March 2009 Archives

Triveni and I met at Cry .. child rights and you.. a social cause organization's chennai office.

I was initially not talking much with trivy though I like her, because I thought Ravi was a boyfriend.. she had brought Ravi to a CRY meeting and this guy's chatter was so much for me to ignore his presence and try to like trivy.

Geetha was a friend at Cry.. who I met there too.. and my flirt in me makes triveni think I had a crush on geetha rather than her.. trivy was always sitting close to geetha if they both came for any of the meets. So, trivy also didn't try talking to me.

Geetha and I spoke now and then .. ofcourse on things related to CRY... of which geetha still thought I was trying to make a move on her. Though I liked geetha, I wasn't sure of her or neither was I trying to talk to her with intentions other than just feeling nice about meeting or talking to her.

It turned out that geetha now and then mentioned to trivy about my moves or thoughts... from what she assumed as my intentions. This only got trivy keep out any distant thoughts about me from her head..

I couldn't get any closer to knowing or liking trivy.. because Trivy was not a regular to Cry.
Later I found she was not a regular to.. "anywhere".. not college, not her mom-dad's place.. not to her friends places.. except for one place.. and that place is not on the planet.. orkut that is.

Ravi turned out .. to be her orkut friend.
Trivy turned out to be not a regular at cry.. because she liked going to orkut (you should hear her say that as if that was like going physically to some place).. and reading out who did what from there.. from photos, peoples names (ya, orkut people change their first and surnames often to show what they are doing or feeling like more than their real names)... and importantly learning things from something out of this world called "crap".. er er.. its "Scrap" in orkut.. trivy thinks that orkut crapping.. er er. scrapping is out of the world idea.

An year and a half of advice later she "goes to" orkut less often.. but still can't avoid it.. she and her ridiculous list (read gang) of friends on orkut scrap each other.. like scrapping each others head.

That is how ridiculous I feel still about her habitat, her living area.. her orkut page.. and now one more step ahead.. her facebook wall, she is trying to get that going.

Going back to history of me meeting trivy.. At the end of the wait.. I think I decided, if you want to talk to triveni, you should install gtalk and try. That happened one day, and I was talking to her initially about how we can help CRY .. and later about .. like they say "all things under the sun".

Chatting with trivy was more interesting than liking to talk to geetha who mistook my intentions with her and even turned down twice or thrice my offer to drop her off even 500m away in my bike.

And more than that.. trivy turned out to be interesting because, she listened with an open mind and blabbered with an open mind about herself when she knew I was not asking things with intentions.

We started to talk about brothers, sisters, whose childhood was most difficult, how we got into what fields of study for what reasons.. and all that.. including whose doggie pisses longer.

If you are curious.. its her doggie that pissed longer... and her brother used to have the "doggie pissing" photo as a thumbnail image on his orkut page.. which trivy would point you to go see if you spoke to her those days.

Yes... they even take photographs of these things these days... even though they know the doggie will do that again 4 hrs later.

Jai Ho has done India so much good, that Indians will realize this only a few more months down the line. I did hear of some femalish band buying into JaiHo, remixing it up, and making the music more reachable to the west.. especially the hindi lyrics that needed translation.

But I never knew it came out so interesting... as Jai Ho (You are my destiny)

The interesting part of the music is.. I could see the album as a celebration by the world, of India's vibrance... and the celebration of India's interest to grow and work and celebrate with the world as a mature country with globalized indians.

Ofcourse, India is poor.. and all this can be seen as falsification of the country's image.. but take it straight, probably working with other nations is what is going to teach how to eradicate poor, keep clean, make less babies and all that.. like all those foreign banks and supermarkets came over and made our own business people do their kind of service, eventually raising the bar now in banking and retail sector to an unbelievable amount in just a span of less than 10 years.

This one is cool. Mac has done a series of ADs which obviously haven't still reached the PC populated, old modellist lives in India. he he.. yea, after seeing these ADs.. I donno.. they have made me think I am old modellish too.

Must watch Mac-vs-PC Ads

We have heard every year the story of how: The Indian Railways have been turned into a profitable organization from a subsidized organization that too making more than 2000 crores in profit, because of Laloo Prasad Yadav.. who has contemplated heavy before (and still) on getting some university to hand him over a Doctorate.

But what is the truth in it.. Numbers shown in balance sheets are more so becoming unreal after each economic recession when companies which have shown big numbers every year suddenly seem to fall off the line or if they manage to stick on they remove 'Tissue paper' from their monthly purchase orders to cut costs.

So, are there similarities like Enron, satyam in Indian railways, or are they really making that money ?

I guess they do make the money, though some of the numbers might be exxagerated.. but they are definitely making the money at the cost of "NOT upgrading" any or all of the services, cleanliness at stations, helping commuters with city or town transport into-outof railway stations.. and importantly without upgrading the rail systems and ticketing systems itself.

It is 2009, and India is still fore-seeing its first bullet train far away in 2015. Better services or food / toilet / waiting room facilities in railway stations is still a long or even unforeseen dream. All you can do today is go 15 mins early to catch the train and get out of the train in a station and hurry out of the station in 15 mins.. If you try to look for waiting rooms, night-sacks, nice clean toilets, or even a decent honest commute to somewhere and back, you are going to find all things that are wrong with the railways.

Recently I went 1 hr early to send off my fiance at the station. She was going from chennai to hyderabad. We found rats, we found so much dirty linen strewn around, no dustbins at regular distances along the platform, biscuit wrappers and coffee cups strewn around as if there was just some shooting in the station and everybody threw it all off and ran.. it was so much so dirty, abandoned, .. and the proper word would be "UNCARED FOR"..

At one instance I was seeing an fully plush A/C coach just standing on the dirties rail tracks possible on earth... with shit, rats, some sewage too, all on the track... definitely smelling something so bad but I wasn't feeling it because probably we Indians are all used to such smells always.

Anybody, who had a few bucks more, and travels to other countries in the world, would prefer to avoid going by train because of these more than for the sake of a sign of status. I was thinking so already to save money for travelling by flights rather than go to such places and get demotivated and un-attitudinal.

It is by allowing all these "uncared for" stuff that the railways is making its money and showing off in the centers of governance as an achievement.

I can't believe I missed the news on this.. Tata Nano the people's car.. had a people's car type launch, mostly because everybody of Auto industry turned out to be critics of the dream of Ratan Tata.

Ratan Tata has done a show to launch the car, on 10th of this month in Delhi.. Some videos of this are posted on youtube.com here

p.s. You may not be able to view the video already from youtube because either youtube.com has deleted it, for copyright reasons or for avoiding too many hits. I was able to view two parts of the video, but the 3rd returned a 'sorry' message from youtube

More than the car, I was worried about the inspiring, but aeging Ratan Tata.. he definitely seemed unhealthy and I-may-fall-anytime kind of postures during the entire show at the launch. Bless him well.. and here are some pics.

Though probably this will be my first auto-review post.. I am so encouraged to type my opinion of Nano if you care, I guess Nano will have a slow start.. and might take an year or two to have expected kind of boom in numbers in sales.. because of the friction every innovative product has in india (remember indians are a demanding audience).. How big a success and revolution Maruthi 800 created when it was launched and for so many years later that.. is something we all know... so we can expect a repeat of that kind of history very very much with nano.

The car, to be honest, to keep away my or even your critical / sceptic thoughts about it.. in comparison to cars and their costs like a Maruthi or Hyundai or Ford ones... nano looks good, affordable, as safe and economic as a Maruthi or Hyundai or Ford is. Not bad or sceptic at all like we careful, demanding indians critic about.

Another thing I observed on the launch function was, almost all employees of Ratan Tata seem to share a fright to get near him or be near him, probably not fear but having worked for him, they know the bigness of him and respect him so. Anyways, nice to see a dream indian project completed, that too when the whole world challenged that it is not possible.. I remember how somebody said from some country they are going to make a $100 laptop, and never were able to keep the promise.

I am going to remember the last photo above.. Tata with the Nano like a pet by his side.. look at the size of them.. cute little creature it is.

Scott Guthrie is a modest man in a high position in the biggie Microsoft, pulling all strings together and delivering technologies that keep Microsoft still still a better technology product maker or technology designer with the kind of loads of competition, stress and economy eating up many commercial products while giving open source a more bigger headway in technology.

Starting with being the manager for the team that designs .Net, and its related technologies, to also listening up or helping users of the technologies directly through blogs or communities, and as if that wasn't enough work, Scott goes the last step in wrapping up his team's work by doing the marketing and sales kind of speeches for the technologies too.

While being inspired by Scott Guthrie, I also notice that coincidentally or not many top guys in Microsoft are Scotts.. or their first names are Scott as well.. You can also put it differently.. that many people with firstname Scott in microsoft seem to be making interesting technology breakthroughs or represent something nice about the company Microsoft.

Though that last one of finding a coincidence of the name Scott with Microsoft is only a fancy observation of mine, I am really inspired by seeing more of people like scott guthrie on the web, to keep that geeky thing motivated in me... that someday I too might try hard and do/become what scott is today.

My recent view of scott guthrie was from here where he talks about release of Silverlight 3, an Uer-Interface technology of Microsoft.

Indian premier league .. or IPL, considered the big daddy of all marketing campaigns for the sport, had its links with indian politics and politicians from day one.

And Indian politics in general has always mixed with cricket.

We have seen one or more politicians becoming chairmen of the Board of control for cricket in India
We have seen politicians making selections for the cricket team. etc.,

While we were wondering what we haven't seen yet in cricket... the Indian ministry of Home affairs, a totally government body run by politicians, is involving itself in the scheduling of the IPL. Not just ad-hoc involvement... the home minister addresses a press-meet to announce possible dates for the IPL. If at least the sports minister did that, it would have been diplomatic.

Anyways,
Looks like the congress-led government at the centre, has more interest in IPL for political reasons, than for sports reasons... that is in the interest of getting people glued to IPL a happy thing, and have people busy thinking whether rajasthan royals will win or super kings will win..
and finally vote for congress again in the coming polls (april -may) .. forgetting congress's handling of '26/11 mumbai attacks' or 'nuclear deal'

Already we know that the congress diverted attention of the nation from the alarming inflation rates, by making the nuclear deal drama.. which the CPI-M really wasted their time on and severed ties with congress.

End of day, both IPL and politics exist for the money and the power they can generate from people.. who cares what people become... and no wonder they are united. But are we people united in anything that stands against us? right from questioning why the women's bill can never be passed, or an anti-corruption bill never taken up. Does going to the voting booth all that we can do.. ??