I blog again

Teaching trash

2006-12-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

This happened on the last working day before Christmas. I was chatting with 3 biggies in my office.( I resented that fact later when I knew that all the youngsters in the office were sitting in the next room and talking about bringing an Xbox and playing for the next 3 hours.) The chat went different paths and the topic became school kids and their education. The company chairman said he was helping his son do Physics homework. The question was "If you are halfway between the earth and the moon, would there be any gravitational pull on you?" And the answer key said, the correct answer was "No". What? So, the teacher has never heard about Newton's law of Universal gravitation? If this is the sort of trash school kids are taught here, I don't know what the future holds for the USA.

How ridiculously arrogant

2006-11-08T20:23:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article in Rediff. The person being interviewed credits himself with 3 start ups. His latest venture is called Seventymm.

Look at the business model, and I quote "an online movie rental company that promises to deliver the movie you want to watch at your doorstep, from more than 10,000 titles from Hollywood, Bollywood and seven regional language films." Doesn't that sound really really familiar?

A Q&A from the article (italics added by me)

How did you get the idea to start this venture?

I came to India in March 2005 on a vacation. After a month I got bored and I wanted to do something new in India. The booming entertainment industry was an eye opener. I was amazed to see that PVR Cinemas charged Rs 500 for a gold class ticket. I grew up in a small town called Dharwad where we had to pay just Rs 2.50 to see a movie!

Here families are ready to spend even Rs 1,000 for a film! It's a completely different India from the one that I grew up in. Consumer is the king here and people have money in their pockets. Besides, DVD prices have crashed to below Rs 3000. So I thought about a product, which people could use throughout the year.

India has supply of 900 movies a year. There is a lot of content here. I also looked at how people watch movies and I found the market completely fragmented -- each store carries only 200-500 titles.

Fragmented market? Thought about a product? All this mumbo-jumbo would fool people? Who is he trying to fool, except himself? And about $10 million in funding? I hope those VCs have more money to shell out to lawyers and patent infringement law suits. Lets wait and see how this situation develops.

Next step in map services?

2006-09-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

I was looking up driving directions today, and I knew I wanted to take a certain highway. But, due to the optimization algorithm that map providers use, I could not get the required directions I wanted. (I know, I am dumb enough to look up maps in print :-S )

Shouldn't Google Maps or MapQuest allow users to force the system to use a certain highway or road, and try to build the driving directions based on the recommendations?? Would that be the next thing that the providers give us?

Coming Zune

2006-09-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article. Found the view points of the author to be correct, yet a bit biased. Heck, he works for Microsoft. What else should one expect?

What caught my attention was this:
The iPod is probably the first computing fashion accessory, and that's no mean feat. It takes strong design skills combined with a careful and persistent marketing campaign, the latter of which should be apparent to anyone who can't escape the ubiquitous iPod dancing silhouette.
I have seen that dancing silhouette many times..probably too many times that it has become too familiar and does not seem to attract attention anymore. Effects of over the limit publicity?

A product starts on the road to fashionability by convincing the trendsetters to favor it. Once that happens, more and more start to gravitate towards the fashionable product until a point is reached where large numbers have the product.

At that point, an individual no longer shows their trendsetting individuality by owning the now common product. Those looking to distinguish themselves may start to look for something different.

That's where Zune has an opportunity.

Hell yeah. Zune has tactfully incorporated WiFi capability which is targeted at the latest fad: social networking. Think of it, MySpace has more than 100million profiles. (One wonders how many of those are duplicates) Zune will definitely not have that much market penetration, but is certainly destined to be a big success. Will it beat the iPod? May be, may be not!

And, what would be the next big thing in the entertainment industry after Zune? Zune with a video camera and the ability to upload to Youtube? You never know.

2006-09-11T08:25:00.001-07:00

Seriously, how come some one not like this guy?

End of an era

2006-09-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

Today will always be remembered as a bitter sweet day for the Tifosis. The King shall retire at the end of the season. After more than 15 years in F1 and 30 years in motorsport. The announcement was made in front of an adoring crowd at Monza,the home circuit of Ferrari.

Such was his determination to win that he was so ruthless on track. He would have terribly damaged the self-esteem of so many drivers. (And, a small example to prove that: today in the press conference He said "...now I would just like to concentrate on these last three wins and finish it in style, and hopefully with the championship...". Not races, but wins!)He has always been in controversies, starting from 1994 (clash with Damon Hill) to 2002 Austria (Rubens moving over to let Him [yes, Him] win). Also, Germany 2003 where marshals pushed his car back on to the trackor Monaco 2006 (Rascasse gate). Well, all you non believers, you can stop reading here.

Schumi is the GOD of driving. People adore him. And your truly is one of the millions of His fans. Take a look at His statistics :247 races till date, 90 wins, 68 pole positions. 11 seasons with Ferrari. He showed committment to the team and people believed in Him that he was given the number 1 status and none of His team mates were allowed to compete with Him. Which I feel was redundant. No one was ever in His level to compete even with equal machinery. I was watching a BBC documentary and one person's comment "Schumacher was quicker by 0.2s than His team mate in that one corner and was quicker by more than a second over the entire course of the lap". Need I say more?

I still can't seem to digest the fact that Schumi will retire at the end of this season. As the president of Ferrari, Luca di Montezemelo, put it, before the retirement was announced: "I hope he carries on for another 15 years". We all hope he had done that.

Schumi, you will always be remembered as the best driver in F1.
No pretender can ever break your records.
We bow to thee.
Wish you the best for the next 3 races
Wish you a good life after retirement!

Perfection

2006-09-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

While reading this article, I cannot but wonder why Cingular cannot offer this phone. I swear by my Cingular network. Never got a dropped call. But the only negative with this carrier is the phones they offer. Other sucky networks give good phones like the drool worthy Nokia N90 and the like. Ahhh.Come on Cingular! Give us good phones.

Don - The music sucks

2006-09-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or every time I hear Kishore Kumar's rendition of Khaike Paan Banaraswaala and then hear Udit Narayan's version of the same from Farhan Akthar's remake of the classic movie,Don, I feel like puking. Shankar, Ehsan,Loy may be good music directors, but they really made the good song sound bad.

Kerala logs Microsoft out

2006-08-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

I did not know whether to laugh or cry after reading this story. Just because Microsoft is the largest vendor does not make it monopolising, even though law suits might say so. And, is the open source OS mature enough, and user friendly enough for school kids to start adopting. Linux, for most people, throws up an image of a geek typing away at the command prompt. Ubuntu or Fedora Core may be easy to use, yet are these easy enough?

Grow up

2006-07-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

This is the mot dreaded part of my life. It is the biggest change I am going to experience. No more the care-free kid or a student. I am a professional. With just 2 more days of free days to go. After that, I am taking up a job. And that gives me a sense of growing up. It scares the hell out of me.

For 23 years now, I have had my parents take the decisions for me.Or be there when I wanted help, They will back me up when I make my own decisions. Should I expect them to do the same now?I am on my own now. All by myself, in a new city. I have my own apartment. My new car. Loans to pay off now.A whole load of new responsibilities. This is all new to me.

It was a good two years spent at Stanford. May be it is time to move on. It is a big change and brings with it its own share of worries, happiness etc.

Yesterday, I was hiking all by myself in Muirwoods.I was thinking about what life has in store for me.I always had the worry that I would lonely during the hike. No, I didn't. That's when I understood what KP means when he says "Be aloe. But don't feel lonely".It was a great hike. I felt if I could do that physically demanding 10 mile hike without water, in the sun, then I can take on the emotionally demanding "growing up" phase in my life.Let me se how it goes.

Exams in Tamil Nadu

2006-03-18T21:52:00.000-08:00

Holidays…That time of the year when you have just nothing to do…nothing at all…that too after my hectic quarter, I am just bored. You know that, right? When you have been busy and all of a sudden you have nothing to do. Your mind keeps thinking what it should do, but keep returning a blank. I am in that state now.

Since I was trying to kill time, I was reading a Tamil newspaper online, and came upon this story. Basically the story says that students in their final year of school are very afraid about their future. Why? Because the questions in the final exam were “tough”. By tough, they mean that the questions did not come from the book or were not direct.

Isn’t that bull shit? Yeah I know. That’s the state of education in Tamil Nadu. Students expect the questions to be direct or just the same examples from their text book. The education system has trained them so bad that they can’t even think and apply the techniques they were taught. All the system teaches them is to memorize the questions and examples in the book and write the answers in the exam. Now that some sensible person has set a question paper that would test how much the students can think people are afraid about the student’s future. I am ashamed myself because I studied in that system. I really am afraid about the future of my country with such students becoming engineers and doctors. Why can’t people at least now realize that memorizing is not going to help anyone, but understanding the basics is the way to go. It is really a shame that sometimes even exams in engineering were like that. I don’t know how long this would go.

A small poll

2005-12-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank you all for reading my blog. One thing I noticed from sitemeter statistics is that my blog is read by people from countries like Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand (Hey that completes the list of countries in which Gopal tooth powder is sold.) And I remember right, one reader from Hungary too.

I have been having smart ass comments in Tamil (??!!!??!) in my posts. Should I stop doing that and make my blog fully in English? Or should I continue with my current style? Do leave your views in the comments section. Thanks.

Don’t fly Air India

2005-12-21T22:18:00.000-08:00

After a long time in the USA, I decided it was time to come back home. It was a sort of last minute decision. So the only tickets I could get, was from Air India. My ticket was code shared with Singapore airlines. Therefore, I could fly through Singapore air, till Singapore Changi airport. Man that is a great airport. It is a small city in itself. I had an 8 hour stay there, and I spent most of the time using their free internet access. I did some shopping too. All was well until I had to board my flight to India. I was so euphoric that home was just 3 hours away.

It was a cold night in Singapore. Outside temperature was around 12° C. And I entered Air India’s flight AI 4001 at 9:35pm local time. Immediately I felt something different. The flight was freaking hot. One could have cooked his dinner in there. When I asked the air hostess about this, she said “Sir, the main door of the flight is open. That’s why it is hot”. What? It is freezing cold outside and how is that going to increase the temperature inside? And the tone in which she gave the reply was not good either. She was too rude.

Once the main door of the flight was closed, everyone started questioning about the temperature. The air supply thingies that you can direct at yourself didn’t seem to work either. An air hostess checked that and said “It will work sir, eventually”. Eventually? This eventuality, that she predicted, never occurred. This again was told to us with a very rude tone and no smile on her face. ( indha mathiri air hostess ellam enga irundhu pudikaranga? She looked like was a failed mega serial actress)

It was baking in there and they started showing Ah Aah in the in-flight entertainment system. Many co-passengers complained that their headphones didn’t work. Again the reply came “See if you are in the correct channel”. Rude again. I didn’t care to complain.

Add to this, the fact that the person sitting to me started blabbering after having 2 glasses of wine. I felt like sitting in a cheap theater watching a third rated movie (which Ah Aah is!) I was looking at my watch the whole time. I was relieved when the flight landed in Chennai. The air hostesses and other staff didn’t even have the courtesy to thank the passengers. When the passengers started to alight, the crew went off to pack their bags.

I don’t want to talk about things like the food provided or how sucky other things were in the flight. I am totally frustrated with their service and their attitude. And am sad that I have to fly using Air India while I go back. I would advise everyone reading this to never to travel by Air India again and also stop your family friends from using Air India.

Happy traveling!

Of Stupid Tags

2005-11-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

I have been quite busy with my school work and hadn’t gotten the time to update my blog for quite some time now. One of my brother’s friends’ has to tag me in one of these stupid tag messages. I thought this would be quite a good opportunity to write a new post and show the world that I am alive. Serious readers of my blog (??!!!) can quit reading at the end of this paragraph. I will write a long post for you guys next week. I am just gonna answer this stupid tag thingy now and quit for tonight.

Five movies which I like the most

1.) Harry Potter series

2.) Lord of the Rings series

3.) Baasha

4.) Saw 2

5.) Chandramukhi

Five things I can never live without

1.) Breath

2.) Heartbeat

3.) Vision

4.) Hearing

5.) Power of reasoning

Five most favorite celebrities

1.) Michael Schumacher (of course)

2.) Sachin Tendulkar (obvious, isn’t it?)

3.) Andre Agassi

4.) Sir Alex Fergusson

5.) Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (a great person)

Five things I miss now

1.) My parents

2.) Home made food

3.) Childhood innocence

4.) Friends from early days

5.) Driving a car

Five things I plan to do in near future

1.) Find a job

2.) Graduate

3.) Get driver’s license

4.) Visit home

5.) Learn dancing

Five books I love

1.) Harry Potter series

2.) You Can Win by Shiv Khera

3.) Tough times never last, tough people do by Dr. Robert H. Schuller

4.) Da Vinci code by Dan Brown

5.) Timeline by Michael Crichton

Five people I pass this HIGH FIVES to

Naa……I am not doing that stupidity. Let us stop it here. Is this some sort of kingdom or a present that I am passing on?

OK people. I am now off to do something useful. You can also do the same. Do check back at the end of Thanksgiving break. I will be coming up with a post that will be my take on lots of happenings that took place in the last 2 months.

Back to School

2005-09-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

Summer has come and passed

The innocent can never last

Wake me up when September ends

Thus goes the lyrics of the song by Green Day. This pretty much portrays my current situation. The song also goes on to say “seven years has gone so fast”. But for me, it is just one year that has flown past, like the blink of the eye.

I daily meet new entrants at Stanford, from various parts of India. The happiness of making into such big a place, the expectations about workload, the fears of living in an alien land, the enthusiasm to face life probably all by themselves, without the comfort of parental protection, and more can be really seen in their eyes. And I can not really believe that I was going through all this just a year ago. I still remember August 25, 2004. That was the day I left India, my parents, my family, my whole life behind and made the journey to this country. Everything looked different and totally new as I stepped out of that flight, starry – eyed. There was a very special feeling inside, along with a fear, which makes a very interesting mixture. That cannot be explained by words, but can only be experienced. The potpourri of adrenaline rush, the tension, the jetlag etc that you undergo is very unique.

That phase lasted within me for more than a month. Then started the unending phase of being busy, and it lasted for 3 months. Even though those three months felt long when it happened, at the end of it all, it did not look that busy at all. I felt that I wasted most of the time sleeping, or doing work that meant nothing. I gained a whole new bunch of friends, and the break was refreshing. The winter quarter was also very similar to Fall and went without a trace. Spring was quite painful for me, with a screwed up time table that changed like a million times. Also, the pain of not landing an internship killed me inside. I started to question myself, at that point, whether coming all the way from India was useful or just money down the drain. I constantly lost sleep, agonizing over this and the fact that I had not gotten any funding also. Come to think of it now, I feel that I worried too much, and lost the big picture. I should have concentrated on my studies more. Constant nagging about everything else, apart from studies, made me lose my concentration and I learnt very little from my coursework.

Summer was a bit more fun, with me doing some research work that was interesting, rewarding mentally. I would have been happier if it had rewarded me monetarily too, but whatever. I had a job, and I worked with high school students and that was a very unique experience.

Looking back at the last three months, I realized that I made more friends during the summer, probably more than I made during the school year. And these people are all spread out in all time zones of the world. Thanks to the technology of instant messaging, I could connect to all these people, and trouble them day and night. Some of them have become close friends to me, and I met a few of them too.

And now, the break is coming to an end. The careless days of summer are long gone. Stanford had its first taste of rain yesterday, and leaves are already yellow and falling off the branches announcing the arrival of autumn. I face the race against time, to get a job, to learn from this unique place at least in these last few months. I face the new year with renewed enthusiasm, feeling quite refreshed. In the bottom of my heart, I pray that it all goes well.

Salaam Namaste – A review

2005-09-11T05:09:00.000-07:00

I went to watch the movie Salaam Namaste with a few friends today. I haven’t blogged for quite a while now and thought why not try a review. So, here is my review about the movie.

Cast: Saif Ali Khan as Nikhil Arora a.k.a Nick and Preity Zinta as Ambar, Arshad Warsi as Ron and Tania Zaetta as Cathy.

The movie is about the love and relationship between Nick, a chef and architect, and Ambar, a RJ and a medical student. Saif is portrayed as a wannabe cool dude, who dislikes his Indian name and calls himself Nick. Preity’s character is a woman, trying to break free from the tradition of arranged marriage and wants to live her life. Like all love stories, this story also starts with a fight between the lead characters. They meet each other at a marriage and start to like each other without even knowing that the other person is the one they fought with. Stuff like these can happen only in movies. So, we can forget this fact. Then, Nick appears as a guest in Ambar’s radio show and tells her that he is in love with her. All this after just a meeting, which cannot even be called a date. One more aberration that can be seen in movies alone.

The fun starts after this. Nick comes up with an idea that no one can ever think of, even in their worst nightmares. He proposes (not marriage) that they move in together, so that they get to spend more time with each other, but Ambar refuses. At this point, he talks some sentimental dialog, which was totally useless, and she accepts. This really made me laugh and brought to my mind Vivek’s dialog in some movie: “Sentiment-a pesi set panniduva pola irukey.” Yet another thing one can view in movies alone. Where in the world would people live together after just one meeting, that might be called a date? But still, they move into a house, and their landlord is played by Javed Jefferey, who is a guy from India, with a weird accent. “I don’t trusts the Indians”,”Eggjactly” are some of his dialogs. At one point he says “While in Rome, do the Romans”. Me and my friend Haarith were rolling on the floor laughing at this dialog.

Ron and Cathy get married and these two are best friends of Nick and Ambar, respectively. They start having problems in their marriage and the scene shows how Nick and Ambar react to it, side-by-side. Like in all movies, the guy is shown to be insecure, not wanting a relationship, afraid of commitments, and the girl is shown to be mature and what not. Problems start for the lead couple when Ambar get pregnant. Nick doesn’t want the kid, while she wants it and they fight over it. Even though they can’t face each other, the lead couple stays in the same house for economic reasons. More fights result. And this goes on and on for a while. During this time, she becomes close to her classmate Jignesh, played by Jugal Hansraj (Anyone remember him?). Nick thinks that she is going to marry him.

At this point, I felt the director totally lost the plot. From here, every incident that happened reminded me of some episode from Friends. Nick gets drunk after seeing Ambar and Jignesh together, and brings back some random woman to his home. This is similar to the episode “The one with the night after” in Friends. Then, she gets labor pains, and is taken to the hospital. They get a semi-private room there, similar to some episode in season 9 of Friends. Nick gets hit by a camera and cries in pain, and Ambar exclaims that her pain is more. This is a rip-off from Friends again. Here, Abishek Bachchan plays the role of a very absent minded doctor, and helps in evoking a few laughs, but he is a bit loud though. And just before the babies are born (yeah, twins…cinemala ondi thaan idhu ellam nadakum), Nick proposes to Ambar, and all ends well.

There are some songs in the movie, which are pretty good and picturized in a pretty colorful way. A senti song sung by Sonu Nigam and Mahalaxmi Iyer kept me mesmerized. There was also this useless song called What’s going on? which they sing at the middle of the night, when she has craving for Ben and Jerry’s Belgium dark chocolate ice cream.At the end of the movie, they showed bloopers for 5 minutes. That was the most enjoyable part of the movie.

I have missed out a lot of details about the story but they don’t really matter. Overall verdict is that the movie is a feel good movie that is very much with the times. I am sure you will have fun watching it. So, enjoy.

The ten day travelogue-among other things

2005-08-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

I am just back from a 10 day vacation. I visited my cousin in Portland. I left Stanford on 20^th August, Saturday. During this weekend, I was in three different states – solid, liquid and gas. Hahaha. Gotcha! I was in three different states of the USA – CA, OR and WA. The weekend started with an early flight to Portland, OR. My cousin picked me up.

That evening we went to downtown Portland. A pretty lazy place. Nothing much to see. A walk along the waterfront of the Willamette River was enjoyable. We then watched kids enjoying a cold bath in a fountain. The smile on the kids’ face was priceless. I have no words to describe that smile. I couldn’t exactly get a picture of that smile, but got something close.
I don’t know what is with me and kids. I just totally lost myself for a few seconds looking at that kid smile. One has to really see and experience that smile to understand what I am talking about. The purity of heart, the total happiness the smile showed was so precious.

Sunday we went to Mt St Helens, which is an active volcano. Well, we didn’t actually go into the volcano, but observed it from a safe distance of 5 miles from an observation center. You can see smoke coming out of the crater to prove that the volcano is still active. The last time it erupted was on May 20, 1980. But it had a smoke and ash eruption last Fall. I was listening to the tour guide explain about the eruption in 1980. She went saying something like this. “Volcanoes normally have harmonic earthquakes inside them before an eruption. Before May 20, 1980, there were a few harmonic earthquakes noticed in Mt. St. Helens. But they subsided and nothing else was noticed. But unknown to scientists, the volcano was growing at an inch per day in the beginning and at a rate of 5 ft per hour on May 19 1980.” You could make out the dramatization in her voice, which I assume was for evoking interest in the listeners. Her face showed boredom. She has gone through this like million times and yet her voice had that dramatization. This made me think. Isn’t this how school should teach kids? Isn’t this the way Geography should be taught? I remember Mr. Sivanandam’s “Jhaw-gara-fie” class during my seventh grade. He drones in his monotonous voice with no voice modulation “Canada is the second largest country in the world. Can you name the largest country in the world?” This is why I hate geography even today!

During the week, all I did was eat – sleep – chat. This cycle repeated itself every 4 hours. I made new friends through Orkut Iyers and started having conferences with them and some chatting sessions too. 24 hours was spent in front of my laptop everyday. I had home cooked food after a long time. Man that was heaven.

The last Saturday we drove along the Oregon Coast Route. This is the road in which Lance Armstrong hones his cycling skills. We visited different capes namely, Cape Meares, Cape Lookout, and Cape Kiwanida. The view from Cape Meares was merely breath taking. You will see the Three Arch Rocks and the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. I for one second felt like Truman Burbank when he sets out on his boat in the movie The Truman Show. True awe and admiration of the beauty of nature. I jut shut up and stood there admiring it for quite a while.

Out and out, it was an enjoyable vacation. Now I am home wondering how the past 10 days went past so fast. As a matter of fact, it has been 367 days since I came to the USA and I wonder how the past one year flew away without me ever noticing it.

Prattling about a weekend

2005-08-17T02:03:00.000-07:00

OK. This has taken a long time coming. But, rest assured. I am not to blame for this. I blame my laziness partly and partly writer’s block. You see, I am a good writer and one has to expect such things.

The summer is almost coming to an end. My summer job ended on a Friday. The same day my exams got over. The weekend was a welcome break. Well, not that I needed one. All the summer was a break. So, what did I do over the weekend? Read on to know more!

Orkut is an online community. Many of you guys know that. I am a part of a community called Iyers (my caste) in orkut. This is a pretty cool online hangout place. Nice people. Interesting discussions and controversies. New people to meet. Everywhere around the world, every now and then, people who are part of this community met and had fun.

After much planning, five of us decided to meet, and this meet was christened “OI Bay Area meet”. The participants – Balu Natarajan (nicknamed kottai), Sripathy (naadhas), Anand (naara), Shivkumar and myself. No gals. Can you believe that? Well, we took it in our stride and go ahead with the meeting. None of us knew each other before. I had talked to Balu and Shivkumar over the phone twice before that. We had taken part in many of the discussions in the Iyers community. That’s it.

Saturday night Shivkumar came to pick me and up and we reached Balu’s place. We started talking. You know, normal chit-chat. It never felt to me that these are new people. I was sitting there and chatting with them as if we were best friends. What made this possible? Was that we all spoke the same language? Or was it that we come from a similar background? Or that we had taken part in discussions? I am an introvert and it takes me sometime to get comfortable with new people and start a discussion. That day I was talking with them and felt no apprehension at all. That fact amazed me a lot.

Once we were comfortably settled in the couch and talking, one by one, stories about each came into the discussion and that day was a bad one for Balu. He was teased a lot. He was smiling at that. He understood that it was all in good fun and nobody meant anything bad. Do the same thing to me, and I would probably storm out of the room, because I am a bit testy. I really admire Balu for this.

The discussion went on and we were talking about the adventures or misadventures from our undergraduate institutions. Balu’s Gangotri incident, Bangalore mission etc were explained to me and Shivkumar. Then, we also talked about the ventures of everyone’s classmates. Such fun I have never had in my life.

Then, we went to watch Mangal Pandey. I liked the movie, except for the music and songs. And one item number in a historical movie? That’s what I call crass commercialization. Only Bollywood can do something like this. Ah, that brings to mind the level of Hindi Balu knows. We were at the theater. One of the theater employees was at the gate checking the tickets. He asks how many of us were there. And Balu replies “saath” and walks in. He was so proud of himself when he asked us “Machan, eppadi correct-a six people vandhu irukom-ndratha Hindi-la sonnen”. We were roaring with laughter at that point. And Balu said this to a Hispanic guy, who was talking in broken English and wouldn’t even have a smattering of knowledge about Hindi.

After the movie, we returned to Balu’s place. All this time, both Sripathy was giving a big build-up about Balu’s Gangotri’s incident. As any normal person, me and Shivkumar were interested in this gossip and were literally pestering Sripathy to say what that incident was. Once we reached home, he detailed to us about how Balu ….Nope you don’t get to hear that. But I can assure you that it was very funny and all of us were roaring with laughter. We discussed useless stuff all through the night, with some booze and the Ashes to go with it.

I came back home at 4 AM. Out and out, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. All of this was possible, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee for inventing that indispensable part of our lives, called the World Wide Web. Thinking how much the net has pervaded our lives leaves me dazed. Think of it – when was the last time you “Google”-d something? The net has become so much of a necessity and has made us all addicts. Without this invention, you wouldn’t have the chance to read my needless thoughts (claps claps – “title vandhuduchu. Tamil padam paakaravangaluku puriyum idhu.”)

Ps: This has been pretty much a Balu-centric post. So, before I sign off, one more thing about him. He is an ardent Koundamani fan. He remembers most of the dialogs uttered by Koundan and uses it to lighten up the situation.

The Indy fiasco

2005-07-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

I am a Formula 1 fan. A BIG Ferrari fan at that. I started watching F1 in 2001. It was a very successful year for the tifosis. I just started liking Michael Schumacher and Ferrari. They continued their dominance and this year has been quite bad. But I still am a Ferrari fan, and will continue to be one. So, basically I was enraged when Ferrari was held responsible for the farce that happened at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on June 19, 2005. Also, in a totally unconnected incident, my previous posts have been quite sentimental and my reader(s??) wanted something different. So, I am trying to make this post funny. My friends know my sense of humor and the poor jokes I come up with. If you think this post is not funny, you know who to blame. Of course, yourself and no one else.

So, let me start of by reiterating incidents that led to the meeting between F1 team bosses, Michelin boss and the FIA on Sunday, June 19 2005 at 9am. As always all the ten F1 teams came to the Indy track on Wednesday and set up their team spaces. Friday was a day of free practices. On this day, Ralf Schumacher of Toyota F1 team had a rear left wheel failure at the turn 13 of the track. Turn 13 is one of the famous turns in F1 – similar to Eau Rouge at Spa, or R130 in Suzuka. This turn is taken at full speed, 7^th gear, and goes on for 30 seconds. Speeds reach at least 230 miles per hour during this. This is actually part of the oval track and is a banked curve. Teams have been racing at this track from 1991 and have lots of knowledge about the forces, stresses the tires go through.

After Ralf’s accident, he was substituted by the team’s third driver, Ricardo Zonta. He too faced the same kind of tire failure. Other teams also started getting similar problems in their tires repeatedly. All these teams were running Michelin rubber. Michelin investigated the problem and came to know that the tire sidewalls were flimsy and were not able to take the loads put on them at the Turn 13 at full speed. The tire failures continued to happen on Saturday too and an urgent meeting was called to discuss this matter. Before going to the meeting, Michelin proposed that a chicane be put up at turn 13 to allow the cars to go slower so that the failures do not happen. All the Michelin teams accepted to this. Two Bridgestone teams also accepted to it. Ferrari abstained from voting for this. This was logical because, even if they had voted for a chicane, the stewards would have said “no”. This is basically a safety concern, because the cars’ setup would not be able to take a chicane all of a sudden. (At this point, I have to wonder about my own safety from my readers because none of the humor I had promised earlier has surfaced.)

The Michelin runners went to meet the FIA Technical Director, Charlie Whiting, on June 19. So, here I present my own version of the meeting, which I presume is funny. My Tamil audience might be in a better position to see the humor in it. Bring to your mind the setting in the auction shop in the Pandiarajan movie “Oora therijukitten”. Can’t remember? “Aayiram , Rendaayiram……bimbiliki biyaapi”.Yeah, that one. So, Pierre DuPasquier of Michelin is Pandiarajan, the seven F1 team bosses are the lunatics and Charlie Whiting is Bayilvan Ranganathan. Here goes:

Charlie Whiting: Gentlemen, we have assembled here to discuss an important problem. Michelin tires have been giving problems and we have to find a feasible solution as soon as possible.

Ron Dennis (McLaren team boss): We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Charlie Whiting: Yes, I accept that is a possible solution. We also need to take into account that Bridgestone runners would not like this.

Peter Sauber (Sauber team boss): We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Frank Williams (Williams F1 team boss): We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Pierre DuPasquier: Stop it. Neenga eppo man decide panradhu, eppo race nadakaradhu.

Charlie Whiting: There are other solutions that the FIA Technical Working group could suggest. Michelin runners could use the pitlane every lap instead of using Turn 13. Or you could change tires every ten laps on safety grounds, which is perfectly legal.

Pierre DuPasquier: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Charlie Whiting: I don’t think you understand. This puts the Bridgestone runners at a disadvantage. Their tires are prepared to take the loads and survive. They might not accept to this.

Pierre DuPasquier: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Ron Dennis: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Peter Sauber: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Frank Williams: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Paul Stoddart (Minardi team boss): Bimbiliki biyapi

Charlie Whiting: (to himself) ada ezhavuku porandhavaney…un team thaan bridgestone tires use panreengaley…nee yenda inga vandhu tholla panra…

Charlie Whiting: Bimbiliki….??

Pierre DuPasquier: He means “We need a chicane at Turn 13.”

Charlie Whiting (to himself): Aiyaya paithiyanga…

Charlie Whiting: No, this is not safe. The setups of the cars have to be changed and have to be tested. We don’t have time for that.

Pierre DuPasquier: Well, all teams have agreed to set up a chicane. Ferrari has said no to a chicane. It is a majority. We need a chicane.

Charlie Whiting: Putting up a chicane is not a team’s decision. No majority among the teams can be used to do it. Also, Ferrari abstained from voting on this issue, which I think is a good decision.

Paul Stoddart: Bimbiliki biyapi

Charlie Whiting: What the ….?

Pierre DuPasquier: He means “We need a chicane at Turn 13.”

Charlie Whiting (to himself): Adhu theriyudhu…yaaru da ivana ulla uttadhu..uyira edukaraan.

Pierre DuPasquier: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Ron Dennis: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Peter Sauber: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Frank Williams: We need a chicane at Turn 13.

Paul Stoddar: Bimbiliki biyapi

Charlie Whiting (to himself): padutharaangaley…mudiyala da…

Charlie Whiting: Gentleman, we see that no amount of reasoning will work with you. No decision can be made with you guys. You can race if you want, or choose not to. You will have to answer the FIA’s interrogation on not being able to race and other rule breaches.

All the team bosses come out of the meeting. There they met the press.

Paul Stoddart: Jimbalakadi bamba.

Press: (astonished) What?

Paul Stoddart: Ferrari vetoed the decision of putting a chicane. So, Ferrari team is bad.

This started a whole chain of incidents and every F1 publication in the world called Ferrari as cheaters. Now, you know how it all happened.

DCBA - Desi Confused By America

2005-07-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

Probably, you would have heard of the derogatory term ABCD. If not, I can’t help you. But, here I am, sitting in the United States of America. And I am confused. I call myself DCBA – Desi Confused By America. Interesting? Read on!

I come from a very conservative Tamil Brahmin (Tam Brahm) family. You know, the stereotypes – IIT, MIT, F1 visa, H1B etc. That pretty much defines me, though I did not go to the sacred portal of IIT. I went to the next best thing possible – PSG College of Technology. But, after that I have truthfully followed the typical Tam Brahm tradition of getting into the USA. Many such specimens exist all over the USA, living their parents dream without questioning the logic behind choosing engineering or medicine, but not anything like humanities, math or other stuff. (A funny write up about this is here.)

I need to talk about the relationship I have with my parents. I recently was reading an article in The Hindu. Well, it mostly talks about mothers and daughters. But, I do not remember doing any such mom-son stuff with my mom, or even bonding with my dad. I always found it funny when people in American serials said “we need to bond”. This was when I was in India. Now that I am here and miss my parents a lot, I guess that I should have spent more time with them and bonded. I always thought that I loved my parents and did not need anything specially to be done to “bond” with them. Is this perspective change due to my separation from them? Or is it just that I have gone mad?

I look at my friends, and the kids I work with. Each one seems to have done something extra-curricular, like learning to dance, play an instrument, or playing a sport. Me? Nothing!!! I seriously think my parents should have allowed me to do such stuff. I have this weird feeling towards my parents now. I do not know if I hate them for this or not. I always wondered what people meant when they said that they did not get along with their parents or hated them. Now, have I started to hate my own parents? Surprisingly, I never had any such animosity towards them when I was in India. So, was this confusion caused by America?

Things apart from parents, I tried doing things that I would have never ever even dreamt of doing in India. Like smoking, drinking, eating non-vegetarian stuff. I did feel like Gopal, from The Inscrutable Americans, when I first ate chicken at my friend’s insistence at Gordon Biersch. I really thought my mom would spring up from behind and kick me. Yeah, I have smoked. How people are addicted to smoking, I can never decipher. It smells weird, it is a waste of time and money and is not good for your health. Did I do this just because I was thousands of miles away from anyone I know who would discipline me? I also tried booze, and faced the same confusion as to why people drink.

And, to top it all off, I even asked my cute classmate on a date. (I got rejected, but that is not the matter under discussion.) I would have never mustered the courage to even ask someone on a date in India (Tam Brahm family, remember?) I wonder what would have happened if she had said yes!

Was this all due to new found freedom? Or just plainly my stupidity? Or me trying to vent my frustrations, homesickness etc in some crass ways? I can not decipher the reason for all this. I did enjoy doing some stuff like going to a dance floor (Coimbatore does not have any such hang out places.) Or managing my money. This did give me a sense of being grown up. But was I ready for all this? Being under the influence of parents for 22 years and then suddenly left out in the wild to fend for myself, made a lot of changes in me. I am proud of some things I did, and disgusted at myself for doing certain other things. I still wonder and search for that one reason for doing all this. And that has evaded me till now. Can someone throw light on this?

Whiff of something enjoyable

2005-07-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

It has been a week since the Enginerds left. I can not believe that they are all gone. What happened during those three weeks at Enchanted Broccoli Forest will be an unforgettable part of my life. Forever. What started as a lazy, hopeless summer job, due to lack of an internship (not to mention the lack of intelligence to get one), has and will be the most prized 20 days. So who are the Enginerds and what is Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF)?

So, I got this summer job, and my post was called Residential Counselor and Teaching Assistant, for the Introduction to engineering class. This was in the Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) program. Something to do over the summer. That was the only thing in my mind when I got the email from Dr.Sommer.

And, Hari was going to work with me. That was something to look forward to. I always enjoyed Hari's wisecracks and jokes, though sometimes they were aimed at me. But never mind. So I had to move into this dorm named Enchanted Broccoli Forest, which was in one end of the Stanford campus, totally away from civilization, so to say.

My expectations about the high-schoolers I was supposed to work with, was not too high either. The thought that flashed my mind was "Huh, a bunch of over-achieving high-school nerds, who just do not want to stay home and enjoy the summer. All they can think of is working even during the summer!" I was assigned to go to the airport to pick up the campers and send them to the Stanford campus. This was the day after a big fight with a friend of 6 years, after which I vowed never to talk to him again. The reason was his childish behavior.

I am at the airport and we have a bunch of 6-7 kids, and we are waiting for the next bus to come and pick them up. I see the way they conducted themselves. So much maturity in their behavior. They did not have any inhibitions and made rapport with others and engaged in conversations with people, who they met like two minutes back. All this time, I was comparing their manners with that of my friend's. That was when I developed a sort of admiration towards those kids. But none of the kids I met at the airport had come to attend the class that I was supposed to be assisting with. So, I returned home after a tiring day with a bit of appreciation for the kids I met and expectation about the kids in "my" class.

All this happened on a Sunday. Monday was the first day of class. I had not moved into the dorm by then. I actually moved in Monday evening. So, I had little chance to interact with the campers. My first impression on seeing them was "Nothing as I had expected. No one seems to be too geeky or nerdy. They are just normal!" Days went by and the campers started working on their projects. This was when I got time to interact with them. They were really intelligent and needed very little of my or any other TA's help. Most of my interactions with them were during their activity time. Playing card games, pool with them or just plainly hanging out with them was so much fun.

I had (and still have) difficulty remembering their names and faces. I met people from over 35 states of the USA and 6 countries. There were total of 41 of them. Their first task was to build a catapult to launch balls into targets. At the end of the first week, I had memorized and could remember at least half of their names. I liked the enthusiasm they showed in working for the projects, and the camaraderie they developed quickly. I am an introvert and it takes me a lot of time to develop friendships. Grown-ups like you and me have lots of inhibitions and mental sediments that hinder the process of making new friends.

Seeing them form new friends immediately upon arrival made me wonder where my days of childhood had gone. I miss those days. I remember my high school days. But I was in no way comparable to these kids while was in their age - in intelligence or otherwise. I seriously want those days back - those were the times of innocence and care-free life.

I remember the prank that a neighboring dorm (Narnia) kids played on our dorm. And the retaliation that we showed (I wasn't a part of that...I was sleeping peacefully!) was the best. The planning and creativity that the kids showed for a small prank was so much. Even the dorm at the receiving end appreciated our effort. Narnia kids did not want to have another attack after this. All they did was just paste stickers all over EBF. The retaliation was so good. The kids had picked up large sheets of Styrofoam for their project. They pasted this all over the doors of Narnia and blocked their views. This was done at midnight. And at 5:30 in the morning, one camper played his trumpet to wake up the Narnia kids and all EBFers shot water balloons at them!!!

I remember the two hour long sessions of playing Mafia with them. Or sitting with them to help during their study time. Or helping them in their final project. I was a bit harsh in enforcing rules, and I now feel that was wrong. I know that they came out of their rooms during bedtime, once I left. I now think back and each camper comes to mind for something or the other they did. Wing-Ho for his God skills in Mafia, Farhan for his "I will stick it in you", Annelise for her baton twirling skills (she is truly amazing), Brian for being so so sweet. I can keep going on and on like this.

All the stuff they did was cute too. They had Engineering spirit week, and dressed up in themes every day of the week. For example, Monday was pajama day and Tuesday was Gangsta day. They looked ever so cute when they dressed up. I should not forget that they did not do only this, but also came out with flying colors in their classes. After all, that was what they were here for.

The camp ended on a Thursday and they all left on Friday. That Wednesday they had a talent show and all those performed were truly exceptional. They were not only strong in academics, but also had extra-curricular activities and were good in them too. Every one of them stayed up all night on Thursday. I was with them. They had a dance party all through the night. They looked adorable when they did a step from Michael Jackson's Thriller. The cute little romance that bloomed between two campers was so adorable, and their agony when they knew that their separation was imminent, was so sad to watch. The sight of them sitting together all night on Thursday was so sweet. It was sad to see them leave. In hindsight, I realize that I lived my lost childhood vicariously through them. That was enjoyable. If you need to have the same feeling, try working with kids. And be very nice to them. Being strict restricts them a lot, and you are guaranteed not to get the same experience.

I could go on and on about the experiences on field trips to Capitola beach and the SF Exploratorium. But I believe you got the picture. And one of the campers stayed back for tennis camp. He is leaving tomorrow and visited me and gave me some chocolates. That was so lovely. And I am reading many of their blogs and they feel the same as me. Feeling withdrawn from something sweet. Nobody expected to meet and enjoy the companionship of such truly wonderful people. Yeah, they learned something in the three weeks. But they established new friendships and left an everlasting impression on me. Dammit, why was the camp only 3 weeks long?