clog

It is evident from the date of my last post that this blog has been on a break. It's not due to lack of content for sure, I have more drafts than ever. There is no lack of time either. The problem is converting those drafts into something publishable. I am in midst of lot of uncertainties that are taking up most of my mind share. There are too many open threads without any actionable items on them. I am depending on some future dates or people to bring them to a logical conclusion. After grappling unnecessarily with them for quite some time now, I have taken a back seat. I once jokingly said in one of my project meetings - "Time takes care of more number of issues than rest of us" owing to the fact that a lot of issues got closed because they just became irrelevant after being left open for long times. I think I am relying on time to see my open items through.

I was in two minds about publishing or not publishing stuff. I realized that polishing those drafts felt a lot like work which clearly meant I was not enjoying the process. So I decided to just let it be and not try too hard.

Just when I mentioned Facebook to be one of the tools for flaunting coolness, Himesh lent it extraordinary credibility by using it in his latest film "Radio". Now, in my list when it came to coolness Himesh could have only beaten Keshto Mukherjee. But surprise surprise, here he is, geared up with all the borrowed tools of coolness.

- First things first: He is on facebook in his movie
- He describes his relationship status as "its complicated"
- The film even talks about f** buddies, a term alien to most of us Indians till we started exporting our software and importing few of these concepts here
- He has named his heroine Shanaya which sounds like a real earnest attempt at coolness.
- Commitment phobia? I don't know if it existed so much in India, or may be it did but was never named. Let's face it we are not great at naming stuff. Go west, you have cuddle buddies, f* buddies, play mates for your kids, your locker room buddies etc. Everything that can be, is named.

Anyway, my labeling of Himesh's movie as an attempt at coolness may be premature and wrong. May be his movie might prove everything I wrote about to be relevant to the script or some such thing which basically rubbishes my opinion. But I won't worry about it now and will take my words back when that happens, till then keep facebooking.

Too much of cricket this year caused me to stay away from the first four matches of "The honour series". But matches like this keep pulling me back. Another ethereal knock by Sachin and India was sniffing the victory. I wish Jadeja had taken a few deep breaths after Sachin was gone. Unable to stand the pressure, he was almost rushing to get out and be gone from the field.

Australia's bench strength is getting stress tested and yet they manage to outperform.

A disappointing loss but a great match.

This theme keeps coming back in some form or the other every now then.

the default for most organizations is "managing to avoid blame". Their implicit motto is "Reward success and inaction, punish failure", which ends up making inaction the most appealing course. "Move fast and break stuff" encourages a different mentality, "Reward success and failure, punish inaction".

Its a choice between punishing or promoting CYA behavior

Here is the full article

Came across an average movie (of course my pov) titled "Butterfly on a Wheel" that is based on the phrase - 'Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel'

There is a book written by someone called "The No asshole rule". I am not going to bother googling and finding out the author or putting a nice link to the book on amazon or wikipedia. I am being lazy. If anything, the title of the post should give you the idea that this isn't going to be a nicely written post, rather an impulsive entry. I don't know of the definition that this guy used for his assholes, I have my own and somehow I am getting a feeling that the two may not be that far off.

I am tempted to write this post because today I faced the challenge (once again) of not falling in the vicious circle of assholeness. The assholes will always play their game, and the only way to counter them is by being one of them. You have to become an asshole to beat another one if you are not exceptionally stronger in which case asshole would be sucking up to you and the question wouldn't arise. Well, so coming to the play part. That indeed is their play. To beat them, be one of them and in the end if you beat them by being an asshole, you become a part of that asshole cartel. Whoever wins or loses, the cartel gains. Also, as a newly transformed asshole, you will start learning the alphabets and the other experienced assholes will hold an advantage, until you become better than them. At this point, you would probably have become a bane on civilization, not visibly so, but I can assure you that the world would undoubtedly be a better place without you.

Now, at some point or other we all behave like assholes, but are we conscious of it when we do. If we are, that's half the battle won and trying to avoid being an asshole is as far as most of us can go. What happens usually is, once fallen into this asshole trap, there is no looking back. The pit is slimy, keeps you from getting out.

The only way out of asshole-dom is to get rid of assholes. If you can't, run away from them.

This post is scheduled to be published at a random date in future. So, this doesn't reflect my current (the date of this post) state of mind. However, I am very sure I will always stand by this. I am in the thick of things, posting it now would give the asshole away to the folks who know me. But I want to get this rant out nevertheless.

Appeared a month back - shows why he is where he is

Link to the interview

Some random google searches helped me conclude that Orkut is still the number one social networking site (4th overall) in India but as suspected facebook is catching up fast. Not in the least is it helped by the fact that most of the western countries prefer facebook.

Similar to what Amit described here, I have independently observed that orkut indeed is considered sidey (that's not my personal view though). People guess based on the personality where would a person be on social networking scene. Comments like "Oh him, he must be on orkut" followed by a laughter are the ones that I have chanced upon more than once in last one week. 'Still stuck to' orkut (just orkut) is definitely not seen as cool.

This is what I get out of my 2MBPS reliance connection :(
You can test yours @ http://airtel.impatientones.com/myspeed_standalone.html

This is strangely how I have my memories of 9/11. I was reluctantly trying to prepare for a quiz on "Design of Steel Structures II". It was the time after my placement was over and I was living a life of no worries. Anyone who has stayed in an IIT hostel would vouch for the fact that it is almost impossible to study in the evenings unless you are living a life of total isolation. Noises came about planes crashing in building in NY and all news channels going berserk. I kinda ignored it for a while, and continued droning on DSS 2. The time was around 7 PM or so, a little before our dinner starts. I took a mental note of going to the TV room which was next to our mess before having my dinner. Others were faster in catching the significance of this happenstance and the noises grew. Having found a valid excuse to not study for my quiz, I came out . It all happened in a hurry then, we all rushed to the TV room which was by now packed to its full strength.

When we came back to review what has just happened, our biggest worry was centered around the quiz and how we should try and get it postponed. And our willing professor complied and canceled the quiz next day since we could not study due to all the things happening around.

Few months later, when I would have least expected, this event gave more wind (or rather pulled out more steam off) to the dot-com bubble burst. I almost lost the job that I never actually started. As weird as this may sound, but I think this one event did a lot to improve everyone's understanding of the world outside their own country. For a lot of first world countries, the largest continent on the planet came into being for the first time.

Beyond the immediate impact of killing 3000 people, the after effects of the incident has since been seen in our minds. Racial tensions got a whole new life. The world got a new metaphor to describe extreme disasters meted out by terrorists. Somethings that used to be just alien now became scary.

Since then, I have been to ground zero twice and found a gaping hole staring, the full import of which cannot be felt watching it on TV. Much like the small holes that most of the folks related or even unrelated to the incident carry in their hearts that gets translated into random acts of hatred every now and then.

Well finally "Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao" is over and I got some spare time at hand. After years of watching unorganized television, a series of reality shows got me hooked back and at the same time I rediscovered my love for American sitcoms. All said and done, last couple of months seem like a blur now. As a result there is tons of stuff on my todo list including some fresh rants to be blogged about. All in due time.

http://www.granta.com/Magazine/107/Capital-Gains/1

off late while I am not watching tv is voting to keep Negar Khan in the reality show "Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao". Its been since school that I have followed programs so seriously on tv. Don't get me wrong, I watch more tv than an average housewife, but it is mostly random. Not so this time. So much so that, it has eaten into my reading, blogging and a few other things I do.

So, what is it that has got me hooked up. The answer comes every day at 1130 PM on Sony TV when an uncut version of the show is aired which invariably opens with a sequence of bikni clad Negar Khan taking a bath. Negar Khan with her surgically enhanced lips is given special clothes to match up to her personality. While everyone got a normal T-shirt, hers ends a couple of blocks above her shorts leaving behind a large chunk of real estate uncovered.

What else is interesting in this show is the return of Palak (a roadie) who would have put to shame the rudest guy I have ever met with her gallis. The return isn't without its own twist where Palak instead of saying "Tune apni bahan *** hai" is doing "haan ji" like Shweta Tiwari's character in most of her serials. (She, btw, is another participant in the show). It seems she got some makeover done for her looks as well as her English. Few months back where majority of her dialogs were heard as *beeps*, she is now very comfortable using "so sweet" and "love you" thrice in every sentence. Not to mention her new found Lakhnavi accent ("Hum apne ghar walo ko bahut miss kar rahe hain").

Equally surprising is the fact that the rest of the gang members seem to have fallen for her innocence or at least pretend as such. In something akin to poetic justice, her theatrics got the better of her. Her crying etc for gaining sympathy turned into a nightmare when she was chosen to be one of the two people fighting for survival (and she lost). Apparently everyone felt she was missing her home way too much and is too young to handle this rough journey. Good for her.

I would have talked about two other popular shows, Rakhi... and Sach.. but not doing it, since the former has lost all its fizz and I haven't tried watching the latter.

Anyway, now that I am done with my token post, I am getting back to work. Gotta go to personally kill everyone who is not voting for Negar.