clog

This cat has been a regular visitor whenever it finds an open window. Never has it been as persistent as this Friday when it just refused to go away. I ended up playing a benign host. Here are some snapshots:

OK, that's a pose for a passport size photo

Getting comfortable, feeling at home

On being dragged out

This blog is about hobbies, so let me start with the first one that caused me to write this blog - Self flagellation. I hate to be part of this brigade, but I will anyway knowing fully well that I am part of what I am criticizing.

In my pretty long life so far, I think 99% of the folks I ever met would have one or more of the following hobbies
- Stamp collection: Seriously, do they really mean it
- Coin collection
- 'Listening' to music
- Watching TV
- Reading books
- Playing: A lot of people claim this but a very few continue to play after a certain age.

Most of the ones that survive are passive hobbies whereas in my travels outside I came across people who would brew their own beer, a guy who had a server 'farm' in his garage and a guy who would select a historical site, read it up and visit it. Now, it may not sound really outstanding till you know that these are three guys out of a 6 member team and the other three were Indians.

This topic came up because one of my friends who is in US right now told me about a guy who designs and builds furniture in his free time. Now that, you are all red and violet with anger, this guy is actually an Indian staying in US for last 8 years. I wonder if he would be doing the same had he been staying in India. For, I don't see too many people here doing such things.

Here you go up to world cup 2011
http://cricket.rediff.com/report/2010/jan/22/world-cricket-calendar-fixtures-schedule.htm

David Blaine: How I held my breath for 17 min

Finally after everyone else in the world I managed to watch Avataar and 3 idiots this weekend along with the much low key Rocket Singh.

Its interesting to see Hollywood and Bollywood's all time biggest grossers running at the same time. The other movies in the top two are again by the same set of people (James Cameron - Titanic and Ghajini by Aamir Khan).

I was thoroughly impressed by Avataar and not just because of the 3d circus. My experience with these kind of things have been that you are amazed for a while and then it all becomes ordinary. So, to say that it worked purely due to effects might be injustice to the overall movie. In any case I wouldn't have minded sitting another hour had they made it longer.

The much hyped "3 idiots" that managed to go beyond that hype was also a good watch. What struck me was the black and whiteness added to the grey shades of the story in the novel. Not in his wildest dreams Chetan Bhagat would have written a script like this where a God-like student is twisting everyone around him much like Krishna in Mahabharat. It was the filmy brain of the other guys that introduced the caricatured characters of Suhas, Chatur and Virus. A more subtle show would have left everyone disappointed. Who would be interested in watching how "Venkatraman Ramakrishnan" managed to get a noble while he could not qualify in JEE to get into IITs.

Rocket Singh was an honest effort to make a realistic movie. I liked it, not sure why others didn't. To end this, I will leave you with this quote from Rocket Singh

"Hum aise office me kaam karte hai jahan hamari speciality koi nahi dekhta. Aur jis cheez ka kaam se koi lena dena nahi wo sab dekhte hain and hum bhi wahi ban gaye hain - main ek joker sardar aur tu ek item girl"

I am probably going too far with this and possibly jinxing it, but the way Virat Kohli has been playing recently makes me wonder if he is the lucky charm India was waiting for before we could win another cricket world cup. For those of you who don't know, here is what I am talking about:

Youngsters spice up dull tournament
Kohli comes of age
Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli tons hand India series

He was the captain of U19 Indian team that won the world cup in 2008. I wonder if 2011 world cup would be known for Kohli making merry in the field and India winning the cup (irrespective!). Here's to a long shot :)

Something to read during the holiday period - What Matters Now

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.