU campus.
Performing to Dr. Albans "its my life" in the Tenth grade at the School Anniversary, dressed as pirates.
High School romances.
District Football matches against BJS High School. We got kicked more than the ball.
Shopping on the Colaba cause way with Deepti, every time. Oh and the ferry ride too
Riding to Osian with friends.
Hunting for Booze on the 15^th of August, 2006 from 2am in the morning to 7am with my two best buddies and not finding any.
New year 2006 With Moose, Breeda, Claire and Shaheen.
New year2007 with Vineet, MK and later with Mini.
Driving down from Delhi to Jaipur, in a big Innova
Midnight chats across continents with Sunshine, Doctor and Melody.
Maggie with mad Vikki, in the middle of the night.
School fairs with my sister when we were all in school, and my most immediate worry was who to con for my next ice cream.
One Monsoon season, it rained Fishes, real fishes no kidding, and we caught them and put them in bottles and made an aquarium.
Summer Holidays in Kerala all of them.
Midnight dinner for four at Velankanni beach and fresh sea food.
Sleeping under the stars, with my cousins on the beach behind my aunts house.
DJing at a Anil's Birthday party.
First Year Graduation Picnic.
Shweta's Birthdays, all of them.
Shopping with Shavi, on C Road.
Putting Aditya and Elishya to Sleep.
There are lots and lots of memories that should have gone on this list, and the ones that are there are not in any specific order, but they were the ones that will tell those people who made them possible how much these memories meant to me. thanx a lot guys, Nilanshus death made me realise after a long time that life could be very fickle so i dont want to go with out saying thanx
Deepti, Sakshi, mudassir, Raj, Shweta, Stuti, bhishm, anuj, shival, vineet, aditi, pushpa, kavita, deepti c, vineeta, moose, Shvaeta, surya, leena thanx a ton guys

Dress Sense

2008-04-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

Today I was talking to a good friend of mine, the funny thing was that we had always met on business first and later when we started to get to know each other, we met after work too and she is a very pretty lady and always dressed very professionally, hair always in a very conservative bun, shirts always light or pastel shades, and trousers with or without jackets. Well a few days back she had to go to a local club on a semi work do, and since she didn’t know any one there she asked if I would be willing to escort her. I said yes as I rarely have any thing interesting to do on weekends and I loved her company, so spending time with her was a good idea, I arranged to pick her up and when I arrived at her apartment complex, I saw she was waiting in the porch of her building for me. I was stunned, she had a short flared denim skirt that fell to just above her knee and was wearing a tank top that just met the skirt around her waist and a short denim jacket, I was speechless well I always thought she was this severe and very conservative lady, she took in my look, looked at me very quizzically, arranged her self very demurely on my bike took the extra lid that I keep for the pillion, strapped it on and said “lets go, we can talk later”

Well as I said earlier that I love spending time with her and we have real animated conversations, so I had a fun night, the guests from her company's Bangkok office and the colleagues that had accompanied us were fun company and the night was a success. We met for brake fast two days later, and she was looking at me with this funny little smile, so I asked her what was wrong. She said there was nothing wrong its just that she was wondering what I was thinking about when I was picking her up for the party the other night. I was embarrassed and I thought she thought that I was leering at her, well I wasn’t, it was more of a gawking look really. Any way back to the topic, I said it was just that I had never really seen her dress like that, and even though she always looked good that night she looked stunning. She just blushed and said that it was not that big a deal, she liked to dress up like any other girl and it was only that fact that if she dressed up for work no one took her seriously they thought she was pretty but dumb and if and when she dressed up people thought she got every thing she did at work was because she was using her looks.

Weird right, why does even so long after women have invaded the work place and even after so many women have gone to the very top of corporate structure they are seriously so stereotyped, and worse still men are still seen as testosterone driven Neanderthals. My friend is real good at her job, and no I am not saying this because I am her friend or because she is pretty I am saying this because we met because of work and I got to like her because she is good at her work oh and she is smart too. Women need to do so much extra to be proven equal to men and then after all that they have to give up dreams of a family, and every thing else and then hide who they are just because they want to be appreciated for what they achieve. Its sadder still that men are still thought of as horny toads. That we objectify every women and treat them as inferior. It is a testament to the immaturity of us humans as a species, more than our petty differences and all other short comings that we cant see women as equals.

girls, money and food

2008-04-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

I had to travel in an emergency and couldn’t find flight tickets, any way my city airport was shut down so it was going to be a round about trip for me any way, so here I was sitting at Bangalore railway station with a ticket that said 21 in the waiting list and no chance of getting my ticket confirmed so I was hunting for a TT who could help get me get a seat, so as I was looking for him I met other two guys with the same travails and we three set forward with our common goals. When we found the man I question he told us there was no chance we could find seats before the train left and so we were to board the last most compartment and try our luck any way, the guy with me told the TT that he was willing to pay for the ticket as he was not feeling well, but the TT just shook him off and said there wasn’t a chance that we could get what we wanted, later as we were sitting on the luggage the very same guy confessed to me that he felt bad trying to bribe the TT but it was the way of things and that we had to do it. I was taken aback, yes, bribery is a way of life and yes people do it blatantly in our country, but remorse at a later point for me was new. I questioned him, and he said it was true that it was a way of life and he had resorted to it more times than he cared to admit.

The point here is a lot of other fellow country men or women question the various practices of the system and lament and bitch about it in their comforts of their rooms, all these armchair warriors wouldn’t think twice before bribing a government official or taking bribes themselves when some one offered it. Again true a lot of these very people wouldn’t mind bribing others but would hesitate to take one, not because they were clear but because they were unwilling to bear the consequences if they were caught, as some one once said “Locks were invented to keep the honest, honest, the dishonest will always find a way”. I don’t know what I would have done or which category I fall in because I have never been offered a bribe or asked for one, but I would never willingly offer to bribe some one, but I will be the first to admit that no matter what my attitude it would hardly make a dent in the system, we need to build a value and ethics system that doesn’t exist, we bring up Indian culture and values to defend, against modernization, against every change basically, we even use it to defend rapist saying that the women brought it upon them selves by wearing western clothes, so what I want to know is where does bribery fall in with Indian cultural values. Times Of India Started a Lead India Campaign the Crux of the campaign was to “DO” it lead with the statement that we were all armchair warriors and would give one Indian the chance to get off that armchair and do some thing about it. Do we need such a campaign for over a billion of us to do some thing or can’t we just get up off on our own and say “no, I will not do that”. I won’t take bribe no matter how much it hurt me and I won’t give a bribe even if it means that I have to travel for 48 hours sitting in the gallery. I know I can and I did.

The train arrived in Pune and a lot of people got off and a few got on the TT came around and told me there was a seat available and I could have it if I wanted as I was the next in line, I was going to answer in the affirmative, when he pointed to a couple of girls who were lower down the order and said or if I didn’t need or could manage then he would give the same seat to the two girls, so I bowed out and let them have the seat, the guy I was sitting with said that Women have it easy and they get everything for them done very easily. This is another aspect of gender bias that we never really tackle I mean, ok women get stuff more easily than men, I might have given them my seat even if the TT had allotted it to me, so what we tend to see the benefits there gender gets them and not the harassment, women are not give equal pay, most women are forced to give up careers and education to be home makers and be totally dependent on some one else for every Rupee they spend. They get picked on by every street side Romeo and still they persevere and go on with their lives, well it pissed me off, go get a sex change operation if you feel so left out.

Oh I Hate eating on trains especially if I am traveling alone, I mean I hate when I am eating and the people try to peek at what you are eating, children gawk at stuff that their parents would prohibit them from, so I generally offer to share what ever I am having with the others around me, but these days with so many incidences of conmen duping people by first drugging them, people look at you as if you are one of those conmen. When we were young we used to travel a lot on trains in summers going to Kerala or other holidays and we had other people traveling with us, the children would share toys they brought and families would share food and three days or more would just disappear like that, the journey was actually looked forward to, now its just a bunch of suspicious people traveling together because they have no choice. Its sad really.

The Mechanics of a Crash ...

2008-03-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

The NH 64 snakes through Western Rajasthan with some really nice paved stretches with long straights and some nice twisty bits too where it goes through towns and all this on mostly flat or slightly rolling, gorgeous desert terrain. The semi arid terrain makes for good high speed dashes across the country, the land as I said is pretty flat and as the climate is arid the visibility is nice you can see for ever and a little more. there are some twisty bits to when the road or one of ts many tributaries curls over the Aravalis, I have many memories riding on the desert stretches around this small insignificant corner of the world. For the past 4 years or so the center of my life were two points on this quiet two lane highway on either end of the town the distance was 30 kilometers, one way, my home at one end and the university where i was struggling with an ill timed MBA. But this is not about that, this is about that beautiful stretch of road, and well some of my rides and more importantly one crash that my enthusiasm or some unfortunate circumstances caused.

Well so it was around 7 O'Clock and i was sweating it out, in the August sun, on the basketball court when one of my batch mates came and asked me if i wanted to go out and grab dinner at one of the many restaurants that hand sprung up around our university one in particular called Chanumda served some amazing food, so we decided that we would meet there and as it was i needed a bath if any one else was going to keep their food down so i told him that i would take a shower and then join the rest of the batch at Chamunda. So i finished the game, headed to my room took a very cold shower and then headed out on the road, the sun was going down the road looked beautiful, long and straight and i was tempted so i took off straight instead of stopping at the restaurant i headed of out of town and on a ride, the sun hadn't set yet and i had time before dinner.

Ten kilometers on i slowed down and turned around and i raced back to our dinner place and the night had fallen and it was dark on the highway but this far out of town it was deserted, i came to a long sweeping curve and i leaned over not far out to scrap my foot pegs but enough to carry the same speed i was going as i came around the apex of the curve i saw a man on a cycle to the left on the very edge of the road he was just tottering and i was going at around 90 kms per hour, so i didn't give him much thought and concentrated on maintaining my line thorough the corner. just before i reached him i realised there was a speed breaker there and having forgotten to slow down for it i took off, and landed, upright, just a little behind and to the right of the cyclist, i realised some thing was very wrong at this moment, the cyclist had changed position while i was in the air and now he was angling right across my front wheel and there was nothing i could do.

There is this very funny feeling when you realise you are going to crash, just before the crash, the world slows down and you speed up, you try every thing to prevent the crash even before your brain can think of it, its instinctive, haul in the clutch, switch down a gear to use engine braking to slow down, at the same time you use your front brake to do the actual braking and you are tapping the rear brake to keep the bike straight, all this while you are still looking for options if you cant slow down in time, way out if you don't have the time to brake or space to stop before a crash occurs. well that is pre-crash and as most crash come with out too much warning this period of sped up time is very short, micro seconds, even though you might have done stuff that you do gradually over a period in normal riding. Some times all this helps and you slow down or swear around what ever you were heading towards.

Some times, as it happened then, that is just not enough, instinct and all is just fine but you cant beat physics, a hurtling mass weighing 180 kilos has some inertia and it takes force, distance, time and a lot of other stuff found in mother's chicken soup to stop. Its like the answer to every thing is "42" but you don't know the right question just yet. Any way as things happened i forgot to remember there was a speedbreaker there and well may be it was lonely and i didn't pay it any attention and catching some air seemed like a good proposition, i don't remember what was the case that day. Well i had landed just a bike length behind the cyclist and had realised to my horror that he was angling across me, well all the pre-crash stuff happened and then the crash happened. Now in a crash the opposite happens in stead of time speeding up it slows down, it slows down just before the actual impact and clarity increases, so i saw the bike Tbone the cyclist right behind the spot where the pedals are fixed, it was a old hero cycle. all my speed, all screaming skidding and sliding 90 kmph of it with the added inertia of a 180 kgs stopped all of a sudden and transfered all that energy into the frame of the cycle. Now all that 180 kg was not the bike alone that included me and physics dictates that i keep traveling so when the bike slowed down to a stop i went flying above and over the cyclist, you see the cycle frame bending, some how i realised he was drunk and i was glad that at least i wasn't to blame for the crash or at least not fully. well back to the crash, the second thing i realised was even though we were on a National Highway it was pretty deserted and and since there was no traffic no one was going to run us over, and there was a petrol pump a few meters ahead so if nothing else, help would arrive before some errant truck driver ran over us. then i hit the road, the world slowed down or i caught up to the world and a lot of feelings came back too, feelings as in "i feel a pin prick", not the emotional variety, my specs broke inside my lid and the glass shattered and cut up most of my my face, none of the cuts were deep but the were bloody, then i stooped i could feel the road through my riding gloves and jeans but no big injuries, as in large swathes of skin scrapped off, thanx to the above mentioned items and no head injury either thanx to my trusty lid. which shattered on impact.

There end of crash or post crash, but it takes time to slow down this time its more biology and physics than physics alone, at the end of crash your body is still high on adrenalin, it drives you and numbs a lot of pain sensations and injuries to the extent that they can be ignored, take too much time to collect your self and you might come off the high and end up as a whimpering ball in the middle if the road and no help to any one.

So i pick my self up and do a quick SitRep, no serious injuries, broken lid, scrapped gloves will have to go, not too much skin scrapped off, (note to self buy new lid and gloves tomorrow), the jeans torn in places nothing too bad though, might even look cool in class tomorrow.

"where was that drunk mobile wall that i had run into?" oh there he is, curled up in a ball,

noises of people running, look up the petrol station people have seen or heard the crash and running to help, good, pick up the idiot, he falls down again, pick him again, he is shaking worse than a jelly who got into fight with Mike Tyson, he is in shock, well roll him over to the side of the road.

pick up bike, you rarely realise how heavy your bike is until you have to pick it up after a bad crash and your coming off a adrenalin high, oh good some one has take that off my hands, there are people around now, you see the guy recoil from the stink the drunk is making, good I wont get beat up. where is the cycle, ok that bent up unicycle was once a bicycle. the lids getting constricting, take it off, the guy asking you questions in a foreign language (it was hindi but my mind was too wound to make sense) recoils as the lid comes off, he points to my face and says there is a lot blood, ohh, good i must look like an extra from evil dead or my shower wasn't effective. Need to get help, intelligent help, check cell phone, good still working, bad, no network, a bike coasts to a stop next to you, the rider asks if i need help, tell them about your batch eating dinner, he goes and collects them, get Bhism to go over the mobile road block(the Drunk), no broken bones no scrapes, leave him by the road side and work over his shock and hangover, he is not your problem, some thing does not feel right, the leg hurts like a Bi*** and the hand doesn't feel right either. The adrenalin high is getting over too, my face hurts too. get Amit to take u to your mom, she is a doctor, she know what to do, no bad idea, go to someone else she would freak out. Two broken bones, one in the leg, one in the left arm, broken nose and a few scratches on the face and arms and a very mad girlfriend the bill for dinner out, not bad, for when Physics(inertia), biology(adrenalin) and chemistry(a drunk with alcohol in the system) clash violently.

Greatness and Stupidity

2008-03-24T02:52:00.000-07:00

If you are not prepared to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen

The Progression

2008-03-14T17:32:00.000-07:00

Ok I was recently talking to a friend of mine about relationships and related stuff and it set me thinking. There was the usual progression, I suppose, Hopeless first love, this and that over the years, unrequited mad crushes. OK well hopeless first love was when i was thirteen, she was a classmate of mine but i was a clumsy, introverted oaf, more adept at football, and scurrying around on the basketball court than telling her how I felt about her. Well i kept staring at her for the next four years and well never told her how i felt. Don't get me wrong, i mean my best friend was a girl, heck my frist friend was a girl, she was my Godfather's daughter and we talked about every thing but when it came to my "hopeless first love" i was born dumb and mute. her name was Surabhi.

We made it to the Tenth standard some how, we studied together, we as in my best friend and me, her name was Sarah. We played on the band together, we played mixed doubles on the badminton squad, and some where along the way we noticed that we were indispensable to each other. When we were in play school we went to a "Fancy Dress party", dressed as a North Indian Bride and Groom. We protected each other from every thing and for some reason we were together all the time, one thing lead to another and we were a couple, it was the most amazing year, I guess, for the first time I understood the chemistry between my parents. we slogged together we were at each others games we practised Dr. Zhivago and Nanha Munna Rahi Hun with each other and she taught me civics and economics i taught her science and my sister taught us both math. We were young and curious and we were eager too, one thing lead to another and we both blamed ourselves for what happened next and stopped talking to each other. I left on an infamous holiday with my friends and she left town when her dad got transfered and then i took a dive of a cliff or half way up off a cliff which ever way you want to see it. it took us two years of recovery and guilt to realise it wasn't such a bad deal and by then she was in love with another childhood friend and as these things go I was the best man at her wedding. that was "you are the most idiotic person on the planet to let her go love". She is top notch geneticist and I had the honor of being her daughters Godfather.

Two years of high school went by uneventfull Sarah had left but there were others most notably Surabhi and a few others. we were busy charting our careers and i was busy playing "boys code of honor" and still never told her that i liked her because my friend liked her and we three spent some memorable times together. life went on exams came and went and we went our separate ways. graduation was not much difference, except there were friends i had known all my life and i could trust with my eyes closed and we blew into the small college like an tornado, we could do nothing wrong and if some thing did go wrong it was some else's fault, always. There, literally I ran into a tall shy Amazon. 5'11" to my 5'6" and a face that could could be rated at a 100 milli Helens and a confidence that could be found with a micro scope. we were a sight to see, life was funny for a time and we grew into better friends and more comfortable with each other. I would like to believe the college and our company had a good effect, as she bloomed into the girl she could be confident, lively and mischievous but there was this evil witch and u know how things go in nightmares. well it wasn't that bad but we drifted apart she was "this" and her name was Ritu.

"That" was Ankita smart inteligent and I fought with her on the first day of college, and in the final year we started talking and we became close. we spent many hours cuddled up on my sofa or hers, watching all the girly movies she picked. oh and she came from a very conservative Jain family s you can guess how that ended, i had places to go and things to do and she could never tell her parents that she was serious about what was going on, waht happened in college stayed in college and never came back to bite you. she looked real pretty at her wedding too.

There was Vandana in the middle some where of all that she is still a good friend but the entire time we went out for all of three months, every time i took my bike out for long rides or went climbing she would drive my mom and my friends up the wall worrying about me, or she would be on the ground shouting be carefull every ten minutes while i had more important things to do hanging off a cliff, for some reason that lasted three months only. I wonder why ? umm oh i guess it was better for her blood pressure and every one else's sanity, oh she and my best friend from school now and army captain make a good looking couple too.

Then there was the "unrequited mad crushes" first day of PG orientation, we had a difference of opinion, well it was mostly that she formed one, an opinion that is, before she knew someone and passed a judgment and I had an opinion about such people we lasted well about six months , when work load and creepy friends and family traditions proved too much and that was that. she is a friend and with Sarah a peg against which all prospectives are measured and well that should tell you some thing. Her name was Sakshi

The "Disaster" was named Siji, friends we had been friends for ages and some how things seemed to go right for us, the night before her birthday i had a big accident. i called her dutifully and wished her and drowned my self in a ton of pain killers, at three in the night when the meds started wearing off my phone had 23 missed calls, from her. she said there was some thing wrong and I wasnt telling her, and she was so worried she couldnt sleep, this when she was in a altogether different city at that time. We shared some thing, two years down the line my life started going to peices and in the middle of all that she called me and told me that she was worried my spinal injury would affect our relationship in the future and that was the end of that. that was the "Disaster".

Then there were the summer romances, and as some one said "Summer romances begin for all kinds of reasons, but when all is said and done, they have one thing in common. They're shooting stars, a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, fleeting glimpse of eternity, and in a flash they're gone." and so it was the same with me they were blooms of splashing color when my life was Grey they were fireworks on moonless nights and they were women of exceptional talents, they arrived when life was missing some thing they gave life color and moved on or stayed back as friends and but they made a difference to who i am, there was oh and all of them were doctors, one a Doctorate student and two medical Doctors one a student of my Aunt in Bombay and the other a Russian educated but a dear friend. that was Surabhi, Arpita and Megha.

I don't know why i wrote all this, but it does bring back memories some good some bitter most of them where gorgeous bursts of color, and so here it is. These women made me who i am today and except for one all have been and are good friends, they helped me make myself today what i am. they all gone on to do or are doing what they were meant to do, as i said they were the people who filled color into the outlines of my life. some drew in pastel shades and some in splashy hurting colors, but well on wards beyond to life at its best.'

P.S. since every one wonders thats my story over the last 15 years. oh and they were not crushes or infatuations, they would take a life time and some more to recount.

Insanity

2008-03-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

“Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes… it’s a triumph.”

"I go little insane every night in the darkness so that i can start every day just a little more sane"

Destiiny and Windmills

2008-03-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

I was Reading this book recently and these two quotes jumped out at me till i was reading them over and over again. These are from a science Fiction book Called Mirror Dance.

"You have won a twisted, broken poor knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. but its a broken world out there, that we were born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. at least I wont tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine them, and blast them to the sky. I will break down the doors of hell, and bring up the dead. "

“Real destiny takes everything—the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure—and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can’t give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I’ve come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it.”

Fight

2008-03-07T20:33:00.000-08:00

In a Fight, Its not the size of the dog that matters, its the size of the fight in the dog.

Punch Drunk Idiot, In Love

2008-02-29T14:35:00.000-08:00

some times ... life just shits on so bad and you still have no choice to take it and laugh. or have to, but still if there werent these love it or hate it times life wont be worth living would it.
hey so here's another story, as promised,

It was five in the evening but it was still hot, but he liked cycling in the summer heat in the fickle shadow of the Neem and the Peeple trees down the busy market streets, well school had just got over and the school had arranged special classes for the childern of St. Paul's School and St. Patrick's School to get special discounted lessons in BASICS, LOTUS, WordStar and other latest computer tech. he cycled to JCS and went to register him self. he met his tutor and sat in class the same batch contained other from his class and a few from Pats(Patrick's)then Melody entered the class she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen she was slim, almost frail extremely so and wore this light blue sun dress that fell to just above her knees. she was pale and she had this shy smile for every one, she sat next to Rashi, a friend of His cousin Julie. Sunny, Rashi, and Melody were assigned to the same batch and assigned one system. they worked on there system during LAB hours and then went their separate ways. The next day they sat together as it was the logical thing to do, well he told them it was the logical thing to do.

On the fifth day Sunny came out of class earlier and let air out of his Street Cat's front wheel, when Rashi and Julie came out he told them to go ahead as he had a puncture and will ahve to get it repaired. he walked in the other direction with Melody and he said "Hi" and she replied with one of her "drives-me-crazy-and up-the-wall" shy smiles and then they walked on in silence out side her home 1 Km away they said good bye and went their own way with him looking for a cycle pump for air.

They learned as a group, played computer games, and made numeric pyramids in BASIC and then the summer ended. it was time to go back to school, the boys and girls headed their separate ways. Sunny took back memories of his first crush in his first teen year and thats how life went on for the next four years, every summer they would meet with different batch mates but they would end up in the same batch some how year after year. since they knew each other they made the same team every summer, while the third partner kept changing, learn different and newer computer programs and then they would go their separate ways many would become inseparable friends but some how Sunny never got the courage to ask for her Phone No.

The first day of high school Sunny was running full tilt so that he didn't miss class. he reached the class door just as Mrs. Davids was closing the doors and he bustled in to see melody sitting in the front row, later when the class was arranged according to their height, sunny ended up in the seat next to melody. they picked up where they had left more than two years ago. the same banter and friendly tricks and ease. but this time they flirted too she would flush bright red when Sunny teased her or flirted with her. they had the same tuitions, and since St. Patrick's and St. Paul's had combined classes for 11th and 12th standard they were in the same classes they made many more friends on the way and then Ashish told Sunny that he liked Melody and then the three of them became good friend, this went on for two years until it was time to pick schools, Melody opted for engineering, Sunny for Media Studies, and Ashish for Medicine in an out of state collage. they went their separate ways again. this time there was a difference Sunny had her no. but never called her cause her conservative parents wouldnt have like him calling her.

Over the next four years they met at random, inter-collage meets and fests, petrol pumps at mutual friends homes, they were always together for such short time that conversation never went beyond how are you these days? then they were always with someone and the time never seemed right then in their fourth year they lost touch with each other completely.

Sunny went on to do his MBA and Corporate law honors from a prestigious University and in his second year he went to intern at RKS-BBDO the prestigious Advertising firm in Bombay. One of his close friend from school was doing his MBA from NITIE Powai and they wen to a party at IIT Bombay next door from NITIE. It was summers so those that were staying in the hostels were those who were interning in Mumbai or had come from other places and were using the rooms for the two months, every one was relaxing and dancing and letting their hair down, Sunny stood in a corner and looked on as his friend danced with an attractive girl then he drifted towards the balcony and their he found Melody standing and looking out over the city lights. they swapped stories and filled holes in their career paths, she was doing her Mtech. from IIT and was interning their in Mumbai had another year to go. they met every weekend and when the internships ended they stayed in touch over orkut, phone and emails for the next one year. when she came back to her home town, he told her the way he felt about her then one day over coffee at Cafe Coffee Day. how he had felt for her from the first day he had seen her, told her that she was his first crush, that summer they were back, it was like all the intervening years had never happened, then she went to Cornell to get her PhD. they faithfully called each other at least once a month and stayed together over 13000 miles from each other.

But as things happen they broke up during the Christmas of that year because the relationship was straining their studies, life went back to normal or sort off with them emailing each other from time to time, both Sunny and Melody didn't want to give up tier friendship and worked it some how.

two years passed then Sunny heard his phone ring one day early morning, it was a weekend and he didn't want to get up, but when it wouldn't stop ringing he picked it up, it was Melody and she had called him to tell him that she was getting married, two months later as he sat in the church aisle ad saw her walking down, all he could see was the frail geeky girl, in the blue summer dress. and he was happy and in love

Dawn (cont)

2008-02-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

Contd ...

It was night, the doctors looked grim the north Indian summer was just peaking. The hospital fan creaked slowly around trying vainly to deliver some relief. Shaun could feel the sweat pool under him, the bed sheet was already soaking wet, oh and it hurt well basically it had been hurting for the last two days now, every time some one brushed against the huge four poster bed it hurt like a bed of nails. Shaun lay awake and stared at the fan in its vain attempt, he knew it was not good the doctors his doctor mom looked at him like it was over , they told him that they only way to attempt to save his life was a surgery technique that was very rarely tried. Basically they would ct him open down his front and go thru all the layers and viscera between his front and his vertebrae and then try and relieve the pressure on his spinal chord.

they had told him earlier that day that even if they were successful it was likely that he was going to be most likely bed ridden for the rest of his life, he was never going to walk again for sure. He turned his head to see who was there and realised, that his sister had fallen asleep in the chair next to the bed. he felt like killing him self, but that wasn't going to happen was it, he thought ironically. The NDA the army was never going to happen, heck school senior year looked distant let alone every thing else. he had talked to his sister earlier that night and she had cried for two hours until is mother returned from home. this was going to get real sorry.

He kept drifting in and out of drowsy sleep, suddenly his whole body went into a mass of pain waking him up he looked around and saw the cleaning lady was bumping against the bed. he asked her to move away and not do that again. his mother came in with his aunt both looked tired and had dark circles under their eyes. he had CT scans scheduled for today and so they piled him into another ambulance and took him to the new city hospital the ride being a miasma of pain which bordered on unbearable, the day passed by with his friends visiting him and every one discussing what subjects they would take when schools started in 4 weeks, they told him the next day was counseling and they will know then what the cutoff was going to be then.

life was moving for them and it was unsure for him. then aunty came in a told every one that she had got the medical board to recommend that he be shifted to Bombay for better treatment. things decided it was decided that Shaun's Aunt and his dad would travel with him. then they packed him into a ambulance and drove to Jaipur as all flights, 2 each day, out of Jodhpur were booked for the next one week. so any way the three hundred kms journey was done in 12 hours as every time the van hit a bump Shaun would go into a spasm of pain. well they got their for the evening flight and the airlines removed 9 seats to strap the stretcher down. it was 12 when he reached Sion hospital in Bombay to which he was referred to.

it was six when he woke up thirsty and really really hurting, but for some reason he was alone in his room his dad who was supposed to be in the room by him, had been by his side for the entire night while aunt slept in the hotel, was no where to be seen. he waited two hours till his father came in with his aunt who was fuming, the hospital staff had thrown his dad out on the pretext of cleaning the room and left him alone for three hours.

Aunt left again to get dates for an MRI and after she left my dad couldn't find their luggage. when the doctor came for rounds they couldn't find his records and hence a fresh round of CT's and X-Rays were ordered. they wheeled him thru hospital galleries and lifts for the tests. When they came back they had a message waiting for them and it said that the operation was scheduled for the next day, they had scheduled the operation without taking a look at one document. when Shaun's aunt heard this she exploded and wanted to get him discharged out.

fortunately after a lot of arguing they agreed and he was discharged and transfered to Bombay hospital where the Administrator was her friend from Med School. it was Firday night. the fall occurred on Monday. it had been five days with Shaun on his back five different cities and a world of pain. saturday dawned and he looked out of his window to see a tower and blue skies framed in it the tower belonged to Liberty Cinema in Bombay. they wheeled a Portable Xray Machine took fresh X rays and then then wheeled the entire bed to the MRI center and then took an MRI. and this bustling man with three young doctors in tow comes in and asked Shaun, if there was any thing he could do for him? Shanu told him get me to walk and climb again and he would be happy. that Doctor told him that would be a cinch, things would get better. Sunday dawned with his aunt waking him up for a little soup and she had taken to sleeping next to him to prevent any other mishaps.

Ten Things I Hate About You

2008-02-25T12:47:00.001-08:00

Veens Tagged me so here goes

The rules of the game are:

---write 10 things u hate about the opposite sex

---at the end of the tag, tag 5 random bloggers to take up the Tag

well ok here goes, well for a guy who recently stated that he falls in love with a new girl every day this is going to sound down right two faced and the things im going to write are going to get me beat up. but here goes

1. Make up. yeah from where i stand god made women so beautiful at least almost all of them and for the small negligible percentage that don't look good any amount of goo on your face is not going to help you. it generally detracts from your true looks and makes you all feel like wanna=be's.

2. Fashion look dressing up is fine, and i don't have a problem with low waists, tank tops, short skirts and hot pants but for god's sakes look in the mirror before you step out of the house oh and if you are so uncomfortable in the clothes that u have to keep tugging them down or up then don't wear them, and tight clothes make you look desperate and insecure, especially of you wear them all the time and are not comfortable in them.

3. fake accents and mannerisms put me off i mean be who you are, don't pretend.

4. When you want some thing say it out loud. its been ages guys don't understand the sublime signals that you send them. for them they are tone deaf so tell them what you mean or need by saying it out loud. giving subtle signs is a waste of your time as well as ours.

5. i hate all the squeaky squeally tone that girls effect when they pretend to be excited about some thing.

6. gossip. what is it with girls and gossip?. why cant they keep their noses clean and mind their own business

7. Oh and PMSing is not a excuse to be rude. i mean we understand your in a bad place, may be we cant empathize but we do understand. but it still isn't and excuse to get rude.

8. i went shopping with a friend of mine, it was during my graduation i had time to kill in the evenings and she lived right next to college, so i crashed at her place most days. so i took her shopping too when she needed, i don't mind shopping and frankly don't understand the horror stories other guys have of taking women shopping. but this day she wanted to go makeup shopping and took me to a Lo' real store and promptly took the back of my hand and scratched me with like 10 different shades of brown. then she asked my opinion on which one was better.i don't mind shopping and i don't mind bungling time when i have it but brown's brown and red's red i don't get the difference between (courtesy amazon) south peach, west palm peach and manila peach. read the names tell me that u don't find them funny.

9. why do you ask questions that you want us to answer un truthfully and still ask us to tell you the truth always.

10 finally boys will be boys and they like sports, fast cars and bikes. if you like boys then make the effort to know about their interest and spend some time doing what they like because you like doing it too. so learn about cricket, football or formula 1 for a change and sit and watch the odd match or race with them. boys do a lot of things to please the girls they like is this asking too much.

ok now to make up for what i have said before.

1. Love the way you smile, when you see me.

2. love the way you blush at a compliment and the look in your eyes when you get a compliment.

3. love it when the girl becomes a woman when things get rough, love it when you take charge and then tell every one what to do.

4. love it when you are scared when you watch horror movies and cling on to our arms even when the movie is over.

5. love it when you are in dresses and saris they just look so elegant.

6. Love the way you smell. even if its just shampoo, its like nothing else

any one who is interested can pick up the tag

Perfect lives

2008-02-21T06:59:00.000-08:00

Perfect lives are made of imperfect starts. it is up to us to take those peices and put them together and make the masterpiece our lives our. some succeed some fail. but then thats life.

About me

2008-02-21T05:45:00.000-08:00

Smriti Tagged me with this tag so here goes
1) Have you been on a date in the last month?
A. Nope. but i hope it happens in the near future

2) What was your dream growing up?
A. To be a jet pilot

3) What talent do you wish you had?
A. paint

4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
A. Headbanger (vodka with pineapple juice and lime) or Screw driver (vodka with orange juice )

5) Favorite vegetable?
A. potato

6) What was the last book you read?
A. the Tipping point

7) What zodiac sign are you?
A. Aries

8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
A. Nope not unless u count the hundred or so stitches i carry from various injuries

9) Worst Habit?
A. Impulsiveness and stubbornness

10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
A. Ofcourse

11) What is your favorite sport?
A. FORMULA ONE, Moto gp, soccer, Basketball

12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?
A. Both... optimistic for the world Negative when it comes to me

13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
A. talk make pathetic pj's .

14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
A. Losing Zodiac .

15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
A. I swing between a obsessive cleanliness and blatant disregard for mess .

16) Do you have any pets? Four dogs .

17) What if i showed up at your house unexpectedly?
A. welcome u warmly plop you on one of the bean bags and offer tea or coffee (both black)

18) What was your first impression of me? (hmmm...careful!)
A. Smart, spirited and awesome temprament

19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
A. Scary

20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
A. Hmmm nothing i guess may be my broken nose or better yet make it out of titanium or steel so that it dosent break again

21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
A. Partenrs in crime. i believe in the adage when it comes to friends if you are right i will fight for you if you are wrong i will fight with you

22) What color eyes do you have?
A.Dark Brown

23) Ever been arrested?
A. Not yet.

24) Bottle or can soda?
A. bottle

25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
A. Give the Down Payment on a YAmaha R1

27) What's your favorite place to hang at?
A. on top of Merangarh fort, jodhpur. the city just looks awesome from there.

28) Do you believe in ghosts?
A. No.

29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
A. Read or ride .

30) Do you swear a lot?
A. Na. not much

31) Biggest pet peeve?
A. animal cruelty. and casteism

32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
A. complicated

33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
A. YES. but it never happens to me

35) Do you believe in God?
A. yeah.

36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
A. funny .. question

im too tierd to tag any one pick up if u want to do this

Hero

2008-02-21T05:35:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, a friend of mine told me that, according to Hindu Mythology when pets die, they do so because they intercept the bad karma meant for some one in the family. i really don't know if thats true or not, or weather he was saying that to cheer me up, but i would like to think that its true because zodiac was that kind of soul, he was a peaceful, playful and really caring soul. for some reason i do believe that he was protecting some one in the family. where ever you are .....thanx baby. u will always have a corner in our hearts.

Love you Zodiac

2008-02-16T00:19:00.000-08:00

Zodiac (2001 - 2008)

When i first saw him he was about 4 weeks old, living in a cardboard box and had his own Urine and feces drying in his hair. His soft white hair was a dirty yellow color and when ever some one approached him he used to cower and whimper. He was from the last litter of two black Poms my friend had and he had been taken by two kids who were finding it difficult to care for him. So they put him in a box and forgot about him when my friend heard this she wanted to give him to some one else and asked if i could just take him in for a "Few Days". my friend drove my bike and i cradled him all the way to my house which was at the other end of town on the out skirts we took him to college and he was so small and furry and cuddly that in spite of his dirty state every one wanted to play with him . he whimpered through out the entire ride home and was really scared. the moment we got home he took two steps in his rolling gait and promptly squatted down to pee on my mom freshly cleaned and shinning marble floor.

the few days turned into months and few pee spots became chewed chair legs, destroyed Sandals, torn bed covers and pillows, but in spite of all that he squirmed his way into all our hearts. he took an instant liking to my mom, and promptly anointed her as his personal guardian and him as her only child. i remember once my mom was sitting on the steps and my brother was lying in her lap and Zodiac got into moms lap and tried to push him away. Mom was his and only his. he was so cowardly but if u threaten mom or say "Meri Mummy" he will go ballistic. and he was peace loving, no argument with raised voices could happen in our house because Zodiac would get in between and scold every one for fighting. or arguing. if all of us were leaving home he would be very sad and would go and sit in a corner and look at every one very sadly.

he would follow mom every where and once, while following her, got his leg caught up in some metal stairs and before any one could do any thing he tried to jump breaking his right hind leg. he loved my mom so much that he wouldn't eat if she hadn't served him food and he was always there if i was in a bad mood, he would sit there patiently or walk with me while i ranted about the world. he was always so patients with my sisters kids who adored him enuff to sit around and feed him by hand and play with him.

once when he was about 6 months old, he chewed on my brothers new Nike Sandals and when my brother got angry he crawled under the bed in fear into 3 inches of space. he used to do it earlier too when he was smaller but he hadnt been able to do that in quiet some time but this time in fear he crawled under and a little later started to cry when he couldnt get out. Ultimately me and my brother ahd to lift the bed to help him get out.

He had been sick for the past few days, and a couple of days ago stopped eating we tried every thing we and modern Vet medicine was capable of and fed him through tubes but he left us all today afternoon, I am not going to be able to go see him but he will always be with me.

I will Miss you A lot Zodiac. little fellow, love u lots.

Dawn ....

2008-02-15T21:53:00.000-08:00

It was June 5th 1996, the three month holiday was coming to an end. CBSE Tenth board results were coming today. It was a Fun Holiday and they had seen and done a lot of things that they had never dreamed of. Ankit woke up early and looked out of the tent, the sun had risen but wasnt high enough to light the valley they were in. It was going to be a bright cloudless day and it was going to be perfect for what they had planned. they hills were a myriad shade of brown just before the rains and they were out climbing in the Aravali's. the height provided some respite from the hot Rajasthan summers, but it was still tough going and although they had packed a lot of water the day before when they set off from Mount Abu it was still going to be close by the end of the day.

Hearing a noise behind him Ankit turned around and saw Shaun crawl out of the tent and getting ready for his morning run. They both laced up there shoes and went for their morning run. when they came back to see that every one was still curled up in their sleeping bags against the early morning chill. They set about making coffee and tea and people started to roll over in the strong caffeine smell by eight every one was out of the bed and ready for a hard days climb.

After Brakefast every one was ready and checking the gear for faults, once that was done they set their sights on the 120 foot cliff that was going to be their last climb for the holidays. shaun took the lead and started up the wall belaying the rope as he went, Amita was second and Ankit was third. Ankit looked up and realised that Shaun was going real fast up the wall and Amita was still stuck at the bottom, some how she was finding the going slower or she was pacing herself better. Amita reached 10 feet and Ankit Started up the rock face after her, at barely five feet of the ground he heard the rope tug and looked up to see Shaun come of the wall at 35 feet and saw gravit take over, he had a very bad taste in his mouth.

Ankit let go of the wall and he and Shaun hit the ground at the same time Shaun some how landed on his feet and then fell over back wards. When Ankit got to him he was trying to sit up but some how his lower body wasnt responding to what he was trying to do and he looked to be in pain. Shaun said he had broken his hip and it looked bad, amita came of the wall and every one corwded around, Ankit taking charge got them in line to get Shaun out of there, they used wood to imbobilize the hip and used a sleeping bag as a stretcher and took him to the van they were using.

The drive to Jodhpur was long and it was apparent that Shaun was in a great deal of pain. Every time they hit a bump his face grimaced and the fact that he was on the floor of the van between the seats wasnt helping either.

that night at the hospital even after three x rays the break in his hips was not visible, the doctors thought it was a muscle rupture or tear and hence it was not showing then Amita suggested why dont you X ray the whole body and then they found the fracture, the T 12 vertebrae had broken and was the break was pressing into his Spinal chord. the bad just got worse.

Speed Freak....

2008-02-13T07:14:00.000-08:00

You know about all those useless studies that go around the world, studies that come up with really stupid results that any one on the street with an iota of common sense already knew about after years of wasted time and money. Well, i heard about a similar study recently where a bunch of swiss scientists came up with a study as to why people speed. Well to cut it short it says young men speed when they hear masculine words. Words like Muscle and beard and people slow down when they hear a feminine word like lipstick and pink.

So i mean if ure going round a corner and listening to nirvana or thinking about going to a service center to get your car repaired or even after you have seen the "Top Gun" you will end up getting a ticket or in a ditch beside the road. Well may be not "Top Gun" its like a little gay isn't it. i know I'm going to get shot for that. any way so you if you're driving along peacefully well under the speed limit and u see this great fat swiss chef with a big beard smiling at you from a billboard you are certainly going to get into trouble. and it must be really really difficult during Christmas time i mean that fat old coot in a big red jacket with white trimmings and a great big beard is all over the place and in every one heads.

funnier still if you really believe the study all you need to slow down warm blooded young men is to put pictures of commly young woman wearing pink lipstick and every one would be driving at sober speeds and there wont be any accidents. I mean if you want to cause a pile up on the express way with a bus up your back side all you have to do is yell "bra" and people hearing that would stop dead where ever they are with every one who hadn't heard the word piling up behind them. Come to think of it that is what happens we are surrounded with commly young women in skimpy clothes on every billboard and it never helps a tinge. people still drive too fast and too rash to do any one any good.

i think it all comes down to education temperament and empathy for fellow human beings and the ot blood that flows through us human beings, i mean how else could u explain that India with its road conditions and some of the slowest traffic speeds still manages to kill more people in road accidents than the rest of the world combined.

i read some where that a lot of people were concerned that the launch of Tata Nano will cause bigger traffic problem, snarling jams, and will push the fuel prices through the roof and thus the car should be taxed to the extremes. i don't think a cheap, affordable car is going to cause more accidents or traffic snarls, in fact i think it would save lives by getting people of two wheeled buses that most Indian families seem to ride. T only way we can make the world safer is by educating people and inculcating empathy for fellow humans and by spending the money wasted on these stupid studies to improve our road conditions.

Shooting Ice Cream

2008-02-13T00:10:00.000-08:00

we did an ice cream shoot for Gelatissimo on CMH road it was reall ahrd work but these are some of the best results we had.

The Worst Part of Working with Ice Cream : it melts
The Best Part of Working With Ice Cream : It Melts
You have to work fast cause it melts and then u have to eat it, make a new one and then start all over again. its tough job but some one has to do it :D

Caffine addiction and Classic Coorg

2008-02-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

olive (dining hall)

olive county

Olive county

Olive County

Olive County (lunch day2)

Jeep 4*4

Foggy mornings

Lunch Any one

Irupu Falls

Stairway to Heaven

Is this what heaven look like

Color me Lilly

Lilly Pond

Take me To heaven

Road Trip

Hosts

Music For My Soul

Brakefast

Did you hear that

Red Brick Wall

dosent taste just quite right

moss tree

coffee coffee every where and not a drop to drink

The tents mine

Dinner Hall

we look drunk dont we

This one tells If ure drunk

Little Tree In a Big Tree

Coffee County (Cottage in heaven)

Carpet Coffee

Dinner time

Road to Heaven

Valentines Day : History and Tradition

2008-02-11T01:25:00.000-08:00

Everybody knows about Valentine's Day but its origins are shrouded in mystery. According to University of Notre Dame Professor Lawrence Cunninghame, scholars have two main theories to explain how Feb. 14 became synonymous with romance:

Roman Feast of Lupercalia
This ancient pagan fertility celebration, which honored Juno, queen of the Roman gods and goddesses and goddess of women and marriage, was held on Feb 14th, the day before the feast began. During festival time, women would write love letters, also known as billets, and leave them in a large urn. The men of Rome would then draw a note from the urn and ardently pursue the woman who wrote the message they had chosen.
Apparently, the custom of lottery drawings to select valentines continued into the 18th century, coming to an end when people decided they'd rather choose (sight seen!) their valentines.

The Birds and the Bees?
In the Middle Ages, people began to send love letters on Valentine's Day. Medieval Europeans believed that birds began to mate on Feb. 14.

Saint Valentine
There's also some controversy regarding Saint Valentine, for whom the famous day is named. Archaeologists, who unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to St. Valentine, are not sure if there was one Valentine or more! Today, the Catholic Church recognises at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred on Feb 14th, (at least two of those in Italy during the 3rd century.)

The most popular candidate for St. Valentine was a 3rd century Roman priest who practised Christianity and performed secret marriages against direct orders from Emperor Claudius II, who believed single soldiers were more likely to join his army. Legend has it that Valentine sent a friend (the jailer's daughter) a note signed "From Your Valentine" before he was executed on Feb. 14 in 270 A.D. That phrase is still used prominently on today's cards!

Early Christians were happier with the idea of a holiday honouring the saint of romantic causes than with one recognising a pagan festival. In 496 A.D., Pope Gelasius named Feb 14th in honour of St. Valentine as the patron saint of lovers. In 1969, Pope Paul VI dropped it from the calendar. However, the blend of Roman festival and Christian martyrdom had caught on and Valentine's Day was here to stay!

Verbal and singing valentines began to be replaced by written missives in Europe in the 15th century. The first written valentine is usually attributed to the imprisoned Charles, Duke of Orleans, in 1415. He reportedly passed the time by writing romantic verses for his wife. By the 16th century, written valentines were commonplace.

Valentine's cards
Early valentines were made by hand, using coloured paper, watercolours and coloured inks. These valentine styles, some still made today, included:

i) Pinprick valentines, made by pricking tiny holes in paper with a pin to resemble the look of lace

ii) Cutout valentines, lace-look cards made by folding paper several times and cutting out a lace design with small, sharp scissors.

iii) Acrostic valentines, which had verses in which the first letters in the lines spelled out the beloved's name

iv) Rebus valentines, verses in which small pictures took the place of some of the words (For example, an 'eye' instead of 'I')

Cards decorated with black and white pictures painted by factory workers began to be created in the early 1800s. By the end of the century, valentines were being made entirely by machine. Sociologists theorise that printed cards began to take the place of letters, particularly in Great Britain, because they were an easy way for people to express their feelings in a time when direct expression of emotions was not fashionable.
Manufactured cards notwithstanding, increasingly beautiful handmade Valentines were often small works of art, richly decorated with silk, satin or lace, flowers or feathers and even gold leaf. And many featured Cupid, the cherubic, be-winged son of Venus, and a natural Valentine's Day "mascot."

Some of the more unusual valentines were created by lonely sailors during the Victorian era, they used seashells of various sizes to create hearts, flowers and other designs or to cover heart-shaped boxes.

The Heart
It's not difficult to figure out the connection between the heart and Valentine's Day. The heart, after all, was thought in ancient times to be the source of all emotions. It later came to be associated only with the emotion of love. (Today, we know that the heart is, basically, the pump that keeps blood flowing through our bodies!)

It's not clear when the valentine heart shape became the symbol for the heart (we all know the heart isn't really shaped like that). Some scholars speculate that the heart symbol as we use it to signify romance or love came from early attempts by people to draw an organ they'd never seen.

Other symbols of love
i) Red roses were said to be the favourite flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love; also, red is a colour that signifies strong feelings.

ii) Lace has long been used to make women's handkerchiefs. Hundreds of years ago, if a woman dropped her handkerchief, a man might pick it up for her. Sometimes, if she had her eye on the right man, a woman might intentionally drop her handkerchief to encourage him. So, people began to think of romance when they thought of lace.

iii) Love knots have series of winding and interlacing loops with no beginning and no end. A symbol of everlasting love, love knots were made from ribbon or drawn on paper.

iv) Lovebirds, colourful birds found in Africa, are so named because they sit closely together in pairs, like sweethearts do! Doves are symbols of loyalty and love, because they mate for life and share the care of their babies.

X - the kiss
How about the "X" sign representing the kiss? This tradition started with the Medieval practice of allowing those who could not write to sign documents with an "X". This was done before witnesses, and the signer placed a kiss upon the "X" to show sincerity. This is how the kiss came to be synonymous with the letter "X", and how the "X" came to be commonly used at the end of letters as kiss symbols. (Some believed "X" was chosen as a variation on the cross symbol, while others believe it might have been a pledge in the name of Christ, since the "X" or Chi symbol, is the second letter of the Greek alphabet and has been used in church history to represent Christ.)

It became easier to mail valentines in the mid 1800s, when the modern postal service implemented the penny post. Until then, postage was so pricey that most cards were delivered by hand.

Traditions
A variety of interesting Valentine's Day traditions developed over time. For example, hundreds of years ago in England, children dressed up as adults on Valentine's Day and went singing holiday verses from door to door.

In Wales, wooden love spoons, carved with key, keyhole and heart designs, were given as gifts.

The gift of flowers on Valentine's Day (along with Mother's Day, the busiest floral holiday of the year) probably dates to the early 1700s when Charles II of Sweden brought the Persian poetical art called "the language of flowers" to Europe. The rose, representing love, is probably the only flower with a meaning that is universally understood. The red rose remains the most popular flower bought by men for their sweethearts. In more recent years, people have sent their sweethearts their favourite flowers, rather than automatically opting for roses. Also making the list of valentine favourites are tulips, lilies, daisies and carnations.

More gifts
Among early valentine gifts were sweets, usually chocolates, in heart-shaped boxes. Apparently, gifts of chocolates and flowers haven't replaced carefully chosen cards on Valentine's Day. The modern valentine card has become increasingly sophisticated, keeping pace with popular technological advances. For example, there are cards that let you record a romantic message, "scratch-and-sniff" cards (chocolate smells would be nice!) and cards that play romantic music.

And of course, you can send e-mail valentines. Some sites even offer free personal use of their illustrations or cards. Other technology allows you to send a romantic fax or videotape with a personal valentine message. But choose your valentine carefully, some people find fax and e-mail missives too impersonal and not private enough for this holiday of love!

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest!

Article by Paul Denton http://www.pauldenton.co.uk

Flritng :tips and Tricks

2008-02-11T00:12:00.000-08:00

With V day coming up i thought i would do some research on it so we start here with flirting.
I saw this on another blog loved it so much that i copied it
Humans observed in a natural mating habitat exhibit nearly all the najor flirting behaviors, whether or not they're flirting at all. Here is a guide for recognizing or, for the seasoned flirts, overviewing some flirting techniques:

OPEN BODY POSITION This come-and-get-me stance suggests the man is neither about to flee nor fight.

RAISED EYEBROWS Upon first seeing a potential mate, both men and women often briefly raise their eyebrows.

HEAD CANT Women frequently tilt their head to one side, exposing their neck, and sometimes flick their hair at the same time.

SUSTAINED EYE CONTACT Men and women both hold the gaze of someone they're interested in for longer than feels quite confortable.

LEANING FORWARD Perhaps not as obviously as the enthusiastic girl above, but both genders tend to lean in toward people they're atracted to. Sometimes they'll unconsciously point to them too, even if they're across the room.

LEADING QUESTIONS A man will often ask a woman questions that allow her to show off her most atractive features.
SIDEWAYS GLANCES Often followed by a glance away or down and a shy smile, these coy looks are a classic flirting behavior for both sexes.

GPS-enabled helmet calls for help post-accident

2008-02-10T23:26:00.000-08:00

by Darren Murph

We've seen some pretty well equipped helmets in our day, but UMass Amherst student Brycen Spencer seems a touch more interested in safety advancements than integrated speakers. His concoction, dubbed the Wireless Impact Guardian (WIG), looks like your average helmet at first glance, but a quick look inside reveals electronics designed to sense an impact, judge if you're conscious and dial for help if necessary. Essentially, an alarm is triggered upon impact, and if you're not cohesive enough to disable it after 60 seconds, it automatically rings up 911 and beams out your location via GPS so that medical personnel can get moving. Currently, the device is quite a ways from going commercial, but considering that Mr. Spencer has already invested in a provisional patent, we'd say it's well on its way.

original story here

Pollution Affects Everyone

2008-02-08T01:36:00.001-08:00

Singapore environment Council. Atmospheric Pollution affects everyone.

Highway Cruising

2008-02-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

With the V6 Purring under the hood content to pull the Accord at triple digit speeds, the powerful halogen lights lighting up the night ahead of even as the moonless darkness wrapped around us like a comfy blanket. I truned up the volume of Chris Dughtery belting his hit song "Home", risking waking up my sleeping passengers. i looked to my left to check if my brother woke up and then the rear view mirror to see if i had disturbed my cousin and her boy friend Kenji cuddled under a blanket in the rear seat.

I realised this how i wish life was, an endless road and a powerful and comfortable car and no worries. It was late May 2007 and my cousin had just come from Tokyo where she had grown up and was in India to meet us relatives before she moved to the States to pursue medicine. She and Kenji had come to Delhi and rented an Honda Accord and drove down to Jodhpur. they stayed around for a few days and we conned mom to letting us stay out for a night when we went to Kayalana lake and sat around in the moonlight drove around the outskirts of the city and to the fort and then drove to Chamunda for a very late dinner/early brakefast. then for two days we lazed around the house and after that it was time for them to leave. They had to get to Kerala so that she did a circuit of the rest of the family and then flew on to the States from there.

We came up with the brilliant plan of driving down to Mumbai via Kumbhalgarh, Ranakpur, Udaipur, Ahmedabad and then Mumbai. I drove most of the way, with Kenji spelling me from time to time we stopped at quaint village towns had tea and food at the most awesome Dhabas. visited some amazing Forts and temples. listened to our favorite music and had such an awesome time it was the best few days of the last year. and through out it all the Accord performed faultlessly going thru the motions, delivering speeds when the roads were well paved and open and cosseting us in comfort when the roads got bad but never causing any problems and giving more than average fuel economy of 10 Kmpl. i would write about the Temples of Ranakpur, or the forts and palaces at Udaipur and Kumbhalgrah but it would be like a travelogue. there were a couple of points when we thought we were in trouble but the car always had the answers to the questions thrown at it. once when we were driving from Ahmadabad to Mumbai at night, every one was sleeping and i was driving, this man carying a cycle on his shoulder climbed over the divider separating the oncoming lane and ran across our lane, it was dark and so i sawe him only when the headlights of the car fell on him and he was in the middle of the lane i hit the brakes hard and the car dropped its nose, dumping Tanya from the backseat into the space between the seats, and tugging at every one else's seat belt but it stopped with meters to spare and every one was safe with out drama. only one instance when it proved an expemlary long distance partner and as for the looks it looks stunning, with the over messy rear and all. It always got us looks and smiles from other motorist even though it was plainly not that exotic and with its yellow plates the car was a rental.

thanx Honda for a great product and some excellent memories.

Tagged About me

2008-02-07T21:31:00.001-08:00

Lone Wolf tagged me to write six inconsequential things about me, but i am not sure these six quirks are inconsequal or not.
When you are a mixed bag of quirkiness, madness and sheer lunacy, you can’t expect me to do sane things all the time. I just picked up six things from a vast pool of my quirks, and here you go. But before that, the rules of this tag game:

The Rules:

Link to the person that tagged you.

Post the rules on your blog.

Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Here is my list...

1. I love Dogs, have had six of them over the years including the current four. i talk to them because i believe the understand whats going on. In my deepest darkest hour one of them has always been with me.

2. I love reading the News Paper from the last page, comics and sports section first.

3. Scared shitless

a. by Tractors and pre world war trucks that ply our roads i have always had this feeling that their wheels will come off and hit me.
b. by ferris wheels, im scared that they will come of their mountings

4. I fall i love very easily, in fact i fall in love with a new girl every day, it can be the most inconsequential thing like a genuine smile, or the way she is dressed but yeah i fall in love every day.

5. I Love eating ice creams the way i used to when i was a child with it dripping all over my hands and coated all over my face, love the smell of we grass and love playing touch football in the rain.

6. hate the fact that i have to wake up in the morning, even though i dont sleep more than three hours a day but i have spent all 24 hrs in bed too. i love laying there and not doing any thing especially on sundays.

i tag Puthali, Meghna, Hakuna Matata, Moose, Smriti

House to Home

2008-02-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

Delhi to home

Indigo announced its boarding call to all its passengers. i took my tickets and for some reason was so preoccupied to notice that id been allotted a middle ticket. For the matter of record i would like to state that i like flying indigo the planes are clean and the crew really really friendly. They always have a ready smile and they are always ready to help you out in any request. Even though its a low cost carrier they still do every thing to make you comfortable. so it was and i took my seat in 6 E and settled in then i noticed the girl who was in front of me at check in come and take the window seat to my right, and a smiling guy with a blazer in one had take the seat to my right. so we all settled in, i noticed the girl rummaging in the pouch at the back of the seat in front and i asked her what was she looking for and she asked me if the airlines didn’t carry in flight magazines, or news papers? which indigo being a low-cost carrier was "no" so i leant her my Zen Stone to listen to music, a little later with us on our way to Delhi we started to chat and realized that both the people on either side were Wipro employees one from sales and the other was from sales and surprisingly every one had some thing in common to the other common friends same company. So we had a good time, Abhilekh had a fear of flying and Manisha was of such a nice disposition that we all didn’t notice when it was time to land in Delhi. Abhi slept part way and me and manisha watched NCIS on my laptop. We swapped stories and horror flights that we had had. We talked about airline food (yuck), we talked about our favorite landings and other such interesting topics. We realized that Abhilekh had never seen a North Indian winter so we told him horror stories of cold mornings and vapor condensing in every orifice. Finally we landed at Delhi with Abhi having wrapped his hands around his head and me and Manisha laughing at him and giggling.

i came to Delhi on business so i went to the place of some friends and stayed there for the night and we watched some movies till late, then i woke up in the morning and realised to my horror that i had forgotten my bathroom slippers in Bangalore and the floor was marble and freezing cold. In three steps my feet were numb and hurting at the same time and i realised that the cold wasn’t that big a joke any more. But some how i got thru my morning ablutions and and finally got ready. then i finished my business and then set up my trip to my best friends house who is based in Delhi and went to her house where her in-laws treated me to a sumptuous lunch which was some of the best food i had eaten in ages. Then we sat talking and ate and thought we would take a trip to CP and do some window shopping. My sister sent car to pick me up for a ride home from Delhi. It was a big Innova and I had fun driving and being driven down Delhi-Jaipur Highway, its beautiful stretch. Even though it was for two days I met some really good friends of mine and we spent hours and hours sitting around in Sheesha. It was really really memorable trip love u guys and thanx for your great company Manisha and Abhilek

2008-02-04T11:09:00.001-08:00

If its all really a game, sometimes, the best thing to do is press the reset button.

Soft ,Wolly and a little Dangerous

2008-02-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

It was a cold night about 4 years ago and the season had just started. Surya, having been brought up in sunny kerala for all of her 18 years, took and instant dislike to the winters and i was trying to do all i could to make her winters as warm for her as possible. Tonight we had ridden to the city in such an effort. We went to this huge annual fair and brought her an arm load of sweaters and jackets to keep her warm and then with us saddled with all this stuff we went home and as it was getting late were riding back to the residential campus we were both students in. the night got dark as we got to the outskirts of the city and we were doing a steady 70 kph when a huge Tata Truck over took and us a sped into the night. i reduced my speed as the Truck went by and then raced up again, never getting too close to the Truck but riding slightly to the left of the truck in a effort to use it to stall the winds buffeting us, then i saw a Mini bus ahead and the truck slowed so i slipped to the right checked the on coming lane for traffic and over took both the truck and the bus and headed our way.

the truck and us swapped places once more and but we still were going faster than the truck and were approaching the junction were we had turn right on to this flyover that took us to the University. the junction is slightly offset towards the right so that people coming off the flyover have a long sweeping left hander that are generally taken at great speeds, so i moved left of the road, checked the left incoming lane where it joined the Highway for any traffic as well as any traffic coming off the flyover into the sweeping turn. seeing none i checked my mirrors once before i raced to the flyover, i instantly saw the truck lights shining in the gloom of my rear view mirror.
and realsied that at the rate that he was coming i wont be able to turn right on to the flyover before he crossed us and i had no idea weather he was going left or right on to the flyover with us. before i could decide he was on us and cut right in front of us with our blinking indicators and all and overtook us from the right and turned left immediately nearly crushing us between the highway barrier next to the higway and the front wheel. i realised that if he finished the turn we wold never be able to stop in time and we would go under the truck, or veer left and smash into the wall. suddenly i was very afraid, iwas affraid for me but i was afraid more for the little girl behind me in a new helmet and a backpack full of new shopping that she was eager to show off to her friends "what had i got her into?"

i throttled up, squeezed thru the gap that slightly wider than my bike, between the barrier and the truck and was out in the clear. with the truck turning left and leaving us safe.... i was still scared and real angry, i realised, by the grip of Surya's hands that she was scared too. relief sweapt over me, no i didnt save our lives but we got thru that only on pure instinct, but the relief was momentary shattered by a shout of warning from Surya, i looked to see a Tractor right in front of me on the left side of the road with no lights, heading straight for us. i knew then and there, we were going to crash. I tried to scrub of the speed using my rear brakes while using the front disk to keep the bike straight but it wasnt going to happen, and we hit the tractor it climbed the front of the bike and we were down. the tractor was on the front wheel of the bike with me lying between its two front wheel, i heard a gasp and then a sob and realised the way it must appear to Surya in the dark with me apparently trapped under a tractor.
we were safe the bike was safe and the biggest injury was that Surya had a scrapped Knee the jacket, the helmet and the big burly bag stuffed with soft wool saved her and i was saved by luck and the fact that she gave me warning.

It was the national higway, with a Major National University situated on it, just beyond a highly populated Paramilitary zone can we let drivers like this still drive the trucks and busses and other vehicles? isnt it time that we overhauled the system no one died that day and even if some one had i dont thing it would have made a difference, but a tractor with no lights on the wrong side of the road, and reckless drivers, some thing ahs to be done

Driving Insane ........

2008-02-04T07:01:00.000-08:00

Im a Self confessed car nut, well basically i am a self confessed nut, but that’s another story for another day. today i want to talk about cars and only cars. Well, what? You come to page titlled ravings of a nomadic mind and then you expect some continuity to what i write here, what did you expect? Well again thats a story for another time. so i was talking about cars....i don’t know much, but i love cars, bikes and any thing and every thing that burns fuel, ok not really true i mean any thing that uses any source to propel its driver, or passenger to speeds faster than i can run. so it can be bicycles going down hill, sleds, motorcycles, cars or even dumpster lids going down slope on a sand dune.

So back to cars, im not an expert again, having driven them only three times other than the times i spent learning to drive them. once was around the block at the princely speed of 30 kmph as i was shit scared of trashing a new car out from the show room, the second time was to drive in the middle of the night as my friend was stone drunk, it was really late, the second time i was driving and big car (Honda City) and the third time was the last and i drove (hehehehe), long story short... my friend tossed me the keys to his new Suzuki Swift with a tuned Baleno Engine tucked into the nose, i got in, started the engine, shifted into first and let in the accelerator the car actually leapt of the mark like a scalded cat poked with a sharp stick i missed my friend and the gates to his house by inches and it took my heart ages to regain its normal rhythm. so again im not an expert.

but i was recently watching the latest few episodes of "Top Gear" its my favorite televised show and the chemistry between Jeremy, James and Richard is one of the best comic relief and then all those really "oh-sweet-mother-of-God she is hot" rides that they keep having on the show each episode better than the other. Then again that’s not the point any way, well any way while i was reading the reviews i realized one thing be it the new Jaguar XF or the new baby Fiat the common thread was these cars were like inch perfect. be it one that costs 5000 euros or an arm, a leg and the ransom for the king of timbuktu's child and then children from the his entire harem. these cars drive, handle, ride and have every thing the target audience requires. some cars have their quirks like the luxo barge 7 series still handles like a racer grown wealthy but a luxo barge none the less. these days criticism in car reviews is like niggling details, like the feel of the plastic or the blind spot is slightly larger than in the other car, stuff that people a few years back wouldn’t have noticed.

the point im trying to make is that cars today have reached a stage where perfection is not just desired its a prerequisite the engineering faultless even though the cars from different companies have different quirks and different character they all, are build to last through the ages and give there owners a lasting ownership experience. Obviously some cars are better than others, depending on the price range they come in and the experience of their parent companies but most do a better job than a Bentley made say 15 years ago. Today Vauxalls and Opels come with 250 HP engines when even 20 years ago a Ferrari couldn’t pump out that much.

Automotive engineering has come a long way the efficiency of the Engines, Safety, comfort, control, almost all aspects of a car have grown up exponentially. I believe after 100 years of existence automotive Engineering has finally come of age.

Tag

2008-02-04T03:30:00.000-08:00

I Got tagged by Lone Wolf with this meme, but a little bit serious and different. There are 10 points, and you are supposed to elaborate on each point. Here goes my interpretation.

1) It is important to be liked by others : No its not important to be liked by others
Some one asked me a Question once "whats more important being happy or making others happy?" i have always maintained that i cant make any one else happy as long as i am happy myself so no its not important to be liked by others as long as i don't like my self.

2) Obedience is a virtue:
ok Obedience is a virtue but blind obedience is bad, Ive always believed that if two people agree on every thing then one of them is useless

3) People are not malicious but they become so because of bad experiences or
circumstances:
Every one is inherently good well almost every one people are born nice and innocent its life and there experiences that teach them to me malicious and hurtful. but then a person who believes in a God can never say that there is no evil so yes few people are really really born evil too

4) Education broadens our view and makes people more humane:
Well, in theory, yes. education is supposed to enhance the way we see the world. but most times it shackles a person down in to narrow confines of the said standards of what has gone beyond. it makes people hesitant to experiment it compartmentalizes thought process and dampens innovation.

5) People who have no money troubles are happier:
Ok, i can see where that leads but may be it gives a lill less headache and may be a little more peace but happiness i dont know i mean the street bums dont look that happy do they

6) As people get older they get wiser:
My 5 year old niece talks more sense than i do at times and then there are things like Alziemers
no i dont think being wise is a function of age its aqbout how open and receptive you are to the world.

7) You can live on love and fresh air:
Love and fresh air - ok the Eagles sang "love will keep us alive" but what are u going to eat, wheres the booze gonna come from then clothes. In a day and age when Cell Phone Network coverage is considered a primary requirement along with food, clothing and shelter, can and will you live on love and fresh air. oh and how about fuel for my bike.

8) There is a celestial guardian angel looking after each one of us:
ABSOLUTELY A ZILLION GAZILLION percent do you think id still be around if some wasnt watching over me

9) All living beings reincarnate.
I Find that slightly hard to believe. I Mean do really think Hitler is one of those millions of toddlers running around on the streets, playgrounds and schools. god help us. i think we all get one shot at making a perfect life and thats it

10) Heaven and Hell are places you go to after death.
Heaven and Hell are perspectives built on your beliefs. period . heaven is a long bike ride. with rest stops made of chocolate pancakes

Tag Hakuna Matata, Anu, Abhishek, and any one who cares to type.

Lets Play Tag

2008-02-04T02:09:00.000-08:00

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Duke NA

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)
Volcano Chocolate Chip

3. YOUR “FLY Guy” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)

S-Jho

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Black Dog

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Sunny Jodhpur

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Jho Sh

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
The Red Headbangger

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
John C

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names )
Na Na

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Mishra Mumbai

12. SPY NAME: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Winter Rose

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Grape Jeanie

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
toast Redwood

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)
The Rock Climbing Rain Tour

hehehe that was funny. any way I tag Lone wolf, Smriti, Meghna, Vini, Anu, Hakuna Matata

My Babies

2008-02-02T12:20:00.000-08:00

Browny the Grand old lady

I am a BIg girl now : Cleo

Zodiac the baby of the house

Coffee being stealthy

the gang, Browny, Zodiac, Steffy, Duke, Cleo

Open Letter to HP/Compaq

2008-01-21T23:48:00.000-08:00

I bought a laptop V3000 series AMD 64 X2 processor, December 2006. I had a Compaq desktop before that for three years and was very happy with the performance of the system and hence when I saw the laptop I really liked the design the spec list and I bought it.

But within 2 months of purchase the DVD driver conked out I had it replaced then the TFT showed dust particles inside the frame in the bottom half of the screen, it also was replaced then the DVD driver conked out again which was patched together by the service agent. Then the motherboard gave up the ghost in June it was replaced in July in Bangalore. It worked fine for a few months then the DVD drive started acting up again. But when it was taken for service it was fine a small bend in the Metal jacket of the drive meant that it didn’t properly align with its socket and it was again patched up and given back to me. Then in December the Mother board Conked out again. It was promptly replaced and barely in time as it was the last day of my warranty period. Its January 22 2008 today and my Laptop is back in HP service center, with a crashed motherboard.

A year back I was recommending the laptop to everyone I knew and today I would steer clear of talking to HP Compaq for a new purchase. I was so proud of the system it had really good specs for my budget and I had bought the laptop with my own money so it was all the more satisfying. But now I wonder sometimes if it was the right decision may be a Lenovo or a Think Pad or even may be a acer, or a HCl system would have been better. May be brand loyalty isn’t what it purports to be.

I free Lance as a graphics designer, I can’t afford to run to the service center every time my laptop doesn’t feel like working. This is an open letter to Hp Compaq to try and rectify the problem as soon as possible. And please put more dedication into your products.

Shanu S John

The Dream

2008-01-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

Some people are born visionaries and for one person it seems to run in the family. JRD Tata was one of those people who was one of those people who helped shaped modern India. Hotelier, Aviator and Industrialist. The nature of his contribution to the nation could never be overlooked.

But his biggest contribution to the nation was not one directly contributed too. It was from his nephew's ... Ratan Tata. He has created the most respect for an Indian Conglomerate in the global arena. Tata Sons controls 98 companies Among them, Tetley, Daewoo CV, Corus, and now most probably Jaguar and Land Rover. But still his biggest contribution to India has been his dream to become an indigenous automobile manufacturer . His first project was codenamed MiNT, later called Indica which become one of the most successful cars on the Indian roads the car spawned two other siblings the Indigo, and the Marina.

He created the entire Project, in about 144 corers when Hyundai spent 1 billion dollars on refurbishing the Accent. although the project had teething trouble and the quality of the product was not upto the global standards, Tata committed to making the project a success, making constant improvements and upgrades.

now he has gone on to make another great contribution, not just for India, but for the world by creating the 1 lakh car ($ 2500). The car was created by throwing existing automobile manufacturing standards into the trash and creating new production methods, manufacturing newer parts using cheaper techniques. If the car succeeds it will revolutionise the established manufacturing methods.

So here's to Mr. Tata Na his Vision and to more of his kind

The Top Ten '80s Robots (We Expected to Exist By Now)

2008-01-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

We were promised robots. Crazy electronic sidekick or death-dealing automaton of doom, we didn't care, as long as the future shaped up to be the awesome electronic robo-battle we'd dreamed of as children. Flash forward 20 years and all we have are sorry, non-robotic pieces of supposedly innovative crap, such as "hybrid cars," "iPods," and "hope for the AIDs vaccine." Consider the below list a sort of report card, so modern scientists can see exactly how far they are from fulfilling the promises of our childhood.

10. Johnny Five (Short Circuit)

Sure, he might be a little obnoxious, not to mention he has the dubious honor of sharing a marquee with 1980s staple Steve Gutenberg. But he scores points for looking like a robot that could actually, you know, "exist." Also, when he gets angry, his eyes go "destruction red" and he blows stuff up with a laser. Which is classic robot!

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: Nintendo Wii

Good First Steps: Entertaining, good with people, rumored to malfunction and cause property damage without warning.

Lacks: Annoying Jackie Gleason impressions. On second thought"

9. Lisa (Weird Science)

To this day, we're not sure exactly what the hell Kelly LeBrock' character was supposed to be in this film, but we're pretty sure computers were involved, making her at least quasi-robotic. And since it' a general rule at CRACKED to include at least one entry in every top ten list that we'd like to have sex with (see number 19 on "The 20 Worst Cover Songs in Pop Music History") we're including her.

Lacking, Modern Day Equivalent: Kate Beckinsale

Good First Steps: British accent, looks good in leather.

Lacks: Has yet to exit our closet in a cloud of fog and, through a series of wacky adventures, help us come of age.

8. ED-209 (RoboCop)

Forget that whiny, morally conflicted do-gooder hero (who was really more of a man in a robot suit anyways), this big guy was the real star of the show. Save for some minor weaknesses ("stairs"), he' our pick in a fight any day.

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: American Foreign Policy

Good First Steps: Destructive tendencies, suspicious disregard for civil rights.

Lacks: Shiny chassis, dual machine guns, voice that sounds like it was put through Macaulay Caulkin' tape recorder thing from Home Alone 2.

7. KITT (Knight Rider)

Take Mr. Bevledere, add a splash of Stephen King' Christine, a shot of one of the guys from The A Team and two shots of some exceedingly strange man/car sexual tension, and you've got one of the most mysterious robots of all time. It' a little known fact that KITT was not actually a special effect, but a fully functional robotic car. However, to protect the secret of the car' existence, Hasselhoff rounded up entire cast and crew of Knight Rider along with their families, and killed them with his bare hands.

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: Hybrid cars.

Good first steps: Being really high-tech and a car, general air of prissiness.

Lacks: Ability to not explode at speeds of over 35mph.

6. Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

He' super strong, fast, and smart, in a pretty standard, robot-y way, but what' endearing is that he really just wants to be one of the guys. Also, he does this thing where he uses the computer by moving his hands really, really fast, which is pretty cool.

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: Wikipedia

Good First Steps: Instant access to a universe of knowledge, generically good intentions.

Lacks: Fast hand trick, suspiciously accurate comedic timing, jaundice.

5. Harrison Ford (Blade Runner)

Is he a replicant? Or just a hard-boiled, genre-bending Han Solo look-alike? It' so damn ambiguous! For the purposes of this list, we'll have to go with the former. Either way, we'll take our young, pre-Flockhart Harrison Ford where we can get him, thank you very much.

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: Harrison Ford

Good First Steps: Being, ostensibly, Harrison Ford.

Needs Improvement: Firewall, Hollywood Homicide, the whole earring thing, distinctly non-robotic signs of aging.

4. Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo (Mystery Science Theatre 3000)

"Wait, wasn't MST3K a '90s show?" you're probably thinking. Well, according to IMDb.com, it started in 1988, smart guy. The equivalent of robot drinking buddies, Crow and Tom taught us that you don't need to look badass, or have exciting abilities, or not be a virgin to be cool. All you really need is massive amounts of sarcasm and snarky pop-culture references.

Lacking, Modern Day Equivalent: VH1

Good First Steps: Brain-splitting levels of self-referential pop culture irony.

Lacks: The ability to not inspire deep-seated self-loathing on a personal and cultural level.

3. The Terminator (The Terminator)

Sometimes, a robot just has to want to destroy all humans, are we right? Also, whether that heavily accented man from the future is here to protect or eliminate us, at least our long-standing Christ complex is finally validated.

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: Al Gore

Good First Steps: Doomsday prophecies; stilted, unconvincing dialogue.

Lacks: Murderous rampages, snappy catchphrases.

2. R2-D2 (Star Wars)

If number one on this list was our older brother, Artoo was our best friend. Adorable, loyal, but just rude enough to let you know he kept it real. Also, did we mention that he spontaneously develops features according to the needs of the user/narrative arc? We guess you could call him the real deux ex machina. (Oh, that sound? That' just our parents sobbing quietly into our liberal arts degree.)

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: iPhone

Good First Steps: Features out the wazoo, small size and sleek, appealing design.

Lacks: Ability to launch a lightsaber fifty feet in the air, sass.

1. Optimus Prime (The Transformers)

Dear lord, where to begin? He' a robot! He' a truck! He' the non-abusive older brother/father figure we never had! Red, white, and freakin' blue all over, he was truly the robo-patriot we hoped for in the next millennium.

Lacking, Present Day Equivalent: Jack Bauer

Good First Steps: Hatred of all things evil, staunch morals, and proficiency with firearms.

Needs Improvement: Receding hairline/paunch, refusal to demonstrate ability to turn into a truck.

Posts

2008-01-15T02:47:00.000-08:00

Well, frequent visitors (heheheheh yeah right) will notice that the blog keeps changing the way it looks every few days, well the reason being that i am currently experimenting with different looks and color codes. so i keep editing the HTML codes and thats why the ever changing facia. so keep coming back and cheers

shanu

Sex and Death 101

2008-01-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

No no no this post is not about a higher purpose or the secrets of sex and the inevitability of death, or any thing else. Its a movie, I saw it tonight well its basically about two stories one dominant and the other one a more subservient one. i wont tell you the twist and i wont give you any spoilers.

But i do recommend that you watch the movie. ok its about this guy who is on the verge of getting married and believes that every sign he sees is telling him to get married. So its two weeks before his wedding and he receives this Email with a list of names all female and all of them with whom he has had sex with but his fiance is at number 29th and all the others he has never heard of. well the list ends his engagement and thats that and in the rest of the movie he is struggling with the dilemma of the list.

The second story is of this women who seduces men and leaves them in coma with verses of poems written on the walls of the room where the deed happens. she is this woman that no one ca get their hands on. so these two stories happen and these two character go through a lot of moral and social dilemmas.

and then the seductress leaves her drivers license at one of the crime scenes and the police announce her name on the TV. and our hero realises that the name is the last name on his list. and he has about twenty more names between him and the "death Knell" well as to how the rest of the movie turns out you will have to watch the movie, you will love it. despite the name its not graphic and its not full of blood and gore. its funny sweet and slightly humorous take on our lives in this day and age. its about verbs, and adjectives that we use to classify our lives with, it about fairy tails and sarcasm and how our lives have become a constant circle repetitious monotony. Well may be not ours but of the Decadent Western Civilization (we are not supposed to talk about that, and we do no such thing, they are the ones that have no morals)

Oh and let me warn you there is no blood and gore or teary reconciliations on the station platforms, no triamphant returns, no chasing cabs and no broken weddings, no morning flights to Australia either.

Oh and then there are Bambi, Thumper, Alpha, Beta and Fred.

Take my advice go watch the movie, its all about Karma Sutra.

"You'll never catch them happily ever after."