Back From Vacation

Its November and I have just returned from my vacation (one whole week of it). Feels nice. Before the vacation started, there were several things on my to-do list. Post vacation, those things still remain. Without being struck off. To be honest, it was a deliberate attempt on my part to postpone these 'to-dos' so that I could catch up on the things leftover from my last vacation (which was around a year back, though it feels like ages now). Thus, I was finally able to finish a book which I left half-read from my last vacation. It took me a while to remember the plot and the characters (figuring out the good guys from the bad ones and so on) and by the time it all started to come back to me, the book was finished. Nevertheless, it felt satisfying to complete the book. Then it was the turn of tackling cryptic crosswords. I had been pushing myself to invest some time on cryptics for some time now. Now I am quite glad that I did. Cryptics are really great food for thought. In my opinion, its like having a good Mediterranean dish sitting in a small hotel by the seaside in a Greek resort town on a sunny day, if you know what I mean. The icing on the cake was that I stayed off my laptop during all this time. I might have just clocked 5-6 hours online for an entire week, which by my standards is not being online at all. Taking a break, going offline, catching up on my paperbacks and just doing nothing in general. Now I know how it feels getting away from it all. A feeling that can only be experienced when you can put off your regular 'to-dos' list away and bring out the vacation to-do list. Did I say that it feels nice? I am looking forward to my next one. Seems to be a long way off.

Tuesday: A Walk In The Rainstorm

The real fun for me started on Tuesday when a rainstorm lashed the city. It started with a tap-tapping noise on my hotel room window at around 3:00 a.m (yea, I was half-asleep half-awake due to the jet lag) in the morning and then went on to become a downpour later in the day. It was late in the afternoon that I gathered enough courage to venture into the chilly rain. The hotel staff were kind enough to provide me with an umbrella. I must say that I made full use of it in the streets that day and later also used it as a drip machine in the lobby area (so not nice of me). Using the umbrella, I might have dripped enough on the lobby floor to irrigate a small paddy field. I am sure that I will be treated as persona non grata as far as this hotel is concerned the next time I am there. Note to self, shake the umbrella well (outside) after use.

Anyways, bracing myself for the chill and the rain, I stepped out. Using my exposed face as a barometer (which was not a very good idea) for measuring the prevailing weather conditions, I decided that it was in my best interest to head straight (or dash, rather) to the nearest Starbucks and get a steaming chai. To start with, walking into a rainstorm is not the same as dancing in the rain but comes quite close once you get used to the wind and the rain (if you are covered and enjoy the breeze that sends chilly sprays onto your face once in a while). The chai made me lose some of my apprehensions and I headed to the B&N bookstore across the street and returned with my hands full of tomes that had been listed as NY times bestsellers. By this time, I was getting used to the constant downpour and was ready to endure some more of it. So the next stop was Chinatown to do some window-shopping (since I was on a tight, make that a very tight, budget). With all the shoppers in their colorful umbrellas and rain suits, the sidewalks looked as if they were filled with Chinese lanterns on a Chinese New Year Day. Two hours and $4.00 (yes, four, not forty) worth of shopping later, evening was beginning to set in and so it was time to walk down a few blocks into the downtown in search of a good place for dinner. The downtown does have a great selection of restaurants. On that day, any restaurant that offered a nice warm soup and a window side seating seemed quite inviting and so I headed for a nearby Subway (I know its not gourmet but it was the best I could do in those circumstances). After fortifying myself with a good sub, I finally decided to head back to the hotel and (h)air dry my totally damp shoes and feet. Though I did not accomplish much on that day, just walking into the rainstorm was an experience by itself. An experience worth saving for a rainy day.

Sunday: Columbus Day Weekend

Attending a mini Italian (make that mini Ferrari) car show (while the Blue Angels were flying overhead) followed by early dinner at a good restaurant rounded up my Columbus Day. Engaging and highly interesting weekend activities are some of the many perks for San Franciscans. I guess these weekends more than make up for the other daily downsides and inconvenience these city folks endure. In my case, since I was just visiting, there was enough stuff to keep me engaged throughout the week (I have been here so many times now that I sometimes act as a tour guide for some of my Bay Area friends).

My Therapy for Insomnia

The past few weeks have nearly turned me into an insomniac. In a bid to finish my assignments after long hours of work, I've had some four tough weeks of late nights. I can safely say that I haven't slept before half-past-one (a.m.) during this time. And along with me, everyone else around me also felt it too. Late nights mixed with early mornings can be a nasty cocktail with a bad hangover and results in an overall bad attitude. So its a habit I wanted to break by trying different things. I decided to work out a bit more than usual so that I could be tired and flop to bed by eight. I kicked the habit of drinking a small cup of instant coffee after six in the evening (oh how I miss that cuppa!). I also kicked the habit of eating an apple as some health article said that an apple might not be able to keep the doctor away but it surely keeps you awake like any caffeinated beverage. I even tried to listen to late night radio in order to doze off listening to good music (I discovered that these radio channels play some good songs during that time). But none of these seemed to work. Finally, before it got worse, just as I was about to resort to some form of medical treatment, I remembered that there was a better way. And that was listening to my iPod before going to bed. To be precise, listening to an audiobook on my iPod before going to bed.

I had downloaded 21 chapters of a novel "Murder in the Gunroom" by H. Beam Piper from librivox.org (legally) about eight months back. However, I never had a chance to go through the entire story. No matter how many times I decided to finish it, I was never successful. Once I started listening to one of the chapters, I'd doze off midway. I might have listened to Chapter 12 at least 15 times (or maybe more. I've lost count), but so far have not been able to get past it. To give full credit to the readers, they have done a nice job and I'd love to sit through the entire story. Even the story is not bad. However, those readers also have some hypnotic quality in their voice that gradually lulls you into sleep. Nice. So I decided to give this a try again. I knew that if this didn't work nothing would. And I was not disappointed. I still don't know who the murderer is but the therapy is working like a charm. Now I have gone back to my 11:30 p.m. schedule. And I am yet to go beyond Chapter 12. Feels much better now. So if you are not able to sleep and want a cure, give it a try. Time for my powernap. Until next time, ciao.

Marketing Satisfaction

Last week came with some good news. I cleared my Strategic Marketing course with a Satisfactory grade. Considering the fact that my Marketing skills are not much to talk about it was an achievement on its own. Let's say hypothetically, if I had to sell a gleaming red, one-of-a-kind Ferrari to a very rich Arab Sheikh who had an oil-well in his backyard and an F1 size racing track in his living room, I would still botch up the deal. Which is all the more reason that I was happy that I had managed through the course.

But in the course of working on my assignment, the discovery I made was, the huge number of books that have been written on Marketing. I know this because while researching for my assignments, I must have gone through at least a dozen of them. Each gave a new insight about how one analyzes the market, the opportunities, the SWOT of the product and so on. All these books did make me realize one thing. I was not cut out for Marketing. It is not my cup of tea. There's way too much art of verbal (fast-talking), research and visual representation involved to sell an idea. So no matter how eager or how willing your customer is, if you cannot sell, he will not buy. Which is the reason why I wouldn't be able to sell that Ferrari. But let me try though. Getting a "Satisfactory" grade was good to begin with. But as they say, practice is a whole different animal than theory. And before practice, I'll have to work on my next assignment, IT Strategies for Companies. Ciao.

>> YSR RIP.

Movies To Silliness....

Whew! its been another whirlwind week. Usually I get sucked into such weekends once in 3-4 years. Maybe five. And not if I can help it. This time I happened to be on ground zero and there was no way I could avoid the backbreaking work that came with it. We had to do a bit of re-structuring and had to redo the closets. Anyways, the weekend came by and went away and I was still in active duty longing for an evening's rest. So when the moment finally came, it was a welcome sight. It was also a week when we got a new car. A process that requires a lot of paperwork especially if you are resorting to external financing for the car purchase. Just a bit too much. Sometimes you cannot pack enough into a single weekend.

To get a breather, I decided to check out some movie reviews so that I could plan for an evening at the theaters. And that's when it all started. After reading a review in a famous website, I happened to see the readers' comments posted below the review. Strangely enough, the comments had nothing to with the movie or about the review. Some of them were just brickbats hurled at the reviewer questioning his IQ. Some were hurled at the lead actors of the movie (just because they were not the favorite actors of the reader). Some were verbal duels between one reader and the other, just because one guy didn't like the way the other reader crossed his t's. And between all this muddle, some comments were about all things that we normally don't like to talk about and then some. I got so caught up in reading this vile stuff that I decided to check the comments for other movie reviews. As expected, they were getting worse by the minute. Some were so bad that they had been deleted by the moderators for abuse. So I didn't go there. But the thing I didn't understand was, why were people using this forum for a slanging contest? Was it deliberate or was it just a normal reaction to any article?

Recently a celebrity blogger threatened to stop blogging because of the readers' rude and abusive comments on a regular basis. Looks like this pandemic has spread wide across the internet. I remember another incident that happened in one of the mailing groups I was part of. A harmless meeting request mail sent by a lady was responded to by a very nasty mail. The sender used all his bad mouthing skills on her and I am sure that if that lady had seen the email, she'd be reduced to tears. The group admin took immediate action on the hatemail and traced out the email id. It so turned out that this email was sent by a schoolkid just because he didn't understand why he was receiving these "stupid" mails from some unknown group though it was he who had registered to be a part of this group. And the school happened to be one of those elite private schools where the well-heeled send their kids to become future responsible citizens. A pity.

Just like some tools are not supposed to be handled by a monkey, some profanities should not be learned or used by some people. It gives them a bad case of halitosis. In some cases it goes beyond that. If the person at the receiving end is a celebrity then the intensity goes up. And ever since people have been able to hide behind IP addresses and funny aliases, they have expressed their freedom of speech a bit too often and without purpose. Its like that scene from medieval times where the armies stood safely atop the castle towers and poured boiling oil over their enemies attempting to climb the castle walls. At least there it made sense. Here, it just doesn't. How I wish these literate people who've got access to the internet do not use it to show off their limited knowledge. Well, let me get back and watch that movie anyways. Hope it takes my mind off this silliness.

Weekend Buzz: Concerts, Flights, Flu and Assignments

Last weekend started off on a nice note. Saturday was the day of the 'Burn Notice' marathon and I was able to catch up on the episodes I had missed earlier. Then started a dull Sunday that brightened up after I got myself invited to a concert. More than the concert (though the concert was good), it was the venue that proved to be more interesting. Stern Grove, as the venue is known, is a natural canyon kind of formation surrounded by eucalyptus (or redwood, take your pick. They're really tall) trees. It forms a perfect natural amphitheater with excellent acoustics despite the sound dampening affect of the woods. The efforts that have gone to preserve this natural habitat in the middle of a city are truly commendable. With a great weather, and with several pretty faces making it a point to attend, it was a nice way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. What followed was a great dinner at a downtown restaurant. But the icing on the cake was the completion of an economics assignment which I well believed was nothing short of a miracle. Truly satisfying.

This weekend started with the long travel back home. Before departure, as I stared at the huge aircraft (a 747-400) from the boarding gate, I realized how ungainly this bird looks on the tarmac in contrast to its sleek profile in the air. So while I was having these thoughts about aesthetics and functionality, a pretty couple walked upto me and wanted their picture to be taken with the 747's nose in the background. I agree that I look friendly and approachable enough for being trusted with a camera, but being photographed with a huge nose in the background is beyond me. Nevertheless, it was an idea and after the couple left, I took a photograph of the nose for myself. Just in case.

Anyways, upon arrival back home, I was amused and also happy to find a bunch of medical staff with nose masks scanning passengers for possible symptoms of swine flu. We had to clear their scrutiny before we could approach the customs and immigration. Looks like a lot of thought had also gone into the H1N1 medical information form (that was given to us just before landing)considering that some of these forms are really tiresome to begin with. It was crisp and simple. But despite the med staff's efficient processing, some of my fellow passengers were still impatient with them. I guess its just a force of habit. I wish the passengers showed a little more courtesy to these med staff who are working unearthly hours just to ensure we did not go home with an infection and afflict our near and dear with this now (in)famous flu.

Well, swine flu or not, now that I am back home, it will be a few more days before my circadian rhythms get adjusted to the local timezone. Till then, I will be holidaying at the Wii Sports Resort at 3 am in the mornings.

Ads, Adwares And Removing Malwares

Whenever I open my mailbox, I see these goofy and irritating ads on the side announcing "singles in your area". More than being irritated, I am amazed to see that such pretty faces with a successful profession (usually listed below the mugshot) are still single. So is it for real? I have never bothered to find out because I know for sure that its as untrue as it gets. The world sadly, is not as sad as they make it out to be. In my opinion, all good girls are taken, and taken for good. But then, nobody would even take a look at these ads if they didn't put such faces. And marketers have had to put pretty women to sell razors, after shaves, suits and even men's underwear (especially men's underwear). So I am not surprised. Well, the long and short of it, these ads don't work and they are mighty irritating. And the only way I suppose I can avoid such ads would be to change my relationship status in my email profile because I've read somewhere that they place these ads 'intelligently' after going through this piece of personal information in your profile. Let me try it out and see if it works.

On a side note, I came across this nice site called www.geekstogo.com which is a great resource for getting rid of malware and viruses from your PC (I wish they could come up with a software to get rid of these personals' ads too). The forums contain a vast wealth of information and the experts are really what they claim to be, experts. And I know this from my personal experience where I was able to nail a Trojan.TDSS through one such expert's help. While doing so, I got enough insights into what a Trojan was, what a hijack was, what a spyware was and so on. So now you know where to go in case your computer is infected.

My Frasier Moments

I was watching this old re-run of Frasier the other day where Dr. Frasier Crane makes an absolute fool of himself in front of his radio audience and later continues his bumbling ways at a conference. And each incident happens to be wilder than the other. Well then, that's Dr. Crane for you. Never a dull moment, thanks to his innate sense of bad humor. I have done enough silly things in my life to make me cringe with embarrassment whenever I remember them. At such times, the feeling of "Why me?" haunts me over and over again. In some extreme cases, these I-will-haunt-you-for-the-rest-of-my-life moments caused more harm than embarrassment and the aftershocks can be felt even today. Truth be told, some of them were totally my doing and the rest, well let's just say, they just happened. Or maybe I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. And my friends are never the worse for causing me grief over those silly situations. So every day I try hard to avoid getting myself into such situations but eventually I do get into them. There is some sort of unknown gravity that pulls me into such blackholes. I call such incidents my Frasier moments because I have seen no one else excepting Frasier get into such spots and not able to get away with it. And me too. I'm not as snooty as Dr. Crane, but hey, embarrassment knows no boundaries, class or creed. And as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I've had several of these, and then some.

I remember about this incident, where I was in a conference and I was talking to this small, laconic gentleman about some topic I pretended I knew a lot about and this small, laconic gentleman was nodding in amazement as if to show how well I knew my stuff. Turns out that the small, laconic gentleman was actually a professor in that field. And I came to know about it well after I finished with, "you should read about it sometime, its an interesting subject." The rest of the evening I maintained the same space between him as Pluto maintains with the Sun in our Solar System. There was this other time when I turned up for a dinner unshaven in jeans and tees only to find that it was a formal gathering of black jackets (if not ties). Reason? I missed out on reading the fine print announcing the dress code. I walked out of the gathering before someone could pull me in to save myself from further trouble and in the course had to miss a great dinner. The one I remember most and I hate the most is the one where I once gave a present (don't remember what) to a girl on a Valentine's Day in front of all her friends while I was in college. She of course calmly rejected it (speaking of which, I would have been surprised if she hadn't). That was the last time she ever talked to me and that was the last time anyone ever took me seriously again in college. Juvenile, but remember, years later, Fred Savage still hates himself for doing such stuff in that wonderful TV series 'Wonder Years'. Even after all these years, someone from my college days remembered me from that incident. And we had a good laugh at it, at my expense. Sweet. All of these incidents are just the tip of a massive iceberg and there are worse ones lurking somewhere down in the murky bottom. I would never forgive myself if I take them out of my black book and put them here. Never a dull moment but enough miserable moments that caused some flutter, giggles and of course to me a lot of embarrassment. And the only reason I'm putting some of them (some as in, 3 in a million. OK let's round it to the nearest billion) here is because my friend today was talking about this embarrassing moment he recently had and was going on and on about it. And of course the Frasier episode too. So its no longer "Why me?" but "Why us?". Well, I'm feeling much better now.

Life in the Jogger's Trail and the Trojan Wars

Ahh.. The sweetness of doing nothing. Things had been busy out here and I did not have much time to do anything that was even remotely relaxing. But starting this week, all that has changed. Jogging, swimming (or at least trying to learn the art) and more jogging has helped. Every day, an hour of jogging after work is making me feel that I am on vacation already. And the lovely trail adds to the feeling. So I have now realized that pulling out an hour for yourself can be very good for you, or at least gives you the feeling that it does a whole lot of good for you. In addition the lazy and twisty jogging trail gives you a nice feeling of doing just nothing. Its another story whether in reality it helps or not.

But because such good blissful things don't last forever, and the laws of averages always tend to catch up with you, I got a rude alert when my computer was attacked by a Trojan. And so, for the past few days, after a good jog, I have been researching to find a good site that would help me get rid of this nasty stuff. Unfortunately, nothing seems to be working. The more I research the more frustrating it becomes. Ever since the attack happened, this hijack has also been directing me to a dead site with a Chinese domain name whenever I click on a Google search result. So, now I realize what happens when you start to browse sites you are not supposed to tread on. I've decided that I will stick to the ones that are familiar or in the web parlance 'trusted'. Lesson well learnt, but the hard way. Before the Trojan creates more damage than it must have done already, I need to win this battle first. And then follow it up with a well-deserved vacation. San Tropez has a nice weather at this time of the year. So I heard.

From Cars To Business To Cars

From a car magazine to a business fortnightly. There has been a gradual transition in my reading habits. And if it were someone else, I would surely call it a sign of aging. Why else would someone start reading business articles with increased interest (from cover to cover) rather than ogle at new automobiles’ pics (Motor porn as some seem to call it)? Is it a sudden realization about where all that moolah to buy good cars (cars I was dreaming about all these years but couldn’t have or rather covet) comes from? Or is it because I don’t understand the techno babble about these high-tech cars? Or..? Maybe, just maybe, just hypothetically, these cars no longer turn me on? All these questions seem to indicate that I am growing senile. Well, the evidence does overwhelmingly seem to suggest so, but its not entirely true.

I still have a thing for cars. Nice cars that is. The real reason for drastic change is the fact that I have come to the fag end of my one-year financial management course. The course has given me new insights into the way modern-day businesses are conducted or at least should be conducted in theory. The last few weeks have been quite stressful considering the fact that the final semester was coming to an end with a series of tests. And boy! Am I glad that they got over? I would definitely consider it a good learning experience and considering the fact that I now understand some hitherto unknown concepts makes me extremely happy. It will still take me sometime before I can completely understand a balance sheet, but I am getting there. And helping me in this process are these nice business articles about economic and trade policies, write-ups about companies, businesses, etc. Matching the theories from class notes to the real world scenarios in the magazine is a good exercise in understanding the nitty gritties of tradecraft. Which in turn has helped me in facing the exams with better confidence. Which is the reason why I had kept all those car mags in temporary cold storage and brought the business mags out. So I rest my case. It is not a sign of aging. It was out of pure necessity. But a useful necessity in the end. Its made me a bit wiser in terms of finances and present value of money and all other things that make a business business. But as you might have observed by now, it has done nothing to improve my horrendous writing skills. Maybe I will take up a writing course in the future. Back to my car mags now.

What an eventful week or two it has been! - II: Killing a Centaur

Moving onto the next one. Another white elephant of our society, Air India, is going bust. And just before the government was all set to come out with a disinvestment plan. Air India employees sure have a sense of timing. As is the story with other airlines, the management of the airlines sure is trying its best to land the jumbo on flat tires. But hey, wait! The brakes are burnt too! So who's gonna stop the crash? We the taxpayers, of course! I am really saddened by the way Air India has been continuously losing its sheen over the years. It has been a constant run downhill. And I think the problem started on the day government said, "Thanks J.R.D., we'll takeover the reins of the Centaur (Air India's then logo) now and don't worry, its in safe hands."

I happen to remember an incident when the then Civil Aviation Minister Mr. Madhavrao Scindia got the brilliant idea of changing the logo from the Centaur to a golden Sun on a red background. This act of his pushed Air India into the red because AI did not have enough cash on its balance sheet to repaint all the aircraft in its fleet. I cannot fathom why our ministers always focused on grandiose plans for AI but never focused on one area that helps an airline more than anything else. Customer service. With such a wide network and excellent pilots and technical ground staff, if there was anything AI lacked, it was the customer service. And it continues to do so. OK, the mascot is a Maharaja, to give you a feeling that you will be treated as a Maharaja once you are aboard the aircraft. But, unfortunately it is not the case. Almost every employee (barring a few) feels that he or she is a Maharaja or a Maharani (as the case maybe) and every passenger who gets on board is a peasant destined to the misery of air travel. Otherwise how can you explain the indifference that starts right from the ground staff who don't give a hoot about how to handle your baggage, or where it is supposed to go? This attitude of indifference stems from the fact that they know that their jobs are secure no matter what they do (or don't do). In case any action is taken against them, the employees' union will go on a strike. More about that later.

In these times, for the airlines to be successful, what matters is good customer service which I should say does not cost more than offering the same service with a little more care and of course, a smile. But the crew and staff of AI never seem to understand this. I have seen my friends fly AI (with pride because it was an Indian airline) come back dejected and frustrated with the kind of service they got. The two times I had to fly AI, it was an experience not worth remembering. One time, they almost stranded me in Changi’s transit lounge where a not so nice Indian born (un-aptly named Bhagat Singh) Singaporean accused me of traveling to Singapore without onward reservation because I was planning to slip into Singapore as an illegal (perhaps he or his forefathers must have done just that). AI had conveniently forgotten to update the online system with my reservation details. My baggage was dumped outside the transit area and I had no way of claiming it because I did not have a visa to go outside. Fortunately for me, a nice lady at the immigration desk granted me a 24-hour visa (after hearing my story) to go into the departures area, claim my baggage and check-in again. I had to spend the whole night in the terminal waiting for AI’s Singapore office to open up the next day and clear up the issue. Tom Hanks’ ‘Terminal’ still reminds me of that long night in Changi. Moral of the story: As much as I hate to say this, never fly AI again. Especially if you are an Indian.

As I mentioned before, the indifference could be because the AI employees think their jobs are safe since they have the loving protection of the State and no matter what they do (or don't do), they'll get their paycheck. If they don’t get a raise or get paid on time, they can go on a strike and hit the passenger where it hurts him/her the most. Cancel the flights and ground everyone. Not nice. I am sure that these employees make more money than an average Indian. They have their own housing colonies at prime locations and of course other perks which are unheard of in other professions. Great managers like Russi Mody and Y. Deveshwar were unable to manage AI and quit, thanks to an unrelenting and rigid employees' union, pilots' union, cabin crews' union, ground staff union, etc. You name a role, the employees have a union for it. And the Ministry of Civil Aviation never actually was effective against these unions. But, unfortunately, all of these unions and the Ministry were never unionized in trying to making a passenger feel less miserable while traveling with them. What more can I say? Yes, a word about the Centaur hotels managed by AI. The less said the better. Anybody who’s given this hotel chain a five star or a four star rating was not in his real senses or never knew what those ratings meant. Classic case of bad management. ‘Nuff said.

Despite having said all this, for me, AI had always been the connection with distant lands since my childhood. Those funny ads of the Maharaja flying to Oslo, Amsterdam, New York and other places are still fresh in my mind. I am sure it is the case with other people too. It would be safe to say, that for a long time, the Maharaja was the most recognized character after the Amul baby. Which is why it makes me sadder still that AI is going belly up. A fine example of bad management and rampant indifference. AI get your act together and get moving. Bigger airlines have faltered despite being good airlines. The government might bail you out despite your bad ass attitude but people won't stand you much longer.

What an eventful week or two it has been! - All Men Equal - But Some Women Are More Than Equal

Michael Jackson, R.I.P.

What a week or two it has been! The news channels just kept it rolling starting with the elephant statue controversy in Uttar Pradesh.

At the speed Mayawati's sculptors are churning out those elephants, Thailand should be worried considering that the country is going to lose its sobriquet of the Land of White Elephants. I am sure, that Uttar Pradesh now has more stone elephants than the real ones. OK, they look good (elephants are undoubtedly very graceful creatures), but, is it a coincidence that these animals are her Mayawati's political party’s symbols? Probably not. Because the statues of Her Mightiness are also standing at various 'chowks' and centers of her state/fiefdom. And all that money to fund those pachyderms comes from the taxpayer. I’d be happier if the money was spent to save some real lions and tigers or even given away in charity. Hope Her Mightiness spared some pocket change on them from her own millions that she has pocketed over the years. Proclaiming herself to be a leader of backward classes, she sure is bringing equality among the caste-ridden society in her own little way. And that is by making the entire state go backwards into decades and maybe centuries. So the moral of the story? if you can't chart any progress for your people, do the next best thing, hit the cruise control. In reverse. Result? Everyone's backward and everyone's exploited and everyone's happy because everyone is now backward and exploited. Mission Social Equality achieved. I had last heard of such excesses only during the times of Roman emperors and in the modern times, in some small African countries (some guy built a church with a dome larger than the Vatican in a famine ridden country, don’t remember who or don’t remember where). Wheels in retro do move faster than wheels in progress. Uttar Pradesh, you are headed south. Politically and socially, that is. And I just hope that the Supreme Court verdict puts brakes on this elephant rampage.

The Source of all the Smoke

There is no smoke without fire. Good. I can now boast of a good opening line. As people and their jobs are reeling under recession, fingers are starting to point at people who caused it in the first place. Everyone has his or her own theory. But the majority of them are blaming the banks and the MBAs who were running them. And what do the MBAs do? They begin to blame their alma mater. B-Schools unfortunately are cornered and nowhere to run. At least a recent article in Harvard Business Review seems to indicate that. So in a way the fire (which I was talking about in my opening line) seems to have started here. There seems to be a sense of worry regarding how some courses are being taught in classes in silos. Professors now realize that the case studies that are taken up are not being seen in an holistic way but instead in a very narrow sense that suits the requirement of that particular course. And then comes the question of ethics. Most of know by now that ethics and all things legal were thrown out of the glassed skyscrapers before conducting businesses that ultimately led to this humogous depression. So Profs being Profs, are quick to point out remedial measures to correct the problem. One of the suggestions is that all students passing out should sign the "MBA Oath" (which promotes ethical conduct of business) at graduation which is being put in practice in some Business colleges. In addition, there is a suggestion to make major improvements in the MBA curricula. Profs insist that the courses should focus more on business ethics so that people (read MBA Grads) can conduct business ethically. Sure. Its like taking a slap on the wrist after committing murder. Or locking the stables with a Yale lock (not the B-School) long after the horses have bolted. Maybe, as a fresh start, these B-Schools should start teaching the new grads ways to earn back people's trust, and jobs and also find ways to earn and pay everyone back every penny (with considerable interest) their seniors lost for them. That's what I would call value add. Are the firestarters listening?

Travel blogs I follow

Beware What You Wish For

During the ill-famed 'monkey' series of India vs. Australia last year, I fervently wished that Kumble the gentleman of Indian cricket send Symmo and Gilly packing in his first over to teach the high and mighty Punter's men a lesson. But it never happened. Yesterday was another story. Kumble got Gilly in his first over for a nought and Symmo in his second over just as he was turning to be a match hero. A wish I no longer wished for had finally come true. Nowadays, as a Deccan Chargers supporter, whenever Gilly gets caught or bowled, I let out a sigh, and when Symmo has to take the long walk back, I shut down the TV or walk away in disgust. Such is life. Sometimes a wish coming true a wee bit too late may no longer be a wish but otherwise. How IPL has turned the cricket on its head is beyond me. Lesson well-learnt. Thankfully, the team won and lifted the trophy. But now I believe that there is a higher Force that controls our destiny. And believe me, that Force has a sense of humor. So beware what you wish for.

(Source: in.rediff.com and Reuters)

Along with IPL, I was following another story. It was the political chess game that was being played between DMK and Congress. I was really curious as to why Congress was not happy to take the two ex-ministers of DMK back into the cabinet fold. I got my answer in an editorial by a famous political analyst. Seems that while one minister ensured that the government (read country) lost Rs. 10,000 crores (around $2 billion USD) so that his family could benefit, the other minister diverted all the road projects from across the country to his state. Why? so that his family could benefit. See the common points? 'So that the family can benefit.' Nice. To paraphrase JFK, 'don't ask what you have done for the country, just grab whatever the country has to offer you.' Politics can be a good business. Resourceful people can build a country or some do just the opposite with politics. I just wish we don't get more of such ministers to run the country. So that everyone can benefit. And I just hope my wish does not come true at a wrong moment. Just when I stand to regret my wish. How I wish!

Cars I would love to see in Transformers 2

I happened to watch Transformers (the movie) after my friend insisted that its gonna be a cool movie. Cool movie it sure was but in my opinion, it had similiarities with Indpendence Day and Armageddon. Having said that, the robots transforming themselves into cars, trucks, fighter planes, etc., was really the best part. And cool too. Besides Megan Fox that is. And Bumblebee of course. And the little squeaky evil transformer that becomes a cell phone. But, honestly, who would want to see robots transforming themselves into GM cars (ok, the Chevy Camaro concept of Bumblebee was cool ) and trucks when there are are cooler looking vehicles around? So I gave it a thought on what cars should the transformers be. And to my surprise, I came up with a big list.

Ninja Transformers: Perhaps this is a no-brainer. What kinda cars would Ninja Transformers transform themselves into? Japanese of course. And in my opinion, to lead the pack would be Acura and Honda. Yea, yea, Acura is American but isn't it Honda's? The new Acura models really look the part. With a feline grin and a out-of-this-world grille, you get the feeling that these cars are a bit more than just cars and have a secret life of their own once you lock them up in your garage at the end of the day.


If the Transformers are not into Acura or Honda then they can choose to become one of those cool Infinitis. Before I forget, Nissan GT-R too. And for the Ninja master? Nissan Murano of course. For the racing Ninjas? Subarus and Mitsubishi Evos. Toyotas (with the exception of the LandCruiser) and Lexuses (with the exception of IS420) seem to be a little plain jane when compared to the ones mentioned above.

For the bad Ninja Transformers? Subaru Tribeca B9 (the older version). A ghastly design if ever there was one. And an equally hideous dash (as if the whole thing started to melt in the hot sun).

And their leader? The Acura RDX. What about the wise Ninja who looks harmless from outside but is really an old pro at his work? Maybe Honda Element. Maybe. Optimus Prime must be frowning already.

Euro Transformers:From the Far-East to the West, moving to Europe and starting with the Germans. Topping the list would be the BMW 5-series. Those flame surfaced headlamps with corona rings are enough to send shivers to any driver who's seen them sneaking up on his rearview mirror in twilight. Audi's R8 and A4 with those daytime LED running lights are no less intimidating either. So is the revamped LED-embellished Q7.

And from the 3-pointed star family definitely the McLaren'ed Stirling Moss SL55. And Red Unimog trucks. How uber cool is that?

From the Porsche family it would definitely be the Cayenne Turbo S.

Super Transformers: Moving onto Italy. How about Lambo Gallardo or Reventon for starters? No mods required. All one has to do is raise its scissor doors and its transformed into a flying pterodactyl. Even Countach and Diablo wouldn't stay far behind. With bright orange and lime green colors, they'd bring some cheer too.

Ferrari Enzo is another one on the list from the supercar family. I would have included Bugatti Veyron too but its too rounded for my liking. Nevertheless a transformer with 1000 hp and 400 kph top speed is not bad to have. A Maserati Q'porte would be a cool addition too.

Baby Transformers: Well, small cars they maybe but the list is not small. You can have the Abarth modded 500, the Mini Cooper S and even a souped up VW Beetle. The new 2008 VW Scirocco (hope I got the name right) with a green paint job also looks sufficiently mean to join the club. A Tata Nano wouldn't be far behind. Small it maybe but it does have some character.

And as I keep thinking, the list just keeps increasing. Let's stop here. For this edition of Transformers, I think this starcast is sufficient. We can have the next list for Transformers 3. Until then, let's hope we have cooler cars in Transformer 2. Besides Megan Fox that is.

Smart Thinking for Greener Tomorrow

The new Honda Accord V6 is really a nice car. Though I am not a great fan of the Honda designs (the new Civic is an exception to this rule), I just love their engines. And I am impressed with the new technology they have incorporated into the V6 engine, especially the VCM (Variable Cylinder Management) which ensures that only a required number of cylinders work at any given time. It also makes me wonder as to why other car makers never came up with this simple idea. If someone actually did, looks like it never got popular. Honda engineers definitely deserve a pat on the back for this genius of a technology. Imagine, for a car weighing close to 2 tonnes if only 3 cylinders out of 6 can help it cruise along in "economy" mode (nice), then why can't smaller cars (weighing less than a tonne) have a technology that will help them cruise on only 1 or 2 cylinders in "economy" mode? It would do the world a whole lot of good by reducing CO₂ and other harmful gas emissions. Hope the rest of the automakers follow suit. Or, at least, for starters, Honda should introduce this technology in its other models. ASAP.

(source: honda.com)

Weathering a Tough Season

It has been a very busy last two weeks. The previous weekend started off in a waiting room of a hospital. In fact I was in hospital on the polling day. And I'm not happy. Waiting rooms of hospitals always have an eerie air about them, at least for me. There is something about hospitals that gives you both hope and despair at the same time. And the waiting gets to you if one of your loved ones (in this case my Dad) is undergoing treatment. Anyways, after a very brief stint and with good treatment, my Dad’s back home again. Here I must thank the Docs and the nursing staff for his speedy recovery and also for restoring normalcy. Feels good to be back home. Both for him and for me.

(source: weather.com)

And while all this happened, the mercury soared like the stock market indices of a bygone era (yea those days seem to have happened a long time ago indeed). Considering the heat wave this year, I am sure the meteorologists might have to come up with a new scale for measuring temperatures. Move over Fahrenheit and Celsius, these are the days of the global warming. Hope we get to celebrate the next Earth Day on a cooler day. From the temperatures predicted in weather.com (image posted above) looks like there is no respite at least for some time to come. So for the rest of this summer, I will step outside only as a last resort. Until then, I’ll try to do something useful such as working on my assignments. At least that way I can make up for the lost time. Isn’t there any recession for hot summers?

Speaking of recession, workwise, recession has finally caught up with us. It was heartbreaking to find that some of the folks I knew got the pink slips. I just hope they find something fast and have a great future ahead.

Upset? Me? You've got to be kidding.. yea right.

Its one of those days again when something inside me has snapped and I have got extremely testy. During this time, my temper sits on a powder keg that has an extremely short fuse and at a slight pull of a trigger, there is a gradual transformation in me from a meek Dr. Jekyll to a monstrous Mr. Hyde. Uh.. its not a gradual transformation. It explodes fast enough to put off anyone who happens to be having the bad luck of being in the same room as I am at that moment.

Most of the times, I try to keep my emotions well under check and even have a smile pasted on my face in a hot situation to keep things from blowing up. I'm even chivalrous to a fault. But when I'm Mr. Hyde, its a different story altogether. No man or no woman (kids are luckier because I feel that children should not be exposed to such bad behavior) is spared. Its like a rhino rampage in a china shop. I'm surprised at my own behavior when I think about it afterwards. But by then, its a tad late. Things get snapped to a breaking point. But I try to apologize and make up. Its tough (to apologize), but its better to make amends then live with it. Needless to say, its very damaging.

At other times, I simply get furious at some one-off incident that would have happened ages ago and purse my lips till the point my teeth start to bite into them. Ferociously furious, I must say. And then it passes off. Don't know what triggers these volatile memories. I really must put a lid on them or start looking at the funny side of them.

So, when some of my buddies say that they have not seen me lose my temper, I murmur Ethan Hunt's memorable quote from 'Mission Impossible', "you have never seen me very upset." Or, for a change (depends on the day of the week), I use Bruce Banner's quip, "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." from 'The Hulk'. Nice lines, those.

Anyways, to cut the long story short, I'm pretty bad at anger management and equally bad at swallowing a tantrum when I am upset. I mean when I am very upset that is.

Thankfully, my bouts of upset mode are far and few and I would like to make them much farther and fewer before I gnash my teeth to bone dust and rip my remaining hair out. Small things upset me or at least used to upset me. But nowadays as experience is tutoring me, I'm getting more thick-skinned and ignoring the smaller irritants. Nevertheless, I still don't want to be known as Captain Haddock (from those favorite Tintin comics) who's not had his dose of Loch Lomond whisky that day. So, I am in search for that elusive elixir that will keep my temper in check. I'm still searching and I have promised myself that I'll find it someday, for everyone's sake.

So as a part of this quest, I google sites that say that they help or give free advice on how to control one's "negative" emotions. I've found a good one in http://www.apa.org (American Psychological Association). It has some nice and basic tips, nothing that hotheads like me have not heard of before but effective nevertheless. Or so say the Psychologists. Some of these tips are:

- Breathe deeply, from your diaphragm; breathing from your chest won't relax you. Picture your breath coming up from your "gut."

- Slowly repeat a calm word or phrase such as "relax," "take it easy." Repeat it to yourself while breathing deeply.

- Use imagery; visualize a relaxing experience, from either your memory or your imagination.

- Nonstrenuous, slow yoga-like exercises can relax your muscles and make you feel much calmer.

I will try to remember them the next time I begin to morph into Mr. Hyde (Eeeaaaargh, get that thing off me!). This way I hope that Dr. Hyde stays firmly in control. Till the time I master my zen and memorize APA's tips, some more china shops will get in the way of those rampaging rhinos. I just hope this modern china is really unbreakable as they advertise.

To Power Without Power

And as the elections near, the speeches get more and more promising. And more entertaining. The great Indian democratic machinery has to be woken up from deep slumber after five years to ensure that the common man votes for the leader of his choice. Suddenly the Election Commission becomes the most important organization for the entire country. Not bad, I must say, after all, we still have democracy dictating the terms in this country.

This morning, I was reading the main page article in the newspaper that talked about one such speech given by a leader in a public meeting. The message given was, we are the wheels of progress and we promise progress along with social justice. What made the whole thing funny was the fact I was reading all this in a candlelight. Yea, in candlelight because of a regular power outage we have during that time. 

Power outages for hours - because there is an acute shortage of power - still makes you wonder about the progress that's been made by the elected governments. The situation's worse in villages and small towns where the power is out for hours together. So, just like all other years previously, power has become a major factor this election year too. In the past, governments have fallen after police fired at people who were protesting about the power situation. Power begets power. But the converse need not be true. I must say that the issue of power scarcity has been a major concern for almost since 3 or 4 elections that I remember. And it is still alive or at least comes to life during the elections. Even after so many years of "progress", there are some things about the political system that still nag you. They nag you so bad that you feel that we are progressing backwards as the rest of the world is moving forward.

The more I think about it, the more backwards I have to travel in time. To the days where we had something called the "load shedding", a term which the state-owned electricity companies invented to switch-off power during the nights, days and whenever other times possible for hours together. Why? Because they were not ready to admit that there was a power shortage situation the state could not solve. The state would not allow private sector to step in to help strengthen the grid. Private enterprises would mean a capitalist fleecing the common public with high rates for the power he generated and sold. Power was a state-owned business and nobody but the public was supposed to benefit. 

Noble thoughts indeed, but easier said than done. The power companies though established with good intentions were also inefficient in many ways. And no one benefited from their inefficiency. Well, having said that, to be honest, some did benefit, by stealing power from the power transmission lines and they still do. Some even stole the high-tension transmission wires because they were made of copper (subsequently the wires were changed to Aluminium which is not as good a conductor as copper is and results in massive power losses during transmission). So the people, who paid, also paid for the power that was stolen by others. And the wires too. It’s common news even today that some industries and residences steal power to save on huge electricity bills. Some of the politicians themselves have been indicted for such activities. 

Power is such an irresistible topic for elections, that you can’t help but keep the issue alive. Thankfully, with better sense prevailing, the governments have been able to involve private enterprises in power generation. Though this is coming at a cost, at least we are plugging the holes that would otherwise weaken the progress.

While all this happens, it will still be sometime before I can stop buying candles. Till that time, I will be reading about the ridiculous speeches on progress, development and modernization under candlelight. More about progress later.

Assignments and Elections '09

Finally, I have been able to complete my Financial Insights assignments. 3 down, 7 to go. Of course, the project involved a little help from my sis and investopedia.com. Especially investopedia.com. The project overshot by a month. But it was well worth it. Now I can make some sense out of WACC, NPV, Debt-equity, blah, blah. I now hope that I get to use all these terms in one sentence and still make some sense one day. Meanwhile, the push has come to a shove and the rest of the assignments need to be finished too. I hope I will be able to breeze thru them. Yeah right!

While I struggle with my own little monsters hiding under my bed, the countdown to Elections '09 has begun and the campaign of each party is heating up. Every other ad or for that matter every ad on TV is that of a political party. I have never seen such spate of political ads on TV before. And there is no respite with news channels either. And if you shut the TV, there's always the SMSes on mobile. There's no escaping from them. One thing I can say for sure is that these parties are definitely getting media savvy and leaders are becoming more photogenic. Hope they become incorruptible too. Sigh! Wishful thinking. I just hope we have a better government this time. Let there be light. And let reason prevail.

CEOs Dilemma

Once upon a time (but not so long ago), a corner office of a big corporate was an object of great desire for any ambitious manager. Fat paychecks, bonuses, unimaginable power and of course the fame if you did a good job. I don't know if this is still the case. But then the old adage "what goes up, comes down" consistently delivers on its money. And it has done so yet again. CEOs nowadays are available for dime a dozen or precisely for a $1.00 per year salary. Take the case of any big company today, the story seems to be the same. In some cases this $1.00 salary does not include perks such as flying around in corporate jets asking for bailouts from the government or taking holidays in exclusive retreats. What the job really comes with is, a lot of challenges, a lot of criticism, a lot of tough decisions like letting go of employees and constant media scrutiny waiting for that one wrong step that will bring down the intricate house of cards. All this for one measly $1.00. Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe, $1.00 is no more measly. Maybe these CEOs are getting overpaid for the job they have on hand. Whatever be the case, they have their job cut out for them. Any takers?

So, while these CEOs try to use their numerous years of experience to bring us out of this quagmire and get grossly overpaid for it, there was one CEO – Paul Levy of Beth Israel Hospital - this week who was bent on saving the jobs of thousands of people who work for his hospital in a unique but effective way. This man certainly does deserve more than a dollar. Its nice to see that some good guys are still hanging on there. Check his blog at http://runningahospital.blogspot.com.

Taxman Cometh

As I write this post, I watch A.R. Rahman win his much-deserved Oscar. Congrats. I first noticed his music in a Doordarshan program called Madras Telugu Academy Presents that used to be telecast on Sundays. He had composed music for the programme's title and credits. It was the first time I had heard a synthesizer and it was mesmerising to say the least. More than the programme, I used to wait for the end credits to roll when the tune used to be played. Seems that I do have a taste for good music after all ;-)

Anyways, its that time of the year again when the taxman will come pay me a visit to take his dues. Which reminds me of the unpleasant fact I worked a little over a third of my time for the him this year. It is painful to see that the very people who are responsible for making sure that this money is used with prudence are themselves misusing the funds. And I also end up paying on behalf of the tax evaders who know a million ways to hide their money from the taxman. I wish there was a little more rationalization while the taxman cast his tax net so that it could be spread wider instead of deeper. Sigh! all that hard-earned money which could have bought me a well-earned vacation or some such well-earned stuff being given away without a question.

Having said that, I don't mind paying my taxes as much. So long as the money is spent for the right purposes. I feel comforted by the fact that I am also paying for the country's defense forces, for its infrastructure and for the countless number of children who can avail free and subsidized education. Taxman, you are welcome. But just make sure that you make good use of my share of dues.

Steamy Memories

Sometime last year, when I was flying with Lufthansa, I came across an article about restored Junkers in Lufthansa's in-flight magazine. Junkers JU 52 were pre-WW-II era aircraft that were used for both civilian and military services. Lufthansa had lovingly restored one of the planes and was even flying them on a special route from Berlin Tempelhof to give its passengers a whiff of the bygone era. Nice.

Now, I am not a big fan of all things old but there are still a few things that make me say, "In the good ol' times we had...." One of them of being the Steam Engines that powered our railways till the electric and diesel versions took over. I can never get over this steam engine fascination of mine. While all the kids (at least I think most of them) in the class were dreaming about becoming pilots, I used to be firmly grounded driving (if you can call it that) trains over a pair of parallel rails. In reality, I was lucky enough to be around these Steam Engines during my holidays. I always liked the way the grimy bandannaed engineers handled these machines and I wanted to badly belong to that elite club. I knew then that I would one day be a Steam Engine driver/engineer (depends on the continent you are on).

All this might sound like a juvenile English assignment (with a very corny title) but I can't express it any other way. Steam Engines were cool. Period. An engineer's ultimate driving machine if you can call it that. To use a clichéd phrase, you needed to get up close and personal with one to believe them. The long black imposing machines spewing steam looked like a beast that'd just come to life and is ready to devour anything in its way. The huge wheels interconnected by coupling rods that moved in tandem, smokestack belting out black smoke and soot and the faraway look of the headlight that gave a feeling that the engine was already planning out its trip to the destination. While all this was happening, in case any dumb soul even managed to venture near its path, the engine's mighty signature high-pitched whistle was a sure warning of the things to come. A display of unadulterated raw power.

As an engineer (or engine driver), you had to stick out your neck out (literally and idiomatically) to peer over the long boiler to see what lay in the engine's path when it moved. The glassless windows meant for viewing were as good as useless. The only view one had through these windows were that of the boiler. The heat inside the engineer's cabin due to the boiler's furnace would be unbearable and one had to work like a slave to keep the engine moving. The driver and his assistant had to constantly haul coal from its coal truck and shovel it into the boiler furnace, so that the steam pressure was maintained just right. One had to use a regulator to control the speed (which depended on the train, the bogies and the distance to be covered). No computer readouts telling you the speed or the steam pressure. No auto pilots. You had to depend on just plain pressure gauges, the sounds - read that as puffing, wheezing, drumming - the engine made and then use your years of experience to interpret these sounds correctly to ensure that the passengers or goods reached the destination safely and on time. No cozy air-conditioned cabins, no joystick type levers, no satellite or two-way radios, no silent whirring of the turbines and definitely no cushioned seats to relax on. A true labor of love. And if you felt (yes, felt) that you were losing traction you had to drop sand through sand pipes every now and then on the tracks to prevent wheelspin. It was a constant rigour of backbreaking work coupled with alertness. But extremely satisfying at the end of the day. A real job for a real man.

I still feel sad that you don't get to see them anymore. Steam Engines have become relics of a bygone era. By the time I was of a legal driving age, the steam engines had run out of steam. For me, it was an end of a career I had dreamed of even before it started. All that massive hardware becoming obsolete and extinct in a way depicts the extinction of the industrial era's dinosaur. But while the steam engines interconnected places and changed our economy, they were commanding beasts indeed. At the cost of repeating myself, one of the few things that make me say, "In the good ol' times we had...."

But all is not lost. Microsoft's Train Simulator (though a poor substitute to the real thing), Railroad Tycoon 3, Sid Meier's Railroads have helped me sustain my fascination, at least virtually. The Murder on the Orient Express and The Flying Scotsman in MTS are real fun episodes and I never get tired of "driving" these special trains. And while these are cool, cooler still is the series "Thomas (the Tank Train) and Friends." I enjoy it as much as the kid next door does. I am sure the producers of the show love steam engines as much as I do. May their tribe increase.

Money for Nothing?

As Olympics 2008 came to an end, so did a lot of things. One of them happened to be the fate of the Bird's Nest Stadium. It definitely cost a bomb - and then some - to build. Now, it is not clear what this spectacular structure is going to be turned into. The stadium has not been used much since the end of the Olympic Games and paint is already peeling in some areas. Was all that money spent for nothing? A point worth debating. But in my opinion, some structures need to be built.

I remember a story about one such monument called Bada Imambara in Lucknow. The story goes that Bada Imambara was built during the 18th century when the kingdom of Avadh faced a big famine. In order to create jobs for the people, the then Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula commissioned a huge project of building a monument that would employ the people stricken by famine. The famine lasted for a decade and so did the construction of the building. Story goes that while the workers carried out the construction during the day, the Nawab employed people to break down the structure during the night in order to ensure that the construction lasted till the end of the drought. If this story is true, then it was a noble act indeed. Maybe such a make-break-make project should be commissioned during these hard times too. History is full of such lessons we need to know about. Unfortunately, we are too busy dealing with our present to look back into time. Perhaps, we should hit the pause button once in a while and rewind a bit to see if there are any such easter eggs we can discover and use them now.

Do Super Strategies Work in Hard Times?

I wouldn't want to add another line to the billions of lines already written by experts about the global slowdown. But what I'm really interested in is how to make a consumer buy any product in such tough times. Of course, many of us will tend to buy only stuff that is really really necessary. But before that, we would first evaluate if that stuff is really really necessary. And think again till we are convinced that it is really really necessary. However, how about products that are really not so necessary or can wait? How can you make people buy such stuff? I am sure that this is a big challenge for marketing professionals and companies. And since companies don't have enough budget to spend on advertising, the challenge gets compounded. So how can you persuade people to buy your products?

I am curious because of the spot of bother the automakers are in. The automakers would like a faster turnaround of their inventories by making people buy their cars. Though changing a car or buying a second car might not be a necessity for us in these tough times, it is necessary for the automakers that we buy their cars. Because, they need to make newer cars, they need to invest in research for newer cars and most of all, they need to keep their employees from losing their jobs. So, will the super strategies of the advertisers and companies that worked in the past work now? At the same time, even if the companies did have a super strategy, how will the companies persuade people to spend money when they don't have any? Looks like a vicious circle that's going to be a bit tough to break. And of course its not just the automakers, there are other companies too. I would love to see if someone's strategy does work in these very hard times. Anyways, its going to be an interesting case study. One of my company's top bosses said that this current global meltdown is once-in-a-century kind of thing to happen. I couldn't agree more and I wouldn't want such a thing to happen even once in a century. And while people try to work their way through this mess, how will a bailout to an automaker help the consumer who ultimately has to buy that car? Who's going to bail him out to buy a car if he doesn't have a job? Go figure.

Non sequitir: Why do chemical companies still blatantly dump toxic affluents in areas where they are not supposed to? Really, its such a pity that we don't do much about this problem. I wish we were a lot less indifferent to such criminal deeds.

HOMP on TV

Sometimes, TV surprises you. You discover offbeat programs that give a different outlook from the regular fare. Not that I am against any soaps on TV. One of my recent favorites has been "Highway on My Plate." This TV series has been going from strength to strength episode after episode. Unlike other TV shows which have pretty anchors reading off scripts, thankfully you have two smart anchors who make sure that they keep you engaged with their goofy commentary on food they come across from various regions of India as they travel on the Indian highways (hence the name). I hope we have more of such programs.

Message in a Bottle

(Source: smh.com.au Photo: Sheryl Waideman)

I always have had this weird thought when I go to a seaside. That is, to send a message in a bottle. The only thing that stops me from doing this is, my lack of imagination to write a proper message. A message that I would be proud of before I cork it up in a bottle. The cynic in me takes over and laughs at my weirdness and lack of imagination. Creativity eludes me.

But the weirdness of the deed made me google about it. I am surprised to know that a message in a well-sealed bottle is well-preserved as the bottle can withstand a lot of things that would be thrown at it by the sea. In short, it is very seaworthy. I read somewhere that bottles keep bobbing for a long long time across continents for hundreds of years. Cool. And over these hundreds of years, several useful things have come out of sending messages in bottles. In fact, Benjamin Franklin used it for his work to trace ocean currents in the Atlantic!

The next time I'm going to a seaside or a riverside, I will be all set with a bottle and well-sealed message inside it. Till that time, let me think about the message. It sure sounds interesting.

From Shining Stars to Blackholes

(source: "Born Loser" from comics.yahoo.com)

Nowadays, no news seems to be good news. Its funny how things can change in such a short span of time. A few months ago, my co-workers were grumbling that they did not get a bonus despite their hard work. Everyone had grand plans to look forward to. With stars in their eyes, the sky was the limit. Now, they are thankful that they still have their job. No bonuses, no promotions but still people are happy to come to work. They are working harder than ever before. The boss no longer seems to be the bad guy or a slave-driver. What was good earlier is now bad and what was bad earlier now seems to be good. But the million-dollar (make that a multi-billion) question everyone's asking is, "where did all that money from the good times go?" I wish I knew. At least now I know the meaning of a blackhole. A not so great place which sucks up everything that comes in its path. Hope we can get out of its way in time.

Stay In and Be Green

I love plants. And that's the reason why I stay away from them. I can kill a plant just by looking at it. Plants and weeds alike. There is no discrimination. I can never water them right. Either I "underwater" them or "overwater" them. I don't know how to keep the garden pests away. And being a self-confessed greenie, I guess its a gift I can do without. So I try to stay away from flowerpots, bushes, woods, forests as much as possible. Let them live for some more time. They deserve it.

I just can't understand how some people get around with plants. For example, my Mom grows a variety of plants such as aloe vera, a rose bush, a flowering plant, a creeper and some other plants (whose names I don't know) in the small verandah we have. Which is the reason why the verandah is off limits for me. I can't stand out on a sunny day and take in the sun. Sigh! such is life. Staying indoors to save the outdoors.

But the fact remains that, no matter where you live, you can grow plants with very minimal effort. All it takes is a little ingenuity. A few flower pots, some broken or unused furniture, a little channel for water flow and èt voila! You can grow almost whatever you want even without a greenhouse. So I'm going to take up the challenge of growing orchids and bamboo. Or maybe I will take up ikebana. I hope I don't mess up. At least it is going to be something different from what I've been doing for a while.

I've been Bean Counting

Another bunch of assignments. Sometime back, I had enrolled myself into a financial management course (goes to prove that an idle mind's a devil's workshop). My intention was to know the stuff I don't know in finance that I ought to know. Or, at least know what I don't know about money. Which essentially means everything. Now I am stuck with a whole bunch of assignments that are due by 31st of Jan. I have been scratching my head, chewing on my pencil(s), fuming, googling and generally getting frustrated but these assignments still don't make any sense to me. Its been an uphill task working on them and it gets worse by the day. Financial ratio analysis, corporate finance, working capital management, athens, parthenon, kanakaredes, cryptos, mykros all sound the same to me. Yea, you guessed it, Greek. With a sprinkling of Latin. So instead of working on my assignments - after having another red bull and chewing on the last pencil I had - I am writing this post. Speaking of pencils, with all that chewing, I have now acquired a taste for graphite. I can now tell which pencil is a real connoisseur's delight and which one is Burger King's Big Whopper. But I still can't calculate how many pencils I need to chew on before I can successfully understand Break-Even analysis. Anyways, let me get back to my assignments. My cash flow statement problem seems to be showing that my cash flow is zero (maybe its due to this recession). So, let me correct it before I lose my net present value.

Before signing off here's a lame joke about an Investment Bank's Balance Sheet I picked up from somewhere in the dubyadubyadubya.

"There are two sides to an Investment Bank's balance sheet: the left side and the right side.
On the left side there is nothing right, and on the right side there is nothing left."

Cheers.

Ciao 2008

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/comics/)

Almost everyone I know feels relieved that the year 2008 has ended. The opinion across the board is the same. 2008 was like a roller-coaster ride that started on a very high note and ended with a stomach-churning steep fall, which sobered up many of us who were celebrating the good times. In my opinion, it was like having a morbid hangover after a great last night's party. Contrary to the year's first-half that brought a lot of cheer to everyone with each passing day, the second-half brought more and more grim news on a daily basis.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/comics/)

In a twisted way sort of way, 2008 taught us to be more careful, more economical and be more happy with less.

I wish that 2009 will be a lot better. For everyone. Happy New Year. Peace.

26/11: To all those innocent people and brave men and women who lost their lives. May their souls rest in peace. (Photo source: http://www.markmallett.com).

Perfect Timing

I just love these watch ads on print. The Swiss ones especially. "XXXXXXXX, Geneve, Swiss Made". Fill the XXXXXXXX with the name of your favorite Swiss watch. Different variations but essentially the same theme. Makes one feel that watchmaking is a cottage industry in Geneva. Which might well be the case. Almost all the brands' ads feel similar. Some show timepieces in such an enticing way that it might easily drive a person into becoming an obsessive watch addict. Put in a male celebrity in a black jacket (or a female one in a cocktail gown as the case maybe) and put a watch on their wrist. Some other brands show golf and tennis celebrities having a ball of a time wearing an expensive timepiece from the watchmaker's collection. While the dial's big enough to stand out like a neon sign, they try to make it as subtle as possible by focusing on the successful celebrity. Very understated. Very hush hush. It feels as if they are advertising some feminine care product (which, I must have to say are not so discreet these days).

There's a new James Bond movie. Which means Omega is going to throw all discreet stuff out of the window to make sure you know James Bond's timepiece of choice (the Omega Seamaster, just in case you didn't know) no matter in whichever corner of earth you are hiding. I am sure you must be familiar with the ad by now. Mr. Bond is tactfully holding a gun in such a way that the jacket and shirt cuffs move up to reveal the face of an expensive watch adorning the wrist of one of the most famous leading men on earth (or movies) with the byline "007's watch of choice" or something like that. You get the feeling that if you were lucky to get into the MI6 or 5 or whatever, you'd get a nicely cut suit and a Swiss watch as standard issues, which unfortunately, is not the case. But for all that advertising, I am sure the watch sells. I know. I know because I gifted myself a Swiss watch with my first full-time job's first paycheck (every cent of it went into the watch and I survived on borrowed bread and water for the next two months). What I didn't know at that time was that these watches were not as strong and rugged as they were made out to be. So though I didn't do any double somersaults or jump off planes without a parachute or go sailing in Monaco, within six months, my new shiny steel watchband was all scratched up. But despite that, the watch was worth it. It felt nice wearing something that cool. I didn't mind going on a diet for the next 30 days. But now I knew why Commander bond always wears a full sleeved shirt when he has a Swiss watch on. Q might allow James to bang up a couple of Aston Martins (no, again they are not standard issues in MI6, or 5 or whatever) in every new assignment, but will not tolerate even a microscopic scratch on his Swiss watch. That would amount to gross misconduct in Q's rule book. So the next time you buy an expensive Swiss watch, make sure you wear it when you are wearing your Sunday best. On other days, better wear your $20.00 Timex which you bought in that Thanksgiving sale. That's what I do. OK, Let's leave it at that.

I recently came across another ad that takes the cake. This one is for Swatch and is also related to the new James Bond movie. Now, before you start thinking that James Bond has gone shopping for cheap stuff because of the economic downturn, let me explain. His watch continues to be Omega Seamaster (recession be damned!). The Swatch watch (I like the sound of that) I am talking about is worn by the villain. Now that's what I call a flash of genius. Since the leading man is already tied to another brand by contractual obligations, get the next most important man in the movie, the villain to endorse for your product. They even have a website listing the "007 Villain Collection" (http://www.swatch007villains.com). I never knew that the Bond Villains also had their own preference for watches. Or, maybe they chose Swatch simply because it kept more accurate time than all those handmade automatics (I meant watches, not guns) and costed a fractionth of the price. After all, for these supervillains, time was of essence and every second counted while their diabolical minds planned to take over the world. Whereas for Mr. Bond, he'd get into action only after downing a few martinis, checking out some local beauties and getting almost killed. Talk about lethargy. A few seconds here and there wouldn't matter. That heavy slab of metal called Omega tied to your wrist can really restrict your movements. I also see another reason for Swatch being the Villains' choice. The watches are quite funky and over the top, just like the villains' personalities. Cool. My next watch is going to be a Swatch.

Welcome to Wall Street, Las Vegas

With all this financial meltdown going on, saw a nice ad in the newspaper. Sometimes a picture says a thousand unsaid words.

The caption reads: "When did Wall Street and Las Vegas merge?". To be honest, to me, they always were the two faces of the same coin. You risked what you could and come out a winner (rarely), or get burnt (and learn your lesson) or lose your shirt. Of course the odds of losing might be different (in Vegas they say the house always wins) but then isn't it something you always knew? As the French say, C'est la vie.

Gordon Gekko's thumping statement "Greed is good" in the movie 'Wall Street' no longer feels like sweet music to my ears. And as the greedy guys like me get cautious, Mr. Warren Buffett goes shopping. Just like he said, “Be fearful when others are greedy. when others are fearful be greedy.” For me, its a lesson well learnt. Greed's definitely not good.

Trave(b)logue

Been traveling again. Three hotels in two weeks. And all in the same city. Sounds crazy. Feels crazier still in reality. I can't imagine how the backpack travelers go about their road trip. But there have been some positives. For example, I can wake up and go to work without having to worry about making the bed in the morning. I can just walk into any food joint and eat something and need not bother to wash the dishes for dessert. But the best is yet to come.

A nice calm beach. Setting Sun. Seagulls hovering around the pier. Kids building sand castles. Grown-ups having a good time. And you in the middle of it after having a difficult day at the office. It is difficult to imagine such a scene in the middle of a city. However, it is true. Tucked away in a corner of San Francisco's busy Fisherman's Wharf is one such little beach. No sign of frenetic activity and a picture of perfect serenity. When you are sitting by yourself in such a setting, its difficult not to relax. As the breeze blows I see this pretty lady in a miniskirt that is too short to keep the chill out but is of the right length to warm me up (without the need of a jacket). And then some more pretty girls (who need jogging just as much as a fish needs a mobike) jogging by in their designer jogging suits. Nice. Just cross the street from Ghirardelli Square and there you are right on this waterfront. I guess the city civic officials try hard to maintain such pockets of sanity intact. Full marks to them.

Discovering such spots that isolate you from the hustle and bustle of the city and providing a moment of peace is enough to make such long travels worthwhile. Thus said Confucius.

Dis-CERN-ing Universe

Finally, 20 years of hard work of Physicists and Nuclear Scientiests from all over the world will see the light of the day at the CERN (in English, it translates to European Organization for Nuclear Research). They have come up with this mother of all accelerators called the LHC or in their terms the Large Hadron Collider to conduct the mother of all experiments. Not that I am a theoretical Physicist or even vaguely connected to anything nuclear (or nukular as some like to call it) but then I put my finger into everything that’s not my business. What the heck! So long as nobody’s complaining, I wouldn’t worry too much.

So they end up building this large circular tube like gizmo called the accelerator which has a few kilometers radius and spans across two countries (France and Switzerland). And now on September 10, 2008 they are going to conduct the first of a series of experiments to discover what happened at the Big Bang (or the creation of the universe). By “they” I mean a bunch of bright Physicists from all over the world and mainly from Europe. Sorry, I tend to be vague sometimes. I am sure that this LHC is one heck of a boy’s toy. Nice. Let’s hope they come up with some great results too that would end up re-writing our Physics textbooks. Its darned boring to read the same stuff over and over again.

What also interests me is the data they are going to come up with and how they are going to sift through it. Seems one single experiment will end up generating a lot of data. And then some. By a lot, I don’t mean that it will fill a few pages of a Lab Book or a few Lab Books but enough to fill around 100,000 DVDs. So the Scientists are going to use “Grid Computing” or Distributed computing to analyse this data. I first heard of this at a conference last year where HP showcased their servers some of which are installed at CERN. Once the experiment is completed, the data will be distributed across different computers across the world and each one will analyze a fragment of this data and send it back to the central computer at CERN. I can’t imagine how they can come up with such kind of ideas. But it does sound real cool. CERN has been nice enough to put much of this stuff on their website (http://cern.ch). So for some days to come, I am going to keenly follow what’s gonna happen. So while I am still trying to figure out why the sky is blue, Scientists have gone ahead figuring out how the sky and earth were created or what elements created them. Needless to say, we live in interesting times.

Fighting the Su-do-ku Mafia

A group of my friends are good at Su-do-ku. I call them the Su-do-ku mafia. They solve the online su-do-ku at http://www.websudoku.com (category: hard) in under 4 minutes (the average time taken by users is under 5 minutes from the stats shown). The average time for me is around 20 minutes with a record of 13:54. So when I talk about my times with this mafia, I get a lot of faces that seem to say, “peasant!”. Well, all brains are not alike. And I am still trying to work on my times. Brain-training as per Nintendo DS is a long time-consuming process and takes time. Earlier on, when I started on sudoku, I used to have a heavily scratched sudoku sheet in the daily newspaper because one way or the other I used to skew up the grid by filling it up with completely wrong sequence of digits. I guess my logical brain is not as developed as Einstein’s but so long as I can add digits when I go to the supermarket, I’m fine with it. Speaking of which, I have noticed that I can add numbers faster in my head now than before. I surprised a grocer by adding more than 10 lines from item price-list (which included weird change amounts) in head faster than his calculator. Nice. Perhaps, Sudoku has helped in other ways. Hope I get to improve my times and surprise my friends too.

And its not over yet. After that, its the Rubik’s cube for me. And there’s a story behind why it will be Rubik’s cube next. I was once waiting for a flight in the airport when I saw this kid around 10-12 years old who was tossing around the Rubik’s cube as if it was some sort of a toy he had become long tired of. His Dad who was sitting beside me took the cube mixed it up for almost a minute and handed it back to the kid. The little whizkid took a look at it and solved the cube in 3 minutes flat! Cool! It should not be that difficult if a kid can solve it. I will too. Someday. But first let me beat the su-do-ku mafia.

Creativity or the lack of it.

As I keep going through some blogs on the net, I am amazed by the amount of creativity they contain. And they show how much creativity mine lacks. Its a revelation. I always try to post something that sounds interesting. Unfortunately, I never complete it because I run out of ideas the moment I type, "It was a dark and stormy night." I never go past that line. Must be something to do with the so called "writer's block". Or it could be that creativity is the domain of a select few and I don't belong to that club.

So I decided to abandon blogging and pick up writing (that way I can keep myself busy and be off blogging for a long time). I keep reading about so many people who quit their cushy jobs and then wrote a book which eventually became a NY Times bestseller (raking millions for the author in the process) that I am frequently tempted to follow the road taken by them. So far, better reason has prevailed and I am still sticking to my job which is the sole source of my bread and butter (and jam). But then I couldn't resist googling "How to write a book?". Result? You guessed it right. I come up with so many hits that I could easily write a book about it. But some people have already beaten me to it and come up in the search hits. There are books which teach you how to write. There are workshops that teach you how to write. There are tips given by other authors on how to write fiction, non-fiction, science-fiction, etc. And then there are podcasts. Whew! The information is overwhelming. I guess that there are so many souls out there who want to write or want to teach someone how to write that I can say for sure that there won't be a library in the world that could store all those books. Which is good. Books are always good. But now the challenge is to find a good site. I have been sifting through some and it will take some time before I can even go through at least 1% of them. I might as well write a book first. There's something even on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y99p13p6hvE).

I will go through these sites and see what works for me best. Lezzee. So for now, I am planning to do my homework about writing. And then I will write. Till that time, I blog. Ah! for the want of creativity. Ciao.

A Dip In Merc-curious Rising

Whenever celebrities are interviewed and are asked about their secret of success, there is almost always a stock answer. "Dream big" and "hard work". These terms are no longer secrets for someone's success. You can use "Dream big" and "hard work" to safely summarize an entire content of a famous person's 1000-page bio or autobiography without even reading a single page. Yet, both these terms are as elusive as they come and are still the privilege of a select few.

In my case, my idea of being big was to own a Merc (a CLS to be precise) by the time I knew how to drive a car. Yea, I am quite a material guy. Yet I am still searching for that elusive Merc (just as the Spanish conquistadors searched for the El Dorado) though its been some years since I learnt to drive. So I started looking back to analyze on what went wrong. A sort of a reality check on why I still can't afford a Merc. One thing sure did stand out. I could never accuse myself of not dreaming big. I was dreaming big while I was supposed to be studying. I was dreaming big when I was supposed to go out and play. Whenever I picked up a textbook, I would doze off like a granny counting on her rosary beads. I preferred to stay inside rather than play ball with other kids. Caught napping was a term that was associated with me like swimming is now associated with Michael Phelps. So in a way I was dreaming big uh.. big time rather. And I dreamt about Mercs too which is definitely a "dream big" thing. Goes without saying that "dream big" part did happen in my life.

So that brings up the question again. Why don't I still have a Merc? My investigations continue. The next thing in my list is "hard work". Now, if you ask me, hard work is a relative term. Some guys can just go on working for 15 hours straight and still look fresh as a daisy. Workaholics! For some, a 2-hour paper-pushing job exhausts them to an extent that you get the feeling that they have been working beyond all human endurance levels. I fall somewhere in-between. Around say, 8-9 hours? I haven't tested myself beyond that. For me that's productive hard work. So looking at where I am today, I think that in-between thing is what is keeping me in-between. Neither a spectacular success nor a spectacular failure. Just a normal average VJ. So I guess I'll still have to wait for that Merc. That wasn't hard. A normal average VJ. Honestly, it is a hard truth to digest. A normal average VJ :-( . Even after popping half-a-dozen antacid pills and downing an alka-seltzer bottle. Normal and average. It would sound real good if I were are celebrity and when interviewed, I'd say, "beneath this famous exterior personality lies just a normal average VJ. A guy-next-door VJ." Dream on. Sigh! For now the spartan Suzuki will do.

Going Green..

Olympics 2008 has started. And the Chinese authorities had been doing their best to make Beijing cleaner. Some of their moves to clean up the city have been really cool. But I don't know how the people of Beijing are taking it.

Looking at the way my city has grown in the past decade-and-a-half (its no Beijing but its surely been growing), and the problems its started to have, its amazing to even to think that its the same sleepy town it used to be when we had first set foot here. The wheels of development can surely move fast if people take the right initiatives and implement them. Anyways, since now I call it my home, I have decided to give something back to help my city in my own small way. So I have decided to go green to some extent. Its been some years since I had cut down on commuting by vehicle. I walk down (though the pedestrian walks are almost non-existent) to nearby stores. I wish the city civic authorities make the city more pedestrian friendly. No more plastic bags for me as far as possible. And of course, water. The city had a severe water shortage sometime back. Its taught me a valuable lesson in conserving water. I will never forget that lesson.

I had read somewhere that to save an email it takes around 20 tonnes of coal (no kidding!). So while I was backing up my system, I deleted a whole bunch of .pst files which contained some pleasant and unpleasant memories (I'm sure I wouldn't have read those emails again anyways). I have also cut down on my time in front of the computer and TV to save a few kilowatts of power. And from now on, will try to keep my posts small too. Slowly but surely, these are small but significant changes coming into my lifestyle. Its tough but I'm hanging in there. And if it can save a few trees and keep the air clean then I guess its the least I can do. I wish more people from the community start doing their bit too. Good for the city and good for the planet. Just like the Olympics.

Bullet lovers, kick this guy out of your clan

I guess the easiest way to go from uncool to cool is to go buy a motorbike and stride it. And if its a Royal Enfield Bullet then you rule the roads. So there are some morons who take this easy way out without learning the responsibility that comes with driving such a royal beast. Thus they end up giving a bad name to the clan.

I came across one such moron, who I guess thought that striding a Bullet would make him an unaccountable lord of the street. In my opinion he was an arrogant menace on the road (who is yet to know how to keep the machine running in bad traffic). Why do I think so? Well, I am waiting at this traffic light when this guy on a Bullet cuts across from left and stops right in front of me because I try to maintain a safe distance between the other vehicle in front. With shades (which I'm sure he must have bought at a flea market sale) and iPod earphones minus the helmet, he was looking every inch a guy the road could do without. And just as the signal turns green, his bike stalls (no fault of the Bullet). Instead of giving me the way by pulling to the left kerb, he tries to start his bike and fails while still standing between my way and the signal. After a full 30-second wait, with the vehicles behind me blaring their horns, when I try to alert him of the outside world by giving a friendly toot, he turns around to give me a glare that almost melts those flea market shades. Nutcase. Just before I think he's gonna get into a road-rage tirade, with almost perfect timing, heaven comes to my rescue and his machine starts and off he goes. Mr. Wiseguy now cuts across two entire right lanes to go straight leaving me stranded at the red-light for the next 180 or so seconds. Some traffic sense this.

I've got no axe to grind with the Bullet lovers. My good friend is a member of Bullet Riders club and I hope to belong to this exclusive club one day. But if you are a Bulleteer just make sure that you kick this guy out of your clan. You don't need such black sheep in your fold.

Easier said than done

It had to happen someday. My laptop crashed last week deleting my profile. So now I have learnt my lesson and have started to back up. I had never bothered to back up stuff earlier (not that I have much stuff worth backing up, but that's another story). To start with, I was supposed to pick up files from couple of folders and put them in the portable drive so that the sys admin could re-configure the system. Unfortunately, with the way I organize my files, its becoming an unmanageable task. And driving me nuts! Wish there was an easier way out. Backing up is a task easier said than done. Period.

How fast can you run?.. back to school

Some years back, a friend of mine challenged me, "how fast can you run?" What he meant was not how fast I can run on my two legs but how fast I can grow in my career. His principle was that the faster you run, the faster you can climb in an organization (flipside, you can fall harder as you climb higher and you happen to miss a step). Now looking back at what I have done so far, I see that I might have been "running" consistently but have reached nowhere (I get a feeling that I was running on a treadmill all this while). So, I went back to my friend and told him that his "how fast can you run?" strategy is zilch. He smiled at me and said that he now had tweaked his theory. His latest line is, "how fast can you switch tracks while running fast?" For him the new mantra is "change". If you cannot change, or if you cannot adapt (without missing a step) to the competition while you are running, rest assured you are a dodo (yea the extinct bird). Yea, he sounds a bit like that English bloke Sir Charles Darwin. I listen to my friend's advice because he's been quite successful himself. I guess by changing his own fundamental mantra, he's stayed ahead of the competition. Lesson learnt. The next time I get some words of wisdom from him, I will make sure its tweaked according to the prevailing conditions. Now I feel more assured and ready to switch tracks.

So, as a part of this exercise (of running and switching tracks), I recently enrolled myself into a part-time course in Financial Management. Don't ask my why. I wouldn't know the answer anyways (its hard to think and do stuff while you are running). I had a vague feeling that its a start (a worthwhile restart, to be precise) and I hope I can achieve something by the time I finish the course (at least get to understand such bizarre terms as "credit" and "debit" or hopefully know how to balance my checkbook). If I finish the course, that is. People joining part-time courses are notorious for dropping out after the initial drive is gone. They feel that this is one new dimension they cannot handle in their already busy schedule. I hope I don't succumb to this syndrome. Wish me luck.

Searching Seoul

Another eventful week and another interesting travel. This week I had to make a short hop to Seoul, South Korea. This is one country (out of a hundred odd other nations) which I know very little about. To be honest, if you asked me to point it out on a world map, I'd be stumped. Such is my ignorance.

In my 3-day stay in Seoul, I discovered that it is a lovely city with some very lovely people. The experience started at the hotel in which I stayed. The hotel has some of the most courteous staff I've ever encountered and a very distinguished ambience that easily beats some of the other good hotels I have stayed in other countries. Added to this was a night life that was almost 24*7. At around 2 am when I peered out of my hotel room (my biological clock was still set to my country's Std Time) which faced the downtown street, I could see people huddled under umbrellas (it was monsoon season and a typhoon seems to have hit the country) at the bus stops waiting for buses and taxis. And it seemed to be a safe city too considering that I could see some women also on the streets at that unearthly hour.

The way the city was organized was pretty amazing. It has some underground networks below the street that connect various buildings in the downtown and also has a mall of its own. Lovely! Beats the hassle of negotiating through traffic to cross streets.

Speaking of which, what amazed me the most was the lack of small cars (or compact sedans) on the streets. Most of the time (by which I mean 90%), I could only see a variety of Korean and imported luxo-barges and nothing less. I haven't seen so many S-Class Mercs and 7-series Bimmers (or is it Beemers) per square kilometer elsewhere. And mind you, I hardly saw anything smaller like the C-Class or the 5-series. I guess the people here go only for the real things. One of my hosts told me that Seoul has some of the most horrendous traffic jams and some of the most expensive real estates in the world. No surprises there.

The weather was muggy but bearable. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to explore the downtown or the city to my satisfaction (it was all work and not much play). But I vowed to myself that I would return someday. Which is why I'm collecting some more info from the net on Seoul and South Korea in general. So if you get to read this post and you've been to Korea or know about Korea, do drop me a note. Thanks in advance.

July '07 - July '08

Its just over a year that I started to blog. At that time I didn't know what blogging exactly was. I still don't know much about it. But it was fun going back in time and checking out all the stuff I had done in the past eventful year which otherwise I'd have conveniently forgotten. Never would know that documenting experiences could be so interesting. Nice.

All those darned definitions!!!

Do you remember this problem from high school. "A block of wood slides over a wooden inclined plane having an angle theta. Compute the distance the block will slide before friction stops it." (or something like that). Why would anyone even worry about a dumb block slide over a dumb inclined plane? Weren't the wheels invented to save you from all that trouble? The only time I would have worried about such a thing would be if I belong to the ancient Egyptian civilization and was building pyramids (great structure those! built before they could fully understand the wheel). So coming back to the problem, a totally unconvincing and impractical issue.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am reading that funny but interesting book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman". So while reading this book I hit this interesting chapter about the education system in Brazil. At some point in his distinguished academic career, Dr. Feynman taught students in a University in Brazil. From his personal teaching experiences, Dr. Feynman mentions that the education in Brazil was quite pedantic, by which I mean bookish. Students were supposed to read a book cover to cover and then memorize them. Thus the students could easily rattle off a huge complicated definition or identify any complex scientific theory from a book. But if they had to explain it in terms of occurring in nature or understand the practicality of the phenomena, they would be lost. This was particularly true for students of Engineering and Physics. No wonder, Dr. Feynman found the Engineering and Physics students quite dumb when it came to applying their knowledge.

Having said that, looking back at what I studied and what I understood (in practical sense, that is) I don't find myself in a situation dissimilar to those students at the Brazilian Universities. Looking back I now realize that the things I felt quite complex and going over my head were actually so because I could never relate to the practical usage of those theories (my experimental observations were always extrapolated in the lab because we could never get the right readings). So was Math. Math always was and has been my nemesis. The only thing I could do well were the Partial Differential Equations and Trigonometry because they were quite elegant and I had a great Prof. who taught them well. But now I realize that if I found practical examples for those other problems I'd certainly be much more comfortable with Math. With regard to Physics, I never had a genius for imagining things in my mind (just like the problem I mentioned at the start). It was during this time that I came across these great eye-opening books "Maths can be fun" and "Physics can be fun" by a Russian author named Yakov Perelman that changed the way I looked at these subjects. Unfortunately, I could not sustain that interest for long (completely my fault and not those books). And all those darned definitions one had to memorize!! It was like taking a very cold shower on a very cold morning (couldn't think of a more apt comparison. When I do, will re-edit). Brrrr!! I still have nightmares about my grad school days.

But if you still are studying or have a passing interest in Physics or Maths, don't miss out on the books by Perelman. They will certainly change your views about these so called difficult sciences for the better. So have fun while you learn.

Several disappointments later...

On my return flight home last month, I happened to sit right next to an exec working for a top Silicon Valley company. Let's just call him Mr. X. The good thing about him was, he had enough anecdotes about his work and life to make sure that I never had a dull moment in the long flight. He was kind enough to tell me that he was traveling to start an offshore team that was to work on a project that would revolutionize the way we use mobiles in the near future. The concept itself was quite amazing. I don't want to go into the details as it would be a breach of confidence. But coming back to the point, wish I met such people more often when I take these long arduous trips. I recall one of the anecdotes he narrated about his company's CEO. It went this way. As any self-made millionaire who might have a taste for good things, this CEO is an avid car-collector (Seems he collects cars just as one would collect bottle caps). To make sure his execs also follow in his footsteps, he conjures up events and ideas that require them to be up-to-date with what's in their garages. One such event was to host a dinner. Now, if you ask me, a dinner where you are invited with a fancy invitation card is no big deal for men of his stature. But what was interesting was the dress code printed in the Invite. It was "911". No mention of any black jacket and tie, just the 3 digits 9-1-1. Mr. X laughed out loud seeing the bemused look on my face, and explained that the dress code meant the invitees were supposed to come to dinner driving a 911, that's right a Porsche 911. Otherwise, they had to make alternate plans. Wow! Some CEO, this!

In addition, Mr. X had other interesting stories that described how his friends turned their humdrum life into rags-to-riches story. He was also quite modest in describing how he used his technical skills to manufacture a machine for a fractionth of the cost of the original and thus saved a big expenditure for his elder brother's workshop. And so it went on for almost the entire duration of the flight. On any other day, I'd have said he was a bore. But he had my entire attention for the entire flight. After sometime I was not even aware that I was stuck in the middle seat for 18 long hours!

The learning I gained by sitting next to Mr. X was unique and I'm sure I might not have got if I was sitting beside someone from my own professional community. Anyways, this goes to show that life at the top or with people who think differently can be quite interesting.

Speaking of which, during the same trip, I also picked up this interesting book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" by Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman. I'm not a big fan of non-fiction and scientific works but this book surely got me hooked. The book was about Dr. Feynman's views about the world, his life and his research and is a real page turner. Long back, my friend had suggested me to read this book, but at that time I detested anything that had too much Physics or too much Math. Well, better late than never. I suggest this book to anyone who would like to just have some fun while getting an insight into how Science and Engineering developed in institutes like MIT, CalTech and Princeton in mid 20th Century. And yes, this first person account is full of interesting and funny anecdotes, incidents and tidbits to hold onto your interest.

Sometimes, it is anecdotes like these that spurn you into the tedious activity of thinking hard. And it usually starts with, "What would I do if I were him?" or "Yes, this seems to be a great idea, but will it work?" And then you go through a funny and not-so-funny roller-coaster of thoughts. I have had my share of inspirational thoughts but everytime I put them to practice the ideas just fizzle out or the plan gets scuttled by my well-wishers who say that its never going to work. Very disappointing. Several disappointments and failures later, Mr. X and Dr. Feynman surely changed my perspective about smart and successful people. Some day, I would really like to do something that I always wanted to do (though I first need to figure out what I always wanted to do). I might not be smart and I might be a spectacular failure but I definitely would love to try once.

Someday, for sure. Surely, I am not joking, Mr. Feynman.

Tears in Heaven

A decade ago, if you had asked me what the national pastime of my country was, I would say movies and cricket without hesitation. Today, a decade later, if you ask me the same question then my decade old answer will no longer be applicable. My answer would be mobile yakking. Yes, jabbering away on mobile seems to be the latest fad. Nowadays, you cannot have a face to face conversation with anybody for more than a couple of minutes. After your two minutes are up, either their mobile rings or they tell you to call them up on their mobile to continue the conversation later. This is what I call the "conversation hang-up". Just the other day I saw 4 people in a car all glued to their cellphones. For all I could guess, they might have been talking to each other using the cellphones out of force of habit. Or they just hated each other with a passion!

I heard somewhere that DWT (Driving while texting) is a traffic offense in Boston. Makes sense. So is talking on mobile while driving illegal in many countries. This is illegal in my country too. But as the saying goes, laws are always made to be broken. There is no exception to this rule. What an irony! this is one rule (the rule to break rules) that never gets broken. How many times have you seen people yakking away to glory while driving, crossing the street, in movie theaters (despite the request to switch off before the show begins), in restrooms and God knows where else! For some, turning off their mobile is like switching off their life-support system. You can see the person fret, fume and in general behaving oddly.

Recently, I was driving in my own lane and in general minding my own business when I had a bitter experience of this mobile yakking phenomenon. As I was taking a very legal right U-turn (after carefully watching the oncoming traffic), out of nowhere, comes a youth on a motorbike (read moron) with a mobile glued to his ear and a missing helmet. The late Evil Canievel couldn't have managed it better. The path of this mobile youth (in every sense) intersected directly with my turning radius. Perfect. Evil Canievel, bless your heart, are you listening? Even you would have thought twice to do such a stunt. This is where my decade and a half long experience in driving took over and I narrowly averted turning this mobile youth into an immobile vegetable. Funny thing was, the guy felt that I had committed a crime by not going over him (on second thoughts, he was closer to the truth than he had imagined). He condemned me to eternal damnation 'cuz I had cut his call short and he had to outmaneuver me to avoid dropping the mobile. Some nerve! I just can't get to understand why it is so important to take a call while driving. For that matter, 99% of the people I know can't do two things at once and they keep telling me so. So why do people actually talk and drive at the same time??!! Does that mean that they're talking gibberish because they are only driving or are they just talking and not driving? Or does our brain switch between driving and talking in an instant as and when required? Either ways it simply does not make sense.

Well, to all those people who feel that today their mobile is more precious than their dear life or driving, try not to let your mothers have the callertune "Tears in Heaven" on their mobiles tomorrow.

How Not To Make A Complete Ass Of Oneself In A Funny Situation

Do you ever laugh or at least smile at a joke that's directed at you? Do you? I don't. I believe I have a good sense of humor as long as that humor is directed at someone else. But if the joke is on me, a good laugh is the last thing on my mind. I'm sure some of you are like that too. They say that the ability to laugh at oneself is one of the toughest qualities a person can have. IMHO, its a must-have. Funny! we can't see the lighter side of ourselves. When reading a newspaper or a magazine I sometimes wonder how do these politicians and celebrities tolerate all those funny caricatures and cartoons the mean cartoonists make of them. If someone did such a thing to me, I'd go through the roof. Which in my opinion, is a bad thing. In some funny situations or in some not-so-funny situations, you need to know how to grin and bear it. Or just know how to laugh at yourself. That's going to save you a lot of trouble. But getting a smile on your face at that moment seems to be the last thing in the world you'd think about. Strange! how some simple things which can stop you from tipping over don't happen. I guess its because we react first and then think later.

My friend has a simple solution to this. When you're about to explode, just take a deep breath and put yourself in the other guy's shoes. See how he feels about it or why he thought what you did was funny. Then you will realize that you're not the perfect guy (the way you look everytime you see yourself in the mirror) about town. You might even find that you are as geeky or as quirky as the guy who you always poked fun at. But let that not overly hurt you. Learn to live with it. Or try to make sure that the you won't give them a chance the next time (easy to say but hard to practice). Well, that's what friends are for, to give such free advices.

My boss has a similar belief. He says when he's with his long-time and childhood friends, and they goof up, its his undeniable duty(!!!) to give them a hard time (or in his words "crap"). Just because they're his best buddies. And they seem to take it in good humor too. Because he does it in a good-natured way. He's also nice enough to admit that when he slips up, he gets a lot of crap in return. But he sure does have a good sense of humor. He has the whole team in splits during meetings. He says that its his way of keeping himself from going mad. Cool.

And that's another thing we need to keep in mind. If we want to tick someone off, do it the right way. At the same time be ready to face it like a man when you are at the receiving end. We forget this paradigm and make a complete ass of ourselves. At least I keep forgeting this paradigm and end up making a complete ass of myself. But I am learning and I guess I will keep on learning. Its not an easy subject to master. Rocket Science should be a piece of cake. Don't get mad, get even!

Jet Lag and Boiling Oil

It has been one of those traveling weeks again. Hopefully, I’ll be getting my silver club membership soon with the airline I fly. That’s the least of my problems. Long flights can be tiresome. And jet lags can be horrendous. Hence, I am awake and writing this blog in the middle of the night. So, I’ve picked up this new hobby besides Origami. And that is Stocks. I have been religiously following the world of stock markets. And the reason I am following the Markets (as they are known in the world of finance) is because I have invested in stocks. My portfolio boasts of stocks which when sold today would fetch me enough for precisely one oil change for the car and leave me with enough spare change to buy jujubes. I am sure you’ve never come across another guy who’d invest so much of his time mulling over oil change and jujubes. Well, when I first decided to invest, I was under the opinion that a few years from now on, the same portfolio will let me buy a good car. So, I started to worry over how I would invest my hard-earned money. My friends say that I should stop worrying and might as well spend the money on oil change and buy jujubes and be done with. I’m giving this idea a serious thought with the way the Markets are playing around with my investments.

Another suggestion from my friends is that I should place my bets on oil. Seems crude oil is getting more expensive by the minute on the NYMEX. Speaking of which, I read this interesting article in the WSJ (yea, yea the very same Wall Street Journal. I read it. No kidding. Thanks to my investments). I read it in more detail than any Wall Street Investment Banker would do. And I’m not one of them. Speaking of which, nowadays, it seems to be uncool to associate yourself even remotely to investment banking. Such is life. Have I told you that I have invested in stocks? So, coming back to the article (in case you lost track, I wanted to mention about an article in WSJ). This article I am talking about was actually an interview with the Chevron boss David O’ Reilly. And from the interview you could gather that despite the good profits, the Oil Boss was a bit skeptical as to how the oil markets were changing. He was skeptical about foodgrains being used for bio-fuels; he was skeptical about how the oil policies are working or not working and so on. But the part that caught my attention was that this big man has switched from Cadillac Escalade to Cadillac STS!! Whoa! Oil baron who earned $45m downgrading his car is a little scary! Or maybe he is becoming environmentally responsible, which could be a good thing. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a sign of changing times. And I hope it will not be the “There will be blood” type. Maybe I should stick to my friends’ first advice and go for that oil change and buy those jujubes while I can still afford them.

Of Lazy Summer Afternoons, Yahoo! Answers and Origami

Summer this year has been going from bad to worse as far as the weather is concerned. It started on a warm note, then went cold with unseas onal rains and now its back to hot now. Its that time of the year when you need to take shelter under the cool air-conditioning vents and refuse to move out from there. Which is what I am exactly trying to avoid. I have made a resolution to stay away from AC (ACs seemed to have contributed to global warming by releasing harmful CFCs and affected the ozone layer) this year. So, this is my contribution to green living. Which means I’m sweaty, smelly, grimy and frightfully dehydrated. Perhaps I should chuck out green living and get back to healthy living before I fall sick.

To keep my mind off the heat (and the smell, grime and dehydration), I found a new pastime. Which is, contributing to Yahoo! Answers. In case you didn’t know what it was, it’s a site where people will ask questions and then some serious experts, not-so-experts and some people with enough time on their hands (like me, for example) post answers. Most of it is done in good faith. Till I started on Y! Answers, I didn’t realize that there were so many people willing to help for free in this world. I now get the feeling that the world’s not such a bad place as it is made out to be, after all. Good for us. And with the points system (which doesn’t earn you anything like those stupid sky miles), its painfully addictive. Everytime I try to reach a certain level, I feel egged on to go to the next. But I’ve made a promise to myself that I will be answering only those questions about which I know a bit or if I can find the correct info when I google. So far I’ve kept that promise. No point in giving stupid answers or on issues I know nothing about. Instead, I try to learn about them from others' answers.

Speaking of which, that is how I came across some interesting websites with equally interesting information. In a way, asking questions spurs your imagination or makes you think the way you never thunk (sorry, thought) before. For example, some of the things I learnt about are, how to keep cats from littering on your front porch? what’s the biggest state in the US? how to restore a Ford Model T? and so on. But the most positive outcome of Y! Answers was my learning Origami. Yea, that very same Japanese black art of twisting paper into various shapes such as a dove, swan, airplane, etc. If you’ve seen the TV series “Prison Break”, you’d know what I am talking about. Michael Scofield (the main character, portrayed with near perfection by Wentworth Miller) leaves telltale origami swans as his callsign, which play a big role in his escape from a high security prison. Its such good fun that now I put all those useless catalog mails to good use. I’m turning those ugly screaming ad-filled sheets into beautiful doves, swans, airplanes, etc. Now, I see a 3-D shape in every 2-D paper. I feel I'm doing the same thing as they do at the Ford Model Agency. Turn everyday common material into supermodels. Its so satisfying that it feels like zen. Maybe I’ve found my true calling. So until I find something better to do, its Origami for me. Ciao.

Of iPods, Tourism and Books

Do you listen to books? I mean not read them but listen to narratives? I'm sure you must have had someone read out from picture storybooks when you were young. As you grew up to decipher the alphabet, you were on your own, straining your eyes at different prints and scripts and absorbing the thoughts of the writer and making opinions of your own. If you are reading this blog I'm sure that you must have formed an opinion of me already. Well, that's what books and essays are for. And good for us too.

I use my iPod almost exclusively to listen to music. Once in a while when I'm bored with the music tracks I've been listening to again and again, I just put away my iPod and then forget about it. That is, till the next time I feel like to listening to music.

Anyways, I recently found two other great utilities for my iPod. One of them is, listening to audiobooks. Speaking of which, I was aware that audiobooks existed but was skeptical about them. I felt that they would take the fun out of reading. Then one fine day, when I was bored out of my wits and was browsing aimlessly, I came across this site called librivox (http://librivox.org). Out of plain curiosity, I downloaded one of the audiobook's chapters for a trial run. And I liked it. Since then I keep visiting this site for new updates. Most of the times, the readers do a good job. Some of them (not all) even modulate their voices and accents to suit the characters in the book. Sometimes, it feels nice to close your eyes and listen to someone reading out passages from your favorite books. You get to relax in a nice way and at the same time are giving your strained eyes a bit of rest.

Coming to the other use of iPod. This is what I call the "iGuide". While, preparing for my trip to Paris, I was researching for a good site that would guide me around the city while I was there. There was way too much information for a first time visitor when I googled and I was totally lost as to where to start. First, there were printable maps. Then there were Bus tour sites that would pick you up from your hotel and take you on a tour and so on.

And then I found two other cool things due to my persistent googling. One of them was a nice interactive map software (trial version) of the city for my Palm. If I keyed in my present location, I would be able to find my way around the city and also easily locate the famous tourist spots and hotels. Which also meant that I could do away with carrying those cumbersome street maps which always tend to get slapped onto my face by the wind just as I am trying to desperately locate the "You are here" spot.

The other most interesting find was this iGuide thing. There is a nice site called Zevisit (http://www.zevisit.com/) which had audiocasts of famous tourist spots. These audio files contained narratives about famous spots in the city of Paris. For a first time traveler with a limited budget and no tour guide, this is a real useful tool. All I needed was an mp3 player (which I had) and I could start to listen about the site as I roamed around it. This would save me the trouble of reading from a guidebook and walk around at the same time. Of course, I just plugged in the earphone into one ear so that I could listen to the city sounds with my other ear. The narratives in the podcasts were nice and well made. They made my experience of Paris all the more interesting. Wish they come up with such good stuff for other cities too.

Now, I truly feel that I'm making good use of my iPod. I'm not into music in a big way. So I used my iPod occasionally. With the audiobooks and the tour trips' podcasts, this little tool has made itself indispensible. Good for me.

How I made "Virtualization" a reality

Sometime last year I attended this session that was hosted by Hardware Tech Gurus. Lucky me, I get to do these things once in a while (Yawwwwn!). Everyone who was anyone came up with something or the other that they claimed would change the way we would work and it will be the next best thing after the invention of the wheel. A revolution of sorts. But the one thing that everyone agreed upon as a great useful concept was something called Virtualization. It Seems that virtualization is a great leap ahead in data storage. And there was a valid reason that the Hardware gurus to be excited about it. And that is the amount of data being added is growing by the second in terms of terra bits. Interesting!

Another interesting fact: It seems that 50,000 people log on to the internet for the first time, every day!

So considering the amount of traffic and the volume of data you have, its not surprising that the hardware is simply not able to scale up to the required level. A study indicated that 8-10% of the power generted in the US today is used by these servers. Massive! So the great computer engineers came up with this concept of virtualization. If you ask me what this means, I would be at a loss to tell you because I myself could not understand enough of it. What I understood though was, that it makes a single physical resource appear to function as multiple logical resources. Or make multiple logical resources appear as one. Yes. Duh! To me it sounded very much like Michael Keaton's movie Multiplicity where he duplicates himself to do different chores around the house. Simply put, this is in a way similar as what you would do if your home PC's disk got to near full capacity. You would have to either delete some files or add another disk to add more stuff. Since data in servers is sacrosanct and cannot be deleted just like that, hardware engineers add more disks (at different physical locations) and spread the data across multiple disks. But when you access this data you never would know that you are accessing info from multiple storage areas. Amazing, isn't it?

And I am proud that I've had a miniscule role to play to make this thing exist from being non-existent. How? You might ask. Go ahead, ask. Simple. By writing this blog. You see, just as tiny drops of water make an ocean, in the same way millions of people like me who store all this worthless information (which no one reads) on others' free servers. So one fine day the servers do not have enough space for storing important data like your friend's anniversary, pics of your ex, pics of your present, videos of us doing goofy things, your favorite music, the forwarded joke (which you would never read but will store for eternity thinking you'll read them someday), etc. This has led to a crisis of sorts in the computer world.

To resolve this very crisis, scientists had (didn't have a choice, did they) to come up with ideas of creating storage spaces out of thin air (now you see the connection? "virtual"ization as in "virtual"?). So now I revel in the fact that in reality (or in virtuality or virtual reality or virtual whatever) my data might be stored in different computers across the world but is still accessible at my finger tips. Just like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces fall into their respective places the moment you command them to. Some technology this! Want to read more about it (I mean virtualization)? Just google and you'll get enough information that'll fill up a couple of terrabit servers to their overheated gills. Happy Searching!

Fly like an eagle..

Have you ever noticed an eagle flying in the sky? It usually flies alone. And I suppose it enjoys its flight. To see where I am going, let me start where it all started. I've been getting a lot of "It's time you found someone" from my friends lately. Its their feeling that its about time. Well, I'd be happy if I found someone but I definitely am not going to lose my sleep over it.

I do come across some of my co-workers and colleagues who feel that they're missing good times by not being in a relationship. The peer pressure of people around them doesn't help either. They rue over the fact that they don't have much life on weekends which makes them dour and dull on normal workdays. These people are not alone. Based on my internet browsing experience, I've come across many such people who share a similar opinion. "Trapped in loneliness", that's what they call it. At the same time, I see people who are into a committed relationship sighing how little time they have now to spend for themselves because in whatever little time they have, they are busy doing this or doing that with their better halves or their kids. They long for that never available precious time for doing that special something which they always wanted to do but never did. One such committed guy admitted that he sometimes envied my simple life. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. Or maybe your neighbor always has the best lawn mower.

I do lead a simple life in fact. When I am not working, I spend most of my time at home (sweet home) playing computer games or doing stuff that keeps me busy. Since I don't venture out much, I can safely say that my social life is not something to write home about. Most of my friends keep in touch with me online and thus ensure that I need not hang out with them often (as I said somewhere in this blog before, I have the social skills of a neanderthal, so they prefer to keep in touch online rather than in person. Some of them also have the excuse of living in different countries.). So the only time I get to go out on a regular basis is when I go out to do some grocery shopping, etc. This averages to about a grand total of a couple of hours a week. Since I've laid down a rule for myself that I won't date someone from work (I admit that I did break this rule once [I'm prone to breaking rules], but not planning to do it again.) walking down the aisles of the supermarket is the only time when you can say I get a window to meet the other people of the world. Honestly, two hours per week does not seem to be enough. And the people who come out to do groceries are not exactly there to hang out or meet people. Admit it, its a boring chore that everyone wants to avoid and get quickly done over with and invariably you are not dressed in your Sunday best or as if you are going to date on a Friday night. This adds to the challenge. The other time I get out is when I am traveling. But since its mostly business travel, again, not much life after work. Its just do-your-business-and-then-travel-back-home.

So what about my weekend? Weekend for me means, playing Wii or Age of Empires, reading books (thrillers, mainly), or catching up on weekly Su-do-ku or Crossword for almost 5 hours (most of it indoors as you might have observed). Or I simply catch up on my sleep. Or got online and catch up with friends. Did I tell you they prefer catching up with me on the internet only? Summary of my life. Dull? But definitely not boring. I sure do get my (so-called) work-life balance.

So, I definitely don't lose my sleep on being single. IMHO I would rather in fact cherish the time I stayed single (which I'm doing) just as much as I would enjoy being in a relationship. No point in worrying about the things that would happen tomorrow today. And when I find that special girl who's going to change my schedule (my weekend schedule especially), I'll definitely go along with her. I'm pretty sure that one of these days I will return from my grocery shopping with something more than I can chew on. But till that time, I'd prefer flying like an eagle, and enjoy every bit of the flight.

So the next time someone tells me, "It's time you found someone," I'll say, let time decide that for me.

As Steve Miller sang:

Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin
Into the future
Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin
Into the future

I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till Im free

(pic: http://www.firstpeople.us)

Paris state of mind

Its been almost 2 weeks since I have been to Paris. But the city still seems to haunt me. My work in the recent past has taken me to quite a few places. But no place has had an impact on me like this city did. I guess its due to the fact that I had read so much about it even before I set foot in it. I like reading fiction especially the books that deal with espionage set at an international scale that take you on a journey around the world while you are still seated comfortably in your armchair. At one time I had this phase of cold-war spy thrillers which somehow or the other used to have Paris as a part of the main plot or at least a sub-plot. For instance, the hero catching a train at Gare du Nord or Gare du Lyon, Or a car chase through the Arondissements of the central city, or spies exchanging information while having cafe au lait (or espresso) at one of the famous roadside cafes, etc. One of the most vivid scenes I remember is the car chase shot from the movie "Ronin". And the other one is the houseboat on Seine which is the residence of Duncan MacLeod (portrayed by Adrian Paul) from the TV series "The Highlander". It was like having a myriad of thoughts about this city in Europe where so much action takes place even before I set foot in it. Perhaps, it could be simply due to the fact that I visited the city as a plain tourist rather than with business as the prime motive. And the city didn't disappoint me at all.

Right from the moment I entered it via the ghastly building that serves as its more famous airport Charles De Gaulle (Orly being the other one), it lived upto its reputation of being one of the most romantic places on earth (if you are a traveler, that is. I really cannot comment on the life in the city as a Parisienne considering the short time I got to stay there). Travel writers and novelists claim about cities and places having characters of their own. I could never quite figure out what this "character" meant. Until I saw this city, of course. For me a city is just a large colony of people living in some buildings out of which some buildings are monuments just due to the fact that they were constructed in the previous century. Paris changed my perspective. Now I understand what a city with character means. It means that a city (or for that matter a place) can have character. Not clear? Then I will leave it there. I will never be able to explain it.


A walk on the north and south banks of the Seine over the weekend was like reliving all those novels which I had read since the time I started reading books without pictures. For a moment all those places which were only names in the books just started to materialize as signposts of streetnames in front of me. Pont Alexandre III, Place Vendome, the Latin Quarter, Montmarte, Quai d'Orsay, Notre Dame.... I had to pinch myself to believe that this was for real. And of course the other proof was the imposing sight of the Eiffel Tower which stood tall enough to remind me that I was in the land of the Gauls. Amazing! Those French pronunciations, those bridges spanning the Seine, the roadside booksellers hawking paintings of the Mona Lisa and the Notre Dame, the famous Hotel De ville with its more famous skating rink in the front, the Louvre museum with the glass pyramid entrance, the street side cafes where you can just pop down for a cafe in case you're tired of all that walking. Paris is also known for its famous gourmet Restaurants such as George V on the avenue Champs Elysees. Whew! Its too much of a city to cover in a weekend.

And the Museums! I suppose Paris has more artwork and museums than the whole of Europe put together. I finally got to see "Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh in Musee d'Orsay. Manets and Monets hung right next to each other. Standing so close to these masterpieces! By the look on the face of the museum guard who was sitting there with a bored expression while we tourists were happily clicking away at the painting with our digital cameras, I strongly suspected that these were clever fakes and the real paintings were safely lying in a vault someplace else.

Perhaps I shouldn't blame the guard. After all, this was Paris.Even the most exotic thing you could think of is at an arm's reach as an everyday object. I could see a Rolls parked unattended near Arc de Triomphe. Or a fleet of black S-Class Mercs (with chauffeurs whose black suits would have only come from an exotic boutique) parked like Fiat Cinquecentos on the Champs Elysees. An experience worth savouring like a good French wine.

Even as I boarded the return flight home, I was in a Paris state of mind.

Pictures worth a thousand words - II (Mercedes F700 and BMW Concept)

I could not resist putting pics of this exotic creature before I went to bed. So here goes:

From the front, it looks as if the C-Class's and S-Class's (2008 models) noses were stretched down to cover for the bumper. A bit too large for my liking. But nevertheless..

Suicide doors. And you can have a business class legspace inside (above). Notice closely (below). A transparent shield over the turbine shaped alloy wheels. Cool huh!

Even a Merc can look evil. The take no prisoners look from the front (below).

And equally mean rear (below)

And now for the BMW

Still the Bangle influence, I guess.

Pictures worth a thousand words and then some

Bugatti by accident... It was by sheer accident that I almost crashed into this concept car show in Les Invalides Hotel in Paris. Luckily my camera was handy. So here are some pics of Bugatti EB18/3 Chiron (The beast has 18 cylinders and generates 555 bhp! Mon Dieu! A worthy successor to Veyron?). Later I'm going to upload pics of F700 concept from Mercedes. Till then..

Nissan Mixim (below):

You had a bad day just sing a sad song....

Some days are just not yours. They squeeze you out like an orange and just suck out every ounce of energy from you. At the end of it, if you still keep your cool then you must start a monastery in the Himalayas or take sessions in Anger Management. You know what I mean. Yea, bad days. They can be so .. ummm.. bad! Just like the one Daniel Powter described in his song. Nice song but incredibly difficult to put into practice.

Research says that you have a bad day if you don't get adequate sleep. Either if you have woken up early or slept late (basically lack of sleep makes you nasty). In my case it started with both. I slept late AND woke up early. Not my doing but the weather just didn't like me being cuddled up in my bed for long. It all started with me going to bed with this unputdownable thriller. One of my vices is reading late into the night if I get a good book in my hands. I find this blissful as its quite quiet and it doesn't take much effort to concentrate with all the silence around. With the novel in my hand, I forget that there is this thing called time warp which does a number on your brain and you lose the sense of time. So by the time I looked at my watch the little hand had traveled twice around the dial after it had stuck 12. Time for me to sleep. I woke up after what I felt was only 5 minutes. It was 4:30 am. Time warp thing again. The rest is history I'd love to forget. The whole day was spent nursing a dull headache and listening (my ear plugs were nowhere to be found even after a frantic search) to an all day classical music lesson marathon which one of my unkindly neighbors had taken up for their pastime (I guess they are into research and experimentation on waging some kind of musical warfare on humans just like one of those chemical warfare things) just on the day when I decide to work from home. And then the daily Sudoku in the newspaper which I tried went awry. This was followed by interviews with a couple of guys who felt (or knew) that they knew more than I did. Downright rude! How I hate such kinda guys! They had picked up a wrong day to mess with me. I rejected them with the same amount of ruthlessness as Lex Luthor would use to kill Superman. Rather unkind of me but I am allowed to throw some meanness back at the big bad world that's been hurled at me by it. The only bright (or should I say a least painful) thing that happened was the spectacular crashing of the Stock Market (seems to be a record of sorts and people are calling it the Black Monday). Right after the day I had invested in some stock with my hard earned money! The stock is now at 75% of the price at which I bought. Sweet. I guess I should just kick my late night novel reading habit and wake up well after the Sun rises. Hope that brings some sanity back to my life. Let me try at least. Sweet dreams. Tomorrow's another day.

Non sequitur: I found this nice poster while browsing some site (courtesy: http://in.rediff.com/). Though I don't look like that guy even by a long shot the pic's a near accurate description of how I felt the whole day today. Shoot those darned demons lurking anywhere around.

...........
Cause you had a bad day
You're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
...........
Excerpt from "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter

A Whiff of Class

Last night by sheer accident, while I was channel surfing on the TV, I came across a channel that was playing the movie "The Day of the Jackal". It felt nice watching an old classic. This is not the one that starred Bruce Willis, Sidney Poitier and Richard Gere. That one was horrible. This was the original that was shot in 1973. I had read the novel several times earlier on but never got a chance to see the movie. The book is one of my personal favorites and I always wondered how the movie would be like. Usually, as you all know, when you watch a movie thats based on a book, it won't be half as good. Case in point, "Da Vinci Code". I slept off by the time Tom Hanks got out of the Louvre with the pretty Ms. Tatou. Most of you who have read "Da Vinci Code" and also seen the movie will agree with me on this.

But surprise, surprise! I really liked "The Day of the Jackal". Though I wouldn't say that it was as great as the book, it certainly came close to it. The Director stuck to the details given in the book and never once took a diversion from the novel. The screenplay was excellent. What caught my eye was the editing. How one shot moved seamlessly into another so that sequence of events were being depicted from perspectives of both the protagonist as well as the assassin. Later when I checked the details of the movie in IMDB, I found out that the film had won the BAFTA award for Best Editing that year. Gave myself a pat on the back for my technical observation ;-) I won't go into the plot details as it is a thriller and if you want to see it, it would only ruin the fun. There was this whiff of class in each of the character. And the actors played the drama with understated panache. Uber cool. Those movies of the sixties and early seventies had their own charm and elegance. And before I forget, the cool Alfa Romeo the Jackal drives is nothing less than beautiful. I think the new Alfa 8C Competizione takes its design cues from this car. Pity they don't make cars like that anymore.

If you get a chance, do watch the film. That's my reco. A must watch, in my opinion.

Going Green - Nice link

A friend of mine sent a nice blog. If you are a Greenie like me then probably you will appreciate it:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Simple but effective way of telling things.

Fooled by a TV prank

It is certainly not funny when a prank you saw on TV happens to you or you assumed if it happened to you.

Sometime ago I had seen a TV prank which at that point I thought was outright funny. A guy is traveling in a car on a backroad in an Australian outback when he comes across a Traffic light right in the middle of nowhere and its on red. This is a straight road and there is no crossing. Added to this there is absolutely no traffic for miles. He waits patiently for a long time and when he loses his calm he tries to jump the signal. And the moment he crosses, a huge black patrol helicopter lands from nowhere and gives him a ticket. Before he can recover from the shock, a bunch of guys who were recording all this in a hidden camera come out and reveal that he's been tricked. They go on to explain that the traffic light, the helicopter, etc, were actually a set up. It felt quite funny too. Imagine a patrol chopper coming from nowhere to give you a ticket in the middle of nowhere because you could not wait forever for a red light to turn green in the middle of nowhere.

Speaking of which, almost a similar thing had happened to me and I nearly ran into trouble. While driving down on a side road from the famed Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, me and my friend came across a Stop Signal that never turned green for a long time. We waited and waited but the light would stubbornly stay red. Mind you this was not even a cross road or a crossing. It is a narrow single road with a Stop light right in the middle of nowhere. You see what I mean? Similar scenario to what I had described earlier. Just ahead of the traffic light the road turns a sharp right and it is a blind spot because the road runs right next to a mountain.

As we patiently waited for what we thought was forever, there was another car that came and sat with equal patience behind us for the light to turn green. I had narrated the traffic light prank to my friend only a few days earlier. Finally, we were almost certain that either this was the same joke now being played on us or that this light was broken. Why else would you need a traffic light on a road without a crossing? Thus thinking (like a bunch of smart alecs) that we were smart enough to put the prank back on the pranksters we started to roll forward. That's when the car behind us started to honk at us like mad. Usually, a car behind you honks if you don't move or they feel that you are getting in their way, right? But there are some rare (very rare) drivers who honk to warn you. We got the feeling that this guy was the latter. Otherwise, why would someone honk at us as soon as we were trying to get out of his way? So we stopped and backed up to start waiting again. Soon we realized, what the light was all about. This road which I mentioned took a right and went right through the mountain as a single-laned tunnel. At any given time traffic from only one direction can pass through this road. So once every 5 minutes, traffic is stopped on one side to let the traffic from other side flow. In our case there was no through traffic coming from the opposite direction when the light was red for us and hence our suspicion of this being a prank had become stronger. Since the road turned right immediately it was difficult to guess what was on the other side. Probably a chopper waiting for you to make a mistake. Thanks to the driver behind us, we avoided getting into trouble. We later had a good laugh about it but it still haunts me to think what'd have happened if we hadn't heeded to the guy who had alerted us.

Looking back, it felt funny the kind of things can get you into trouble. A silly TV prank playing on your mind! Nice.

Hardest thing to do in the world

What's the hardest thing you have ever done?

Express your feelings to a girl you had a crush on?
Waking up at 5 am to catch an early morning flight?
Go on a diet and lose weight?

For me I would say none of the above. The hardest thing for me would have been getting off the couch and hit the gym to start working out again. Yes, "again" because I start working out once in six months and give up within a week. Yea! Sigh! Its such a pain to make your body undergo such torture. When I put on weight, the only way I try to reduce is by trying to burn off all those calories by exercising. Yea, no shortcuts for me. But getting up to do all of this which needs to be done is so much of a pain!

I have put on an obvious amount of weight in the past few months. How do I know? My general meter for checking how fit I am is the Staircase Meter. If I am able to climb up 4 stories without panting then I'm in shape. Otherwise I guess I need to work out. In the recent past I was out of breath before I reached the 2nd story. Which meant I was awfully out of shape. I have a Plan B to counter this argument. That is the trouser fit check. I fall back on it in case I want to pretend that I'm ok even if I run out breath climbing stairs. If my 5 year old jeans fits then I'm ok. Otherwise, its otherwise. Which was the case again. The jeans did not fit. Time to get off the couch. Ouch!

The inertia of getting up from the couch and moving your muscles is enough to call it off. Eventually when you do overcome it, its an achievement to gloat about. And when you exercise for 45 minutes its like you've climbed Mt. Everest, without oxygen. But its the day two which is the most agonizing. Getting out of bed means, falling out of bed because the limbs go on a strike demanding more food and less work (its a mighty strong trade union, if you ask me). Its times like these that I fantasise a good massage. And its times like these I can relate to the agonies of heroes from MacLean's novels who have been shot, have been used as a punching bag and have been left for dead. You get to know about muscles that you never knew existed before. Every joint pains and every muscle aches. It is a cruel reminder that you're a weak mortal.

Forget the staircases, I'll take the elevator. Its faster. And who says that jeans should fit you everytime you wear them? Jeans is cotton and eventually they shrink. Yea right! If I believe in this baloney then its like closing my eyes and pretending that I'm invisible to everyone because I cannot see them.

So, I have been exercising for 4 days straight now and hope to continue it for sometime till results show. My shoulder is loosening up a bit and am able to get some movement into my limbs after all that initial resistance. My hamstrings are allowing me to walk (at least!) like a robot, for now. It was worse earlier. I hope its making some difference. Its such a hard thing to lose off fat in the wrong places that I'm making a New Year resolution of eating right and not to put on more weight. Go easy on food? Hardest thing for me to do in the world!

What it takes to be a Super Spy or "iSpy"

Its been quite an eventful month for me with work keeping me busy most of the time. By work I really mean some useful work. So whenever I got some free time, I tried to avoid turning on my laptop and used that time for chores such as spring cleaning the house, catching up on sports, reading books (the ones printed in ink on recycled paper) and so on. Sigh! its such a pain! spring cleaning, I mean.

While I was not cleaning and not working, I caught up on my reading. It has been a long time since I came across any good well-written novels concerning espionage and spy thrillers, which happens to my usual interest in fiction. Some of my favorite writers are Alistair MacLean, Colin Forbes, Frederick Forsythe and John Le Carre. The latest addition include some contemporary spy fiction by Daniel silva. Silva's novels follow the exploits of an Israeli spy by name Gabriel Allon. Gabriel hunts ex-Nazis and other enemies of the Promised Land. Cleverly written, the plots weave between facts and fiction and sometimes actual events form the basis of the storyline. While Gabriel is not hunting baddies or working for his boss in King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv, he works as a full-time art-restorer in Venice and restores renaissance masterpieces. Quite a feat!

This set me thinking. How can a person with one full-time profession have two full time occupations? Somedays, I can't have proper dinner considering the kind of time I spend on my single bread and butter job. The other thought that struck me at the same time was, if an art restorer can be a spy then why not a guy from any other profession? For instance why can't an accountant, or a doctor or for that matter a software engineer/consultant be a spy? After all, spying means gathering bits and pieces of information (a lot of bits and pieces), piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle, analysing that info and then coming to a conclusion as to where the bad guys are or what evil deed they are upto next. Other times you keep a silent watch on your enemies to stop them from striking you first. All this while, you also ensure that no one is watching you or planning to put you out of commission. I'm sure most of you will agree with me on this. So, what if I were to write a spy fiction and put a Software professional as the main character? Software engineering as the profession because that's the trade I know most about. Art-restoration is something I wouldn't venture into. I wouldn't be able to figure out which side is up for a Picasso.

But then again, if the character was a computer professional, the story wouldn't be half as exciting. For argument's sake, let's imagine a software consultant being a super spy character. Just imagine!

So I let my imagination fly and starting thinking about creating this great character. For starters, he would have all the necessary equipment and gear and go anywhere without raising anyone's suspicions. He'd always carry a laptop which would store loads of info and not a soul would raise an eyebrow. He could carry hi-tech gadgets like a PDA-cum-mobile or a Blackberry, an iPod, a digital camera, a case of CDs/DVDs, and the list goes on. He could conceal all the info as program code written in some high level language (Trust me, even a fellow software engineer cannot read a software engineer's code). No microfilms, concealed chips under the skin, etc., that would cause bad people to shoot at him. Everything he carries would be his normal tools of the trade. Nothing out of place in his profession so long as he does not carry a gun, or some other exotic gadget that could cause bodily harm.

His mundane job also takes him places. His passport is stamped with visits to countries all over the world. So no fake passports and legends. He could be seen in Paris today and Casablanca the next, because he had a "presentation" to give. No questions asked and no eyebrows raised.

For that matter, he can do any so called covert activity of exchanging classified material without even disguising himself and contacting shady informers, night club dancers, sleeper agents, document forgers or visiting dead letter-boxes. All he has to do is receive encrypted e-mail from anywhere in the world on his Blackberry. The riskiest thing he might do is carry out a surveillance on a bad guy using a spycam or webcam his contacts might have set at the baddies' place posing as hardware engineers. Logon to the webcam URL and watch the things unfold on the laptop, of course.

And while he is "onsite" as part of a consulting project, he can take pics on his digital camera, upload them to picasa, and email the URL to his "controller". No danger of someone trying to stop him (whatever maybe the cost) and grabbing hold of the negatives while he's in transit. Alternatively, he can post all this data in his SSL enabled website or blog with restricted access or simply write a blog. As someone mentioned, the best place to get lost for a person is in a crowd. With so many people like me getting online these days, the internet is getting crowded, and then some. So all the precious information he would collect would be securely "lost" and "found" as per convenience in an obscure website which he should be wise enough not to list in Google search. Which means, a perfect guy for the job with no high life insurance premium. And way too boring. James Bond would be out of job in a day considering the kind of expense reports he submits to his bosses. So would Maxwell Smart of "Get Smart" fame. And of course no collateral damages and no getting into the line of fire.

And yes, in case he wants his government's laser-guided bombs to decimate the baddies' place, all our man has to do is get onto Google Earth and locate the spot, mark it with 'X' and email the map. The aerial bombers can finish the rest of the job.

On normal days, that is, on days he's taken off spying, all my character would have to do is get online every morning, check his emails while brushing his teeth and probably play some games online while at the job (because his company pays his broadband bills) or chat online with a handle like "DaSupaSpy" (no one would give a 2nd thought about it). After a late breakfast, get back to his cover "work" and do some coding on his programs and assignments whenever he would feel like, munching on a bag of chips and downing liters of diet coke. All in a day's work for a digital world citizen.

Which makes me get back to my point. All the above stuff would make my plot a whole lot less exciting and very normal. No guns, no fast cars (ouch! that hurts), no pretty damsels-in-distress or no pretty damsels pretending to be damsels-in-distress, no deceptions, hidden secrets, double-crossing, no black tie events at the baddies' mansions where you can have a tongue-in-cheek verbal duel with the top baddie, no exotic places to travel to (yes, no Venice, no Monaco, no Udaipur, geez!) wearing designer wear and designer gear, no cutting down bad guys with specialized weapons, no tortures, and so on. Yawn!

Any editor worth his salt would kill the idea of a spy-cum-software-consultant even before I start on chapter one. Some ideas are so perfect that they are not meant to be. The thriller/spy fiction world will not miss an internet savvy hero. Pity.

While on the subject of spies, I spied upon this recently launched Airbus A380 double decker plane at Changi Airport last month. It does look bulky but it seems that its fabulous interior makes up for that extra girth. Here it is.

Holiday Shopping and Assassin's Creed breaks my heart

Time to celebrate! Its holiday season and its that time of the year when they release new games for PCs and Gaming consoles. So here I am to start my shopping with a wish list as long as the Santa's beard.

This year, I had a chance to get into the stores earlier than usual for my game shopping. Game shopping for me is what Oktoberfest is for Germans or any beer lover for that matter. So it seems to be for most of my gaming brethren. It was like a fest going on in the stores. Guitar Hero III seems to be the flavor of the season. Everyone queued up to play the demo setups in the stores. It indeed is a nice game with cool guitar like controls. Without a doubt, anyone would like it. No wonder everyone's shopping cart is filled with guitars (I mean game controls, fake but nevertheless).

Crysis was another game that was getting a lot of attention. Seems to be a good FPS. I must say that FPS games have come a long way since Quake or Doom. Halo 3 was also going strong. But I am not into FPS gaming. So I'd skip them anyday.

The one game I was looking forward to was "Assassin's Creed". And it was disappointing to find that the game was released only on XBox 360 and PS3. All I have is a wii and its not released for this platform. And the PC version is yet to be released, which I'm sure will not play on my antique desktop. Sux! After Prince of Persia series, this was one game I felt which had great artwork. And as the writers said, the environment was "Organic" which means that you can interact with non-play characters or at least there is an affect if you mess with NPCs. I just hope they release it on wii too :"(. Hope Santa listens to my prayers. I have been a good boy this year and even if I did slip up, I will make it up in the next. Santa puh-leeze!

Where does Mr. Bean get these funny ideas from?

I had taken a hiatus from blogging after someone reminded me that I was being verbose to the point of being ver"bore". Well, then this blog's not for them. Anyways, its one of those weeks again where I ended up traveling some miles. Quite a few miles that is. While doing so, I watched trailers of Mr. Bean's holiday which triggered me to think "where does this man get his darn funny ideas from?" Rowan Atkinson, for that matter, is a very serious individual. I realized that there was someone feeding him ideas. Later, I felt very pained to realize who it was. Me!!

I admit that I am a grumpy traveler. I'm surely not one of those lonely planet traveler kinda guys/gals who just keep smiling and narrating stuff to the camera even if the headhunters of Borneo are about to put them into a boiling cauldron to cook and eat them. And besides being grumpy I'm a perfect klutz. I never travel light, which means I never travel right. Over and above that, I shop while I travel. That's like a snowball collecting snow as it rolls downhill. Recipe for disaster. And then I create enough trouble for my fellow passengers whenever and wherever I can. So if you find me seated next to you, beware! Reminds of that episode in Seinfeld where Elaine's stuck in the coach class. So getting the idea? Mr. Bean, I mean?

The purpose of my travel was to attend one of those meetings where people come dressed up in perfectly cut business suits (no matter what the weather is) and have blackberries (or is it Blackberrys?) glued to their palms and ears. Unnerving. First of all, I don't dress like them because I don't like dressing like them. And I don't have a blackberry (that's because I can't afford it. And most of the emails I get are hate mails which I don't bother to reply, not that it matters). So imagine sitting in such a meeting with an open collar shirt and a sportcoat and no blackberry. Exactly. Embarrassing. You'd stand out like a cranberry, in a bunch of blackberrys. Verry verry un-berry like (bad pun but good rhyme. I'm tired of saying "sticking out like a sore thumb"). Anyways, it didn't end there. The meeting starts and as it is progressing, I end up finding that I have a nice little coffee stain on my sparkling white oxford shirt. What do I do? Being a guy given to his impulses, naturally, I start to rub it off with a tissue. I get so busy with this impromptu laundry that it takes me a while to realize that there is a dip in the conversation around me. I lift my head and see that everyone's staring at me or rather what I was doing to the stain. Seems that while I was busy, someone had directed a question at me. So now, I don't know the question, which implies that I don't know what to answer. Nice. I'd rather be joining those Borneo headhunters in their dinner ritual dance. You see where I'm getting at? Uh-huh. Mr. Bean again. And then, my mobile starts to ring. Earlier on, I was experimenting with the ringtones and had set the phone to play "Jingle bells" for incoming calls (purely a simple mistake. No relation to XMas). Speaking of which, I had forgotten to put the phone in silent mode. I'm sure Xmas came early for some this year but I'm also sure that I'll be left out of my boss's Xmas list. I'm glad that I still have my job. I don't know how much pain Detective Clouseau (of Pink Panther series fame) caused to his boss but mine sure looked like that he had shot himself in the foot by inviting me to that high level meeting. Note to self. Never ever clean your shirt while your phone plays jingle bells in a business meeting. And if you have a coffee stain on your sparkling white oxford, let it be. If you rub it, it just starts to spread like plague all over the white shirt.

So all said and done, I'm seriously considering to enroll myself as a writer to the Mr. Bean series. With the kind of things I get into, I won't run out of ideas for a long time. Might as well make some money out of being a dufus. Are you reading this, Mr. Atkinson?

Instant fame? Here cometh the comet 17P/Holmes

Its another full moon night which means the astrowolf in me has woken up and is baying for some night-sky watching. Actually, a full moon night is not a good time to watch the skies, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Added to this, the place I where stay has enough light pollution to discourage even the most ardent sky-watchers from looking up towards the heavens. I end up seeing a orange glow till late into the night. But there was some news this week that was positive enough to get my binoculars out.

A comet by name 17P/Holmes changed from a magnitude 17 to a magnitude 2 celestial object in a short span of a week. A quite unheard of phenomena in astronomy. So what's this magnitude thing? This is actually the scale of brightness based on which the stars and other sky objects are classified. The smaller the value of the magnitude the more the brightness. For example, the magnitude of our Sun is -26.7 and that of the moon is -12.7. Sirius or the Dog Star has a magnitude of -1.4. You get the point. In this case the brightening was enhanced by almost 400,000 times.

Astronomers are still pondering about this. Why should a comet that was faintly visible through a telescope suddenly brighten up so much that it could be seen with a naked eye? And with a pair of binoculars one could make out its tail and coma. Well, I am no scientist but I have an explanation for this. Its the 15-minute to fame thing. In a sky full of twinkling stars and other bright objects how can any John Star or John Comet make any place for itself? By becoming famous, of course. And how does one become famous? Through a lot of publicity in the right way (or sometimes the wrong way, too). Instant fame, that's the name of the game. Glitter in everyone's eyes. So Mr. 17P/Holmes who was just another Mr. 17P slash Holmes till last week, got tired of it and started to put some efforts into brightening up till he started got into everyone's eyes. But now everyone is talking about "the" 17P/Holmes. Quite an achievement, this. Mission accomplished. Maybe the comet took out a leaf from our earthlings' TV reality shows. Now everyone's talking about you till the time someone else upsets your applecart. I'd say one opportunity can be your ticket to fame. One missed opportunity means, wait for the next bus.

Putting my argument and speculation aside, if you have a chance, do watch the comet. Its visible in the skies even in areas where the light pollution is considerable. Its visible (Pic courtesy: Shigemi Numazawa) in the Perseus constellation a little left above Mars.

When its Amway, I'm away: Selling it to the wrong guy

The nine-days (or rather the nine-nights) of festival came to an end on a high note for me. It was fun to watch how different people celebrated it and how everyone had a time of their life. It was definitely much better than how it went for me last time (I was away working).

The only thing that left a bitter taste in my mouth though was a phone call that had me real fuming at the end of it. I am sure you might have heard of this multi-level marketing thing that's happening all across the globe. Yea, the same thing where you enroll yourself as a node and then evangelise the usage of that company's products to people who eventually become your nodes, pyramids, etc. Finally, you end up becoming some sort of a gem or metal (emerald, platinum, etc.) based on the number of people who are below you. This call was from one such aspiring gem (or metal).

People have to realize that not everyone has got the subtle art of sweet talking others into doing things which otherwise they wouldn't have dreamt of. In other words selling off things which the buyer would find no use of. I, for one, don't have this so called soft-skill. So why convince me to convince others? I get this call from this sweet voiced lady telling me about how to become a millionaire and eventually quit my present job. Perfect. What else would I love to do? But for me, since neither do I have a pleasing personality nor do I have a way with people (I've got the social skills and charisma rivaling only to that of a neanderthal to say the least) this is not my kinda job. I simply don't belong to that club of elite people who can make zillions by convincing ordinary folks into joining the organization and ask them keep using products which they don't want to.

I remember, a few months back, one of my friend who really went out of the way to be nice with me (he treated me out in a Malay restaurant on my birthday) and then cornered me into a situation (I sometimes cannot use the word "No" even if I am desperate.) where I had no choice but to attend a convention of like-minded individuals who belonged to such similar organization. He was gracious enough to give me a lift to the convention center. I entered this huge room in jeans and beach sandals only to find people dressed up to their neck in business formals. It was like being fully clothed on a nude beach. Trouble. I also heard a few sniggers from those business formals. Totally un-business formals like, I must say. And then I am asked to take a very uncomfortable chair right next to a lady who's cheering and clapping on everything the guy on the podium was talking about. So my cue was: clap when the lady claps and pretend as if you are listening, even if you are not. It was one of those tortuous 2.5 hours which tested my patience to the limit and then some. And all the while I was sticking out like a sore thumb. Unforgettable. The speaker was good, damn good, but I was simply disinterested and indifferent. Once the speeches and presentations were over, I had the "privilege" of meeting some of these individuals in Armanis and Men's Wearhouses. Everytime I met someone, I was invited to this even larger convention that would be held someplace else. I must say, to my own amazement, everytime I got invited, I managed to wriggle out of it. Everytime. I guess these presentations were actually helping me improve my soft skills. I was mastering the art of saying "No".

All this is not new to me. I have had invites and being cornered into such meetings and conventions at least half a dozen times in as many years. It seems to be a popular pastime for people with whom I interact in my line of work. I haven't been able to come out convinced at any point in time. Goes to prove that its just not my cup of tea.

So, in future, if someone comes to me selling Amway or whatever, it'll be time for me to pack my bags and head in the opposite direction. Good luck to all of you who have joined, and who'd like to join, but take my word for it I'm not your man. I'm a self-confessed social retard and for this crime, when I retire, I would try to live off what little I end up saving instead of regretting the lost opportunities you so nicely presented to me. And yes, I have read that amazing book "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie. It never worked (for me). I lose more friends than I make (social retard, remember?). So leggo of me.

From an am to a pro.. To Wii or not to Wii

Finally! After several agonizing but entertaining man hours (not to mention 3 days of sprained lower back) and several dead batteries later, I was able to achieve the status of a pro in tennis yesterday. In case you are wondering what I mean by dead batteries and a pro status, let me explain. I am talking about Wii Tennis on the Nintendo Wii. My Wii fitness age has also come down. Another super achievement. From a senile 64 (I didn't know that I was in such a bad physical shape. Scary!) to an amazing 32. I hope I can make it to 21 soon. The sprained back which I mentioned earlier was due to the fact that I tried some of those forehand shots with full vigor as if I was playing against Nadal. My fault completely. And another reason could have been that my back muscles never had to work this much ever. But that aside, the hours of fun the Wii's provided is almost the same as my other favorite, Railroad Tycoon 3. Super console.

Its been one whole month since I had this toy with me and I am not bored of it till date. That in itself speaks of volumes about this console. Usually, my attention span for anything that's new does not usually go beyond 2 hours starting from the time of purchase. At the time when I bought this game from Best Buy, I was not very sure about my decision and I was still wondering which one I should invest in. The choice was between XBox 360 or Nintendo Wii in that order. The PS3 was simply out of my budget. I had almost picked up the XBox. But the Wii was looking interesting from the reviews I had read. Also since I was moving (I was shopping while almost on my way to the airport), it was a less bulkier box to pick. The guy at the counter also promised that it would be money well spent on the Wii. If not I could always return it. But he was sure that I was not gonna return it. So I went ahead and bought it (patting myself that for the first time in my life I had bought something that had not crossed my budget). He was right. I'm not gonna return it. Money well spent. Every hour of Wii has been extremely rewarding. The Nunchuk remote is cool too! And I needn't vouch for it. Other gaming officionados have written pages and pages about it. I don't want to add any further.

So if you have a limited budget and you are not into gaming consoles like I am (I mean if you are not a hardcore gaming fan) and not an outdoor sportsperson like I am, nor an extrovert like I am, then I guess its the Wii for you. Trust me, everyone in your family will love it and you might have a hard time getting your hands on the Wii remote. Wii have come to play :)

Driving the point home vs. driving at home

Looks like the boffins of the McLaren Mercedes F1 Team read my blog last week. And may have been mighty upset with my views about F1 racing. Or it might be just sheer coincidence. Considering the number of people who read my blog (the count is 3 as of last time I checked, I, me and myself.) I think it might have been the latter. I switch on the TV and what do I see? McLaren team came up with a footage which compared a roadcar (Merc C-Class), a souped up roadcar (an AMG modified C-Class), a rally car (yet another Merc) and an F1 car to actually show how an F1 car is different from the normal cars we drive. The road car was driven by a lady who's a professional driver, the souped up version of the roadcar by the same guy who drives the safety car in front of the F1s when the safety flag is up. The rally car was driven by a professional race driver. Of course the F1 car was to be driven by Fernando Alonso. And the venue was the Silverstone Racetrack. The home of the McLaren. Did I mention that all the cars were either Mercedes or McLaren Mercedes or AMGs? Naturally! Top of the line in their categories. So what was the end result? The F1 car won the race by a full 15 seconds. This after starting a full 30 seconds after the first car drove off and then taking the mandatory pit stop too while the other drivers were sweating it out among themselves. The roadcar was beaten by a full 48 seconds. Awesome! And to drive the point home (on second thoughts, I think they did read my blog), Mr. Alonso said that sometimes people don't get the idea as to how powerful an F1 car is. Point noted, Mr. Alonso, with due apologies. My bad. F1 is serious racing and not just driving in circles. And if I had been one of the drivers, I'd have arrived at the finish line just about the time these drivers would be having their dessert after having a 3-course meal. After finishing the race, of course. Slowpoke.

Well, being a slowpoke is the order of the day here. Let me give an example. I commute to work by car. The total distance one way is 11 kilometers. Now on a normal work day, if I start at around 8:30 am, the average time I take to travel these 11 km is 35 minutes. Doing some math based on my school Physics formula which says speed is equal to the distance upon time, this works out to an average speed of just about 19 kmph. No, don't get me wrong. I'm not driving a 1940 vintage which has a habit of breaking down, its just that I'm driving in a city where the smallest of errand can turn out to be a massive exercise in patience and self-control. Its also a great memory class on how to cope up with bumper to bumper traffic at every red light without forgetting where you wanted to go in the first place. The traffic's unreal! There's a joke here that we are supposed to be wearing the seatbelts (mandatory as per the law) just in case someone dings your car or you bump into someone, your seatbelt will keep you tied down in the car and you won't get out stark raving mad and chase the perpetrator of the evil deed with a carjack or some such lethal weapon. Safety restraint system (SRS). So imagining myself performing well on a test track is a bit far-fetched. I wish I knew how to ride a bike. I could weave in and out of traffic just like that if I did ride a bike. My average speed might come upto 25 kmph. That's lightning speed for me. Unfortunately, that's one art I could never ever master. Maybe some day.

Ah! Here's October. Time to think.

Another month comes in bringing the thought that 2007 is passing by. Time flew for me this year. Lots of things happened during this time and they've left me with mixed feelings but richer in experience. After 3 years of hard work and not so much fun, I left my previous job and got into a new one. And ever since then, things have happened at such a breakneck speed that it took me a while to realize that I need to slow down and think. Yea, 'think'. That's an effort for me. Using my gray cells. But just as couch potatoes need some physical activity once in a while, so do people like me who treasure their brains and never use them. I need to jog it mentally once in a while.

So as a starting point, I picked up this book of puzzles published by Mensa. And that was the mistake I committed. It was the mental equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest in my regular Sunday gym gear (which consists of a track suit and a pair of sports shoes both of which I have never ever used for the purpose they were bought). It was devastating. The puzzles remained puzzles. And to be honest, when I tried to cheat, the solutions in the last page were incomprehensible too. Doh! Homer Simpson would be proud of me.

But I did not lose heart. I picked up my daily newspaper and started to do the daily crossword. Another big mistake. I pride myself to be an acrostics enthusiast but I hadn't tried one in ages. I am now eagerly waiting for tomorrow's paper for the crossword's solution. I am clueless and I haven't filled even a single cell.

Now I need to figure out where to start. Probably I should start where it all started. Right about the time when I got this silly thought that I need to slow down and start using my grey (or is it gray) cells. I should just stop thinking about it. In fact I should stop thinking. I will just watch the Formula I Shanghai Grand Prix where the cars will just keep going in circles till the time someone feels enough is enough and waves a flag (a flag that reminds me of a crossword. Aargh!) to say the race is over and some chap is declared a winner. Well, as the last year's champ Fernando Alonso commented, even the winners are declared off the track. So what's the use of watching the race to see who wins? Non sequitur. Logically speaking its highly illogical. I will just go to sleep. Now that's a good thought! Looks like my head's not lost its edge after all. Before I close, a change of topic. Check out the lines of the new Infiniti Q37 coupe. Jeez! whattacar! Cool design. The caption says "Intensity captured. Patience rewarded". Nice.

If I owned a 599 GTB Fiorano

Redhead that breathes fire. From Testarossa to Fiorano. Ferrari's been coming up with new breed of thoroughbreds from its stables year on year. Just saw one on TV. The 599 Gran Turismo Berlinetta Fiorano or simply the 599 GTB Fiorano. So why am I writing about it? Am I an auto journo? Nope. Have I ever driven one of these? Nope. Have I ever even seen one in flesh? About some years back when I had been to Sydney, Australia, I had seen the F360 Maranello in an auto expo (see the pic). That's when I saw a Ferrari in flesh and blood for the first time. But what about 599 GTB? Umm.. nope. So why waste my time on it? I don't know. Ever since I got my Mattel 1:18 scale model of the legendary Lamborghini Countach (I've never seen a car like that since), I started following cars. Mind you, those were the days when there were no good and affordable car mags in India. With my meagre pocket money, I could not even afford those cool posters in Archie's. For a long time, my schoolmates used to think that Ferrari and Lamborghini were names invented by my imagination. No kidding.

I like cars. Period. People have given me names which were not so flattering behind my back for being a car nut. But then that's part of growing up. Their growing up, I mean. Anyways, for a car nut I'm a pretty lousy driver. My driving skills swerve from ultra careful to a downright angry road-rager which causes me to do silly things. I'm trying to downplay the road rage part these days. I did talk about how to avoid road rage previously in one of my posts about coming back home. One day, if I end up owning a car that is now just a poster in my room, for real, then I'll have to be careful not to ding it. So bye-bye road rage.

Back to where I was. Truth be told, I might never ever drive a super car and might not even know how its insides look like, but from what little I've seen of the Fiorano, it is a work of art and then some. Every handbuilt piece really stands out in flamboyance that is typical of anything Italian. And it has a mighty heart (and brains), which is a 6 liter (5999 cc) engine. Huge. Massive. For a berlinetta, I mean a two-seater. Nice. Well, that's exactly why its a supercar and is so mighty exclusive. The more I read about it, the more I like it. Can't imagine what'd happen if I saw it for real. Probably, I'll go on a bank-robbing spree till I get enough hard cash to book one or get booked by the Policia in the process. I will certainly think up of something. Probably, I would form a team of suave heistmeisters a la Danny Ocean (of the Ocean's Eleven fame) and rob some Casinos. Probably.

But what would I do if I actually had enough to buy one and actually bought one? Tough question (I'm finding my own questions difficult to answer today. Strange but not unusual. I normally didn't have answers to the Math quizzes I used to take in school and college.). Would I drive one right out of the Fiorano test track? I would. But only after my hands stopped shaking. That would take one whole hour to happen. And in the meantime, if didn't drop the keys in my excitement (hope it comes with a wallet key option), I certainly would. Butterfingers! And then once I finally drove it home to its humongous garage (here, I'm stretching my imagination. A guy who can buy a car like that should have a humongous garage.) in a chateau in France, I'd pull a chair and sit beside it and watch the beauty for a long long time. Einstein explained his Theory of relativity like this: spend hours of time chatting with a beautiful girl and it'd be like time flew and you'd be left wondering where all that time went. However, spend time with something you are least interested in and even seconds would seem like hours. In my case, those hours in the garage would be the Einstein's example of the one with the beautiful girl. I'd fly the best gas/petrol from wherever they make the best gas/petrol and use it. I'd buy the best coolant and engine oil in the world for those 12 cylinders. I've heard that there's this guy who charges 5000 pound sterling (per wash) for washing cars and he does only supercars for rich clientele. I'd hire him to clean mine. What else? Oh yes! once a month when the weather's right and the roads were driveable (which is between 1 am and 4 am here) I'd wake up in the middle of the night and take it out for a spin. Or once every summer I would fly it out to Nurburgring and drive round the track a dozen times, each and every day of that summer. Or I'd ship it in my 90-foot custom yacht (another small stretch of my imagination) to Monaco and go for a drive in the Alps around the Principality's Casino Royale. Well, that's what life in the fast lane's all about. And once every year when Scuderia Ferrari came up with a new model, I'd reserve one for my stables. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams. Sigh! But one thing's for sure, if I owned a car like that, I wouldn't be writing this post. I simply wouldn't have the time to sit on my futon and type away my imagination. Enough.

Ever since the Renaissance happened, Italians have become highly expressive about their art and engineering (and of course, football). Good for them. And good for us. All those supercars they make let you dream about your career. With just a simple dream to own one, you end up working that much harder (I don't know if its working in my case). Otherwise, questions like "What makes me get up and go to work everyday?" plague me every now and then. And every now and then I get this vision and the answer flashes, "Son, for the very reason that some day you've gotta own one of those beauties. Or maybe several of them." Some day. That's gonna be One mighty fine day.

Using wrong proverbs at the right time

Lots of times as a part of my job, I need to make decisions right on the spot. Think on my feet. Though these are not the kind of decisions that'd change the world or have an earthshattering impact, they're quick decisions nevertheless. And I need to back them up after they're made. Otherwise they'd be just barefaced lies. So in such cases should I think about the proverb, "Think twice before you leap"? I don't know. I did try it once but then people felt that I was dragging my feet.

Another proverb which I constantly find myself at loggerheads is "Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread." Come on! Isn't there something that goes like "Nothing ventured, nothing dared, nothing gained"? So should I go where no man has gone before or be a wise man and keep my feet on dry terra firma? Well, then, the world be a lot less exciting.

So what about "Slow and steady wins the race"? One thing I can always claim for sure in my short life is that I'm steady. And supremely slow. But these are the exact things which made sure that I never won any races. Right from the time when I used to participate in school athletics. I used to get disqualified in the selections itself. Our Physical Training instructor once told me, "son, if you have a choice between running for your life or surrendering, don't even think twice. Just surrender. Will save everyone a lot of time. Which would be approximately 5 seconds. You won't cover a yard before you'll be outpaced." So should I still believe in this proverb?

"Speech is silver, silence is golden." Of course. But not when I'm standing on a podium and a hundred pair of eyes are focussed on me expecting me to speak. Lots of times, I had never been able to score in interviews (in the earlier part of my career days) because I used to lose my voice, and my mind. So I used to end up being mum or just speak gibberish. Neither helped. That's when I decided to opt for the silver club. Its been paying me rich dividends unlike silence. I'm yet to see gold in it.

So where does that leave me? Confused and totally out of focus. I need to re-visit Aesop's fables and see where I stand. Or probably Aesop's fables might have to be re-edited so that dumb crumbs like me don't fall for them. Anybody tried it?

Of course one proverb/saying I'd always swear by is "A picture is worth a thousand words." A thousand unspoken, unthought words. And yes, another one, "Well begun is half done." Heh heh. Since this article was not well begun, its pretty much... done. So till next time..

Rains everywhere...

What a season! Rains flooding this part of the world and people once again complaining that the administration is being ignorant/clueless about it. Not so long ago the very region that was supposed to have the scantiest rainfall next only to the Thar region is now inundated with water and its predicted to rain till December. Another strange phenomena. Usually rains dwindle down by September end or October beginning. Global Warming, I suppose. People are clueless. Isn’t administration also comprising of the same people? No wonder they’re clueless too if I may use the induction logic.

And the Electricity Department which always complains that it can only give so much power because the hydroelectric plants are shut down (due to lack of water levels in the reservoirs) cut the power the moment there’s a hint of rain. Reason? Falling wires might be a hazard. Agreed. Last known, the hydroelectric plants are still shut down due to maintenance. They had not foreseen such rainfall and so had left the turbines and other machinery to rust. Now since its raining heavens, they have started to work on these power generators and plan to generate some extra electricity. Hope they start before the rain stops.

Well, while all this is going on and we get bombarded by images of widescale flooding on TV, things seem to take a down turn for me. Rains excite me and also depress me. The starting of the rainy season is always exciting. I missed it this time. But I haven’t missed rain much after I returned. It just continues to drizzle at least for half hour everyday. Depressing. The roads are bad enough to drive. Depressing. You would require an off-roader to drive through them because there are no roads. Depressing. There is a spread of diseases everywhere and I can’t eat on the roadside stalls anymore. Yea, yea, depressing. What a pity! Wish we could do something about it. I can’t control rainfall but at least I could ask the people who tax me build better roads. Why can’t roads be built that can last for some years? Why do they have to be dug up every few days? Don’t think I’m asking these questions like a moron who doesn’t know anything about roads or road construction. I’m a Civil Engineer by qualification and I had specialized in Transportation Engineering. And I have seen other countries where the climate is harsher but the roads are just lovely to drive on no matter what the season is. As a concerned citizen can I do something more than question the government or cuss the government for not doing anything? That’d be mocking my own inability and cussing myself. The government’s been elected by democracy and I was a part of this democratic system. So I guess I should stay put at home and keep checking my mail and add to my blog or keep reading back issues of Top Gear which I had missed while I was away. At least the cars look nice in pics. Which reminds me. I should get my car serviced. Poor thing, it has had a tough time with all my driving in the potholed roads. I’m sure its gonna cry one day and plead for mercy.

Ah! Rains! You’ve overstayed your welcome. You’d been late this year like any true Indian. But make sure you’re on time next year. Ciao.

Highway to the Danger Zone

Have you heard the song Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins? It goes something like this:

Revvin' up your engine Listen to her howlin' roar
Metal under tension Beggin' you to touch and go
Highway to the Danger Zone
Ride into the Danger Zone
Headin' into twilight Spreadin' out her wings tonight
She got you jumpin' off the track
And shovin' into overdrive Highway to the Danger Zone
I'll take you Right into the Danger Zone

Its nice to be back in your hometown. For better or for worse. Since the last time I was here, the traffic’s just got a little bit more stressful. The rainy season’s here which means that the roads will be more tough to ply through. That adds to the stress. Probably, it’s the same for everyone. So how do you vent out your stress on the road?

Let me think of some things I keep trying out:

* Don’t give way to others and revel in the small victory you’ve just achieved. Now the other guy will be stressed out, shouting out his lungs at you. See? Its simple. And terribly contagious. I try not to do this but I end up doing it one out of five times.

* Keep chatting with someone beside you. So that the conversation will absorb the stress off you. If you have a pretty face sitting right next to you, wow! that’ll be an added bonus. But of course, there is every chance of getting distracted. Traffic hazard. So try at your own risk.

* Never glare at someone if he makes you shift to a lower gear or makes your car come to a grinding halt. Just grin and bear and listen to a music that you’re gonna karaoke with.. It works wonders.. Wear shades to cover those ugly glares.

* Use cuss words if you’re alone.. But make sure you’ve your windows rolled up. People have been killed for lesser crimes.

* Pedestrians can cross the road anywhere. So just make sure that you’ve your eyes peeled for them.

* Try to avoid on mobile yakking. It helps. One hand on the steering, the other on gearstick and the mobile cradled on your shoulder and chin.. Trouble. Nay. Recipe for disaster.

* Don’t stare at the back of a girl riding a two-wheeler. Nope.. no siree.. might be a sight for sore eyes but could cause enough grief later.

* Teenagers have the right to act as Vin Diesel in “The fast and the furious”. So you better be Paul Walker and use your nitro sparingly. No point in getting jailed when you’re an undercover cop. Vin Diesel was cool but Paul Walker was cooler.. and he got the chick too.

* If someone scrapes your car, that’s your fault because you entered the traffic at your own risk. The cops are not gonna help. They’re just overworked and underpaid and see these things everyday. So, better get your insurance out rather than foulmouth the guy.

* Drive a small car. Size matters. The smaller the better. See how cute the iPod shuffle and Nano are no matter how nice the regular iPod looks. You like your mobile to be lightweight, your iPod to be light so why need a big and heavy car?
Well that’s how it is.. and of course, avoid getting onto the streets if you can. It’s a dangerous world out there.

So, its nice to be back home. Provided you don’t venture into those danger zones. If you've got something to add, you're welcome to do so.

Highway to the Danger Zone
Ride into the Danger Zone, Danger Zone, Danger Zone..

Till next time..

Back home…

After being away for 3 months, I’m back home. Whew! What a journey it was. And no stewardesses sharing their troubles with me in Changi. Well, who cares! Its nice to be back. Home sweet home. But it was a tough thing to overcome the jet lag. For some strange reason, I sleep early and get up early now. My biological clock has to be reset just like my Omega Constellation (hmm.. who am I kidding?.. its actually a Timex bought on a Thanksgiving Day sale). And I didn’t have any lost baggage issue like some other passengers did. That’s pure luck. The Airlines was nice enough to help them out. So all in all my flight was uneventful. But it was raining when I stepped out of the airport. Puddles of rainwater everywhere. Welcome back.

But its been fun since I returned. I had picked up the cool Nintendo Wii on my way to the airport and man! was it worth every cent I spent! The games are so cool.. This is the first gaming console I had and I just love it. And the great thing is that you get some exercise while playing it. At least it seems so. My hand still hurts after that brutal tennis game I played. Need to pick up some gentler game like Wii Golf.

Sum total: Wii’s a winner. So one thing off my wish list.

And miles to fly...

I wish it were just another normal Sunday I woke upto. The moment my dream broke and I opened my eyes, I saw myself sitting in this cramped seat with a constant hum that bordered on a drone around me. There was a dim light coming from somewhere and it was hurting my eyes. Was I in one of those famous interrogation chambers behind the Iron Curtain that I used to read about in those cold war thrillers a long time back? I certainly am not a super secret spy, no sir, not even in my dreams. And I don’t look like one so that the secret police will book me and haul me into such a terrifying place. And my imagination is not that great. I blinked and it took me a moment to realize that I was in an aircraft that was doing the night-time crossing of the Pacific. No wonder, I had such thoughts crossing my simple mind. Anyone who’s traveled economy class in an international trip will know how difficult it is to sleep in the aircraft and how extra difficult it is to keep oneself charged-on to catch the connecting flight. Probably, its always the destination that keeps you ticking till the time you finally arrive. Especially, when you’re heading home after a long time. The odd hours of boarding, departures, in-flight meals, the long waits for the connections, the extra rigid security checks, etc., become a killjoy for such travels. And I’m enduring one of them now. And that too right after my packing fiasco which I had mentioned earlier on. The airline I’ve been condemned to travel is Singapore Air. Mind you, it’s a good airline to travel with. But no matter how good an airline is, the only way to travel is either First-Class or Business Class for such long journeys. Any other class lower than those is sheer punishment. Reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Elaine gets to travel in economy while Jerry gets an upgrade and gets to travel in the Business Class where he he has a seat right next to this blonde leggy model. I was in Elaine’s position, not Jerry’s. Not even remotely.

So, here I am stuck at Changi Int’l airport (that world famous airport of Singapore) for the next 7 hours after traveling 16 hours non-stop sitting in a middle seat of the economy class (see above, in case you missed). One positive thing though was that the seat was next to the emergency exit. So I could stretch my legs without bumping my knees into the back of the passenger seat in front of me. Oh! And yes, another positive thing that I almost forgot to mention. The cabin crew jumpseats were bang opposite my aisle. Just before landing or taking off, a couple of young and pretty stewardesses in those pretty sarong kinda attires used to come and buckle themselves up in these seats and would try to look everywhere but at me. My pleasure. I could stare at them unabashedly without being noticed and I did so. For all practical purposes I was invisible to them. I could have made faces at them and they wouldn’t have even blinked. Hollow Man. C’est la vie. You need to make out the best out of any situation. They sure were a sight for my tired, sleepy and very sore pair of eyes. And I certainly was not for them, from their point of view. Note to self. Ask out an airline stewardess for a date sometime. You will get access to some pretty (no pun intended) company. I never can fathom how they can remain fresh as a daisy even after such long flights and that too after tirelessly helping a never-happy, unendingly dissatisfied bunch of passengers. My sincere compliments to them. Probably it’s the make-up. Anyways, while I was not having the pleasure of their company (3 minutes before take-off and 3 minutes before landing, overall a measly 12 minutes in a 16 hour flight), I tried to sleep most of the stretch so that I can avoid the jet lag. Trust me, it’s a difficult thing to do when there’s a 6-month old infant in the next aisle, who for every 10-second interval realizes that this is not her home and the only way she expresses her displeasure is by crying out hoarse. As I said, the next connection is after 7 hours. This will be a 5-hour long flight before I finally can say that I reached home. I just hope I get the same kinda seat. Minus the infant.

Meanwhile, what do I get to do during this time? I will be roaming around the duty free shops in the intransit lounge like Tom Hanks did in The Terminal. Beautiful movie, wasn't it? Made more beautiful for me by the very charming Ms. Catherine Zeta-Jones as a stewardess having a rough patch in her life. Hope a stewardess like that finds my company interesting in these 7 hours. Yea, right! Wishful thinking. Thankfully, Changi’s a good airport to walk around. I’d say its like walking in a decent shopping mall provided you are just window shopping. Also thanks to the free Internet lounge I get to spend some time writing, editing, revising and then re-writing, re-editing, re-revising and then finally publishing this new entry in my blog. This will take care of the next 15 mins. After that, what? Look out for some pretty faces, I suppose, as I walk around the terminal. Changi, here I come.

How do you drink a $75.00 per lb. Tea?

Carefully. Very carefully. If I had my hands on it then I’d dry the tea leaves after use to re-use them. But then that’s me. I am a type of guy who tries to preserve his dead presidents like the way the ancient Egyptians preserved (mummified) their dead pharaohs for eternity.

One of my colleagues orders this exotic tea from China which costs her a fortune per pack. Around $75.00 per pound. And to flaunt the exclusivity, the tea bag displays your name stating, “Lydia’s Tea prepared by so and so.”, that is, if your name is Lydia. What’s so special about this tea? For starters, if you put your hands in the bag and try to pick one of the tea leaves, you won’t get a usual burnt, processed and a very delicate strand of tea leaf. Instead, you’ll get a ball that looks more like a pepper seed than a tea leaf. To top it all the ball smells more like a flower and less like tea. In this case, a jasmine flower. For a guy who thinks who knows his tea, this was mighty strange. My patient colleague explained that this is a handrolled tea leaf ball which covers a seed of jasmine. I've heard of handrolled Cuban cigars but handrolled tea leaves? Whoa! that stretching things a bit too far! Why? So that the tea will have an additional fragrance of jasmine. So when you put a teaspoon of this tea in hot water you will not just smell the tea but also the fragrance of jasmine. Which means that while drinking tea you can also think of a pretty girl. Which means that if you have cold, better keep the tea bag sealed. And the tea if it has to be sipped (and not just smelled), should be drunk with hot water (optimum temperature unknown at the time of writing this article...) without any sugar or milk. Any impurity (such as milk or sugar) spoils the delicate flavor. Any tea which does not have lots of milk and lots of sugar spoils my taste. That’s one more good excuse for me to keep away from it. Anyways, it seems that they can prepare this special bag of tea in almost all the natural flavors available and while shipping, put your name (like the engraving on iPods, I suppose) on the tea bag. Amazing. So how would I drink this tea? I suppose I wouldn’t. I’d stay away from it. Or I'd steal the tea bag from a discerning tea drinker and demand a king's ransom in exchange. I value my dead presidents.

P.S. Tea connoisseurs, yes, you can order this tea on the internet.

A fitting finale..

What an end to a long weekend it was..!! I was looking forward to a nice, quiet and a lazy Monday to relax from all that cleaning. That is when I get this voicemail from my friend on Sunday evening inviting me to come to his alma mater at San Luis Obispo. And to do that, I had to cancel a whole bunch of appointments on Monday. My busy Monday appointment calendar ran thus:

Mon, Sep 3, 2007
11:59 am: Good morning! Start of a brand new day
Noon – 2:00 pm: Hunt for breakfast (or lunch..)
2:00 – 7:00 pm: Siesta Time (do not disturb hours)
7:00 – 9:00 pm: Dinner, TV, more TV
9:05 - … : zzzzzz

After much contemplation and mulling over, I asked my assistant (yea right!) to cancel my appointments for the 3rd. I woke up at an unearthly hour of 7:00 am (gee! Even the sun looks sleepy at that hour) the next day to travel 200 miles down south to some place called San Luis .. umm.. something. I got the “Obispo” part much later. Never knew that a city could have a first name, a middle name and a last name just like humans do. Talk about cities having a character of their own.

Well, the trip wasn’t disappointing as such. I got to taste the Mansaf (its a special dish of Jordan often prepared as a sign of honor for guests (me, me…!!). Made from lamb served atop a bed of rice and yogurt sauce, the dish is served family style.) at my friend’s aunt’s. And the baklava too. Interesting cuisines. Left a nice taste in the mouth.

So that took care of the food. So what else made it interesting? The weather. The sun, the sea and the beaches!! For a city with a quirky name, the place is surrounded by some nice seaside spots. If the water was as green (as in emerald/turquiose) as the Mediterranean, I wouldn’t be surprised if people felt that they were on the Riviera. As we drove, the coastline was ridden with cliffs and rocks with narrow coves for beaches.. Amazing!! The place can be easily listed as one of the most beautiful spots on this planet. There’s this beach called the Avila (nice name!) Beach which is popular with the College community of the area. So it was a hotspot for hot girls in two piece swimsuits, hot guys in speedos and some not so hot guys (I could only spot one, me.) in a pair of jeans and a tee.

The best part was walking up a cliff which has a sheer face dropping 400 ft into the sea. Let me make one thing clear here, I am scared of heights. Heights do a number in my tummy which makes it vibrate like a tuning fork till I end throwing up. It was a hair-raising moment to walk up the rock and peer straight down into the sea below (no wonder, I’m still having a bad hair day today). As I write this, my tummy’s on vibrate mode already. Some guts. Did I mention that I was scared of heights (and lizards, and roaches, etc)?

Then there was this other place by name Morro Bay. A fisherman’s village with a natural harbor. Quite nice too. Reminded me of a fishing village I had seen in Mass(ah-choo-setts. I always catch a bad cold there). In fact, it reminded me of the place in Scotland that Alistair MacLean wrote about in When Eight Bells Toll. There’s this mountain of a rock (called Morro Rock or something like that) which juts out and sits right in front of the harbor like a Colossus guarding Rhodes from the sea. When I took the pic on the left, the fog had enveloped the rock, making it misty (and mysterious). The setting sun behind the mist was a shadow of its former self. Incredible! And it looked cool too. Nice place to go to if you are a fish-and-chips guy and would like to watch the sunset and the sea-lions while you’re munching on your seafood. Anyways, the setting sun reminded that it was time to head back home for a 200 mile return trip. I just wished I could stay back. A weekend to remember… and a fitting finale. San Luis Obispo.. po be po be po. Sorry, Frank (Sinatra).

Note to self. Changes to calendar:

Mon, Sep 3, 2007
6:59 am: Good morning! Start of a brand new day
9:00 am - noon: Drive to SLO
Noon – 5:00 pm: Beaches, cliffs, beaches
5:30 – 6:30 pm: Dinner
7:00 - 8:00 pm: More beaches
8:30 pm: Drive back home and zzzzz

Tue, Sep 4, 2007
7:00 am - 9:00 pm: Out Sick

Dude, Clean up!

Have you seen that new Radio Shack Back to School (Dude, clean up) commercial? Sweet. One of the many chores I had reserved for this long weekend was to clean up my pad (aaarrrgh!). I’m moving out of here the coming weekend. And the commercial explains my lifestyle and how! Every morning on my way out, I used to make a resolve to myself that I’d clean up in the evening before I switched on the TV. Never happened. So here I am discovering that there’s more stuff to throw than a normal U-Haul truck could carry. And I’ve got more stuff to pack than I can fit in my big suitcase. That’s Plan A. Fit all that stuff into one suitcase. If that doesn’t work, I will resort to the oldest way to pack, that’s Plan B, just throw in the stuff into the suitcase and sit on it while I try to zip it up. Hope that works. If that does not help either, then I guess its Plan C - last option. I will have to shop for a new suitcase. Desperate situations call for desperate measures.

So, while I was doing all this cleaning, I came across these areas of carpet where I had never set my foot on. Clean as a whistle and soft as the day it was laid. It felt so nice for the feet to sink in into these virgin areas where no man had ever stepped before. Now I know how Louis (or was that Neil?) Armstrong felt when he set foot on the Moon. One small step and a giant leap in podiatric comfort. The next area in the list to clean up is the bathroom.... Tricky area. I am not sure how in the world I’m going to do that without rubber gloves and pine sol. Thankfully, the kitchen’s clean ‘cuz I could never cook anything that’s not microwaveable. Some comfort.

Lesson? I’ve made a resolve to myself that in the new place, I am not gonna leave those Subway foot-long wrappers on the floor, CDs on the coffee table, CalTrain tickets on the dresser or any such thing. Period. Note to self, "Dude! Clean UP!"

Start of the long weekend

Another long weekend and absolutely no plans! And that's how I'd love to plan it. It felt good to wake up around elevenish and glance out of the window only to see people walking their dogs. Of course, perfect weather to do so. What can I say about them? Sleep for some is a luxury they cannot afford :-) But not for me. Especially after a busy week at work (yea, I think someone put a spell on my free time after what I had mentioned in my last blog. It was a g-r-i-n-d on Thursday and Friday). And, on Thursday, after a hard day's work, it was great to watch James Blake and Fabrice Santoro battle it out in the US Open. A thriller of a five-setter with the match swinging either ways every set. I hope the rest of the matches are like that this year. I'm looking forward to spend the rest of the weekend watching the tournament. One downside though, the TV channel has put Burn Notice off the air for 2 weeks till the US Open gets over :-( I really wish they hadn't done that. The adventures of Michael Westin are just starting to get interesting. Came as a rude shock when the TV channel put the ad and said that the series had been put off for the tourney. I don't know how many of you will agree with me but its a well conceived plotline with a great narration. Well, you get to win some and lose some. The Monk has been going downhill this season.

Anyways, while these past few months have been relatively cool for me, I've ended up putting some undisclose-able amount of lipids around my already bulging equator (simply put, I've become fatter!! Oh, how I hate saying that). I've made a resolve to burn them out. What better way to do it but by grabbing a can of coke (no diet coke for me) and surfing the internet for weight loss programs? All you have to do is type Weight Loss in Google search bar and you will get an obscene number of programs telling you to do this or to do that. Probably, the only way they succeed to do that is by lightening up your wallet. I think its time that Google trimmed down the search algorithm for a good weight loss program. Coming back to my point, before the coke can was half empty, I came across this great site (hold on and read further, before you point fingers at me and accuse me of advertising for someone) for tracking your diet and daily regimen. Its a government initiative and really seems to be promising. Looks like even the government is worried about me getting overweight. Anyways, before I forget, the site is http://www.mypyramidtracker.gov/ (run by U.S. Dept. of Agriculture). Exploring it gave me quite a few new insights into the kind of food I'm supposed to be taking versus the food I've been taking so far. And what a real exercise is compared to my idea of workout (which is, in case if you are wondering, a 15-minute slow walk everyday after lunch to shake off my guilt of having a bag of "koorly (curly) fries" and a big burger). So if you are not planning for any crash diets like me, and want to shed your pounds/kgs surely but gradually, then you can find some good inputs on this site. I'm gonna start on my WL program after this weekend is over. In the meantime, I will grab that bag of non-fat chips (they taste yuck!) and get back to the TV to watch the US Open. Its 40-0 set and matchpoint for the calories in the match starring calories vs. me. Er... my bad. But I'm gonna make it a tiebreak. At least!!

Games I love to play on a rainy day

In my free time, when I've not planned on anything, I usually end up playing games on my PC (I never had a gaming console like PS2 or XBox. But the wide selection of PC games never made me miss them, though now I'm planning to save for the super cool Nintendo Wii :-) ). My entry into first-hand PC gaming was in 2002 when I got a laptop of my own. Before that, the only games I knew were solitaire and minesweeper that came (and still come) bundled with MS Windows. I started with Age of Empires on my laptop (I got the game CD because it was on sale. I was not aware that it was a cult classic by that time.) and have been a fan of this and a whole bunch of other PC games ever since. If I had to list down my favorites out of the dozen games I have, they'd be:

Adventure/Action: Sid Meier's Pirates, Thief 3: Deadly Shadows, Prince of Persia
Strategy: Railroad Tycoon 3, Age of Empires (Conquerors expansion pack)
Puzzle Solving/Adventure: The secret of the Monkey Island, Indiana Jones

Why do I rate them top in my list? Let me explain...

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows

When I first heard about this game, I had a feeling that this was one of those routine games that comes out with a promising name but ultimately disappoints. I had not heard of Thief 1 or 2. I am a fan of movies that belong to the heist and mystery genre. So it was a no-brainer that I was looking out for a game with similar plots. So, since I was having a lean period (read that as loads of spare time), I had nothing to lose and bought the game just because I liked the name. But when I tried to install it, the game would not run because my PC’s graphics card was not capable of supporting the game's graphics (Grrrr!!!). It cheesed me off and I tossed the game box onto my overloaded bookshelf-cum-JAA (junk accumulation area). It was another 3 months before I got a new graphics card (ATI Radeon 9500) and had it installed. One of the first things I did after installing the card was to install Thief. The whole reason for investing in a graphics card was to play this game. I had lost interest in the game after ignoring it for so long, but when I saw the opening tutorial I was hooked to the game.

As the play progressed, the settings, the environment, the layout and the stealth tactics got really cool. To top that, the game had an eerie aura to it. Gothic architecture in the city, the cobbled streets with menacing soldiers on the watch. And since you played a thief, you never ventured into daylight. So the night streets with shadows and dark spaces became more menacing and spooky at times. Garrett, the title character has this uncanny power to merge into the shadows but then again he's human too. You got to use your stealth capabilities to fight soldiers, zombies and other creatures of the dark. And there's this suspense that built up as you progressed in the game. Anything more would spoil the fun. Arguably, this is one of the best games I’ve ever played so far. If you are a fan of adventure and stealth games I strongly recommend this game for your collection.

My rating: ****/*****

Sid Meier's Pirates (Live the life!)

Another game I got bitten by after I saw the graphics. When I'm playing a game, my main focus is not only on the plot but also the graphics. I hate playing a game with a great plot but which has graphics that suck.

Pirates was one such game which fulfilled both my requirements. Well, almost. Though the plot was not as in-depth as I would've liked (hey! you can't have the cake and eat it too.) the graphics were really cool. Added to that, the battles with the swordfights and strategic plundering of towns, though similar in nature, give a great twist to the game. And the fun doubles when you hunt for treasures buried by other Pirate captains :-). The kind of map clues and leads you get in town taverns and through Governors' daughters, amazing!! I especially liked the way the hero ages as the game progresses. You really end up living the life of a goodhearted but wronged swashbuckler. And the other good thing about it is, the blood and gore normally associated with action/adventure games is thankfully missing.

If you ever wanted to play a game that should not strain you much but at the same time entertain you, this one is a must. You can select various options and keep playing for hours together and sometimes the game brings a smile on your face without you even knowing about it..

Probably, if I get more time on my hands (I've plenty of that on my hands these days), I'll write about the other games I like in my next blog.

My rating: ****/*****

My experience on working towards OCP in Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Supply Chain Management Consultant

[I had cleared the final paper of this exam in May 2007 with Procurement as the main path. Though I had an experience of almost 3 years working in Oracle Applications Manufacturing, it was not an easy exam for me to take. As most of you might know by now, the OCP exam for SCM Consultant has 3 papers. The details are given in the official site. The certification path also includes a mandatory classroom training apart from clearing 3 papers before finally getting there.]

Prep Time (Paper wise):
Paper I: 2 weeks (1 week rigorous). Familiarity level: 4 on a scale of 10
Paper II: 2-3 weeks. Familiarity level: 7 on a scale of 10
Paper III: 4-5 weeks. Familiarity level: 4 on a scale of 10
Overall: 8-10 weeks

What to refer: Oracle Inventory and Oracle Purchasing Student's Guides (11i), Oracle Inventory and Oracle Purchasing User's Guides (11i), Hands-on practise on Vision Demo Database 11i

When I decided to take this exam (March 2007), there was absolutely no information on the net available to work on with. Added to this was the $95 (Paper I), $195 (Paper II) and $195 (Paper III) fees which made things worse. I could not afford to flunk any of the papers. Otherwise, I'd end up paying twice for a re-take. Despite this, there was a strong reason for my decision to take the cert. exam so early (just as it went into production). At that point I had some free time on my hands and I wanted to make the best possible use of it before I got busy again.

The first and foremost hurdle I faced was the EBS 11i essentials (1Z0-200: 11i E-Business Suite Essentials for Implementers). Though I had worked on reports and forms in my own small way when I was a developer, I was not familiar with the Sys Admin, DBA and workflow concepts. The best material for this was the sys admin student's guide which I was able to borrow from one of my friends who let's say, had access to it.

The student's guide really proved to be of great help. A rigorous one-week two hour per day study schedule after office hours worked wonders. I am sure if I had not done this, there was every chance I'd have flunked. So the best place to start for this exam is the Student's Guide if available. The workflow and sys admin questions were essentially lifted straight out of this book. One sad thing about this though is that I'm where I was before after the exam with regard to the fundamentals. I would not be able to practically apply the stuff I learnt from the Student's Guide. My prep was purely from exam point of view.

One down, two to go.

The 2nd paper (1Z0-221: Oracle Inventory Management 11i Fundamentals) was more in my league as I had been working in the functional side. Here though the thought was that you can pass this exam directly using the official Student's Guide, I felt otherwise. One has to have a good knowledge about the basics of Oracle Inventory which includes hands on practice. This is what I realized while I was taking this exam. Mind you, I did not have the Student's Guide for Inventory which I got access to much after. My advice in this regard is, use the User's Guide as the starting point:

* Check the fundamentals of Inventory in the User's Guide (Chapter 2 - Setting up)
* Concept of Subinventories
* Concept of Locators* Concept of Lots and Serials (especially from point of view of Inv Transactions)
* Concept of Item Key Flexfield
* Organizations (Master and Child) and Org Parameters* Planning - Min-max - Reorder Point Planningand the rest of the stuff..

Also, if you have the student's guide, do use it but don't completely depend on it. It is a good indicator of the syllabus and what to cover, but not comprehensive.

The questions mostly are like mini case studies which make you think and sometimes you will need to use the sheet to jot down the problem summary. And yes, there can be more than one correct answer. Once you put it on paper, its really easy to visualize where the question is getting to.

For instance, a sample question would go like this:
A company XYZ wants to set up Oracle Inventory with the following requirements. The item part number should contain the information such as item type, item number, and item serial information. How would you help the company design the item key flexfield?

Also there are trick questions (that's what I like to call them) where a lot of unnecessary information is given when the first sentence in the question will be enough to select the right choice.

And of course, there are questions which you can answer based on elimination of wrong answers.

The best ways to prepare for this is work on an Oracle Applications Vision Demo Database and try different test cases, For example:

Create several items which are having different combinations of lot control, serial control and locator control. Do Inventory transactions on these items. The main transactions I would recommend are inter-org transfer and subinventory transfers.

The most difficult part was Inventory Planning. Apart from the Min-max, I had not worked on other planning methods which involved MRP. Some of these methodologies are direct formulas which you might have to memorize.

I allocated my time like this:
* one-week for familiarizing with the concepts mentioned earlier.
* 5 days for working on a Vision instance for doing different transactions. Out of this, I dedicated one-full day (3 hours) checking out the different flags in the Items form and creating several items with different inventory controls. The 2nd day for transactions and transaction managers (plus profile options), and Inventory controls, the third for Inventory integration with other modules, esp., WIP, Order Entry and Purchasing, and the fourth for reports and different Inventory forms. The fifth day I just went through the entire stuff which I had covered in the previous 4 days.

Also while doing this, I made sure that I referred the window help for each form which contained some good and useful information.

I skipped some of the Inventory Planning chapters as I had not worked on planning and kanban (it was purely a no-brainer that I skipped these topics because I knew I would not be able to cram this relatively new stuff in such a short time).

I expected that the 2nd exam would be similar to 1st one in terms of the type of questions that would come. What I mean to say is, I was expecting that the questions would be directly lifted of the Student's Guide. And this worried me; as I didn't get access to the Student's Guide, though I tried hard.

When I took the exam, it was an eye-opener and then some. I could see that whatever I had studied would not be directly useful but had to be applied. I had to work on each question as a case study and apply the concepts from what I had learnt. I was glad when it was over and was glad that I had practised the stuff on the Demo database. But it gave me a good idea as to what to expect for the 3rd test, provided the 3rd one would be based on similar lines.

Other colleagues of mine who had written Paper II mentioned that they got questions from Warehouse Management System also. I am not sure about this because I did not get any questions on WMS.

Two down, one to go.

The IIIrd paper (1Z0-222: Oracle Purchasing 11i Fundamentals) was again no cakewalk. I was only familiar with creation of a PO and receiving against a PO in an existing setup with a basic information of the PO workflow. I took 4 weeks preparing for this paper. At one point, in desperation I even searched in google for any OCP site. The only site I came up with was the OAUG blog which didn't contain much info on the Purchasing paper (this will be the first site you hit when you search for OCP in Google).

I started with the User's guide again. I tried to correlate the syllabus from the OCP site with the User's Guide. Once done, I tried to get info from my friends familiar with Purchasing. I got different approaches but I got back to the one that was the hardest and the most painful: Working on the demo Vision database. And again referring to the Window Help. I felt that this worked best for me.

Purchasing fundamentals mainly consists of Purchasing, Requisitioning and Receiving. There are other sub-modules iProcurement, iSupplier and Sourcing. Its a good idea to have an overview of these topics before starting. Again a good starting point is the User's Guide.

The first week I got to familiarize myself with the Purchasing fundamentals. The next was the setups, esp., the documents and approval hierarchy setups.

Questions on document types and approval hierarchy are one of the most straightforward ones you get in the paper.

The other part which was a bit new to me was the Purchasing interfacing with other modules which mainly consisted of Payables.

After completion of these, I went for the Approved Supplier Lists (ASL). The sourcing part of the Purchasing was really confusing. In this regard, one profile option that's important is the PO: Automatic Document sourcing.

The exam also contained questions on iProc and Oracle Sourcing which are a part of the Procurement suite of products in Oracle Applications.

And then, it was all grind and no play. Work on the Vision demo database. Create POs, BPAs, requisitions, releases and other documents.

On the day of the exam, I was glad that the questions set in the 3rd exam were similar to the way they were set in 2nd. Based on the concepts, I was able to get some sense out of questions. One thing worth mentioning (again) is, when I was reading the questions, I simultaneously jotted down the problem points and the steps on a piece of paper to analyze the questions. It made things easier and saved me time. For the questions for which I was not sure of the answers, I revisited them after I had answered the questions I knew. For all the papers, I was left with about a little more than 1o mins for revision.

The exercise paid off and I got certified with a decent score (I had never aimed for 100%).
Three down!!
Whew!!
Here, I should really appreciate the folks at Oracle. They had aimed to test the candidate's knowledge of fundamentals and they did succeed to a great extent.

Stargazing - Lunar Eclipse 28th August 2007

Once in a blue moon, (no pun intended) the amateur astronomer in me surfaces out into the open. So this time when that happened, by sheer luck, I had a chance to watch the Lunar Eclipse (that occurred on 28th August 2007) standing right in my frontyard!! On the left is one of the shots I could take with my pretty outdated digicam (with a ridiculously low zoom). Its actually the same camera with which I got the pic of the Golden Gate (the genesis of this blog), but in this case it simply gave up on me (and consequently exposed my very limited photography skills).

And without any optical aids such as binoculars, telescope or any other useful sky gazing kits, I could not capture the "red moon" :-( .

But I was lucky to get to view it with the naked eye without the clouds playing spoilsport (and at 2:10 am, even the light pollution was less!!).

Also, I found these great photos on the net if you want to really see the entire event: http://www.umatrix.net/lunar/ . Enjoy!!

While we are on this topic, you can also check this useful site for Positional Astronomy I came across a very long time back (it involves a wee bit of Math).

Chances are...

[ This is a random article I had written for my office magazine a long time back (of course, it never got published!! :-) ). I am posting it here so that I can save this work. Most of my friends who saw this article liked it, some said I should never take up writing for a living. Anyways, I'm publishing this so that I can clean up my hard drive. If anyone does chance to come upon this, enjoy (or disregard). ]

“I’ll take my chances.” How many times have you come across people say that in course of a conversation?

It is calculated, that the chances of winning a jackpot in the UK National Lottery is 1 in 13,983,816, that is, 1 chance in almost 14 million! Yet, you do find people thronging to the lottery centers trying their luck to make a quick fortune where the odds of winning are miniscule. Taking a chance is not new to mankind. I guess the first game of survival the evolving human ever played would have had to do with was to take chances, yes, a lot of chances. For instance, the chances of survival were extremely low when trying to hunt for food in the wilderness but so were the chances of surviving if he did not hunt. In short, he didn’t have a choice but to venture out.

In this world of uncertainities, there are still some people who love to take that one chance that will give them the thrill of a lifetime. And while taking these chances, many have made a fortune and many have lost. But had not those chances been taken, maybe this world would have been a less interesting place to live in. It is said that many inventions that changed this world happened by chance! Yes, so, the odds of winning the jackpot might be 1 in 14 million but who knows, the first chance you take and you win, your life’s changed. Forever, and how! A renowned astronomer and physicist once stated, “God does not play dice.” But then probably, we lesser mortals can.

Rarely does one gets to do something he or she always desired when given a chance. The question then is, Why not? It is better to have tried at least once and failed than never to have tried at all. Success or Failure should not be a criterion to decide, much unlike in those action movies, where the ramrod straight General states in a typical clipped accent, “Failure, gentlemen, is not an option.” Success and failure should just be the byproducts of the chances that are offered to you. You might win some and you might lose many but do go out and make the most of it while the opportunity knocks.

Why am I talking about all this? Well, I always loved writing but the writer’s block used to hit me even before I used to type “Foreword”. I got this chance to show off and this one time I just didn’t want to let go. So I skipped “Foreword” and went forward. What the heck! Let the creative juices flow! You as a reader may criticize it, laugh at the attempt, pan it, toss it into fire, but at least I have made a start. As the byline of an upstart company ad used to state, “Just do it”, just did it. So the next time, you get to do something you really felt good about, go ahead, take the plunge. Make your world a bit more interesting. So, while you people figure out what you would love to do, I will go ahead and buy that lottery ticket. Chances are…

At the Golden Gate on a lazy Sunday afternoon

This is a blog about my recent trip to the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco. Everyone who's seen this famous bridge has his or her perception. I had been to this place earlier on but did not have a chance to photograph it. This time when I did, it was not so perfect a day to visit the place. The bridge was almost completely covered by one of those famous SF fogs. I could never see the entire span from any given point and so could not take a picture. Though initially this seemed frustrating, I realized that this is the natural setting for this bridge. I hope the snap I took does some justice to the scene I saw.