So for some reason anything I post appears on Buzz. I already have Google=Skynet issues and this particular bit of nifty-we-own-it-all-anyway code that makes whatever I write appear in bold all over the internet frightens me. I admit that's great advertising but this also censors what I write.
Which is good too... sometimes...
Anyway we decided to go off Google plus since there's just too much social networking going on and I'm beginning to feel that my entire social life is currently sitting on a rather precarious fence between real and virtual.
Again, I have to pose a counter-argument to my own rants with the old - "some people are better off being virtually networked than in real life". And there are enough of them to make hiding behind millions of miles of fibre optic and copper cable and facebook a far better option than meeting over coffee.
But those concerns apart, this is largely a test post to make sure this blog is not broadcast across the fields of google and thus read advertently or otherwise.
More on the travails of the cooking bachelor and the undying nature of the world's most annoying coming up if this doesn't go viral.
Peace out
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Monday, October 24, 2011
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
and here's to 2010
It's 1.30AM I'm having the first of possibly many insomniac spells and I'm writing my first post on a mac book air. It's a nice machine. They keys are responsive and make me honestly believe that I can type faster, longer and perhaps funnier than I could on my Dell Latitude. Which I must admit is the hardiest laptop I've ever seen. Barring the stuff that they sell to children nowadays.
This blog's been dormant for over a year. With possibly good reason. I recently became a licensed neurosurgeon and the better part of that year of ignoring this little space was dedicated almost solely to the pursuit of this lofty ideal.
Now that I realise that my current situation is not lofty and hardly ideal, I do suppose this is a good time to get back to writing.
What do we write about? My last wish list was a hopeless failure. I didn't get any of them. Thank you gentle readers.
There's the deteriorating traffic but that's now so much a part of our lives in Bengaluru (or I could just launch about how terrible a name that is) that the average 7 minute drive is 7 minutes because of a minimum of two snarls.
There's the metro, who offered a hundred thousand in cash for a cool 4 second jingle, in mp3 format preferably. mp3? Seriously?
There's the new ink pen from Flair. Called Inky. Which I quite like actually, not withstanding the fact that it's less than 1/20th the cost of the Sheaffer Valor which I so completely lust after it's borderline pathological.
There's the Hidden Orchestra, if you can find them, they're a very good listen.
And perhaps work and it's skullduggery it involves. In every way possible.
There's a conference in Malaysia, a host of new TV shows that I came across - old ones with new seasons and new ones.
There's Android phones and the N8 with Symbian 3 (Symbian 3? Why?) and the Chiphone, Chokia and Blackcherry that crack me up every time I see them. And the Micromax with a universal remote.
And perhaps the intense masochistic joy in soaking chili flakes in vodka for a month and then gingerly tasting one drop.
As Bill Waterson said, it's a magical world.
Time to go grab it.
Watch this space. I just might be back.
This blog's been dormant for over a year. With possibly good reason. I recently became a licensed neurosurgeon and the better part of that year of ignoring this little space was dedicated almost solely to the pursuit of this lofty ideal.
Now that I realise that my current situation is not lofty and hardly ideal, I do suppose this is a good time to get back to writing.
What do we write about? My last wish list was a hopeless failure. I didn't get any of them. Thank you gentle readers.
There's the deteriorating traffic but that's now so much a part of our lives in Bengaluru (or I could just launch about how terrible a name that is) that the average 7 minute drive is 7 minutes because of a minimum of two snarls.
There's the metro, who offered a hundred thousand in cash for a cool 4 second jingle, in mp3 format preferably. mp3? Seriously?
There's the new ink pen from Flair. Called Inky. Which I quite like actually, not withstanding the fact that it's less than 1/20th the cost of the Sheaffer Valor which I so completely lust after it's borderline pathological.
There's the Hidden Orchestra, if you can find them, they're a very good listen.
And perhaps work and it's skullduggery it involves. In every way possible.
There's a conference in Malaysia, a host of new TV shows that I came across - old ones with new seasons and new ones.
There's Android phones and the N8 with Symbian 3 (Symbian 3? Why?) and the Chiphone, Chokia and Blackcherry that crack me up every time I see them. And the Micromax with a universal remote.
And perhaps the intense masochistic joy in soaking chili flakes in vodka for a month and then gingerly tasting one drop.
As Bill Waterson said, it's a magical world.
Time to go grab it.
Watch this space. I just might be back.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Scary
Ok I've had it with abortive ideas, exhaustion, writer's block, the lack of internet and perhaps sheer laziness. I type with renewed vigour and zest and will to complete this post and then retire in to my shell of the above mentioned for another 20 odd days before my conscience and other influences prod me on to a new post.
So we shifted to an apartment. Whee. Apart from my dad waking up screaming in cold claustrophobic sweats once or twice a week due to a previously mentioned issue, the transition from house to flat has been smooth with less hitches than Will Smith. It's nice, 12th floor, one less than the expensive drinking joint, overlooking a concrete jungle and a hyacinthed lake, with faint strains of bhangra and biriyani, not always mutually exclusive, occasionally wafting through the windows. But I love apartments. Life is so easy. Within minutes of shifting we had milk, water and newspaper delivered by some enterprising little man who for a tad extra offered to bring by flowers too. Valentine's notwithstanding I had to pass that offer.
So one day in this new abode, sleepy and disoriented due to some paradigm shift in my internal clock I was rudely woken up by a man claiming to have put in the internal gas line in the kitchen. He of course wanted to check and see if all was well and we weren't living in some gas chamber, so to speak. Here's my problem, the standard way to check for a leak is either by dabbing soapy water on the joints to look for bubbling, or in the absolute worst case scenario to do it inspired by a truffle hunting pig - smell. They do dope the cylinders with some sulphurous compound for that simple reason. Our intrepid little Darwin award contender proceeded to pull a matchbox out and light up under the pipe. 30 of the longest seconds in my life later he turns with a grin and proclaims all is well. I haven't slept since then...
So we shifted to an apartment. Whee. Apart from my dad waking up screaming in cold claustrophobic sweats once or twice a week due to a previously mentioned issue, the transition from house to flat has been smooth with less hitches than Will Smith. It's nice, 12th floor, one less than the expensive drinking joint, overlooking a concrete jungle and a hyacinthed lake, with faint strains of bhangra and biriyani, not always mutually exclusive, occasionally wafting through the windows. But I love apartments. Life is so easy. Within minutes of shifting we had milk, water and newspaper delivered by some enterprising little man who for a tad extra offered to bring by flowers too. Valentine's notwithstanding I had to pass that offer.
So one day in this new abode, sleepy and disoriented due to some paradigm shift in my internal clock I was rudely woken up by a man claiming to have put in the internal gas line in the kitchen. He of course wanted to check and see if all was well and we weren't living in some gas chamber, so to speak. Here's my problem, the standard way to check for a leak is either by dabbing soapy water on the joints to look for bubbling, or in the absolute worst case scenario to do it inspired by a truffle hunting pig - smell. They do dope the cylinders with some sulphurous compound for that simple reason. Our intrepid little Darwin award contender proceeded to pull a matchbox out and light up under the pipe. 30 of the longest seconds in my life later he turns with a grin and proclaims all is well. I haven't slept since then...
Monday, January 21, 2008
Back.
Ok I've had enough of aborted posts. Some five lie incomplete in the drafts folder and it's beginning to look like the death of a blog and one that I swore never to let die.
So here goes. After some many half-hearted lines on small towns, John Butler and his two friends and a bit on Rashid Khan taking Malkauns to a new level, I've decided to start small and wax eloquent about what I know best. And no it's not that you sick mind, I was talking about medicine.So I had some impacted, infected molar with the roots growing all awry so it needed to be yanked out and I had to, after much procrastination, visit the local dentist. Sweet man with all the regular jazz of assistants, unprotected-thyroid-cancer-inducing X-rays and a lifetime supply of 'Outlook' in the waiting room. So last Saturday evening was spent in his company with him going at the old biter with an assortment of scary implements (and bending two in the process). Saturday night was spent in hungry agony. Saturday afternoon though, was spent in prayer to the Gods of blasphemy at Koshy's consuming some incredible beef fry that they serve with beer. But that lasted only little longer than the anesthesia which explains the rest of the night. The next day happened to be apartment checking out day considering the folks have finally gotten tired of living with the fungus. No that's not their idea of me. The old house is falling apart and the only saving grace is that it isn't ours. So the usual house hunting saga happened with us finally settling on an apartment. Now those of you who've been avid readers of this space and hang on and memorize every word would remember that dad had an apartment complex... well it seems while you can't make horses drink water, most would once led to a stream or some similar water body.
So we found an apartment and once the interior designer has decided that the upholstery is the right shade of blood red and is finally satisfied with the cool inlaid saree on the cupboards we shall shift. Will have to remember to take the Balinese menstrual cloth that she's put in one of the rooms as a curtain and sentence it to purgatory.
managed to rip the sound track of Unreal tournament and put it on the pod, if I have already mentioned some technological achievement of this sort, I beg for forgiveness.
But getting back to our medical story - what connects a tooth extraction, burning feet and high fever the next day? House would go infection. It's not auto immune and certainly not Lupus and god forbid a tumor. But yeah the feet have been doing the hot coal routine for the past day or so and it's driving me up the wall. Much rumination went into it's etiology and after denying access the the zebra diagnosis of Gopalan's Burning Foot Syndrome (yeah I know it is cool too) I've settled for post infectious radiculoneuropathy.
All that's left to do is to load up with some legal trippy meds and kick my feet up. Suggest you do the same.
On the afterthought, to do justice to the many posts that didn't see the light of day Rahid Khan does make Malkauns a tad more magical than it already is, John Butler Trio is trippy music, if at Madikeri or Mangalore eat at Eastend (Biryani) and Costa's (Neer dosa and any curry you want) respectively.
And check out the Hero 849. Cool?
So we found an apartment and once the interior designer has decided that the upholstery is the right shade of blood red and is finally satisfied with the cool inlaid saree on the cupboards we shall shift. Will have to remember to take the Balinese menstrual cloth that she's put in one of the rooms as a curtain and sentence it to purgatory.
managed to rip the sound track of Unreal tournament and put it on the pod, if I have already mentioned some technological achievement of this sort, I beg for forgiveness.
But getting back to our medical story - what connects a tooth extraction, burning feet and high fever the next day? House would go infection. It's not auto immune and certainly not Lupus and god forbid a tumor. But yeah the feet have been doing the hot coal routine for the past day or so and it's driving me up the wall. Much rumination went into it's etiology and after denying access the the zebra diagnosis of Gopalan's Burning Foot Syndrome (yeah I know it is cool too) I've settled for post infectious radiculoneuropathy.
All that's left to do is to load up with some legal trippy meds and kick my feet up. Suggest you do the same.
On the afterthought, to do justice to the many posts that didn't see the light of day Rahid Khan does make Malkauns a tad more magical than it already is, John Butler Trio is trippy music, if at Madikeri or Mangalore eat at Eastend (Biryani) and Costa's (Neer dosa and any curry you want) respectively.
And check out the Hero 849. Cool?
Friday, July 27, 2007
PilGrim
In a moment of... well I wouldn't call it weakness but let's just say rationally challenged thought, I promised my granddad that I would trudge up the famed seven hills to pay obeisance to the family deity. Actually if I remember correctly he said he'd do the trudging if I made it to the hallowed halls of Neurosurgery and I offered to accompany him. So we left about 36 hours ago on this shady Mysore-Thirupati-Chennai Passenger that stopped on almost every two-bit platform and picked up more despicable people. Why despicable? Let me elucidate. So this large extended family gets on and occupies most of my lower berth, preventing my reclining and drifting off. Then proceeds to consume portions of pomegranate and then tossing the bits unceremoniously, not out the window but on the freaking floor of the compartment. Cursed socialism for a while then just decided to pick the piece up and toss it out hoping that setting an example would help. But nay, the man continues to thup seeds hither and thither. Now the seeds of a pomegranate are meant to be eaten.
On an aside, thup, which is tamil for spit, is the first evidence of vernacular onomatopoeia that I've ever encountered. And how good an example. ThupI, so simple, yet so clear. Any more examples would be received with much gratitude and appreciation.
Anyway in some form cruel justice, one of the extended family who was on the wait-list ended up sleeping on the thupped upon floor.
So we arrived at Thirupati on the Pilgrim express and a short ride later entered the vast halls of "srinivasam" the pilgrim services centre setup by the TTD at around 5 AM. No rooms allotments till six screamed a board and while perusing the sign a man walks up and offers to get a room. For a little more than what is the regular price. Went ahead and gave him the go to do the needful, slowly coming to terms with the fact that this was to be a regular feature.
Wash and breakfast later, we began the trudge up 3,665 steps over 9km. Finished it in about 3 hours and my granddad's my current hero. Unfortunately between getting up and getting to the correct queue we'd gotten too late to make any of the special offering deals that they have up there. So we hobbled along to the above 75 queue and holding up my hobbling granddad got in for the usual 5 second look at the deity before being shoved away by the crowd controlling scouts who are unfortunately ever prepared.
Took a bus back and planned to visit the temple dedicated to the Goddess Padmavati (consort to the God on the hills). There too we found the queues all closed for the next hour and refused to bribe some local tout and entered the temple hoping to get a glimpse. And how we did. The deity was being taken around the temple on a palanquin and a good look ensured that we didn't have to spend the next couple of hours in some queue, which seems to be the way of life in Thirupati.
The town itself is hell. Built around the ten odd temples with nothing outside of a train station, a bus terminus and about a million lodges. And advertisements for Bio beer and Bio whiskey which I did not have the guts to try.
No pictures due to an embargo on cellphones and cameras in the temple complexes.
But it's strange when a temple becomes a business or sorts where one can get ahead in the queue depending on the amount one spends and having spent that much time, energy and money all one gets is a 5 second glimpse. Not that I believe too strongly, but still. Actually it's worse if one doesn't really have the faith. But it's done. I'm aching all over and have a couple of days before I start off my residency so rest it is...
On an aside, thup, which is tamil for spit, is the first evidence of vernacular onomatopoeia that I've ever encountered. And how good an example. ThupI, so simple, yet so clear. Any more examples would be received with much gratitude and appreciation.
Anyway in some form cruel justice, one of the extended family who was on the wait-list ended up sleeping on the thupped upon floor.
So we arrived at Thirupati on the Pilgrim express and a short ride later entered the vast halls of "srinivasam" the pilgrim services centre setup by the TTD at around 5 AM. No rooms allotments till six screamed a board and while perusing the sign a man walks up and offers to get a room. For a little more than what is the regular price. Went ahead and gave him the go to do the needful, slowly coming to terms with the fact that this was to be a regular feature.
Wash and breakfast later, we began the trudge up 3,665 steps over 9km. Finished it in about 3 hours and my granddad's my current hero. Unfortunately between getting up and getting to the correct queue we'd gotten too late to make any of the special offering deals that they have up there. So we hobbled along to the above 75 queue and holding up my hobbling granddad got in for the usual 5 second look at the deity before being shoved away by the crowd controlling scouts who are unfortunately ever prepared.
Took a bus back and planned to visit the temple dedicated to the Goddess Padmavati (consort to the God on the hills). There too we found the queues all closed for the next hour and refused to bribe some local tout and entered the temple hoping to get a glimpse. And how we did. The deity was being taken around the temple on a palanquin and a good look ensured that we didn't have to spend the next couple of hours in some queue, which seems to be the way of life in Thirupati.
The town itself is hell. Built around the ten odd temples with nothing outside of a train station, a bus terminus and about a million lodges. And advertisements for Bio beer and Bio whiskey which I did not have the guts to try.
No pictures due to an embargo on cellphones and cameras in the temple complexes.
But it's strange when a temple becomes a business or sorts where one can get ahead in the queue depending on the amount one spends and having spent that much time, energy and money all one gets is a 5 second glimpse. Not that I believe too strongly, but still. Actually it's worse if one doesn't really have the faith. But it's done. I'm aching all over and have a couple of days before I start off my residency so rest it is...
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Rant.
Aborted a post. Then wrote one. On paper with a pen. Tossed around with the idea of transcribing it and ditched that too. Read about Stephen Fry on wikipedia off my phone. Which I must say continues to surprise me. Mostly by vibrating in my pocket when I least expect it but occasionally by allowing me to check where some errant courier is (en route apparently) and also reading bash.org every morning on the pot. Though I know and feel deep down that there are many whose lives would go on just as before and maybe even a tad better if they didn't know that detail it is still cool. I recently found that this blog had replaced a newspaper as someone's crap-read so to speak. Now again I know and feel that there maybe some who think a crap read is one that would have been better if not read at all and that I too should feel chagrin that my opus-es are relegated to lavatories. But nay, I think I shall stay happy that what I write eases someone's morning. Again I was going to say passage but then that's way to graphic for even me.
Maybe I'll GPRS his blog in the midst of my sojourns.
Applications for the next set of exams are out. The good part is that seems to be my only ticket out of this place. The bad part is that this time around there are only 5 seats on the bus. And one's in CMC which may just decide to go ahead and give it to a believer. No qualms about that considering they mention it very boldly in their bulletin. They also allow one to apply online, which due to some inadvertent press of an enter key I've botched up so now I eagerly wait their reply to tell me how I may redeem myself from eternal purgatory. Nimhans is up as is PGI within a couple of days of each other hinting at travel at the speed of anxiety. AIIMS has no seats which makes me occasionaly feel like a jackass but then my paycheck comes and I shut up and sink into my prostitution without complaint.
This post has gotten too ranty for my liking but nothing funny's been happening. My apologies.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Holi ko unholi kar de...
Yeah I know I'm losing it. When the title's in hindi, the cry goes around, as Psmith would say, that Quietly Amused's finally been found cackling in a strait-jacket in a Padded cell. Again something Wonko would wax eloquently about for hours on end. But yeah somehow the spirit of the festival that permeated this part of the world has stayed off me as have the riot of colours.
It started at one am last night and thankfully there's only so much the average human body can endure before lapsing into a tired sleep. So more than 24 hours hence the campus is finally quiet. And no body's trying to waylay me and paint me in that particularly stubborn gold spray that they seem to have invented this time around. The heavy metal content of the various shades that are used is disturbing to an extent but unfortunately a single exposure once a year is not sufficient to cause any lasting damage. In any case I think the jokers here are so used to pollution that their bodies would take more abuse without batting the proverbial eyelid.
The current obsession though is Superstition by Stevie Wonder who in my mind is finally out of the I just called to say I love you mould. Amazing how the worst songs become the most popular. And the Nokia Nseries theme. Not the Moby one, the one with all the drums. Does anyone know what track that is? Can you mail it to me? I will be eternally grateful.
In other news my hostel allotment is held up due to the unfortunate emptying of the printer cartridge. Which means depending on the speed of a Government Procurement Agency, I'm either going to be in a swanky room with an attached bath and rumored central air conditioning, or have screeching hatchlings courtesy the pigeons.
I'm also officially a whore now. I'm doing a job that I don't quite like, with no apparent future, with the risk of HIV with every client, for a pay that's reasonably good. The accounts department here works the best apparently.
So last night, the period between the first half of this post and a couple of sentences ago was a nightmare. People drunk on alcohol, bhaang, both or assorted psychedelic substances came to the Emergency in droves along with the people that they'd beaten up and run over and it was only the collective state of inebriation that stopped them from continuing whatever fights they had outside, in the hospital. There's something seriously flawed in a society that wants to douse the average passerby in colour and when met with opposition proceeds to douse him anyway and then beat his head in with a brick. It's times like this I wish I could buy a month's supply of water, store it and then drown a few monkeys in the water supply. Or wish that small amounts of exposure to the colours used here had lasting damaging effects. The ward was a sea of trolleys with patients of every hue, thus also making it impossible at times to identify who was who and occasionally what was what. This hopefully is only an annual occurrence but one can never really be sure.
The highlight of the day though was lunch at the AP Bhavan, which is like the Andhra Pradesh Embassy in Delhi. Full meals. With Gongura. Heaven.
I need sleep now and maybe a hot bath in any order so Ta.
It started at one am last night and thankfully there's only so much the average human body can endure before lapsing into a tired sleep. So more than 24 hours hence the campus is finally quiet. And no body's trying to waylay me and paint me in that particularly stubborn gold spray that they seem to have invented this time around. The heavy metal content of the various shades that are used is disturbing to an extent but unfortunately a single exposure once a year is not sufficient to cause any lasting damage. In any case I think the jokers here are so used to pollution that their bodies would take more abuse without batting the proverbial eyelid.
The current obsession though is Superstition by Stevie Wonder who in my mind is finally out of the I just called to say I love you mould. Amazing how the worst songs become the most popular. And the Nokia Nseries theme. Not the Moby one, the one with all the drums. Does anyone know what track that is? Can you mail it to me? I will be eternally grateful.
In other news my hostel allotment is held up due to the unfortunate emptying of the printer cartridge. Which means depending on the speed of a Government Procurement Agency, I'm either going to be in a swanky room with an attached bath and rumored central air conditioning, or have screeching hatchlings courtesy the pigeons.
I'm also officially a whore now. I'm doing a job that I don't quite like, with no apparent future, with the risk of HIV with every client, for a pay that's reasonably good. The accounts department here works the best apparently.
So last night, the period between the first half of this post and a couple of sentences ago was a nightmare. People drunk on alcohol, bhaang, both or assorted psychedelic substances came to the Emergency in droves along with the people that they'd beaten up and run over and it was only the collective state of inebriation that stopped them from continuing whatever fights they had outside, in the hospital. There's something seriously flawed in a society that wants to douse the average passerby in colour and when met with opposition proceeds to douse him anyway and then beat his head in with a brick. It's times like this I wish I could buy a month's supply of water, store it and then drown a few monkeys in the water supply. Or wish that small amounts of exposure to the colours used here had lasting damaging effects. The ward was a sea of trolleys with patients of every hue, thus also making it impossible at times to identify who was who and occasionally what was what. This hopefully is only an annual occurrence but one can never really be sure.
The highlight of the day though was lunch at the AP Bhavan, which is like the Andhra Pradesh Embassy in Delhi. Full meals. With Gongura. Heaven.
I need sleep now and maybe a hot bath in any order so Ta.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Trauma and the like
Damn it's good to be on a keyboard again. And a nice Toshiba laptop at that. Now I'll let you all imagine that I struck gold for a bit. ... . I didn't it's a friend's who's kindly left for a two week trip to to Seattle to settle scores with certain gates that didn't let him through to whatever he wanted to do. And he plans to buy himself some slim, trim Vaio or some such. So here I am Toshiba-ing away. I can feel the beginnings of a bad Toshiba joke bubbling away but I'll spare my small but significant sane side the agony.
It's almost a month since I landed up in Chomland and my take on it sadly is unchanged. My Jane Goodall feeling persists as does my intense displeasure at the vagaries of the weather and the people. Had someone asking me a week ago if I'd learnt hindi from watching movies considering "in the south" they don't take too kindly to hindi. If only they knew what chom meant... So I had to politely in my stingiest voice point out that much as we might not like it we are taught the national language in school. I then proceeded to daydream about punching their shocked faces in.
C'est, they say, la vie.
But on the upside, summer's starting soon.
That's not the real upside, my pigeons, which according to Wikipedia incubate their eggs for 18 days are coming to the end of that period.
Which again reminds me of this nondescript shop at Kadrenhalli Cross in good old Bengalooru that had some emaciated, marinated birds boldly advertised as teetar tandoori. Now I'm not quite sure if that's a parrot or a pigeon and almost anyone I ask has a tendency to avoid answering the question by breaking in to song. You must have heard it, "teetar ke aage do teetar..." It's only the thought of June back home that's keeping my from going on to some homicidal rampage. For those of you who play chess and unreal tournament, the next time you play the board game, capture 6 or seven of your opponents pieces continuously and then in the deepest voice you have say, "killing spree". Thank you bash.org for that.
Ok to point of it all is that I've suddenly realised a few things. One, that trauma is a good place to be as long as you're on the other side if you get what I'm saying. Oh on a small aside, when I told someone that I was going to be working in trauma they asked me why I would encroach on a psychologist's territory. It took me a while to figure that a traumatized person needn't have been in an accident.
Back to the points in question. Trauma/ER shifts are excellent for many reasons. The whole I'm a surgeon, I save lives line that I borrowed from Grey's Anatomy and use to evoke alternating awe and disgust from the world at large, is largely true in the ER. The golden hour, though a fine theory, is rarely followed in the real world. Patients land up usually at 55+ minutes which as one can imagine gives us five or so minutes to do what we can. Which at least here is quite a bit.
The adrenaline rush apart, once the shift is done, there's absolutely no concept of a follow up. Which I love. Every shift has new patients, no wards where there's a chance of seeing patients for days or weeks on end, no discharges or case notes to constantly update and thus no boredom.
Yeah I'm insensitive.... Sue me.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Pigeon holed.
It seems I'll post whenever I can find a computer, ten minutes and an idea. Irrespective of how bad the post will be. Why? Simply because much as I think my phone and it's ability to interact with the Internet at any level from simple mail checks to telling me route information of the Delhi Metro to even USC 2257 approved material, I get tired of typing mails on a little keypad. And watching the Internet in little 2x3 inch bits. (bits, Internet ha ha). So here I am on this really cool laptop that has a screen that's bigger than the desktop back home and apparently is one of those wide screen things so when you watch Lord of The Rings on DVD you actually get to see the lone orc wanking off the normal screen. And some people will make quiz questions on that. Like what's his name? Was he of the White Hand of Saruman or the Eye of Sauron or just some freelance bystander turned on by all the carnage?
The rambling is due to many reasons. One, just outside my window two pigeons have decided to roost. Thus for the past few days I've seen them bring twig after twig akin to the little drops of water making oceans, and put together a nest and then in one flash of movement do the needful. There are now 3 eggs in that nest. I had initially planned pigeon omelets but they're just too damn small to make anything substantial. And too common to be touted as a delicacy a la caviar. Now I dread the time in the next few weeks when they'll hatch and all day and most of the night some fledgling squealing is going to drive me up the wall. Watch this space then. Or maybe not.
Second I haven't slept after last night's tryst in the emergency. Not that it was life-savingly busy but yeah got a few brownie points. The most frustrating is having to bump patients across (vide previous posts) after some aggressive resuscitation.
Third is Delhi and it's intense insanity. Like some moron who ran into a glass door. Like the Saint Gobain advertisements we all laughed at. He did. And despite every instinct to whack him across the head and ask him what he thought he was looking at I had to scan his head and surprisingly enough he seemed to have an intact brain.
And then at three I heard a sound that television and occasionally real life have taught me signifies a potential sight for sore eyes. High heels clicking on mosaic tiles.
Sound followed. Ugly unpolished pointy leather shoes found attached to chom man. Thus the angst.
Have this cool plan to get Bangalore's fashion gurus and force them to watch the common man here. Hopefully they'll die of apoplexy. Or something.
The rambling is due to many reasons. One, just outside my window two pigeons have decided to roost. Thus for the past few days I've seen them bring twig after twig akin to the little drops of water making oceans, and put together a nest and then in one flash of movement do the needful. There are now 3 eggs in that nest. I had initially planned pigeon omelets but they're just too damn small to make anything substantial. And too common to be touted as a delicacy a la caviar. Now I dread the time in the next few weeks when they'll hatch and all day and most of the night some fledgling squealing is going to drive me up the wall. Watch this space then. Or maybe not.
Second I haven't slept after last night's tryst in the emergency. Not that it was life-savingly busy but yeah got a few brownie points. The most frustrating is having to bump patients across (vide previous posts) after some aggressive resuscitation.
Third is Delhi and it's intense insanity. Like some moron who ran into a glass door. Like the Saint Gobain advertisements we all laughed at. He did. And despite every instinct to whack him across the head and ask him what he thought he was looking at I had to scan his head and surprisingly enough he seemed to have an intact brain.
And then at three I heard a sound that television and occasionally real life have taught me signifies a potential sight for sore eyes. High heels clicking on mosaic tiles.
Sound followed. Ugly unpolished pointy leather shoes found attached to chom man. Thus the angst.
Have this cool plan to get Bangalore's fashion gurus and force them to watch the common man here. Hopefully they'll die of apoplexy. Or something.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Kids These Days
The weekend past was spent conducting a couple of lit events at St John's Medical College and attending a full paisa vasool concert. I did get in for free so theoretically it would have been paisa vasool if anyone but Himmesh was there but this was also a band that I have and would have paid to watch, time and again. The grammar in the previous sentence is of a dubious nature but there are reasons for that too. And the organisers at John's are a kindly bunch and thus the free entry.
Many thoughts have risen in the old cranium the past few days so this just might be a long ranty post so there's the headlines so you can scroll down to the relevant parts or just leave if you find them uninteresting
1. Lack of substantial participation in lit events
2. Rather depressing state of knowledge of the current TV generation
3. A somewhere it is Thermal and a Quarter Concert
4. The deplorable state of affairs regarding music taste or the difference between good music and popular music
5. Adobe Audition as the best audio editing software no matter how amateur you are or How what you hear is never what you get
6. What is this Gazzag anyway
Part I& II
So I was asked to conduct Word Games and 20 Questions at Autumn Muse 2006. It used to be a good fest in the years gone by attracting excellent talent in literary and debating events. Culturals will always be big anywhere. Vellore Engineering college gets some 15 western music bands so we shan't go there. Now there are hardly 5 teams in registering who know what the event is. And they don't know grammar. Or slang. Or difficult words. And in twentyQ somewhere along the way you realise that they aren't reading classics anymore. They aren't reading medicine either so what are they doing? TV? Awesome!!
Part III - Bring your Daughter to Thermal and a Quarter
Taaq turned 10. Have seen them and heard them for 9 of the 10 so I shall speak and not take flak. Like they say in Cheers, I'm rubber and you're glue, anything you say bounces of me and sticks to you. The concert started at seven and within twenty minutes of it's starting the heavens opened like they did an hour before the concert and the previous day. Incredible really. Autumn Muse does that to the weather. Clear skies for a week before and after the fest and torrential, end-of-the-world, let's all pair up and get on to the ark rains bang in the middle of the Rock Show. Squelchy but it's fun if you're at the sound console.
This was the song list
Galacktiqua, Look @ Me, Paper Puli, Sunset Man (Hallelujah!), Brigade Street, Wonderwall (yeah Oasis but I actually like the song now), Holy Jose (new), Sanity, Bend The World, How Can I Get Your Groove(clean, simple, awesome), Shine On You Crazy Diamond (another trip), Chameleon and Hoedown. How do I know? I've spent the last 36 hours trying to clean up the audio recording but more on that later. The one thing new that I saw this time was 23 year old Nate from the Chicago area who's here with his tenor saxophone which he cleans with used currency notes when it gets damp, by the way. Now Nate changes the way the band sounds to a level that I haven't seen in this many years. Be it blistering solos in Shine or Hoedown or fill-ins in Sanity there's something to it. Treading the fine line between staying in tune and straying off it, as he would say, it was trippy da.
Thank you lord that Bruce is back to singing and Pascal isn't. And like I said it was good fun and so was the 10 year anniversary bash after that.
Part IV - The serious bit
As the rains poured down the sound console had the usual influx of the audience who didn't think getting wet was a good idea but didn't mind the risk of electrocution with all the cables around. Now in the midst of the hoi polloi was one heckling gentleman screaming for rock. I do understand the individual preferences of the world at large and that would explain how Himmesh and the Backstreet Boys are oh so up in the ratings or why the only thing we get to hear in rock competitions is heavy metal. Or why Strings, Fuzon and Call are raking in millions by selling albums in India. It doesn't quite gel well. Shah Rukh Khan is a superstar while Nasserudin Shah is best known for his role in Tridev. Why no one's heard of Dave Matthews Band but would swear by 'Nsync. Why music with the shelf life of spoilt meat is so popular while enough good bands haven't gotten very far.
Time will change things they say. But a paradigm shift (how I love that phrase) in people's tastes is unlikely to happen and till then Himmesh is going to rule the roost.
Part V
Adobe Audition is so cool. That's all there is to it. Simple any moron (including yours truly) can work it with ease and actually get something that sounds almost, but not quite like perfect.
Gazzag. What kind of meaningless palindrome is that? The worst kind.
More editing remains me off.
And I made no spelling mistakes apparently.
Many thoughts have risen in the old cranium the past few days so this just might be a long ranty post so there's the headlines so you can scroll down to the relevant parts or just leave if you find them uninteresting
1. Lack of substantial participation in lit events
2. Rather depressing state of knowledge of the current TV generation
3. A somewhere it is Thermal and a Quarter Concert
4. The deplorable state of affairs regarding music taste or the difference between good music and popular music
5. Adobe Audition as the best audio editing software no matter how amateur you are or How what you hear is never what you get
6. What is this Gazzag anyway
Part I& II
So I was asked to conduct Word Games and 20 Questions at Autumn Muse 2006. It used to be a good fest in the years gone by attracting excellent talent in literary and debating events. Culturals will always be big anywhere. Vellore Engineering college gets some 15 western music bands so we shan't go there. Now there are hardly 5 teams in registering who know what the event is. And they don't know grammar. Or slang. Or difficult words. And in twentyQ somewhere along the way you realise that they aren't reading classics anymore. They aren't reading medicine either so what are they doing? TV? Awesome!!
Part III - Bring your Daughter to Thermal and a Quarter
Taaq turned 10. Have seen them and heard them for 9 of the 10 so I shall speak and not take flak. Like they say in Cheers, I'm rubber and you're glue, anything you say bounces of me and sticks to you. The concert started at seven and within twenty minutes of it's starting the heavens opened like they did an hour before the concert and the previous day. Incredible really. Autumn Muse does that to the weather. Clear skies for a week before and after the fest and torrential, end-of-the-world, let's all pair up and get on to the ark rains bang in the middle of the Rock Show. Squelchy but it's fun if you're at the sound console.
This was the song list
Galacktiqua, Look @ Me, Paper Puli, Sunset Man (Hallelujah!), Brigade Street, Wonderwall (yeah Oasis but I actually like the song now), Holy Jose (new), Sanity, Bend The World, How Can I Get Your Groove(clean, simple, awesome), Shine On You Crazy Diamond (another trip), Chameleon and Hoedown. How do I know? I've spent the last 36 hours trying to clean up the audio recording but more on that later. The one thing new that I saw this time was 23 year old Nate from the Chicago area who's here with his tenor saxophone which he cleans with used currency notes when it gets damp, by the way. Now Nate changes the way the band sounds to a level that I haven't seen in this many years. Be it blistering solos in Shine or Hoedown or fill-ins in Sanity there's something to it. Treading the fine line between staying in tune and straying off it, as he would say, it was trippy da.
Thank you lord that Bruce is back to singing and Pascal isn't. And like I said it was good fun and so was the 10 year anniversary bash after that.
Part IV - The serious bit
As the rains poured down the sound console had the usual influx of the audience who didn't think getting wet was a good idea but didn't mind the risk of electrocution with all the cables around. Now in the midst of the hoi polloi was one heckling gentleman screaming for rock. I do understand the individual preferences of the world at large and that would explain how Himmesh and the Backstreet Boys are oh so up in the ratings or why the only thing we get to hear in rock competitions is heavy metal. Or why Strings, Fuzon and Call are raking in millions by selling albums in India. It doesn't quite gel well. Shah Rukh Khan is a superstar while Nasserudin Shah is best known for his role in Tridev. Why no one's heard of Dave Matthews Band but would swear by 'Nsync. Why music with the shelf life of spoilt meat is so popular while enough good bands haven't gotten very far.
Time will change things they say. But a paradigm shift (how I love that phrase) in people's tastes is unlikely to happen and till then Himmesh is going to rule the roost.
Part V
Adobe Audition is so cool. That's all there is to it. Simple any moron (including yours truly) can work it with ease and actually get something that sounds almost, but not quite like perfect.
Gazzag. What kind of meaningless palindrome is that? The worst kind.
More editing remains me off.
And I made no spelling mistakes apparently.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Microwaved rays
Ok this is, as embarrassing as it may be to admit, the third time I'm sitting down to write a post in 2 days. It's not just your average writer's block, apparently, which usually resolves in the second attempt to write a post, unless one is James Joyce. Or some pathologically deranged creature with suicidal intent every time a blog goes unwritten.
The problem is that this is to some extent therapeutic. If we could get the average agoraphobic sociopath to blog and of course throw in some fake comments to con them into believing someone was listening we'd manage to get old Sigmund into the Internet age. Of course these need to be access controlled since we don't want other agoraphobic, sociopathic, Internet junkies getting ideas to destroy civilian life and property from them.
So here goes attempt three.
The stingray menace is being actively tackled down under, apparently by dragging them onto land. What is wrong with people? Steve Irwin died. We're sorry about that but lopping tails off stingrays doesn't solve anything. I'm not even sure they taste good. But this might just explain things.
In other things that managed to mess my life up, albeit not significantly enough is the microwave. This device powered by electricity but more importantly radiation at 2450 MHz (that's a wavelength of 12 cm approx, which I thought was pretty large) was the brainchild of one Percy Spencer whose candy bar melted in front of a Radar. Stopping short of running down the streets naked and proving the Archimedes principle yet again, he patented it and for many generations ensured that his descendants could live off the interest from the royalties.
That's not the story. Of late the microwave oven has become an indispensable kitchen accessory. Of course it can't grill or roast but who wants the carcinogens anyway. We like boiled food nowadays - it's apparently healthier. And even more salubrious if we do away with salt and pepper. Garlic is still fine. But if you want to breakfast on it just make sure you stay out of the halitotic radius.
In a woman-less household the microwave is of prime importance. In many a bachelor pad, the day starts with paying obeisance to this mighty machine of easy cookery. And consuming it's offerings with relish. Mine is one such abode that resisted the temptation to get one for many a year till our fridge (which contains mostly cold stored pickle, beer and orange juice) died a sad demise. Some wheeling-dealing later we now have a new fridge and a microwave. Joy was that day. Food could be warmed in 2 minutes, pop corn was now do-it-yourself and aerosol cans were no longer kept in stock.
Things went along well. The bell was a joyous sound that meant food was ready and hot. The hazards of trying to heat plastic boxes of frozen food - most involving molten/melted plastic and a tendency for it to coat the digestive passage - were no longer present. The metal rimmed mugs were strategically broken beyond Araldite's reach and all was good. Till Dad decided to put a bowl (microwave safe) of rajma in without a cover despite there being a full roll of cling wrap in the immediate vicinity.
The third item to be tested in a microwave ever, was an egg. Apocryphal perhaps, but here it went in before the chicken and needless to say it burst. As do tomatoes. Boiling rajma also as a similar tendency. Dinner therefore, involved spooning it out from all 6 walls of the oven and spending the rest of my life dreading the bell.
Tomorrow, they say, is another day.
The problem is that this is to some extent therapeutic. If we could get the average agoraphobic sociopath to blog and of course throw in some fake comments to con them into believing someone was listening we'd manage to get old Sigmund into the Internet age. Of course these need to be access controlled since we don't want other agoraphobic, sociopathic, Internet junkies getting ideas to destroy civilian life and property from them.
So here goes attempt three.
The stingray menace is being actively tackled down under, apparently by dragging them onto land. What is wrong with people? Steve Irwin died. We're sorry about that but lopping tails off stingrays doesn't solve anything. I'm not even sure they taste good. But this might just explain things.
In other things that managed to mess my life up, albeit not significantly enough is the microwave. This device powered by electricity but more importantly radiation at 2450 MHz (that's a wavelength of 12 cm approx, which I thought was pretty large) was the brainchild of one Percy Spencer whose candy bar melted in front of a Radar. Stopping short of running down the streets naked and proving the Archimedes principle yet again, he patented it and for many generations ensured that his descendants could live off the interest from the royalties.
That's not the story. Of late the microwave oven has become an indispensable kitchen accessory. Of course it can't grill or roast but who wants the carcinogens anyway. We like boiled food nowadays - it's apparently healthier. And even more salubrious if we do away with salt and pepper. Garlic is still fine. But if you want to breakfast on it just make sure you stay out of the halitotic radius.
In a woman-less household the microwave is of prime importance. In many a bachelor pad, the day starts with paying obeisance to this mighty machine of easy cookery. And consuming it's offerings with relish. Mine is one such abode that resisted the temptation to get one for many a year till our fridge (which contains mostly cold stored pickle, beer and orange juice) died a sad demise. Some wheeling-dealing later we now have a new fridge and a microwave. Joy was that day. Food could be warmed in 2 minutes, pop corn was now do-it-yourself and aerosol cans were no longer kept in stock.
Things went along well. The bell was a joyous sound that meant food was ready and hot. The hazards of trying to heat plastic boxes of frozen food - most involving molten/melted plastic and a tendency for it to coat the digestive passage - were no longer present. The metal rimmed mugs were strategically broken beyond Araldite's reach and all was good. Till Dad decided to put a bowl (microwave safe) of rajma in without a cover despite there being a full roll of cling wrap in the immediate vicinity.
The third item to be tested in a microwave ever, was an egg. Apocryphal perhaps, but here it went in before the chicken and needless to say it burst. As do tomatoes. Boiling rajma also as a similar tendency. Dinner therefore, involved spooning it out from all 6 walls of the oven and spending the rest of my life dreading the bell.
Tomorrow, they say, is another day.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Orkutting again
A long discussion was had fuelled by funny scraps that one gets to read on other people's orkut account. Which set the wheels in motion, the gears turning and the machinery working and now we have a post dedicated to networking sites.
Or that's what they want to be called.
Long years ago, when all was text, if you had to meet new people you irc-ed (Internet Relay Chatted) the results of that are seen here. Or if you had to spread any word you painstakingly typed out all the addresses. Or just called everyone up. Needless to say (then why say it? It's just a expression like notwithstanding) life was without charm and people often died alone only to be discovered by the neighbor while investigating the scary noises.
Then email groups became the rage and suddenly like minded people were joining groups of interest under id's both bizarre and interesting. That element of internet uncertainity prevailed where one was never sure if silvan_elf@whatever was a Legolas or an Arwen. So there were hits and misses and geeky boys were trolling the corridors of pro-abortion groups in the hope that they'd land someone. Well, the logic essentially being that here was a bunch of women whom one was sure would be having enough sex to make abortion a legal requirement.
It was also said of Marie Stopes (wiki if you don't know) that at the time she was living in an arrangement with a certain gentleman which would certainly have required the use of contraception.
Then one had alumni sites where with a little ingeunity one can dredge up email ids of either the 4th standard crush that turned one down or the 6th standard bully who turned one upside down and subscribe them both to donkey porn or some such. The only fallout of the whole thing is the rare chance that someone would actually like donkey porn. Like the song says, there are all kinds of people in this world.
Then the early networking sites came up. And now they're sprouting like mushrooms. Advertising on the internet, appearing in magazines and newspapers and intelligent men and women are unable to understand why there's such an exponential increase in subscription. That might be explained in the lines to come.
So there's Hi5, Orkut, Fropper and a bunch of others that beg, plead, entice and cajole people into signing up. Fropper is probably the worst with the sleaziest tv advertisement I've seen after that MR Coffee thing. Hi5 is ok till one starts getting friend requests from unknown cool sounding people who have porn websites as their webpages. Not that isn't necessarily a bad thing but occasionally donkey porn happens. Even my motherboard, which is a particularly cold, emotionless thing shuts down in disgust those times.
Orkut. Google initiative so it is to an extent remarkably intuitive and reasonably well organised. And it's primary advantage is the fact that the level of anonymity is very low. Your email id is on display as is your face if you chose to display it and essentially so are your friends. That can be a good thing. But also can be disastrous.
Orkut has a few issues of it's own. One is that scrapbook concept. Where whatever anybody wants to tell you is open for public perusal. It is like a friend said, akin to shouting out across a crowded room when suddenly everyone's stopped talking. The only way out is the delete potentially offending scraps. Why can't people just mail instead? The other is the weirdo invasion. This happens either completely anonymously - the "fraandship" bunch or skeletons from your old school closet. The anonymous bunch can very easily be ignored or laughed at the others pose a threat.
There exists a concept that one hasn't kept in touch or taken the trouble to keep in touch with a large number of people primarily because one may not want to keep in touch. This theory is ignored, violated and trampled thanks to orkut. Specimens from 4th grade (not the crush) and the bully from 6th grade is back with pictures to take revenge for the whole donkey porn thing. Old school people, here refers to people from the old school, pose a problem of a completely different nature than most of the weirdos from another planet.
The friends one makes in college or even high school are people who have a fair idea of what they want in life and who they are. So a connection formed then is a reasonably sound one. Now in 6th grade where most people are trying to come to terms with either puberty or pimples is an eminently forgettable time. Now if someone from that shady past appears out of the blue and wants to catch up it's terrible. Conversation never progresses beyond ten minutes even with beer and often you find them married with a kid at a time when you can't see a future in your own life.
But experimentation on orkut by hypolink and me have yeilded the following tips :
- Friend requests expire if ignored for a week
- People can be unfriended without them ever knowing
Use this wisely.
More on the orkut profile and how to ensure you stay single in some time.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Trip Hop, Industrial and the News
Just read my previous post again and found a rather distressing vein of irritation flowing through it. Is it because I have exams in less than a week? Yes. Then what am I doing here blogging when I should at least appear to be at my desk with some voluminous tome dedicated on how to carve people effectively, safely and beautifully. Yes, au contraire to public opinion we surgeons are aesthetic. We like dabbling in things that would make most people go pale in the face and wrench the guts of a significant proportion but still we are aesthetic. Not Ascetic, acerbic perhaps but aesthetic. Of the many voluminous tomes that I often refer to, in the blog and outside, where I have to refer to them, most wax eloquently about the aesthetics of surgery. And there's the occasional Head of Department (fondly called 'Chief' after the Chinooks or the Apaches I'm not sure which) who'll peer over your shoulder and gently remind you that whatever you're trying to stitch up is a person and not a gunny bag. And so we learn and try drilling this fact into the many scalpel happy children who seem to entering the halls of Surgery nowadays.
That apart this post is about this new genre of music that I've recently discovered. Before certain people accuse me of being pompous enough to say that I 'discovered' a new genre, let me explain. It's been around for a while and I learnt of it's existence now. Like Darwin discovered that big turtle. Those of you who pay attention to what you read and store every word in some vague recess of your memory, you would remember Supreme Beings of Leisure. Those miserable worms of readers who simply scan through, skipping alternate words, lines or even paragraphs depending on your attention span, it's this new band I've been listening to.
It turns out that a bunch of people in Bristol or some such scenic locale in England decided that hip hop wasn't trippy enough and so they made this totally new kind of music with 'ambience' and 'groove'. With 'break-beats' and sample heavy synthesizing. All those technicalities apart it sounds like it sounds - trippy. Morcheeba, Supreme Beings, Massive Attack, Lamb would be a good set to start. The sound is often dark especially with Massive Attack's Mezzanine album. For those of you who've watched House, MD the title track is a sample of a song off this album 'Teardrop'.
When music like this gets too easy going, for times when that extra energy is a must, for late night journeys into the textbook - we switch to industrial. Now don't get me wrong it's not my favourite type of music and given a choice I wouldn't listen to too much of it. But when journeying into the aforementioned, there's nothing like the OSTs of Spawn, Matrix, Mortal Kombat and Prodigy's Fat of the Land to make throw one convulsive jerk and hit it like there's no tomorrow. You can throw in chemical brothers but there's a tendency to zulu dance to galvanize which can be detrimental.
So there it is boys a girls a guide to the latest noise that's haunting my haunt.
Of course I had the option of talking about Aldous' Brave New World or what's been happening in the world for the past week or so but it's depressing enough to have to read it in the newspaper. Why waste blog space ranting about the ABVP or the NSUI, or how politics today is like politics 2000 years ago - founded on clan and tribe, or how political parties are wooing Abu Salem to contest in elections.
May Balrogs eat them all.
Monday, August 21, 2006
What to do...
Here I am again alternatively battling insanity and boredom as the exams draw close when life drops funny stories into my lap.
If any of you see a very mild mannered old lady in a train en route to chennai tonight or the return sometime next weekend, wearing your standard issue sari, bifocals, diamond earrings and grooving like there's no tomorrow to Semmangudi on a beat up Panasonic discman - That's my grandmom. Be nice and you might get invited for lunch and that's something you shouldn't pass up. It'll be vegetarian but worth every morsel.
Why the current obsession with the progenitors' progenitors? Just been spending time with them and realizing that apart from good food they make great company.
As long as one doesn't tell them that lunch involved some dead animal.
And beer.
Some theater company in Bangalore decided to stage Chicago the musical and inside informants have it that the costumes and choreography were lifted straight from the movie. Or are we calling it inspired these days? So this company in a whirlwind marketing drive put up a billboard the size of Liechtenstein proclaiming their venture with a panty-hose clad nymphet (cigarette holder included) in the middle of City Market.
Why?
Anyway the play's off. The reasons currently making the rounds in apocrypha are that they didn't get the rights (but it was only inspired... Same script, you idiot) or that the cops in Bangalore being what they are shut it down under the pretext that it was improper for our audiences.
And then it came to pass that the audience were again brought to the limelight when some public forum on one of the news channels (Aside : The ambiguity of time place and person reminds me of page three where people are partying in "one of the city's hip clubs with an open terrace and a greek flavour". Sheesh. But can't name the names can we?) decided to discuss KANK. With respect to marriage in contemporary society and if the movie advocated adultery, blah blah.
We were debating that in the 12th. Anyway about time I thought. Except that the panel consisted of 2 marriage counsellors, Shobha De (twice married, has to deal with your kids and my kids are fighting with our kids), the owner of Shaadi.com (yuppie NRI, unmarried is sitting on all his money and advocating marriage simply because it makes him more money) and here's the clincher Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan. For being the director and actor in the movie that 'dared to explore adultery'. There were movies down south (like really down south) that were exploring porn before either of them were born but that's another story.
The discussion we shan't go into except to say that K of the Koffee fame claimed that he was unmarried because he was too cynical to take that step after all the horror stories he's heard and seen. The grapevine thinks he's not married because of the guy sitting next to him.
So the debate is still on whether marriage is a relevant institution or not...
That brings us to another story involving the caste system. It's bad enough that it exists and now is a pawn in the great game of vote-bank politics, the funny things are the sub-castes that I came to know of recently. Details are too convoluted to put down and I don't feel like transliterating and translating terms of the aaru velu niyogilu ilk. But the fun bits are the intra caste anti-subcaste jokes that have been making the rounds for a few centuries now. Why this is seminal? Happened to see the monthly vernacular publication affiliated to one of the 4 mutts that are held sacred (page 3 ambiguity again... sorry) and the appendix is what was brought to my notice.
In a nice spreadsheet excel-esque format are the following columns -
Serial Number, the importance of which will be outlined
Name
SubCaste, note the readership of this magazine has to be pretty exclusive for them to have this column up
Gotram (trust them to do something like this)
Nakshatram
Date of Birth
HEIGHT (in inches)
Educational Qualification
Place of Residence/employment
Place of Origin
So there's lists of boys and girls with all the details filled in and a disclaimer that serial numbers n1 - n2 have been erased with time, considering they can't keep the same names on for months. (no that's not why the numbers are important.)
Here's the rub, in this age of communication, ready made stuff, shaadi.com and a reliance on the easy way out, a self-addressed envelope with a request for the horoscope of serial no 'n' would get you that horoscope via mail. Of course residents of Chennai (where else) would have to go and get the desired information in person on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.
There comes a time in every man's life when they wished they were born to a lower phylum. Today's mine.
If any of you see a very mild mannered old lady in a train en route to chennai tonight or the return sometime next weekend, wearing your standard issue sari, bifocals, diamond earrings and grooving like there's no tomorrow to Semmangudi on a beat up Panasonic discman - That's my grandmom. Be nice and you might get invited for lunch and that's something you shouldn't pass up. It'll be vegetarian but worth every morsel.
Why the current obsession with the progenitors' progenitors? Just been spending time with them and realizing that apart from good food they make great company.
As long as one doesn't tell them that lunch involved some dead animal.
And beer.
Some theater company in Bangalore decided to stage Chicago the musical and inside informants have it that the costumes and choreography were lifted straight from the movie. Or are we calling it inspired these days? So this company in a whirlwind marketing drive put up a billboard the size of Liechtenstein proclaiming their venture with a panty-hose clad nymphet (cigarette holder included) in the middle of City Market.
Why?
Anyway the play's off. The reasons currently making the rounds in apocrypha are that they didn't get the rights (but it was only inspired... Same script, you idiot) or that the cops in Bangalore being what they are shut it down under the pretext that it was improper for our audiences.
And then it came to pass that the audience were again brought to the limelight when some public forum on one of the news channels (Aside : The ambiguity of time place and person reminds me of page three where people are partying in "one of the city's hip clubs with an open terrace and a greek flavour". Sheesh. But can't name the names can we?) decided to discuss KANK. With respect to marriage in contemporary society and if the movie advocated adultery, blah blah.
We were debating that in the 12th. Anyway about time I thought. Except that the panel consisted of 2 marriage counsellors, Shobha De (twice married, has to deal with your kids and my kids are fighting with our kids), the owner of Shaadi.com (yuppie NRI, unmarried is sitting on all his money and advocating marriage simply because it makes him more money) and here's the clincher Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan. For being the director and actor in the movie that 'dared to explore adultery'. There were movies down south (like really down south) that were exploring porn before either of them were born but that's another story.
The discussion we shan't go into except to say that K of the Koffee fame claimed that he was unmarried because he was too cynical to take that step after all the horror stories he's heard and seen. The grapevine thinks he's not married because of the guy sitting next to him.
So the debate is still on whether marriage is a relevant institution or not...
That brings us to another story involving the caste system. It's bad enough that it exists and now is a pawn in the great game of vote-bank politics, the funny things are the sub-castes that I came to know of recently. Details are too convoluted to put down and I don't feel like transliterating and translating terms of the aaru velu niyogilu ilk. But the fun bits are the intra caste anti-subcaste jokes that have been making the rounds for a few centuries now. Why this is seminal? Happened to see the monthly vernacular publication affiliated to one of the 4 mutts that are held sacred (page 3 ambiguity again... sorry) and the appendix is what was brought to my notice.
In a nice spreadsheet excel-esque format are the following columns -
Serial Number, the importance of which will be outlined
Name
SubCaste, note the readership of this magazine has to be pretty exclusive for them to have this column up
Gotram (trust them to do something like this)
Nakshatram
Date of Birth
HEIGHT (in inches)
Educational Qualification
Place of Residence/employment
Place of Origin
So there's lists of boys and girls with all the details filled in and a disclaimer that serial numbers n1 - n2 have been erased with time, considering they can't keep the same names on for months. (no that's not why the numbers are important.)
Here's the rub, in this age of communication, ready made stuff, shaadi.com and a reliance on the easy way out, a self-addressed envelope with a request for the horoscope of serial no 'n' would get you that horoscope via mail. Of course residents of Chennai (where else) would have to go and get the desired information in person on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.
There comes a time in every man's life when they wished they were born to a lower phylum. Today's mine.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Phony tunes
Many moons have passed since I came this way, mostly because I've been both distracted and attracted to the new little toy in my life. A black 30GB ipod. Video. Decided that I had no need of human company. It listens to me. Sounds a lot better than most people I know, and even looks better. I am, like they say, back in business.
The mobile service providers have finally lost it. The past 24 hours have seen me get the same message(s) about 20 times. Though this can occasionally be fun when one can target the sender and cause obfuscation beyond compare. All entertaining but when it happens consistently it gets on everyone's nerves. But revenge is soon at hand. I've taken to forwarding service messages. "Do you want caller tunes?" or "Win an ipod?" (bwahahahaha) or "get hookers at discount..." whatever. The upside is as usual, entertainment, and the downside is confused replies, that thanks to the service providers iterating behavior I receive about 20 times.
Another rather significant thing I've noticed is how a cell phone is a major determinant of both sentimentality and social connectivity.
Take my cool, sleek 3315 for instance. Notice how it's still on the site and not in the museum, like my camera. Says a lot about the phone... or about Nokia but that's not the point, is it? Again, I digress. This little nifty gadget has a great feature that simply are must haves for the socially withdrawn - No phone memory. Everything is stored on the SIM card (subscriber identity module, by the way. Incidentally, there's also an antilipemic medication branded Simcard... had a good laugh, you can too). The result is I can know only 250 people. Or if some odd member of society whom I actually like has more than one number that I need to store, that's a person less. The corollary to this is simple. Since I don't remember numbers (I'm a doctor, duh!) and hence I'm marginally dependent on phone or paper to remember them, getting rid of anybody from the my spheres of influence essentially involves deleting them. Its a good thing. Except when they haven't reciprocated or have technologically advanced communicators that ingest and retain any number fed into them, thus causing a tendency to "keep in touch". A little embarrassing but when one has a phone that's close to being a museum relic, it can take the acceptable blame. The other downside is the one time I actually had 250 people (or less and multiple entries, vide supra) and some pretty lady gave me her phone number. Unfortunately she saw the error message that memory was full, assumed that it was my memory and not the phone's and turned away in a huff. Thus the 3315 is not just a device to avoid social contact, it can be a deterrent too.
The next fallout of not having phone memory is a lack of sentimentality. I have 25 messages. Two out of which are stored email ids which I have been too lazy to transfer to gmail's vast repository of addresses. I could do them even as I type this, but like I said, I'm too lazy. Turns out that any message that is angry, insulting, adoring, suggestive, sensuous or even plain filthy doesn't get stored for more than 20 messages later. They all vanish is a fell sweep of the erase all messages in folder button. Unlike the 3310 wherein each message had to be deleted individually, which still left room for sentimental non-deletion. Here it's gone without prejudice. Evolving technology is so cool! No sent messages so a Bart-esque "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, can't prove anything" is a valid alibi. And if someone shoves their phone with the offending message displayed in technicolor, blame Hutch. Oops, sorry I sneezed. That's not my service provider, though it sounds suspiciously the same.
Thus it has come to pass that technology is now determining another important aspect of our lives.
That's all folks!!
The mobile service providers have finally lost it. The past 24 hours have seen me get the same message(s) about 20 times. Though this can occasionally be fun when one can target the sender and cause obfuscation beyond compare. All entertaining but when it happens consistently it gets on everyone's nerves. But revenge is soon at hand. I've taken to forwarding service messages. "Do you want caller tunes?" or "Win an ipod?" (bwahahahaha) or "get hookers at discount..." whatever. The upside is as usual, entertainment, and the downside is confused replies, that thanks to the service providers iterating behavior I receive about 20 times.
Another rather significant thing I've noticed is how a cell phone is a major determinant of both sentimentality and social connectivity.
Take my cool, sleek 3315 for instance. Notice how it's still on the site and not in the museum, like my camera. Says a lot about the phone... or about Nokia but that's not the point, is it? Again, I digress. This little nifty gadget has a great feature that simply are must haves for the socially withdrawn - No phone memory. Everything is stored on the SIM card (subscriber identity module, by the way. Incidentally, there's also an antilipemic medication branded Simcard... had a good laugh, you can too). The result is I can know only 250 people. Or if some odd member of society whom I actually like has more than one number that I need to store, that's a person less. The corollary to this is simple. Since I don't remember numbers (I'm a doctor, duh!) and hence I'm marginally dependent on phone or paper to remember them, getting rid of anybody from the my spheres of influence essentially involves deleting them. Its a good thing. Except when they haven't reciprocated or have technologically advanced communicators that ingest and retain any number fed into them, thus causing a tendency to "keep in touch". A little embarrassing but when one has a phone that's close to being a museum relic, it can take the acceptable blame. The other downside is the one time I actually had 250 people (or less and multiple entries, vide supra) and some pretty lady gave me her phone number. Unfortunately she saw the error message that memory was full, assumed that it was my memory and not the phone's and turned away in a huff. Thus the 3315 is not just a device to avoid social contact, it can be a deterrent too.
The next fallout of not having phone memory is a lack of sentimentality. I have 25 messages. Two out of which are stored email ids which I have been too lazy to transfer to gmail's vast repository of addresses. I could do them even as I type this, but like I said, I'm too lazy. Turns out that any message that is angry, insulting, adoring, suggestive, sensuous or even plain filthy doesn't get stored for more than 20 messages later. They all vanish is a fell sweep of the erase all messages in folder button. Unlike the 3310 wherein each message had to be deleted individually, which still left room for sentimental non-deletion. Here it's gone without prejudice. Evolving technology is so cool! No sent messages so a Bart-esque "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, can't prove anything" is a valid alibi. And if someone shoves their phone with the offending message displayed in technicolor, blame Hutch. Oops, sorry I sneezed. That's not my service provider, though it sounds suspiciously the same.
Thus it has come to pass that technology is now determining another important aspect of our lives.
That's all folks!!
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Bugged? It's wan ley a blog, init?
And so it came to pass that a computer was tormented by moisture and decided to not work till it had dried off. Such is the tale of woe that a friend of mine (and a significant contributor to this blog) is currently playing a role in. Reminds me of the earliest transistor and vacuum tube run machines that crashed one day. The engineers (evil laugh track) took a week or so to check every wire and circuit and discovered that the culprit was a moth. Thus the term bug. Or so says Apocrypha.
Bone (dead) tired after some two instructors at the gym decided that today was Judgement Day and I hadn't been a good boy. All references to BDSM apart, it felt like that minus the dirty bits. So here I am back waiting for God to intervene and a benevolent MI to end the suffering.
Craving meat again. To eat, you filthy minds. Cooked, you filthier minds. Like Chicken, dope.
It doesn't help that a friend's been belting cheap food at some chinese joint called Wan Ley. How that name lends itself to poor humor... Dinner for two? wanley 200 roopees.
I wan ley you down in a bed of roses....
Ok that's it. But that Bed of Roses is another potential. Take out the down and there another kinky movie. I'm beginning to think I'm in the wrong line of work... Or perhaps its just that I haven't done my cutting bit in a while. Gross as it sounds, it's true. It doesn't even help that I'm in a vegetarian house (despite being an ardent supporter of the right to eat red meat) otherwise I'd have come up with some cheaper albeit denigrating alternative.
Like Carving meat. To eat, you filthy minds. Cooked, you filthier minds. Like Chicken, dope.
More new music. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. It's a really good jam band. Get on stage and noodle for a few hours on a banjo/mandolin, bass, horns/flute, percussion. Neat stuff. So they have this song called Chennai off the album The Hidden Land. It's called chennai so we assume, with valid reason that it's inspired (unlike annnnuuu malllick) by something Indian classical. So it is. But this is what a reviewer had to say. And this too. Middle eastern? Mongolian? You'll have to dig a bit for that Mongolian bit, but it's there. The world is doing it's I'm better off ending thing on me again.
The other new band/artist is Jack Johnson. Curious George's Singalong songs apart, he's pretty good. Nice john mayer/dave matthew-esque voice and acoustic guitar. Nice.
Notice ye evil being, who's moisture ridden calculator is now back to being high and dry, It's nice so go listen.
Quote of the day - Yes Prime Minister - A Bishop's Gambit
Dean of Oxford - "Isn't it awful in Qumran (random fictional middle eastern country) they cut off your hands for any offence and women who commit adultery are stoned..."
Sir Humphrey - "Unlike here where women get stoned and then commit adultery."
Peace be on ye.
Bone (dead) tired after some two instructors at the gym decided that today was Judgement Day and I hadn't been a good boy. All references to BDSM apart, it felt like that minus the dirty bits. So here I am back waiting for God to intervene and a benevolent MI to end the suffering.
Craving meat again. To eat, you filthy minds. Cooked, you filthier minds. Like Chicken, dope.
It doesn't help that a friend's been belting cheap food at some chinese joint called Wan Ley. How that name lends itself to poor humor... Dinner for two? wanley 200 roopees.
I wan ley you down in a bed of roses....
Ok that's it. But that Bed of Roses is another potential. Take out the down and there another kinky movie. I'm beginning to think I'm in the wrong line of work... Or perhaps its just that I haven't done my cutting bit in a while. Gross as it sounds, it's true. It doesn't even help that I'm in a vegetarian house (despite being an ardent supporter of the right to eat red meat) otherwise I'd have come up with some cheaper albeit denigrating alternative.
Like Carving meat. To eat, you filthy minds. Cooked, you filthier minds. Like Chicken, dope.
More new music. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. It's a really good jam band. Get on stage and noodle for a few hours on a banjo/mandolin, bass, horns/flute, percussion. Neat stuff. So they have this song called Chennai off the album The Hidden Land. It's called chennai so we assume, with valid reason that it's inspired (unlike annnnuuu malllick) by something Indian classical. So it is. But this is what a reviewer had to say. And this too. Middle eastern? Mongolian? You'll have to dig a bit for that Mongolian bit, but it's there. The world is doing it's I'm better off ending thing on me again.
The other new band/artist is Jack Johnson. Curious George's Singalong songs apart, he's pretty good. Nice john mayer/dave matthew-esque voice and acoustic guitar. Nice.
Notice ye evil being, who's moisture ridden calculator is now back to being high and dry, It's nice so go listen.
Quote of the day - Yes Prime Minister - A Bishop's Gambit
Dean of Oxford - "Isn't it awful in Qumran (random fictional middle eastern country) they cut off your hands for any offence and women who commit adultery are stoned..."
Sir Humphrey - "Unlike here where women get stoned and then commit adultery."
Peace be on ye.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Post Emergency thoughts
So the ban is lifted and all is back to normal except for that sick taste that the government has just proven its capacity to do whatever it wants and get away with it. And all we have left with is that old sickening taste in the mouth. I'm beginning to wonder if I need to throw that 3 day old milk...
But two days of finding innovative ways to read blogs has led to a ranking of the various methods.
Geekiest, most ironic, and the coolest. The nerds shall inherit the planet in any case. When all of us will be on the streets Tianmen-esque, some geeky bastard will be secure tunneling in some underground bunker diverting vast sums of Canadian money (loonies, incidentally) into some bank account in an island of Jamaica.
Did I mention I watched Shark Tale? Those Rasta jellyfish... And Don Leno with a mole, and "Sykes! My Brother from another mother!" Now Rastas are interesting.. Turns out in their cannabis induced convoluted state of mind, 'erb is rasta for weed, and kaya is rasta for 'erb... Go figure.
It's amazing how things that have taken time and patience to build, cultivate, achieve can all be destroyed in one swift, fell stroke. Kind of like virginity and a balloon... All it takes is a prick. But bad jokes aside... Spent two hours working out and treading mills, crossing trainers, basic and reverse crunching, sweated bullets, yada yada a couple of days ago. Walked out. Stood under a street light and thought for a while. Beelined to La Casa down the road and quaffed a cold chicken and salami and cheese and mayo. And shaved this morning after working on a beard that was initially french then just all over. Now it stings when the wind hits my chin. Kipling's when you've seen what you've given your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools aside, seems a tad unfair that it's so simple to break. Swavrovski is a good example.
The answer to what question is 35 cubic feet of dirt or 700 lbs?
Now my blue toe (mentioned earlier, the result of a 5kg plate) has persisted to be blue and all ye who conferred upon me sympathy, many thanks. The rest of you who didn't may ye rot in Davy Jones' Locker, Arrrrrrrr. Now our local paper is extremely excited, as most of us are, at the release of Pirates 2. The excitement unfortunately doesn't mean they can claim that Kidnapped by RL Stevenson is a pirate novel. I think they meant treasure island. After all it is the same author. But that's like saying Rikki-tiki-tavi instead of Sher Khan, after all they are by the same author. Ok the writer of the article is a little on the slow side, but the editor too? Oh there is this funny story about spell checks in newspaper editing that if I told you, I'd have to kill you.
But Pirates 2 should be worth the watch and so it shall be.
The realisation dawns that in ten days I'll be officially out of work, having completed three years of surgical training. Hot damn!
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
But two days of finding innovative ways to read blogs has led to a ranking of the various methods.
Geekiest, most ironic, and the coolest. The nerds shall inherit the planet in any case. When all of us will be on the streets Tianmen-esque, some geeky bastard will be secure tunneling in some underground bunker diverting vast sums of Canadian money (loonies, incidentally) into some bank account in an island of Jamaica.
Did I mention I watched Shark Tale? Those Rasta jellyfish... And Don Leno with a mole, and "Sykes! My Brother from another mother!" Now Rastas are interesting.. Turns out in their cannabis induced convoluted state of mind, 'erb is rasta for weed, and kaya is rasta for 'erb... Go figure.
It's amazing how things that have taken time and patience to build, cultivate, achieve can all be destroyed in one swift, fell stroke. Kind of like virginity and a balloon... All it takes is a prick. But bad jokes aside... Spent two hours working out and treading mills, crossing trainers, basic and reverse crunching, sweated bullets, yada yada a couple of days ago. Walked out. Stood under a street light and thought for a while. Beelined to La Casa down the road and quaffed a cold chicken and salami and cheese and mayo. And shaved this morning after working on a beard that was initially french then just all over. Now it stings when the wind hits my chin. Kipling's when you've seen what you've given your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools aside, seems a tad unfair that it's so simple to break. Swavrovski is a good example.
The answer to what question is 35 cubic feet of dirt or 700 lbs?
Now my blue toe (mentioned earlier, the result of a 5kg plate) has persisted to be blue and all ye who conferred upon me sympathy, many thanks. The rest of you who didn't may ye rot in Davy Jones' Locker, Arrrrrrrr. Now our local paper is extremely excited, as most of us are, at the release of Pirates 2. The excitement unfortunately doesn't mean they can claim that Kidnapped by RL Stevenson is a pirate novel. I think they meant treasure island. After all it is the same author. But that's like saying Rikki-tiki-tavi instead of Sher Khan, after all they are by the same author. Ok the writer of the article is a little on the slow side, but the editor too? Oh there is this funny story about spell checks in newspaper editing that if I told you, I'd have to kill you.
But Pirates 2 should be worth the watch and so it shall be.
The realisation dawns that in ten days I'll be officially out of work, having completed three years of surgical training. Hot damn!
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Tyrants ahoy!
And so it would come to pass that a week after Mumbai was terrorised, the government decided that it was their turn to be a tyrannical outfit. For those of you who can read this without having to resort to clandestine tunneling through anonymous servers, here's the rub - blogspot, typepad and maybe a couple more blog hosting domains have been blocked by the Indian government to curb lines of communication of terrorists.
While I am profoundly shocked with what happened in Mumbai and deeply angered. I find it shocking and perhaps even stupid to block access to websites in the hope that whoever did the heinous acts would be unable to plan more. Why not cut off all telephone lines, television, radio, newspapers? Why not push us back into the time of the emergency? Most of us were born after that time and have often been told that things are so much better now and that having to stand in a queue for basic amenities is a thing of the past. Considering each passing generation takes a lot more for granted, perhaps it's our fault for believing we lived in a country that was sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, republic. Where we were given rights as long as we followed the law and did our duties.
I'm reminded strangely of the Matrix.
There is already enough angst on the net about this... And perhaps other forms of media might rise up in protest. But it was shocking when in the news a young girl said, "It's obvious that our government is incapable of doing anything about it. If that careless attitude to a few hundred people dying is there in the government itself, why should we care?" Or more or less.
It seems hard to still say this my home and I want to stay here and help when all that gets thrown my way is insane taxes, a corrupt government, reservation, and now censorship.
The papers say that the government had instructed that certain specific blogs/sites be banned. In it's usual ineptitude, all blogs were deemed restricted. And in only certain parts of the country. For example, I have been able to access blogs intermittently. Someone pointed out that that is probably because I live in the back of beyond and the Bangalore Rural district is yet to fall under the blogblock. Very Funny.
Strangely it doesn't make sense to write this. Outside of an angry vent. Hell. That's what it is.
The fake livestrongs will have to wait.
Dropped a 5kg plate on my foot yesterday at the gym. Sympathy is welcome.
While I am profoundly shocked with what happened in Mumbai and deeply angered. I find it shocking and perhaps even stupid to block access to websites in the hope that whoever did the heinous acts would be unable to plan more. Why not cut off all telephone lines, television, radio, newspapers? Why not push us back into the time of the emergency? Most of us were born after that time and have often been told that things are so much better now and that having to stand in a queue for basic amenities is a thing of the past. Considering each passing generation takes a lot more for granted, perhaps it's our fault for believing we lived in a country that was sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, republic. Where we were given rights as long as we followed the law and did our duties.
I'm reminded strangely of the Matrix.
There is already enough angst on the net about this... And perhaps other forms of media might rise up in protest. But it was shocking when in the news a young girl said, "It's obvious that our government is incapable of doing anything about it. If that careless attitude to a few hundred people dying is there in the government itself, why should we care?" Or more or less.
It seems hard to still say this my home and I want to stay here and help when all that gets thrown my way is insane taxes, a corrupt government, reservation, and now censorship.
The papers say that the government had instructed that certain specific blogs/sites be banned. In it's usual ineptitude, all blogs were deemed restricted. And in only certain parts of the country. For example, I have been able to access blogs intermittently. Someone pointed out that that is probably because I live in the back of beyond and the Bangalore Rural district is yet to fall under the blogblock. Very Funny.
Strangely it doesn't make sense to write this. Outside of an angry vent. Hell. That's what it is.
The fake livestrongs will have to wait.
Dropped a 5kg plate on my foot yesterday at the gym. Sympathy is welcome.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Why they have this title space, I don't know.
A sudden onset bleah feeling is persistently irritating my life. It started off as a vague unsettling feeling and now it's a sense of impending doom that's settled in quite nicely, thank you. I'm hoping it's the result of an upcoming exam which has suddenly become all the more real since they've called for the payment of examination fees.
Not that it was ever a fantasy but till today it was a distant reality. All that's changed.
Was going through dibyo's blog where he's linked to this. Kevin Cornell has the meanest sense of humor I've seen in a while, as is exemplified below.
Vicious. I like it.
But back to the mood. Half an hour of killing random people with names like Barkooth, Blake, Rhea and Vanessa (I'm sorry kiddo, but that's how life is) on Unreal hasn't helped and neither has another half hour of arresting some drunk druggie on SWAT and getting half my team shot to hell in the process.
Before you start screaming morbid! Let me remind you that I am.
The torps have kicked up a minor storm with their rather misunderstood (tried spelling it like pink does but can't. It's not like I don't have people nit-picking on my spelling and grammar already. And like Prince it's P!nk now. Apparently.) post on the Limca book of records. Go there and figure out what's up with all that yourself, because I'm not launching on that. I'm in a bad enough mood and I don't need to dwell on thoughts that irk me some.
But when googling for pink or P!NK or whatever Alecia Beth Moore chooses to call herself, special characters or otherwise, I came up with the wikipedia entry on pink. No, I'm not linking that here. Interestingly, Shakespeare never used the word, simply because it didn't exist till the seventeenth century. Now I need to find that person who came up with it and kill him. Of course that doesn't mean that the colour won't exist. Bright Undersaturated Red. Often used to describe watered down socialists... (Red, Light-red, Pink. Get it? Just like soft porn can be referred to as a light-blue movie)
That and the entire range from lilac and lavender through mauve, violet and royal purple. And wikipedia gives red/green/blue, cyan/magenta/yellow/black, and hue/saturation/volume codes to create any one of these colours and the 16,000 more.
But there are things that cheer one up. A friend's mother is convalescing from surgery. No, you creeps that's not what's cheering me up. The story goes that mom snaps her fingers across the house whenever she needs something. How cool is that? Don't need any of my progenitors knowing this. It can be devastating.
And how can you yell at anyone who when questioned behind the motives of an apparently evil act says, "because I'm stupid and I don't know better..."
Need a beer. Toodles.
PS Will review an ancient Zappa and L Shankar Album in the near future. Still lost in it.
Was going through dibyo's blog where he's linked to this. Kevin Cornell has the meanest sense of humor I've seen in a while, as is exemplified below.
Vicious. I like it.But back to the mood. Half an hour of killing random people with names like Barkooth, Blake, Rhea and Vanessa (I'm sorry kiddo, but that's how life is) on Unreal hasn't helped and neither has another half hour of arresting some drunk druggie on SWAT and getting half my team shot to hell in the process.
Before you start screaming morbid! Let me remind you that I am.
The torps have kicked up a minor storm with their rather misunderstood (tried spelling it like pink does but can't. It's not like I don't have people nit-picking on my spelling and grammar already. And like Prince it's P!nk now. Apparently.) post on the Limca book of records. Go there and figure out what's up with all that yourself, because I'm not launching on that. I'm in a bad enough mood and I don't need to dwell on thoughts that irk me some.
But when googling for pink or P!NK or whatever Alecia Beth Moore chooses to call herself, special characters or otherwise, I came up with the wikipedia entry on pink. No, I'm not linking that here. Interestingly, Shakespeare never used the word, simply because it didn't exist till the seventeenth century. Now I need to find that person who came up with it and kill him. Of course that doesn't mean that the colour won't exist. Bright Undersaturated Red. Often used to describe watered down socialists... (Red, Light-red, Pink. Get it? Just like soft porn can be referred to as a light-blue movie)
That and the entire range from lilac and lavender through mauve, violet and royal purple. And wikipedia gives red/green/blue, cyan/magenta/yellow/black, and hue/saturation/volume codes to create any one of these colours and the 16,000 more.
But there are things that cheer one up. A friend's mother is convalescing from surgery. No, you creeps that's not what's cheering me up. The story goes that mom snaps her fingers across the house whenever she needs something. How cool is that? Don't need any of my progenitors knowing this. It can be devastating.
And how can you yell at anyone who when questioned behind the motives of an apparently evil act says, "because I'm stupid and I don't know better..."
Need a beer. Toodles.
PS Will review an ancient Zappa and L Shankar Album in the near future. Still lost in it.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Ghana and a contraceptive problem
A small African country with Burkina Faso (the capital of which incidentally is Ouagadougou) and the Ivory Coast as neighbors has an area approximately 7% of ours. The population is about 2% of a billion and the per capita of $2,500 as compared to around $3,300 that each of the Indian billion earns. The differences in GDP of course are similarly comparable. So how is a Sub-Saharan country like Ghana (which has a currency called cedi (seedy?)) giving Brazil a hard time at the World Cup? And a pretty bad time at that. Final scores are 3-0 in Brazil's favour thanks to a 5 min killer by fatman Ronaldo then some controversial offside-not-called goal by Adriano some where around 43 min into the first half and finally ze Roberto in the 84th. But Ghana's been attacking with some statistically insignificantly higher possession time. It's insignificant but its higher. The question is a cliched one. How come all we have to show is an Army guy who can shoot straight? Oh there is the lady too... What lady? Sania Of course. If she'll stop drinking so much Sprite and lose about 10 pounds she might cross the court a little faster and stop making excuses about clay being boring.
Tragic the state of the world.And all our favourite news channels will pick up some obscure villages in Bihar and Kerala and show how little girls are bending it like Beckham. Thankfully not like Posh. Which is more of a Times NOW thing. Speaking of Times, Zoom and everything that's not right, MIDDAY's Bangalore edition is on the streets. Bangalore Times finally has competition to sleaze away ad nauseum.
In other bits of information the Government has always proposed that 72 condoms are sufficient for a couple for a year. How? It isn't a newly wed couple we're talking about. In that case 72 may not last out the honeymoon. It's the average indian frequency which is 72. There is of course the story of filling a jar with marbles everytime sex happens in the first year of marriage and then taking them out everytime after the first year. The result, in most cases, is that the jar never gets empty. But i digress. When we first read of this number it seemed woefully inadequate. It still does but prompted some socio-statistical thought. 52 weeks in a year. Knock off a week a month for that time of the month. I know it's not a week but yeah you get the drift. That leaves 40 weeks of potential... time. Now is twice a week a normal average? One would have to take into consideration pesky kids who can't sleep alone, pesky guests who won't sleep, familial structure (joint or otherwise), marital discord... but I think it should be ok.
I think I'm getting to a point where I have more time than I know what to do with. Or just don't want to do what I need to.
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