Random Ramblings

Visited my blog after ages...was pleasantly surprised to see over 1100 hits :-D And also saw how my enthu has dipped over time...from 36 odd blogs in 2K6 to just 5 in the whole of 2K9! I would like to blame it largely on Facebook, where you can instantly share what is in your mind and exchanging comments back and forth with friends on the topic! :-) Of course, I have been busy with work as well and the Bay area traffic dictating my work hours to a large extent...further making it difficult to blog :-p
And if I really sit to list them out, I could come up with another 100 excuses for not having written anything in a long time (my personal favorite that I use a lot is that I am suffering from a writer's block...lol :-D)

So to kick start 2K10, according to me the last year of the first decade of the new millennium, I shall start by sharing this link to privacy on Facebook (courtesy SS) and with a rare resolution to be more regular with blogging this year! :)

-uv

Indian History!!

I have been egged by many people to write the next post, so I shall attempt to scribble something :-p

This ones for Lakshmi and Mr. SS (not Neta and not Chin!!) :-)

Of late, have been having a lot of discussions about a lot of things..but one thing that has surfaced a lot is India- it's past and to a slightly lesser extent, the Hindu religion! One interesting point that Chimney brought up and which I liked is: There is no Indian mythology - it is all Indian history!!! The stories from Ramayan and Mahabharat, about Indian Gods etc, which the West likes to call mythology, are actual events that happened and not some myth! Another thing that is largely unknown is the existence of civilization even before the Aryans came to India! The thing people are not aware of is that a lot of these facts were distorted by the British since they, probably could not accept the fact that Indians could have an older civilization than what the Brits knew and that it was much more advanced than those found elsewhere in the world.

We Indians are largely to be blamed for this as well, since we are not proud of our history and have hardly invested time and resources to find and provide conclusive proofs for these things. IIRC, there was recently some evidence found proving the existence of the stone bridge mentioned in the Ramayana! But how many people know about it? We have evidence of Harappa and Mohenjodaro civilizations, but it is not taught properly even in India, forget elsewhere in the world! Chimney even gave an example of what is taught about Indian history in the US (unfortunately I don't remember exactly what it was :-p), but it was something vague and inaccurate!

There are a lot of points which have come up, but it would take an entire day to list those :-p
But the idea behind this post is to get people thinking and where possible educate the rest about facts! We are doing our part by educating our non-Indian friends to the best of our ability :-)

And yes, the other topic I mentioned, Hindu religion, am not delving into details since that can quickly snow-ball into an argument about religions :-)

Tip of the Week!

Last week managed to drop yet another bluetooth headset in water and as expected it stopped working!
I was a lil disappointed as I had take great care since my last disaster and I had pulled this out instantly! But alas, that 1 second dip was enough for the thing to conk-off :-(

Anyways, was talking about this to bandhu (Mr. SA, my good pal in office) and he offered me some very interesting piece of advice...keep it in the freezer overnight and in the morning keep it in the sun! Yes, I could not believe my ears that he had just asked me to put a piece of electronic equipment in the freezer!! Well, I decided to give it a shot...i had nothing to lose and a minimum of 60 bucks to save! Next day took the headset out and kept it in my car the whole day (yes, it is that freaking hot these days)...went home, charged it and Voila! it started working!!!

And guess what, the dude has tried this with his cellphone and some other stuff and it has worked each time!

so the next time you drop some electronic item in water, head straight for the refrigerator! :-)

-uv.

p.s. don't forget to remove the battery (if any) before freezing it :-D

Positives!

I am a subscriber of AWAD and the person who manages it, manages to send words with interesting themes each week and he follows it up with a weekly digest of sorts where he collects interesting reader feedback. This weeks theme was : Forgotten positives and the featured words were:
evitable, wieldy, exorable, gainly, corrigible (spell-check is reporting the first 3 of these words as misspelt words!! :-) )

Reading this week's feedback i came upon this very interesting bit of poetry (no am not becoming a poem lover :-p)

A very Descript Man .... J H Parker

I am such a dolent man,
I eptly work each day;
My acts are all becilic,
I've just ane things to say.

My nerves are strung, my hair is kempt,
I'm gusting and I'm span:
I look with dain on everyone
And am a pudent man.

I travel cognito and make
A delible impression:
I overcome a slight chalance,
With gruntled self-possession.

My dignation would be great
If I should digent be:
I trust my vagance will bring
An astrous life for me.

It is a wonderful piece of work mainly because it uses only positive words! try coming up with a piece which uses only positives and you will hopefully appreciate this as well...:)

Double dactyls !

I never have been a poetry person, but just read this interesting poem, called a Double dactyl, I got as part of the AWAD weekly issue:

The subject was the word maudlin (Def: 1. Overly sentimental. 2. Foolishly sentimental because of drunkenness - origin from Mary Magdalene).

email quote:

I'm reminded of poet James Merrill's decidedly unmaudlin double dactyl on the subject:

Higgledy piggledy
Mary of Magdala
Said to the Dolorous
Mother of God:

"Parthenogenesis
Ought to be left to the
Simple amoeba or
Gasteropod."

Double dactyls, as some of your readers may know, are a light verse form with very strict formal rules. DDs are quite difficult to write, but delightful when wittily conceived and carefully constructed.

--- end ---

One of the rules is to have the last line of first para rhyme with the last line of the second para! Truly awesome I think, given that it usually hard to make first line rhyme with the second :-)

Stereotypes!

After a long gap, I finally managed to go to India for a vacation. And the funny part is, when I left for India, when I reached there, whoever I met, everyone assumed I had come to get married! And everyone had the same reasoning...the dude is 20 something odd (ok closer to 30), going to India after such a long time for such a long time....is obviously going to see girls lined up by his parents and will pick 1 and marry her! I tried telling everyone that it is not the case, I am just going on a vacation (part of which was actually spent working from B'lore!), but no one believed me!

That's when I realized that Indians are, to a large extent I would say rightly so, stereotyped....we do our engg, come to the US for our Master's, get a job and H1, work for a couple of years, go to India, see a few girls short-listed by our parents, select one..get married, get her here on H4 or try to get her H1 done through a consultant...wait for the Green Card and while waiting continue slogging at work! Of course, in between they have kids who become US citizens and we feel happy that at least our kids won't have to go through all the we went through!!

Another part of this image is best explained by this story : When I had just moved back to the US and was planning to buy a car, I decided to check out some Ford cars only because a friend told me I could get a new one for under $10K! Turned out it was not the case..But when my boss' boss heard that...he was like how dare you break away from the template?! I was like what template?
He goes...a desi dude is never supposed to even consider buying a Ford! He has to either buy a Honda or a Toyota!! And then of course, the above thing about marriage was repeated for good measure :-)

The best part was a friend sending this about why I am still single...:)

Read this blog and saw the video on it, and really got me thinking...what is our country coming to? And what the heck am I doing sitting here? Why the heck am I not doing anything? What can I do to make a difference?
Have had countless such discussions in the past with friends and each time we could not come up with good answers for these questions...nor do I have any now. Except probably the fact that me and most likely everyone else, is too self-centric to really care or do something for the greater good. I know the frequent argument is - what can I do? how will me doing or saying anything make a difference? But I guess it has to start somewhere by someone! The other day I had jokingly asked a friend to take up the cudgels after the Mumbai attack, but his response was he can work in the background, but not lead!

I think that sort of answers the above questions - India is in desperate need of a leader...a person strong enough to stand up to the current bunch of hooligans running our country, charismatic enough to draw the people to him (or her!), mobilize everyone and clean the country up and set it on the right course. In some ways, you can say we need someone like Obama in India!!

Until then, we are going to have numerous Bilqis', Satyendras, Manjunaths, Navleens and the Mumbai terror attacks.

There is an oft repeated old joke - Apna desh Bhagwan bharose chal raha hai (Our country is surviving thanks to God's blessings!), but what if God gets tired one day and says "I have had enough of you fools, now go manage it yourself!!"?? Boy, wouldn't that be a nightmare! :)

-UV.

p.s. I am blank about what to title this post, so ...:)

Toilet Tax and Thanksgiving!

opened my blog page after an eternity and was pleasantly surprised to see 867 hits...posting ur blog link on Orkut and Facebook does help :-D Have either been plain lazy or loaded with work to have not posted in a long time...the latter being a good thing in this day and age ;-)
The posts would have been either about the Big B show I attended in July, parents being here in the US, birth of my niece, completing a year in the US, the Raj T tirade (absolute nonsense), the economic crisis (lot has already been said about it and lot will still be), the Indian triumph over the Aussies (who btw are real sore losers), the God finally breaking the much awaited record or the seemingly never ending historic American elections!

And while typing this one, got an email from a friend about a new toilet tax being proposed in Australia!! Read it here! Wonder how it would go if something like this was proposed in India where water is used instead of toilet paper!!

But the thing I was planning to write about was the Thanksgiving potluck lunch we had in office today. To keep it short - a whole bunch of people got tonnes of food...everyone had a great time...a manager tried to convince me to eat the turkey saying it was begging me to eat it! There was the expected discussion of the impending layoffs in the company and why would they announce it months in advance! I too had taken a dish thanks to my bhabhi who literally burned the midnight oil to get it ready! People liked it, but sadly, with so much food, a lot of it was left :-( But on the brighter side, gave it to my buddy, who for now is a pseudo-bachelor (wife n kid away in India :) ) so at least the effort she put it in won't go waste! A big thank you to her! :-)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

-uv

Comedy

Of late a plethora of comedy reality shows have hit the airwaves....Comedy Circus, Laughter Challenge, Comedy Champion and another combination you can think of! When these shows first started, there were mainly 2 of them and they were really good...you could laugh the whole time, but have noticed that nowadays, the quality has really gone down. I watch an entire episode in the hope of having a good time and barely manage a smile at the end! In fact, with so many shows on air, and most of the contestants being on all the shows, the jokes get repetitive. Another problem is the participants being from all over India and Pakistan, which is a good thing mind you, at times start cracking jokes in their native languages (Punjabi,Urdu etc) and you are completely lost!

What I realised is the age old funda that to make someone laugh is one of the hardest things to do! I know, I had tried it a couple of years back, when I had participated in a speech contest and had tried to make ppl laugh (had blogged about it as well)...man it was tough! But recently had gone to an event where people of the local church had organized a comedy night and there was some stuff on the lines of Whose Line is it anyway and they were really good! An example: Participants were asked to say things you could say to your dog but not ur girlfriend. One of the dudez comes forward and says "Roll Over!!" :-D That was an evening well spent :-)

Anyways, the reason for suddenly writing about comedy? Was watching Hera Pheri (yes part 1 for the umpteenth time!) and it still managed to make me laugh! And more importantly, reminded me of the day when we had gone to watch it during our college days...was one of the G8 theatres in Bandra...and we had bought tickets in , er black! and once inside we realized that we had got seats scattered all over the place and in fact 2 were for the next show :-D but once we settled in , I still remember the whole crowd was laughing hysterically and I actually had an aching stomach and could not laugh any more!! Sadly, such movies don't seem to be made any more nor are the good ol' college days coming back! :-(

-uv.

Ambidextrous!

Well the other day we had a great day at office...or rather out of it! day started with taking a couple of folks from India to our factory, then we went for team lunch followed by bowling! Now, it has been ages since I went bowling...there was a time in engg when we used to frequent the mecca of Jahndus...BoCoS!! The next time you are in Bombay, I would recommend it as a must-go place :-D
Anyways, back to the story(?!), I had expected myself to be rusty...but boy was I out of form! Not one throw was going as I intended it to! Somehow labored to a 91 in the first game! :-( The next one I thought would be better, but the nightmare continued! I tried all kinds of balls, but nothing seemed to work...in fact ended up hurting my thumb in the process! And towards the end I gave up and switched to bowling with my left hand! Now, I have always wanted to be ambidextrous, and I do use my mouse with the left hand (courtesy RSI), but that is as far as I have gone! So with the sole intention of doing TP (time-pass), I continued to bowl left-handed at the top of 3rd and the result again was as expected....first 2 throws - gutter! The next 2, I did better and managed 3 and a 5, but next 2........back to gutter :-D but by this time, I was having fun and mid-way through actually managed to get a spare! Then for some reason, for our team-mates in the other lane, their time limit got over and they decided to leave and so did a few from our lane....for some reason a few of us stuck around and we resumed playing...and I managed my first ever strike bowling left-handed :-D The game continued and I ended up with the highest score - 93!! :-D It was a wonderful sense of achievement :-p so much so that I think I shall switch loyalties while bowling ;-)

some of the famous men of India are ambidextrous too...The Big B, Sachin Tendulkar, but they are genuine left-handers, who I think might have been forced to use their right hands...something to do with some Indian myth or something, I guess :-p...even Mahatma Gandhi was, IIRC, in the same league....not that I am counting myself in the same league as these great gentlemen! but no harm in aspiring to ;-)

-uv.

Another close call!

Looks like I am living life on the edge these days:-D Yesterday had to go to our un-official HQ and on the way back had a repeat of 2 weeks back! Only this time, it was not as close :) Like last, started to change lanes and a lady in the far right lane, for some strange reason, just swerved to the centre lane, where I was planning to move to! The good thing this time round was that I had just started my move and so had ample to time to back out!

sort of reinforces my view that there is a higher power above after all looking after all of us :-)

on a much different note, the GoI has gone a step further and is planning to introduce reservations in private institutions as well...and the IITs may be forced to lower their criteria for the "reserved" folks! wonder if people are still feeling good about the country's future?

-uv.

Last Hope Vanishes!

The worst has come true with the Supreme Court approving the 27% reservations for OBCs :-( This takes the total reservation to 49.5%!! And as if doing a favor, the SC has asked the GoI to draw guidelines to exclude the creamy section from this! (any guesses how difficult it would be for the "creamy" layer to work around this? :-D )

Don't want to say much, since IIRC, I have already vented my anger at this whole nonsense in an earlier post!

All that is left to say? Good luck to the "open category Gen NexT!!"

-uv.

Trivial Weirdness

Read this nice thought!

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.
-Rudolf Arnheim, psychologist and author (1904-2007)

And the trivial weirdness?
Well on Sunday I lost my SIM card in the weirdest possible manner! Had gone to Chandu Trojan's place to meet him since he was leaving for India the next day. On reaching his place, saw he was playing around with an i-phone. Apparently it was the other great man's phone and CT was trying to unlock it which he had managed to do but he was not getting the menu! So, me being the ever nice guy (:-p) decided to help and gave my phone's sim card to try and see if we get the menu. The result was expected, but when he removed my card to give it back to me and he dropped it on the sofa (i had a funny feeling he would do it!). Nothing out of the ordinary so far, but you know who's law kicked in (sadly the law is preventing me from remembering that guy's name!) and the card decided to go and park itself in the micrometer gap between the sofa arm rest and the sofa seat (if you can imagine that!). All we could see was the tip of the card! (and just remembered, it is Murphy's law! :-D)

Then us 3 enggrs (bro was also there) got down to the task of trying to pry out the card. CT got 3 different knives, one being big enuff to chop a human being, and we tried to push the card down, then up and poke the knife in what ever gaps we could but the thing refused to budge! And alas, our last ditch effort saw the card sink into an abyss and I have been with out my phone since :-(

Moral of the story :- your worst fears come true when you least expect/want them to and 3 enggrs cannot retrieve a teeny weeny SIM card!! :-D and then again, going by the above thought, nothing is small or trivial :-)

-uv.

What is the world coming to?

Just when I had thought I had heard the worst possible about mistreating/molesting women, I read this absolute shocker of a news - a man in Bombay was sentenced 10 years for, hold your breath, raping an 18 month old baby!! What kind of a sicko does something like that? (The only good thing about this was the the father of the man helped the cops apprehend his son and eventually his testimony got justice done). But the question is: 10 yrs of imprisonment enough? Will that stop such future acts? What needs to be done to root out this evil? This and many such instances in the past are not a good sign, I fear for the society in general.

And Bombay of all places was considered to be the safest city in India, esp for women and kids to venture out alone even late night! The Marine line's incidence, the new year's even incidence and this one have completely shattered that image.

Too angry to continue, but something on which everyone needs to reflect, I think.

-UV.

3-5-1.5

Well those are the targets for the 3 events comprising an indoor triathlon - 3K rowing, 5 miles biking and 1.5 miles running. On 03/28 we had an indoor triathlon organized by the fitness centre in office. Now, I have been as regular as I can be in going to the gym, but I was hesitant to sign up for the triathlon...thinking being the obvious..."I won't be able to do it!" Didn't sign up till a friend said...Dude going ahead in life it should not happen that one day you feel like doing it and then you are in no condition to do it and then you regret that you didn't do it when you had a chance to! Those words reminded me of my new resolve and I immediately signed up for the non-competitive section!! (gotta be realistic as well ;-) )

I just had a week to prepare for it and on Monday tried each for 10 mins and cud barely manage 50% of the target for each! Tuesday I did just 2 of them and skipped Wednesday :-p Thursday was anyways a recommended rest day :-D Well the day dawned and went to work (bro insisted I don't since my cousins were visiting and he wanted me to take a day off and go with them...little did he know what I had in mind for the evening :-) ) Off to work, which was as usual hectic. The moment of truth (at least for me it was that way) came near and I headed off to the gym .... in a hurry forgot my bottle of water as well...and got ready and was all eager to give it a go...was aiming for a completion time of 45 mins (highly optimistic, but what the heck!) and began with real gusto! Finished the rowing in 14 odd mins .... took a break and started the biking but the going was tough...but I kept pedaling as CNN kept featuring the Democratic race! Got done with biking and moved to the treadmill...by this time my legs were so heavy could barely stand! But kept pushing myself (I had to do it!) and eventually got some momentum going and after 54 mins and 50 seconds had successfully completed my first every attempt at a Triathlon!!

And boy, was the feeling awesome! Contrary to my belief, I was very much alive and able to walk and return the stop watch to the front desk and get my time registered! The sense of achievement was wonderful (didn't matter that I had the worst time of the lot...but it was better than what I knew I might realistically take - 1 hr). I had a tick mark against one more thing to do! And I walked out of the gym feeling fresh, energetic and invigorated!

Next on the list is a marathon! or at least a half-marathon :-)

-uv.

Close call!

Have been meaning to write this since yesterday evening, but could get around to it only now...nearly 40 odd hours after it happened...and am lucky to even be here to write about it! Yesterday morning, as usual, left home for work at a time when the rush hour traffic would have subsided and was cruising along the freeway. Like a tonnes of idiots who drive slowly in the last lane, encountered such a dude in front of me, and decided to move to the lane on the right and pass him....gave my indicator lights and had almost completed the manoeuvre when I realized that the dude on my right was also trying to change lanes (with out giving any indicator!) and almost hit me side on at approx speed of 65mph!! Had to break hard and move back to my original spot (luckily no one was behind me) and honk hard at him to make him realize his stupidity!! He apologized and no damage was done to either of us, but once again reminded me of what I wrote in my previous post...Live each day as if it is your last! and also live in the present moment (easier said than done!). But am now more determined to implement this in life...

till then.........

-uv.

p.s. just read this on another blog..sums it up nicely..

“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

RIP JB

Last Sunday night a colleague and dear friend John Bell passed away. I had known him for only 5 odd months and met him only twice. But we had spoken a lot on the phone and it felt like I had known him for years! A very friendly and jovial person and one of the nicest human beings I have met. It still has not sunk in completely that he is not with us around and he won't be there for our usual meetings. His sudden death brought the realization that life is indeed short and uncertain!

My heartfelt condolences to his wife and son.

R.I.P. Buddy!

First Post of 2K8!

a little over 4 months now since i moved and am missing home like hell! work is hectic as usual but good fun as well. in between have managed to keep abreast of the happenings around the world n back in India. The furore over the Sydney test and the public reaction and all the hullabaloo. I too got agitated and share m2c with frndz around. But what troubled me even more were the happenings in India, especially on new year's eve and the relative lack of response from people...I mean in less than a week's time, there were reports of women being molested by a huge gang - one in the capital of the country and the other more shockingly in the financial hub of the nation...and coming from that part, I was shocked no end with what happened. Worse was papers like the Sena mouthpiece condoned it and even laid the blame on folks who have come from outside (read ppl from Bihar)! Must have been a rude shock to them that some of the arrested were localites!

Anyways, I guess the point I am trying to make is we are couple of days from our 58th Republic day and now safety of women even in the cities is not assured! We have foreign tourists being raped, local women being molested and not one iota of protest is heard from anywhere! I happened to read Bachi K's article in the STOI (for a change) and she had summed it up quite nicely (unfortunately I don't have the link, but google should help). The priority clearly seemed to be national pride hurt (??)in Sydney and the fate of mr. singh!

It's still the beginning of a new year and let's hope there are no repeats of such incidences. And to ensure that, the authorities need to make an example of those caught and not let the opportunity go wasted! Also, time for the so called moral police to step up and show that they are not just publicity hungry jerks who we all know they are!

Happy Republic Day Folks!

And yeah, a very Bleated Happy New Year! :-)

-uv.

Life in the Fast Lane!

Life has been very hectic the last couple of months, especially on the work front! Too many new things to learn along with the old work I had! One fire-fighting effort after another! Was talking to a close friend today morning and then later to the big boss and suddenly feel like doing a whole lot of things (not withstanding that I am still struggling to get into any sort of a rhythm or the exponential increase in work load!)...this is one of my classic rambling post as I have just finished some high priority work I had been at since the last 10 days or so! and it is a nice feeling to have :-)

And guess what, just like that don't feel like continuing anymore :-p

-uv.

The Quake

Well, the other day was home early and was watching TV..surfing thru the channels and ended up watching the Democratic Presidential debate. Poor Ms. Clinton was out-numbered 7 is to 1!! The good part about this country is that you have such debates and people get to know what the candidates are promising to deliver! The part that is similar to India..the candidates were trying to smear each other! But that apart, it was good fun to watch, especially Hillary doing what politicians are best at...not giving an answer to the (awkward) question asked :-D

Anyways, just as it was about to end, Chandu came home and we started discussing politics and the system et al when suddenly the whole house shook. For a second I was like what the heck are people upstairs doing at 8 in the night...when suddenly Chandu screamed.."It's an earthquake..bhaag!! (Run!!)" And we both ran out...barefeet in the cold and saw a lot of other people already standing there...soon our neighbours joined us and the elderly couple were scared that their new home might not be standing any more! As it happens, we started discussing the magnitude..chandu put it at 6...turned out to be a 5.6 (yeah, he does win in Vegas :-D) and past "quake" experiences! This was the third one for me...The first was in Bombay when Bhuj(arnd 2K) was rocked and tremors were felt in Bombay as well...Our entire building shook wildly for a few seconds and then things were back to normal..Luckily for me, though I was in the loo, nothing happened..else....
The next one was in LA in 2K1! That was a minor one and hence don't remember the details...And then experienced a fourth one yesterday...actually was driving so didnt really feel it and came to know only because people from the office were going out! The surprising part was that for at least an hour afterwards, the cell phone network went down! could barely make/receive calls..though the internet seemed to be working fine :-D Chandu was quite shaken up afterwards and hence decided that we should eat outside where we met Chiruda n Chirudi and had the oiliest desi food till date!
Went for a quick dessert and once the nerves were sufficiently calm, returned home!

Net result of this? a slight change in life attitude where by I have decided to stop worrying about the future and live each day as it is the last! Let's see how long can I follow it :-D

- uv.