Its been long since I wrote my last blog.
Quite a few interesting issues crossed my path during past 8 months but, some how or the other, I could not gather myself to the task of reporting it here.
Yet another very interesting issue came up yesterday. Its about the show Apprentice, running on NBC hosted by Mr Donald Trump, the real estate baron. Yesterday night was the finale of the event where in out of 18 contestants, final two competed against each other, in a managerial task, for the coveted position of an apprentice at Trump organizaiton.
Randal Pinkett, and Rebecca Jarvis were the two final contestants. Undoubtedly, Randel by education by exprerience running a real business, by age and even by stature (hmm..) was better than his rival Rebecca, a 23 year old, financial journal reporter. Donald Trumps final choice of Randel was without doubt perfect. But heres the twist to the tale.
If any one has followed the show over past couple of months, one would have easliy realised that Rebecaa, with her broken ankle, in the second week of the show, with a smiling face all through out, with her calmness under stress, with her true loyalty backing her team in the final task, with her foresight in understanding the bigger picture overlaying a given problem and sheer charisma, was upto Randel in terms of being Trump Apprentice. Trump, as would have possibly elected the 2 of them for 2 huge projects he has currently undertaken.
All through out, it was sort of clear that, Trump would declare, Mr Randel winner and hire, Ms Rebecca along with Randel. But in the end, after declaring Randel the winner, Mr Trump, posed a question to Randel, "If you were me, would you hire Rebecca also ?". Surprise Surprise, the answer from Randel was, "Mr Trump, the show is apprentice and not apprentia, there should only b e one hiring". What the F*** Mr Randel I wonder!!!
Agreed that the the show is apprentice, agreed that you were the brightest amongst the contestants, and agreed that u deserved the accolade and the moment of glory. However, why in the world would you be so selfish, and egocentric so as to deny another bright candidate an oppurtunity.
Infact, the two jobs that Mr Trump announced earlier, were out there for both of u to pick.
I still wonder what logic other than self centric mania, would have made Mr Randel a MIT graduate
make such a statement and deny a well deserving candidate her share of the glory.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Saturday, February 19, 2005
My new Pet (s)
Yeah, you know I cant have a single grape, and similarly, I cant have a single pet, the size of grape...So my new pets.
I am now a proud owner of an aquarium. It has right now 4 gold fish ranging from $7 to $0.26. Now you might wonder how the heck I did end up having an aquarium and actually managing to stuff it up with a range of gold fish. To begin with, it was always in the back of my mind. Growing up I had an aquarium, in my grannys house.. I had seen the weekly rituals involved in cleaning the aquarium, and the process of actually maintaining it.. For sure, was pain in the butt. But what the heck, I loved the entire process...
My neighbour , Shantu, was enthusiast about animals.. He had a pet Dog, a pet Cat, and for some time even a pet Rabbit, that too in Mumbai...Imagine, a family of 6 people living a miniscule, 300 sq ft apartment with all the additional burden of extra family members. But Shantu was up to them and for sometime he even managed to have his own aquarium. I used to go with him to local fish shop in Andheri, where I grew up....
It was fun to look at all the fascinating variety of fishes, and assortment of worms that go with them as fish food. Though, being too young to be technical about maintaining an aquarium, which I now learn is a form if science in itself and actually one can publish original articles...Shantu did pretty well.
In UCSD price center, a food court on campus, they maintain a huge, I mean huge aquarium, the capacity of which easily would be on the upwards of 250 gallons. They have an assortment of tropical fish in there.. I will clarify what I mean by tropical
soon. So as you see it all summed up pretty well for me to do something about having my own aquarium.
To the initiating, here are some tips about how to go about setting up your own aquarium and what to look for in the initial few weeks of proud ownership. No wonder if one decides to venture into this, beginning is with google. Yes, heres the link to wonderful website which is all about aquariums, Aquarium Info . Ok so if you go through the website, a few things will immediately stike you. The guy for once has pretty decent knowledge about aquariums and assortment of fishes that go with them.
However my own research into it lead to some varying answers. First of all, as it is suggested there, I agree that it is better to have a fish tank rather than a fish bowl, if one really wishes to decorate his/her apartment with the amazing little creatures of water. A decent 10 gallon glass fish tank with all the kit, which would involve a filter, a lamp, dechlorinating liquid and a Ph maintaining solution would cost around $25-$30 in Walmart. Petsmart, which specializes in everything that is animal is probably a better place to look for such beginners kit. However, Walmart does have best deals as usual.
Once the kit is bought, one has to decide where to keep the tank, how high above the ground should it be and should it be kept on any ordinary table. A 10 Gallon tank when filled with water will get darn heavy. So it makes sense to have a very sturdy and really strong table and a safe corner in the house, away from direct sunlight.
The kit that I bought came with a very decent instruction manual, following which for a change dosent require a PhD. Neways, the tank should be set up in a safe corner of the house with filter mounted and the tank filled with tap water. Yes using tap water at normal room temperature should be ok. One has to take care though to dechlorinate the water using the solution that comes with the kit. Let the filter run for a day or two before you decide to venture into the store to look for your pet.
For beginners usually, as I found out, having Gold fish makes sense. The reason they are better pet for amatures is, their maintainance is easy. The water temperature for them is usually, around 68-72 degrees farenheit. So tap water at room temperature should be usually ok. That eliminates the need for heater. Tropical fish which I mentioned earlier require heater, as they thrive better in temperature range of around 78-80 degree farenheit. Gold fish in wild can live upwards of 30 years (an esstimate I got from talking to a few people in Walmart and Petsmart and Pets People). In captivity, they can easily live upwards of 10 years... So they really have a long life. That again is a boon for beginners, who do not really want to invest into pets that would die say in a week. One can buy gold fish ranging from $0.25 to anything upwards of $20 -$25. As I have seen the higher price is usually for big (by size )gold fishes..
The rule of thumb which actually I liked and kinda makes sense is an inch and half sized gold fish per gallon of water. That said a 10 gallon tank can easily hold 3 to 4 small gold fish. In india, one gets live worms as fish food, which for sure are better. But in America, I would guess they would have 'N' rules and regulations against worms killing and given the technological advances, one can buy, variety of fish flakes with detailed description of protein and vitamin contents. There are even fish pills available for the enthusiast. I also found medicine pills for fish illness.
So you see, there is amazing mishmash of stuff out there for your fish not to get bored of same food. The next most logical question is how much and how many times should one feed fish. Gold fish are very adapting. If you feed them more, they will eat more and vice versa. I therefore would suggest to begin with feed a pinch of flakes once daily. That prevents the filter from being clogged of extra food remaning in the tank. It also prevents some nasty chemical reactions in the water evoked by remaining food. The rule of thumb here is, feed as much as fish can finish in a few minutes time.
Finally tank cleaning. Once a week one should take care to replace one third of tank water. No need to remove fish from the tank. There is something called gravel cleaner, that one can buy for around $7. It is very useful to remove all the gunk in the tank resulting in one weeks time.
As it turns out, the room freshners that one can buy in any supermarket are not good for fishes. In my experience, if the the room freshner is on for a long time, the fish die. I still couldnt figure out how exactly the room freshners affect fish, but my initial investment on 3 gold fish turned sour one day when I left my apartment with room freshner on in my room. In the evening, when I returned my room was freshened up but , the fish tank had 3 dead bodies. I have stopped using the room freshner since. So far all my pets are hale and healthy.
So you see, with few tricks and tips under the belt it is easy and great fun to own an aquarium....
Happy aquariuming you all!!!!
I am now a proud owner of an aquarium. It has right now 4 gold fish ranging from $7 to $0.26. Now you might wonder how the heck I did end up having an aquarium and actually managing to stuff it up with a range of gold fish. To begin with, it was always in the back of my mind. Growing up I had an aquarium, in my grannys house.. I had seen the weekly rituals involved in cleaning the aquarium, and the process of actually maintaining it.. For sure, was pain in the butt. But what the heck, I loved the entire process...
My neighbour , Shantu, was enthusiast about animals.. He had a pet Dog, a pet Cat, and for some time even a pet Rabbit, that too in Mumbai...Imagine, a family of 6 people living a miniscule, 300 sq ft apartment with all the additional burden of extra family members. But Shantu was up to them and for sometime he even managed to have his own aquarium. I used to go with him to local fish shop in Andheri, where I grew up....
It was fun to look at all the fascinating variety of fishes, and assortment of worms that go with them as fish food. Though, being too young to be technical about maintaining an aquarium, which I now learn is a form if science in itself and actually one can publish original articles...Shantu did pretty well.
In UCSD price center, a food court on campus, they maintain a huge, I mean huge aquarium, the capacity of which easily would be on the upwards of 250 gallons. They have an assortment of tropical fish in there.. I will clarify what I mean by tropical
soon. So as you see it all summed up pretty well for me to do something about having my own aquarium.
To the initiating, here are some tips about how to go about setting up your own aquarium and what to look for in the initial few weeks of proud ownership. No wonder if one decides to venture into this, beginning is with google. Yes, heres the link to wonderful website which is all about aquariums, Aquarium Info . Ok so if you go through the website, a few things will immediately stike you. The guy for once has pretty decent knowledge about aquariums and assortment of fishes that go with them.
However my own research into it lead to some varying answers. First of all, as it is suggested there, I agree that it is better to have a fish tank rather than a fish bowl, if one really wishes to decorate his/her apartment with the amazing little creatures of water. A decent 10 gallon glass fish tank with all the kit, which would involve a filter, a lamp, dechlorinating liquid and a Ph maintaining solution would cost around $25-$30 in Walmart. Petsmart, which specializes in everything that is animal is probably a better place to look for such beginners kit. However, Walmart does have best deals as usual.
Once the kit is bought, one has to decide where to keep the tank, how high above the ground should it be and should it be kept on any ordinary table. A 10 Gallon tank when filled with water will get darn heavy. So it makes sense to have a very sturdy and really strong table and a safe corner in the house, away from direct sunlight.
The kit that I bought came with a very decent instruction manual, following which for a change dosent require a PhD. Neways, the tank should be set up in a safe corner of the house with filter mounted and the tank filled with tap water. Yes using tap water at normal room temperature should be ok. One has to take care though to dechlorinate the water using the solution that comes with the kit. Let the filter run for a day or two before you decide to venture into the store to look for your pet.
For beginners usually, as I found out, having Gold fish makes sense. The reason they are better pet for amatures is, their maintainance is easy. The water temperature for them is usually, around 68-72 degrees farenheit. So tap water at room temperature should be usually ok. That eliminates the need for heater. Tropical fish which I mentioned earlier require heater, as they thrive better in temperature range of around 78-80 degree farenheit. Gold fish in wild can live upwards of 30 years (an esstimate I got from talking to a few people in Walmart and Petsmart and Pets People). In captivity, they can easily live upwards of 10 years... So they really have a long life. That again is a boon for beginners, who do not really want to invest into pets that would die say in a week. One can buy gold fish ranging from $0.25 to anything upwards of $20 -$25. As I have seen the higher price is usually for big (by size )gold fishes..
The rule of thumb which actually I liked and kinda makes sense is an inch and half sized gold fish per gallon of water. That said a 10 gallon tank can easily hold 3 to 4 small gold fish. In india, one gets live worms as fish food, which for sure are better. But in America, I would guess they would have 'N' rules and regulations against worms killing and given the technological advances, one can buy, variety of fish flakes with detailed description of protein and vitamin contents. There are even fish pills available for the enthusiast. I also found medicine pills for fish illness.
So you see, there is amazing mishmash of stuff out there for your fish not to get bored of same food. The next most logical question is how much and how many times should one feed fish. Gold fish are very adapting. If you feed them more, they will eat more and vice versa. I therefore would suggest to begin with feed a pinch of flakes once daily. That prevents the filter from being clogged of extra food remaning in the tank. It also prevents some nasty chemical reactions in the water evoked by remaining food. The rule of thumb here is, feed as much as fish can finish in a few minutes time.
Finally tank cleaning. Once a week one should take care to replace one third of tank water. No need to remove fish from the tank. There is something called gravel cleaner, that one can buy for around $7. It is very useful to remove all the gunk in the tank resulting in one weeks time.
As it turns out, the room freshners that one can buy in any supermarket are not good for fishes. In my experience, if the the room freshner is on for a long time, the fish die. I still couldnt figure out how exactly the room freshners affect fish, but my initial investment on 3 gold fish turned sour one day when I left my apartment with room freshner on in my room. In the evening, when I returned my room was freshened up but , the fish tank had 3 dead bodies. I have stopped using the room freshner since. So far all my pets are hale and healthy.
So you see, with few tricks and tips under the belt it is easy and great fun to own an aquarium....
Happy aquariuming you all!!!!
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Lets Talk Sex
What...in open, how colud we ? what will mom say, father will kill u!!!
This is what we as indians hear, growing up through our adolescent lifes.
But you know, kids are ingeneous when it comes to sex. They figure out ways and means to figure out, what exactly masturbation is, how to do it, whether is it indeed harmful ,where does a baby child comes from, what the weird yet the most amazing feeling of orgasm, is and the means to acheieve that. There are many a night outs, in bed under the bedsheet, with night lamps, us reading books on what is socially unexpectable and each kid on his own resorting to, most often unsavory means, to look for the answers to the universally true fact of life. Various forms of sexual diversity, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, monosexuality, are still unknown even to common adult healthy man in indian society. A country of Kamasutra,The art of Love, is engulfed by cultural norms enforced upon people by hulligans calling themselves, the savior of traditional east from the rotten influence of the west.
The point I am trying to make here is, is India today ready for movie like Kinsey. Amazing portrayal of one mans passion with sex and science. He tried in very orthodox american society of early fifties, to do something which I am pretty sure, still is impossible in India. Dr Kinsey, or Proc as he was called, did pioneering studies on
human sexualilty, opened the eye of the world to the most bizarre out there and enabled the western world to associate with the natural.
The movie for me personally was a shock and I believe, most of us will feel extremely embarassed to even think watching this movie in front of our parents. Surprisingly though even when each of us at my age and staying in US for soemtime now, have come to accept, and know and associalte sex with form of natural biological fact of life.
However, for sure every one on his own has to figure out the solution to conflict between, the natural desire to satiate ones biological needs, and confer to societal norms and come up with some metric for love , based on personal bias or more precisely wiring in the brain, tuned up by experiences growing up.
It might be disturbing in some sense, after all we are indians, but I recommend Kinsey to understand what really sciene and passion is all about.
This is what we as indians hear, growing up through our adolescent lifes.
But you know, kids are ingeneous when it comes to sex. They figure out ways and means to figure out, what exactly masturbation is, how to do it, whether is it indeed harmful ,where does a baby child comes from, what the weird yet the most amazing feeling of orgasm, is and the means to acheieve that. There are many a night outs, in bed under the bedsheet, with night lamps, us reading books on what is socially unexpectable and each kid on his own resorting to, most often unsavory means, to look for the answers to the universally true fact of life. Various forms of sexual diversity, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, monosexuality, are still unknown even to common adult healthy man in indian society. A country of Kamasutra,The art of Love, is engulfed by cultural norms enforced upon people by hulligans calling themselves, the savior of traditional east from the rotten influence of the west.
The point I am trying to make here is, is India today ready for movie like Kinsey. Amazing portrayal of one mans passion with sex and science. He tried in very orthodox american society of early fifties, to do something which I am pretty sure, still is impossible in India. Dr Kinsey, or Proc as he was called, did pioneering studies on
human sexualilty, opened the eye of the world to the most bizarre out there and enabled the western world to associate with the natural.
The movie for me personally was a shock and I believe, most of us will feel extremely embarassed to even think watching this movie in front of our parents. Surprisingly though even when each of us at my age and staying in US for soemtime now, have come to accept, and know and associalte sex with form of natural biological fact of life.
However, for sure every one on his own has to figure out the solution to conflict between, the natural desire to satiate ones biological needs, and confer to societal norms and come up with some metric for love , based on personal bias or more precisely wiring in the brain, tuned up by experiences growing up.
It might be disturbing in some sense, after all we are indians, but I recommend Kinsey to understand what really sciene and passion is all about.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
GPS for the unknown
We all in research community know , and wonder how people actually did any work before google. I know its an exaggeration and may be my love for google is speaking here..
But to give you an example heres, what I found at Dictionary.com :
Google :
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine
Example: She googled her high school boyfriends.
Google has entered english language jargon as a verb, to be used as synonym to verb search.
To add to my fascination, now google has bunch of new services available to ease our life even more. There is so called, scholar.google.com. Its a matter of pride to type ones name here, (well if ur new to research anyways) and get list of papers (published) ranked in order of number of citations it has received and many a times direct link to the papers online version from the publishers site. The matter of ease with which one can now do search for the journal articles is amazing. One only has to know first few words of the title or the author and the context and more often than not, google will find the article one is looking for. No wonder, this google service is aptly described "Stand on the shoulders of giants".
The next amazing service is local.google.com.
I am in the mood to eat, etheopian cuisine today and wonder where the nearest Etheopian restaurant is located. Comes in local google. All one does is type in Etheopian Restaurant, and your postal code, up comes the nearest restaurant offering ehteopian cuisine with detailed address of the place. Till like few days ago, one had to take the address, go to mapquest and get driving direction to the desired location. Google has now minimized that effort for you even.
Last week, google released the latest service on their menu. maps.google.com. This is where the title of this entry comes in. Try some search on this new service offered by google. It has insanely close resemblance to GPS navigation system, we are so used to see on those, sci flicks. One types in any address, and pops up the location on a map, zoomed in close up to the place. Then the browser prompts the user to answer whether is it the start or destination address and appropriately pops up a window to type in the requisite address. Say I type in my start and destination address, and la behold u have the shortest route, connecting the two points.
It reminds me of the famous travelling sales man problem and I wonder if I type in multiple destination, what output the page produces. I wonder whether is there some cool genetic algorithm running in the back end, trying to optimize on the shortest route. And infact I wouldnt be have ikling of surprise if that is so.
Neways, as I always say, "Discovery is stuff not found on Google."
But to give you an example heres, what I found at Dictionary.com :
Google :
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine
Example: She googled her high school boyfriends.
Google has entered english language jargon as a verb, to be used as synonym to verb search.
To add to my fascination, now google has bunch of new services available to ease our life even more. There is so called, scholar.google.com. Its a matter of pride to type ones name here, (well if ur new to research anyways) and get list of papers (published) ranked in order of number of citations it has received and many a times direct link to the papers online version from the publishers site. The matter of ease with which one can now do search for the journal articles is amazing. One only has to know first few words of the title or the author and the context and more often than not, google will find the article one is looking for. No wonder, this google service is aptly described "Stand on the shoulders of giants".
The next amazing service is local.google.com.
I am in the mood to eat, etheopian cuisine today and wonder where the nearest Etheopian restaurant is located. Comes in local google. All one does is type in Etheopian Restaurant, and your postal code, up comes the nearest restaurant offering ehteopian cuisine with detailed address of the place. Till like few days ago, one had to take the address, go to mapquest and get driving direction to the desired location. Google has now minimized that effort for you even.
Last week, google released the latest service on their menu. maps.google.com. This is where the title of this entry comes in. Try some search on this new service offered by google. It has insanely close resemblance to GPS navigation system, we are so used to see on those, sci flicks. One types in any address, and pops up the location on a map, zoomed in close up to the place. Then the browser prompts the user to answer whether is it the start or destination address and appropriately pops up a window to type in the requisite address. Say I type in my start and destination address, and la behold u have the shortest route, connecting the two points.
It reminds me of the famous travelling sales man problem and I wonder if I type in multiple destination, what output the page produces. I wonder whether is there some cool genetic algorithm running in the back end, trying to optimize on the shortest route. And infact I wouldnt be have ikling of surprise if that is so.
Neways, as I always say, "Discovery is stuff not found on Google."
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Life is beautiful
I am going through a bad phase in life.. recently laid off, in debt and depressed..I have a rich friend somewhere in the city. I think of that friend of mine, who actually was love of my life, in bygone days, now married to some rich city man..
I wonder, should I visit her and ask for help. Will she help me. Will it look good on me. Am I doing the right thing. So many questions fly by my mind.. Its impossible to restraint myself..
I finally decide to visit her. I see her, in her house full of antique furniture, drapped in silk saree, and am in awe of her affluence. How could I, present myself as a nonety, to her, a lady, living a life of luxury and richness and bliss and comfort.. My cell phone rings right then. The cell phone actually given to me by my high school friends wife, while my stay in the big city. This gives me oppurtunity to brag in front of my ex, as to how, I flurt with my secretary, who stays in the city to take care of our huge enterprise. I tell her everything that is not..and hear from her everything that is..
She then leaves the house, to get me hot lunch. She tells me all the servants are out and she has not cooked a meal in long time... so the need to actually get food from outside. Suddenly there is knock on the door, some random guy enters the house with the intention of using the restroom, and starts talking about the affairs of this ex.
I learn from him that actually my ex, is in a state far worse than me.. The house full of furniture is actually owned by some furniture renting company. The house that she is staying in is actually owned by him and that he has not received even a single pie of rent for past 10 months and how in couple of days, my ex with her alcoholic husband will be on road.
I give the loan money that I had borrowed for my work, to this landlord and ask the man to give her and her husband some leeway. She comes back, with hot puris, and continued deception. I pretend to listen to all of her stories about her splendor...
I come home, taking adieu from her. In my raincoat pocket I find a letter from her.
Covered in the letter are some of her jewellery. She tells me, I should have asked her for money which I was in so need of..she tells me, had she been my wife, wouldnt have I approched her. So here she was giving her jewellery to help me out of my dire strait..
The movie ends..
Yes the above sketched plot is from very recent movie, Raincoat, starring Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Dewghan... excellent insight into human psyche, telling us that being in love implies lying and smiling even when the heart is breaking..
Simply awesome...
To end with what Gulzar says
"Kahin ye hawa ka jhonkha tha, jo deewar par lagi, taswir ko teercha kar gaya"
I wonder, should I visit her and ask for help. Will she help me. Will it look good on me. Am I doing the right thing. So many questions fly by my mind.. Its impossible to restraint myself..
I finally decide to visit her. I see her, in her house full of antique furniture, drapped in silk saree, and am in awe of her affluence. How could I, present myself as a nonety, to her, a lady, living a life of luxury and richness and bliss and comfort.. My cell phone rings right then. The cell phone actually given to me by my high school friends wife, while my stay in the big city. This gives me oppurtunity to brag in front of my ex, as to how, I flurt with my secretary, who stays in the city to take care of our huge enterprise. I tell her everything that is not..and hear from her everything that is..
She then leaves the house, to get me hot lunch. She tells me all the servants are out and she has not cooked a meal in long time... so the need to actually get food from outside. Suddenly there is knock on the door, some random guy enters the house with the intention of using the restroom, and starts talking about the affairs of this ex.
I learn from him that actually my ex, is in a state far worse than me.. The house full of furniture is actually owned by some furniture renting company. The house that she is staying in is actually owned by him and that he has not received even a single pie of rent for past 10 months and how in couple of days, my ex with her alcoholic husband will be on road.
I give the loan money that I had borrowed for my work, to this landlord and ask the man to give her and her husband some leeway. She comes back, with hot puris, and continued deception. I pretend to listen to all of her stories about her splendor...
I come home, taking adieu from her. In my raincoat pocket I find a letter from her.
Covered in the letter are some of her jewellery. She tells me, I should have asked her for money which I was in so need of..she tells me, had she been my wife, wouldnt have I approched her. So here she was giving her jewellery to help me out of my dire strait..
The movie ends..
Yes the above sketched plot is from very recent movie, Raincoat, starring Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Dewghan... excellent insight into human psyche, telling us that being in love implies lying and smiling even when the heart is breaking..
Simply awesome...
To end with what Gulzar says
"Kahin ye hawa ka jhonkha tha, jo deewar par lagi, taswir ko teercha kar gaya"
Saturday, January 29, 2005
sharukh
I have a few friends who abhor Sharukh so much that, whatever the case might be, they are extremely skillful, in finding faults in all of his performances, stressing a few trademark remarks, that his acting is monotonous, he infact is not a real actor, he overacts too much and much much more.
I recently had oppurtunity to watch two movies back to back of Sharukh. One is the recent, Swadesh, about a young indian, working for NASA in USA of A, who for the love of country and his life, decides to leave behind all the comforts in life and truely follows his heart back home, swadesh.
The second movie, an old one, which probably released like a year back, and one that I had watched earlier, Kal Ho Na Ho. Amazing performance by Sharukh, in the movie. After the movie, I had heard many a people sarcastically remarking about the prolonged ending and that how much time sharukhs character in the movie takes to die...that quite a few people were bitting their nails and praying hard enough that he dies and the movie ends.
However seeing the movie for the second time, I actually realised how elegantly Sharukh has portrayed the character of a dying man, with love for life and all that life represents. It was brilliant depiction and i shud say comparable if not better performance of character played in late seventies by Rajesh khanna, in the movie Anand.
Sharukh carried the entire movie solely on his wonderful performance. There are a few suttle cheap dialogs in the movie, which, for the second time if one watches the movie, come to light. For example, in the scene where, Sharukh gives Saif an ear phone to train him to woo preeti zinta. He says, "Ise Kan me dalna", and Saif interprets, "ise Kh... me dalna", and reiterates, what sharukh just asked him to do..
Second in a scene, where Saif comes with his father to preeties, home, to formally ask for preeties hand in marriages, he says, "....painter mere hool ko bhi paint karega" and the small kid erupts into laughter..The flow of the movie does produce its effect and one cant help but laugh.
I actually am able to correlate the character of sharukh in the two movies, with the character of Miles played by Paul Giamatti, in the recent hit, Sideways.
Correlation in sense that, life is not pretty most of time, but outlook is what matters.
How one carries oneself through life is what people remeber in the end and
small goods, even if it is say, allowing the old man in grocery line to checkout first, is very very important. It gives one a sense of self and actually is more satisfying and happiness enducing than many more materialistic joys in life.
Neways, I think I thoroughly enjoyed all the movies, mentioned above and yes I for sure think Sharukh for all his weaknesses , still is one of the best actors hindi movie has produced so far.
I recently had oppurtunity to watch two movies back to back of Sharukh. One is the recent, Swadesh, about a young indian, working for NASA in USA of A, who for the love of country and his life, decides to leave behind all the comforts in life and truely follows his heart back home, swadesh.
The second movie, an old one, which probably released like a year back, and one that I had watched earlier, Kal Ho Na Ho. Amazing performance by Sharukh, in the movie. After the movie, I had heard many a people sarcastically remarking about the prolonged ending and that how much time sharukhs character in the movie takes to die...that quite a few people were bitting their nails and praying hard enough that he dies and the movie ends.
However seeing the movie for the second time, I actually realised how elegantly Sharukh has portrayed the character of a dying man, with love for life and all that life represents. It was brilliant depiction and i shud say comparable if not better performance of character played in late seventies by Rajesh khanna, in the movie Anand.
Sharukh carried the entire movie solely on his wonderful performance. There are a few suttle cheap dialogs in the movie, which, for the second time if one watches the movie, come to light. For example, in the scene where, Sharukh gives Saif an ear phone to train him to woo preeti zinta. He says, "Ise Kan me dalna", and Saif interprets, "ise Kh... me dalna", and reiterates, what sharukh just asked him to do..
Second in a scene, where Saif comes with his father to preeties, home, to formally ask for preeties hand in marriages, he says, "....painter mere hool ko bhi paint karega" and the small kid erupts into laughter..The flow of the movie does produce its effect and one cant help but laugh.
I actually am able to correlate the character of sharukh in the two movies, with the character of Miles played by Paul Giamatti, in the recent hit, Sideways.
Correlation in sense that, life is not pretty most of time, but outlook is what matters.
How one carries oneself through life is what people remeber in the end and
small goods, even if it is say, allowing the old man in grocery line to checkout first, is very very important. It gives one a sense of self and actually is more satisfying and happiness enducing than many more materialistic joys in life.
Neways, I think I thoroughly enjoyed all the movies, mentioned above and yes I for sure think Sharukh for all his weaknesses , still is one of the best actors hindi movie has produced so far.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Blame the Machine
What do I mean by that, well.. isnt it true that whenever when ever we are into something really important, very technology that enabled us in the first place to do what we are doing and probably is really important at that moment in time, gives up on us. Like, say for example, I am working on an application deadline and suddenly it turns out that the charger of my laptop just gave up on me.
I realise that when, suddenly the laptop starts bliking, prompting me to switch onto AC power asap..
What!!!!wasnt I on AC power all the time.. how did this happen and then I scamper here and there trying to save the work onto some portable media and hope that I have back up machine to continue my work in office...
As it turns out, the day is just bad...Network in the office is down and the way the server is configured, down network implies one cannot even log onto ones own machine....
What does one do in such ocassions.. Can one really be prepared for the unexpected...Have we reached a point in life, that dependence on technology for mere survival has become so important that if things go wrong, one is just stranded midway, gasping Why ME????
Being in sciences, and research, most of ordinary days, are spend reading journal papers...
Gone are the days, when there used to be archieve of journals in the library and one had to climb on those, wooden stairs, to reach the Journal archieve on the top most rack.. The glamour of actually researching to get the research article is lost. With the recent scholar.google.com and the pubmed website, all one has to know what key word in the field one is looking for and with correct mention of the period of publications and any more of minimal information, without even knowing the actual source of material, one can lay hands on any god damn article one pleases. In some sense one can also retrieve classics from yester years, and I say in some sense, simply because, the actual work is probably hanging on some museum wall, surrounded by impenetrable enclave, like 1959 paper by Hodgkin Huxley on ion channels on cell membrane, or Black Scholes paper on Option pricing model or Lorenz work on reduced version of Napier Stroke model, which was first published in some obscure Weather journal, and is now, the most prominent, feature of any fancy work related to chaos or say 1905 series of papers by Einstein on
Brownian motion and photoelectric effect and Special relativity...
Each of papers mentioned above spawned an industry of work in itself.. All I had to do to get these classics was, Google it!!!
Some how, the charm of hard work and the satisfaction of being able to lay hand on something priceless is lost, may be many people will argue against it and to be true, convinience is what man strives for and now that I have it, I want the old days back...
Neways, I was prompted to write here today was as I began, life sometime just sucks!!!
In such times, the only saving grace is a nice book in hand and soft pillow under head.
I realise that when, suddenly the laptop starts bliking, prompting me to switch onto AC power asap..
What!!!!wasnt I on AC power all the time.. how did this happen and then I scamper here and there trying to save the work onto some portable media and hope that I have back up machine to continue my work in office...
As it turns out, the day is just bad...Network in the office is down and the way the server is configured, down network implies one cannot even log onto ones own machine....
What does one do in such ocassions.. Can one really be prepared for the unexpected...Have we reached a point in life, that dependence on technology for mere survival has become so important that if things go wrong, one is just stranded midway, gasping Why ME????
Being in sciences, and research, most of ordinary days, are spend reading journal papers...
Gone are the days, when there used to be archieve of journals in the library and one had to climb on those, wooden stairs, to reach the Journal archieve on the top most rack.. The glamour of actually researching to get the research article is lost. With the recent scholar.google.com and the pubmed website, all one has to know what key word in the field one is looking for and with correct mention of the period of publications and any more of minimal information, without even knowing the actual source of material, one can lay hands on any god damn article one pleases. In some sense one can also retrieve classics from yester years, and I say in some sense, simply because, the actual work is probably hanging on some museum wall, surrounded by impenetrable enclave, like 1959 paper by Hodgkin Huxley on ion channels on cell membrane, or Black Scholes paper on Option pricing model or Lorenz work on reduced version of Napier Stroke model, which was first published in some obscure Weather journal, and is now, the most prominent, feature of any fancy work related to chaos or say 1905 series of papers by Einstein on
Brownian motion and photoelectric effect and Special relativity...
Each of papers mentioned above spawned an industry of work in itself.. All I had to do to get these classics was, Google it!!!
Some how, the charm of hard work and the satisfaction of being able to lay hand on something priceless is lost, may be many people will argue against it and to be true, convinience is what man strives for and now that I have it, I want the old days back...
Neways, I was prompted to write here today was as I began, life sometime just sucks!!!
In such times, the only saving grace is a nice book in hand and soft pillow under head.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Outrageous
I am prompted to write here, simply because I heard this audio file, related harresment of Indians, working in call centers, by some radio jock on his show.
Audio File
It is very well known now, how outsourcing jobs to indian companies have enraged quite a many americans and we are in some ways accostomed to the rallies protesting such outsourcing. However, never in my 3 and 1/2 years of stay in the states have I ever experienced any kind of racist behaviour or any sort of discrimination against Indians and in general any brown population. This is a country which cherishes meritocracy and if ur good u will find a way to succeed here, no matter what background u have and no matter where u come from in the world. I have grown to love america simply for this reason. However, it was a shock for me when I heard the above audio.
Its been in the press now for sometime, the harresment of indian callcenter workers by callers here, but this is just too much.
I am happy to know that there was wide spread protest by indian community here, an apt response to such behaviour. In this country no one will tolerate such nonsense.
However I am not very happy with the punishment levied on that jockey, who supposedly has been suspended for a day.
i hope such events will not happen again, it will only tarnish the already bad image that Americans in general evoke around the world. To this end, I would also like to mention about an incident that happened in France, told to me by my friend.
This blonde girl goes to ticket station and is asked by the French ticket collector about her destination, ofcourse in french. This blonde american couldnt understand french and she told the guy in english that she couldnt understanf french, the response she got, shockingly, "So, I cannot help u then". My indian friend close to her was watching this incident unfolding and he had to intervene and speak to the ticket collector (ofcourse in english), to help this blonde american get her tickets. Surprisingly enough, this indian friend of mine dosent know french and he managed to survive in france with english pretty decently.
So there does exist discrimination against americans outside america in some way, I only hope americans in general realise this and take all measures to prevent such discriminations in this country, if for nothing else, to avoid any more 9/11s.
Audio File
It is very well known now, how outsourcing jobs to indian companies have enraged quite a many americans and we are in some ways accostomed to the rallies protesting such outsourcing. However, never in my 3 and 1/2 years of stay in the states have I ever experienced any kind of racist behaviour or any sort of discrimination against Indians and in general any brown population. This is a country which cherishes meritocracy and if ur good u will find a way to succeed here, no matter what background u have and no matter where u come from in the world. I have grown to love america simply for this reason. However, it was a shock for me when I heard the above audio.
Its been in the press now for sometime, the harresment of indian callcenter workers by callers here, but this is just too much.
I am happy to know that there was wide spread protest by indian community here, an apt response to such behaviour. In this country no one will tolerate such nonsense.
However I am not very happy with the punishment levied on that jockey, who supposedly has been suspended for a day.
i hope such events will not happen again, it will only tarnish the already bad image that Americans in general evoke around the world. To this end, I would also like to mention about an incident that happened in France, told to me by my friend.
This blonde girl goes to ticket station and is asked by the French ticket collector about her destination, ofcourse in french. This blonde american couldnt understand french and she told the guy in english that she couldnt understanf french, the response she got, shockingly, "So, I cannot help u then". My indian friend close to her was watching this incident unfolding and he had to intervene and speak to the ticket collector (ofcourse in english), to help this blonde american get her tickets. Surprisingly enough, this indian friend of mine dosent know french and he managed to survive in france with english pretty decently.
So there does exist discrimination against americans outside america in some way, I only hope americans in general realise this and take all measures to prevent such discriminations in this country, if for nothing else, to avoid any more 9/11s.
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