Friday, December 30, 2005

Terror in Bangalore

After Wednesday's tragic terror attack at IISc, there have been a few hoax calls and letters about bombs being planted in various parts of the city. I wonder if such a call about a bomb being planted has ever come true. After all, the people who planted the bomb want it to go off and cause maximum casualty, so why would they alert their victims beforehand? Unfortunately no such call can be ignored, which makes it easy for pranksters to have fun making fake calls. It is impossible to protect the whole city against such attacks, so I am afraid that such things can happen again.

Meanwhile, what surprises me is the ease with which the attackers got away from the IISc the other day. How did they manage to make such a clean exit from the crime site and leave the police with absolutely no clues to hunt them down? The police, so far, have clearly figured out that the crime has been committed by 'some' people, now they just need to find out who these 'people' are. They are strongly suspecting that 'terrorists' are involved! Good guess guys!!! They are also suspecting that the attackers used a car or a bike or city bus to arrive at the scene, or else they must have come on foot! Police are probably hoping that one of the terrorist organizations will claim responsibility to the act, making their work easier. Meanwhile they are quickly familiarizing themselves with acronyms of terrorist organizations operating in Kashmir. (For example, LeT is not same as LTTE).

The public meanwhile are wondering how their life will change with these new terrorists in town. So far the only terrorists on road they were afraid of were auto and BMTC drivers. People are also wondering which vehicle allowed the terrorists to flee so easily, without being stuck in Bangalore's traffic jams during that busy hour. The Government is meanwhile wondering how to prevent terrorists from fleeing the site of crime so easily - "We need more traffic jams on our roads!"

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Who are these 'Indians'?

Almost every day, English newspapers in India, especially TOI, report news like "NRI girl is the most popular radio jockey in Canada", "NRI becomes the local council member in US" and recently even "NRI is among the sexiest men in the world"! Whenever I see such news, I read through to see if these NRIs are really Indians by any means. Because after all, NRIs should be Non-Resident INDIANS.

I am often surprised at how easily the press categorizes any famous person with a remote link to India as Indians. For example, if the person's grandmother was half Indian, or if the person's forefathers migrated to Fiji from India a couple of centuries ago, or in extreme cases, any Hindu is categorized as Indian, because after all, Hinduism originated in India ;-) Because this person isn't in India now, he/she should be an NRI :-)

I wish the press was more careful while branding anyone and everyone as NRI. For example, people whose forefathers migrated from India, possibly when Shivaji was alive, are not Indians anymore! Ditto about children of sardars who migrated to Canada in 50s. Even a person born and brought up in India, once he/she takes up citizenship of another country, should not be called Indian or NRI. They are not Indians anymore, forgodsake! The max we could go is call them people of Indian origin.

While at it, there is another class of people - Resident Non Indians - RNIs. These are people who are living in India, but behave as if they are not. This is especially seen in desis returning to India after a stint in the US. You know the type - they fill 'gas' in their car's petrol tank, ask for 'restrooms' instead of toilets, talk with a semi-cooked American accent and begin every sentence with either "This is not how it is in US..." or "When I was in US...". I have heard that some of the RNIs haven't even gone out of India once!

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Shopping in Bangalore

It appears that every day a new mall comes up in Bangalore. So shoppers have more and more choice every day. However, a large percentage of shopping - both wholesale and retail still happens in and around K.R. Market - BVK Iyengar Road area. This is where a number of 'pet's are - Chikpet, Sultanpet, Balepet, Tharagupet, Pearlpet and so on. Oh, sorry, Pearlpet is a company making plastic jars.

I used to be sceptical about the benefits of shopping in these areas and I used to think that the trouble in finding parking place, bargaining and rush in these areas nullifies the advantage of cost savings. However, over the last year I have been to BVK Iyengar Road and surrounding areas a number of times and I can now confidently say that even those who are not good at bargaining, end up saving significant amount of money here compared to other areas. This is pretty much the only area in Bangalore where you can buy everything for less than MRP. Be prepared to start bargaining with at least 25% less over the price he quotes and never stoop below 15%.

One of the major gripes about going to this area is the lack of car parking. However, I saw a good improvement when I went there this weekend. There is now a new multi-storeyed car parking on the junction of BVK Iyengar road and K.G. Road. It was designed to be just like car parkings in western countries, but due to various reasons it has ended up being slightly different. First of all, the inward ramps are so narrow, they test the driving skills of the driver. If I felt that way in my Alto, people who have bigger cars must be feeling afraid to take their cars through. Downward ramps seemed to be alright, though! The staff manning the place are from a private company and they were very friendly and professional, which was a pleasant surprise. There were a large number of them (staff), just like it is with anything in India. They sent me off with Christmas and new year wishes! Parking fee is quite reasonable for the facility - 10Rs for 1 hour and 20Rs upto 4 hours. I hope the other parking areas being constructed / planned by BDA/BCC reach completion soon.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Mystery of Mona Lisa's smile

Looks like people's fascination about Mona Lisa's smile is not going to subside any time soon, in fact it is only going to worsen, like Bangalore's roads. There was a recent scientific study in this area, through which they 'cracked the enigma of her smile'. "According to findings published in the New Scientist, a British journal, the exact breakdown of Mona Lisa's emotions, as captured by Leonardo da Vinci, were 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful, and 2 percent angry." Heck, I am sure they couldn't have analyzed even their wife's smiles this well.

I have seen Mona Lisa when I visited Paris in 2001. I can surely say her expression is 50% surprise and 50% disbelief. Surprise and disbelief that the people of the world are making so much fuss out of her facial expression. I am sure da Vinci will be laughing himself to death in his grave. Oh wait, he can't do that!

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Fair and (uh!) handsome?

Indians have always been attracted to fair skin and considered fair skin superior. I guess when the British landed on Indian shores centuries ago, all they had to do was to just show up and Indians immediately prayed to them "Rule us, please, rule us". It was only because Michael Jackson turned himself white from black, he is considered a 'white' hot star in India. Most of his Indian fans want to meet him probably just to know who his plastic surgeon is :-) Indian girls have always tried to become fairer, proof being the approximately two thousand skin whitening creams available in the market. Going by the claims of these beauty creams, most Indian women should have become at least as fair as Caucasians by now, leaving the Indian men 'in the dark'!

The Indian male had somehow been left behind in this race to 'whiteness'. But not anymore. Recently I saw a TV ad for a product called 'fair and handsome'! It shows a really fair young man being flanked by beautiful girls, apparently just because he is fairer than them! Ha ha! Now Indian girls will have a 'fair' competition from the boys!

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Sandwiches speak Kannada?

I noticed this while running spell-check for my previous entry in this blog. Google thinks the people who speak Kannada are called - prepare to be surprised - sandwiches!! See the image attached here. It could have made some sense to call them Bisi Bele Baths or something like that. Or is this to indicate that Kannadigas are now sandwiched between people who speak other languages? :-)

Bangalore vs Bengalooru

Ever since the Government announced plans to rename Bangalore as Bengalooru (or Bengaluru) last week, there has been a lot of discussion in mainstream media about the pros and cons of it. English newspapers have written mostly about the cons of it. People have expressed their views on both sides of this issue in newspapers, on radio, near office water coolers and at neighborhood addas. I used to have the opinion that any such name change should not be encouraged. I always agreed with the idea that Governments resort to such gimmicks to distract people from the core issues plaguing the city, like development.

However, a few opinions I saw and heard in the last few days have made me re-evaluate my opinion. I was listening to one argument on RadioCity, where a guy said "Yes we know there are problems with Bangalore, Government is not doing enough to improve infrastructure in the city. However, why should that come in the way of renaming our city Bengalooru? What's the connection? After all, Kannadigas have always been calling it Bengalooru all the time". Another argument against renaming Bangalore was that it will lose it's well known name, thus affecting the city's 'brand value'. However, I was reading about such renamings that were done in many countries of the world. Our own Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkota are good examples as well. I don't think any city has suffered a decrease in brand value due to change in name. So why should it affect Bangalore? Hence I think that argument is not valid.

There is one argument against renaming Bangalore that will hold good, though. Our Government will project this as their greatest achievement and forget about doing anything else for the city. Government will spend an exhobirant amount of taxpayer's money in this process. Other cities will quickly ask for name change as well (Mysooru, Mangalooru, etc) and that will start off a chain reaction. So in all this, we the citizens lose a lot.

So I think renaming Bangalore is perfectly fine in principle, but the only real reason to oppose it is our corrupt Governments taking undue advantage of it for their own benefits, wasting a lot of taxpayer's money in the process. Unfortunately this reason will hold true for anything and everything in our country.

About Air India

I travelled Air India/Indian Airlines during my visit to US this time. People are always apprehensive about travelling these 'national carriers'. We get to hear horror stories about how badly they they are managed, how badly the staff behaved and so on. I now have first-hand information about these airlines, so I am ready to bust some myths about them.

* Air India/Indian Airlines flights are all old.
- True. But what about ? The fact is, pretty much all American airline companies are under bankruptcy protection or close to getting there. So they are forced to run their crafts until, say, one of the wings falls off. So we can pardon AI/IA there.

* AI flights are not safe
- Baseless.

* AI check-in staff are rude and unhelpful.
- Not true. I saw perfectly helpful and smiling staff at AI/IA check-in desks. Of course there may be some rude staff in some places, but can you say that won't happen with other airlines? The AI check-in desk staff in Chicago turned out to be dumb, though. They insisted that I move some stuff from my cabin luggage to my laptop bag, because cabin luggage was too heavy. I had to convince them that since both go into the same overhead storage in the flight, it won't make a difference :-)

* AI flight crew are old, slow, stiff faced and unhelpful.
- Partially true. If flight crew have to deal with misbehaving passengers every day, we cannot expect them to remain cheerful throughout the journey. Many desis, once they board AI flight, feel obliged to ask for additional servings of alchohol and within a couple of hours of flight, can't control their minds well. Some feel it is the right opportunity to flirt with air hostesses (What is your name? You are very beautiful. Which city are you from? and so on). Pretty much nobody heeds to the announcements made in the flight until the crew force them to (Landing instructions, etc). Very few of the passengers say "Thank you" when being served. So we can compare the state of crew to BMTC conductors at the end of their day. Considering all this, they do a fantastic job.

* AI flights stink
- True only in toilets, but that too not at the beginning of the journey! Many don't like using toilet paper, so they carry cups to the toilets and... you get the idea. So by the end of the journey there will be water logged on the floor of the toilet, so obviously it stinks. Most passengers don't perform the basic courtesy cleaning of the wash basin, so that stinks too.

* Jet Airways is better than IA.
- True. Jet is better than pretty much all of the domestic flights in the US as well :-)

* Food in AI is good.
- True.

So all in all I think AI/IA do a pretty good job. Some people complain about everything that is 'ours', so they surely complain!

Monday, December 12, 2005

How is 'namma Bengalooru'?

I returned to Bangalore last Tuesday and have slowly gotten adjusted back to life here. I was surprised at how much my home city has changed in little less than 6 months. I am sure people who left Bangalore a few years back will find it hard to believe the amount of changes that has happened here. I will try to answer a few questions such people may ask:

Q: I am flying straight to Bangalore from Frankfurt/London. How is the customs and immigration facility in Bangalore?
A: When I landed in Bangalore this time, I was pleasantly surprised to find smiling, friendly staff at immigration counters. No, I am not joking. They were indeed better than the immigration folks in Chicago airport. They surely set us off on a good mood at 5:30AM. However, customs has not improved much :-(

Q: I have heard that Bangalore airport is very crowded now-a-days and it looks like the Majestic bus stand at times?
A: No, Majestic bus stand does not get that crowded.

Q: How is the traffic situation in Bangalore?
A: Contrary to popular belief, Bangalore's roads are now safer than ever before. All cars move at an average 10kmph and bikes at 15kmph now, so number of fatal accidents is coming down drastically. People walk out of head-on collisions without a scratch on their body!

Q: How is the condition roads in Bangalore?
A: You would have seen some jokes a couple of years back comparing Bangalore's roads to moon's rocky surface. Well, those are not jokes anymore. Only Ashok Leyland, Shaktiman and Ambassador have the right technology to build right vehicles for Bangalore's roads.

Q: How is the water shortage situation?
A: This problem has been fixed. This year during the rains the authorities ensured that all houses get enough supply of water in their ground floor rooms. If that was not enough, there was enough water on the roads.

Q: I was asking about drinking water, through the pipes.
A: Oh!

Q: How is the condition of Kannada in Bangalore?
A: The Government has announced the solution to this problem today. Bangalore will be renamed Bengalooru and that will solve all the problems. It is surprising that the earlier Governments could not think of this.

Q: Is there good coverage of mobile phone network?
A: You must have been away from Bangalore for quite a few years. Now-a-days it is impossible to be in any place where Airtel coverage isn't there. Unless you are in a bunker designed to protect from nuclear bombs.

Q: How is the cost of living?
A: Here is where Bangalore is giving serious competition to the cities in western countries. If you have been in a small city in mid-western US and if you are returning to Bangalore, mentally prepare yourself - you are not as rich as you thought you are.

Q: How is the airport road flyover helping? How about the flyover at Jayadeva circle?
A: If you are returning to Bangalore after 2 years, there is nothing to see at the airport road flyover construction place, because nothing has changed! Jayadeva circle flyover is not very different either. Any joke about these is not funny anymore.

Q: When will these flyovers be ready?
A: This year

Q: That is what you said last year!
A: True. And the year before as well.

Q: Are there shopping malls, multiplexes, good cars and high speed internet access in India?
A: Yes. You should visit India more often.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Going away from people I liked

One of the best things about Austin has been meeting good people, many of which are old friends. We get to know people only when we meet them outside work, which mostly does not happen while in India. I would have never known Suresh and Murali this well if I had not met them in Austin. And then I got to meet old friends from my hostel in Mysore. Gururaja has been in Austin for a few years and helped me with various things, including grocery shopping! Balaji, another from my hostel, joined us in the last one month. In a way I am happy that Balaji did not join us any sooner, because I am sure I would have gained a few pounds thanks to his culinary skills.

Of course, meeting Manju was one of the great benefits of coming to Austin. I got to relive all memories from undergrad days in Mysore. I also realized that after all these days, he has not changed in his core principles and behavior. He remains a true friend and it is good that real friendships don't go stale with time.

There are many such people because of whom I find it sad to leave Austin, in spite of the excitement of flying back home after 6 months. I can only take memories with me. Luckily memories don't consume any space in my carry-on luggage.

Speaking of luggage limits, UA has reduced carry-on luggage limits, putting in in great discomfort. I hope they take pity on me tomorrow at the airport. I am all set for the looooong flight back home, starting tomorrow.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Gas prices and SUVs

America's long love affair with monsterous trucks and SUVs now appears to be headed for an end. Over the last few decades, the low gas prices resulted in nobody caring about gas mileage. Ford and GM built bigger and bigger SUVs every year, until it was difficult to distinguish a Chevy SUV from a FedEx delivery vehicle. These vehicles gave roughly as much gas mileage as a typical BMTC bus. I am sure NASA did more research about making their space shuttles more fuel efficient than GM and Ford about their cars.

In this year's summer gas prices went up to more than 3.5 dollars per gallon, shocking the people who had just a few years back had thought paying 1.6 dollars was too much. This made the people think radically and take some unbelievable decisions, like switching to cars! (No, people are not yet thinking of using public transport). Suddenly they realised that the Toyota or Honda sedan that they never thought of driving could cut their gas bill by half! So sales of Honda and Toyota cars is increasing rapidly. GM is realizing that they never invested in making their cars more efficient. They always thought president Bush would wage another war in the Gulf to bring down the gas prices, but this time it is not happening in spite of the war. Honda and Toyota are smiling, thinking about the research they have been doing about hybrid engines.

Though it may seem like high gas prices hurts the US, it is good in the long term. It is forcing the US car makers to think about fuel efficiency and it is making the US consumers aware of this issue. As biggeest consumer of petroleum in the world, any such effort by US will help the whole world. I hope people in the US switch to smaller cars and all cars run 50 miles per gallon in a few years.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

FF 1.5

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is out! I have been using this browser since, may be, a couple of centuries, when it started out as 'Phoenix' beta1. They changed the name to Firebird (still vaguely meant phoenix), because somebody had a copyright on the name 'Phoenix'. Later they found that Firebird was also taken, so they changed it to 'Mozilla Firefox'. Luckily it stopped there, otherwise we would have had to use a browser named Firedog or Firecat or Firerat, which would have been very un-cool.

I dutifully downloaded 1.5 version immediately and tested it out. It looks the same UI-wise, but the beast inside seems to be faster. But I am not moving just yet from my 1.06 version. I want all my favorite extensions to be available on 1.5 before I move. Also it would be nice to have an rpm compiled for FC3 ;-) I may have to wait another week for that.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Shop like a man

No, you don't hear this very often. Shopping is often attributed to women, because only they can visit 10 stores to buy a handbag, find good ones in at least 5 of those stores but still walk out without buying one to the 11th store. Men are often known to dread shopping. It is even considered 'unmanly' to admit that we like shopping.

But I am more and more convinced now-a-days that men are not too behind in this artform. It is true that we men don't visit too many shops, nor are we very good at window shopping. Ours is more of a targeted attack - we know what we need before we enter the store, we find the shortest way to reach the counter in question and just go for the kill. We men consider ourselves especially knowledgeable about electronics stuff. We pretend to make wise and informed decisions about buying high-tech stuff. (Oh boy, this toaster is both firewire and bluetooth enabled. I must buy it). But ask a man to buy non-electronics stuff like handbags, jewelry or beauty care products and see him be as clueless as Lalu after recent elections.

So in essence, I think both men and women spend equal amount of money on buying things we don't need, but we men do it much more efficiently without wasting a lot of time visiting tens of stores ;-)

Monday, November 28, 2005

Last week in Austin

This is my last week in Austin before I travel back to India next Sunday. When I started here 6 months back I had never imagined I would end up liking this place so much. It is one of the newer tech capitals of the US, a place with moderate climate for most of the year, one of the safer cities, a city with enough desis to ensure we get good Indian food and grocery ;-) and a place to meet some of my old friends. I am surely sad to leave Austin, though I am happy to go back to Bangalore. It is amazing how I can be both happy and sad at the same time. I am a nostalgic person and I am sure Austin will be a big part of the nostalgia in the days to come.

Black Friday

With the thanksgiving weekend, the holiday season begins in the US. This season is the favorite of retailers, because this is when people shop like crazy. You ask me whether it is any different during rest of the year? Hmm... yeah, but not much!

This thanksgiving weekend I decided to join the shopping mela, so that I do my bit to help the economy. Country's that is, not mine. I had distant memories of trying my luck at a day-after-thanksgiving sale in Salt Lake City 5 years back. I had gone to Wal-mart at 8AM and had found such a mad rush, there was absolutely no way I could get into the store, leave alone shop. So I knew I had to go early, but I was not prepared for what Gururaja told me - reach our neighborhood electronics shop "Fry's" at 3:30 in the morning! Fry's was running a 'Black Friday' sale on Friday, where many electronic items were selling with 'deep discounts'. This is when a typical shopper feels obliged to buy things he/she doesn't need, because after all, they are on sale. I used to think that most people, after eating turkey the previous day, wouldn't even be able to wake up by 3:30, but decided to trust Gururaja's advice, coming out of experience.

When we made it to Fry's at 3:30 I could not believe my eyes - the queue was already around 100 meters long! Some people seemed to have arrived with tremendous preparation - camping chairs, food, water, etc. It appeared to me that some had camped there since Halloween. By 4AM, it was difficult to find parking in the vast parking area. The store opened at 5AM and people rushed inside like they were running for their lives. I wasn't far behind, and luckily, I was able to get the stuff I was looking for. But the checkout queue was at least 10 times longer than a typical queue for 'darshan' at a temple in India. This shopping was nothing like the one typically enjoyed by women - browse 100 shops and in exceptional cases, may be buy at one. This was instead for the sophisticated male shopper. One had to know his targets in the store well in advance (having studied the catalogs), run as fast as possible without caring for any bodily injuries incurred or inflicted on others and go for the kill as soon as the target is in sight.

Rest of my day was spent visiting other shopping malls and stores, but nothing like the initial burst of 5 to 11AM shopping, when many stores look like K.R.Market. I read that the retailers have expressed optimism about how the holiday season is gonna go for them this year. This is a funny time of the year - if the shopping season goes well, the retailers are happy, product manufacturers are happy and not to mention, customers are also happy! But common sense says not all of them can be happy at the same time, such a win-win situation doesn't apply to sales. But the shopping season is when common sense of shoppers takes a hibernation. And economy booms :-)

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Funny news of the day

I happened to see too many funny news today, so I can't resist blogging about it.

First of all, a woman tried to open the door of a flight while it was flying! Apparently she wanted to smoke and it said "No smoking" inside the flight.

Next, I saw an interesting news about a scam by match.com and Yahoo personals. match.com "wrote him romantic emails and even sent him on a sham date with an attractive employee to encourage him to renew his subscription". Huh, he got a date with an attractive woman (I assume it was a woman, website doesn't mention explicitly), but he is still complaining? What else did he expect from match.com anyway?

The last piece comes from our neighbor across the border. As I was reading cricket news from Pakistan, I saw that there was more explosive action in the stands than on the pitch. "The England innings was suspended for nine minutes when a gas cylinder exploded in front of a packed stand." Oh man, what was the gas cylinder doing in the stand? Reading further, "It was purely accidental. The explosion occurred because a carbonated gas cylinder exploded as it could not take the pressure, senior police official Amin Watoo told Reuters." Hmm... a lot of explosive action under high pressure conditions.

50 posts!

I just realized I have made 50 entries in my blog, this is in fact 51st! When I began I had not thought I would reach this 'milestone'!

Friday, November 18, 2005

Thanksgiving lunch

Today there was a unique event at office. I think it happens at all offices in the US during this time. It is the annual thanksgiving lunch, a free lunches provided by the employers. Needless to say, employees make maximum use of it.

Today our annual thanksgiving lunch was at 11:30AM. Unfortunately my breakfast wasnt't even be half digested by then. But as all loyal employees, I did not want to miss the lunch. After all, it was free! A few of us reached the cafeteria at around 11:25AM. In fact we just _tried to_ reach the cafeteria, but could not go anywhere near it. That is because, by then the queue for free lunch had grown so long, it appeared that the end of the queue was somewhere near Houston. All the people, including the ones who complain about the quality of food in cafeteria looked to be in the queue. My veggie lunch obviously excluded the traditional thanksgiving turkey, so it was like going to MTR and not eating dosas. (or buying rice-sambar in a Gujju restaurant;)) The live music and the cheerful atmosphere made the lunch enjoyable. While asking for veggie lunch today, I became nostalgic about my life at Salt Lake City 5 years back. I and my friend were the _only_ vegetarians in the *whole* office during then! But the lady who managed the cafeteria never forgot to get two special veggie meals for us. People gifted us wonderful home-made cakes and pies during these festivals. Hmm.... those were the days!

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Expensive haircuts

Indians visiting the US quickly learn about the cost of living here. In recent years, people from Bangalore visiting smaller cities in mid-west US do not get very surprised when they see price tags at stores. Heck, this time around I felt that Bangalore is costlier than Austin for most daily use items. (Of course, you aren't making the mistake of comparing the price inDollars against equivalent Rupees, are you?). It is not just about petrol, for which we 'poor' Indians pay twice as much asAmericans do. But when it comes to anything involving manual labor, there is no comparison in costs! India is order of times cheaper. Of course, cost of whatever we have in large quantities will be lower. We have a lot of people!

One of the best examples of this is the cost of a haircut. I have seen desis who, even after having lived in US for 5-10 years, still plan for two haircuts during their 1-month India visit - one just after landing and one just before leaving India. So when they land, they normally have enough hair on their head to appear in Dabur Amla hair oil ad, and while leaving, just enough not to show their skulls. So desis still find the cost of a haircut unfathomable. Another complaint I have is the quality of haircut. After having paid 13 dollars for the haircut and 2 dollars in tips, I am disappointed with the skill level shown by the hair cutters. They have diplomas in hair cutting, for godsake! Oh, I may be missing something. They may be preserving their skills for the 'special' haircuts I see in their catalogues. But I am not going to spend upward of 20$ for a haircut!

May be one day hair cuts will be outsourced from the US. The only hurdle is finding a way to get the haircut done over a telephone line running all the way to India.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Perfect friday evening

I had been to Main Event this Friday night. It is an entertainment place, where we can play a number of funky games like video games, rock climbing, laser tagging, not to mention bowling. I like the racing games. Most people like them, because they get to do what they would love to do on the real roads, like riding a 18-wheeler smashing up all cars in the path, driving a Ferrari at 250mph, carelessly hitting the curb on the side. Many like the shooting games, where they get to kill enough people to make an army of a small country. Later we hit the bowling alleys. The lane next to ours was occupied by a bunch of girls in 10-12 age group. Every time one of the girl bowled, irrespective of whether it was a strike or a gutter ball, they all used to start a celebration ritual, which included a little dance and more importantly, a high-pitch scream at a volume high enough to scare the cattle in nearby farms.

At beyond 1 in the night, Manju didn't want to end the day yet, so we went to Mozart's, which is a coffee bar, located on the banks of lake Austin. It is close to downtown and is one of the tourist attractions in Austin. It has all the old-world charm intact and the wooden benches on the lakefront offer one of the best places for spending a casual evening chitchatting with close friends. Since it is close to UT Austin, a number of students spend time there, some doing their homework and some surfing the web on the free wifi connection Mozarts offers. A place not to miss if you are visiting Austin.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Chronic overeating

The last three days have been like a festival season as far as eating is concerned. On Saturday I had been to Houston again, this time with Manju and Sandhya. Our devotion to Goddess Meenakshi and our commitment to the food court there pulled us all the way to Pearland on the southern periphery of the city. We then spent the afternoon at NASA space centre, where we learnt the following:
*) Moon has rocks, they are called (you guessed it) moon-rocks.
*) There are cattle inside NASA campus.
*) The girl who was our guide in the tram through NASA facilities was really cute.

We then put considerable effort spotting the Gujju restaurant 'Thali' that Manju had made a note of. But the fantastic dinner buffet was worth all the effort. The restaurant owner's insistence that we taste more of the delicacies there was just one of the causes of overfeading. The only other thing we would have liked was a place to crash for the night, rather than
drive 200 miles to Austin in the night.

Yesterday, lunch was at our local favority Madras Pavilion, resulting in another dose of overeating. Balaji came from India yesterday and with him, some yummy home-made snacks! Going to the Mozart's coffee bar in the evening was really not the antidote we needed.

To stretch the perfect weekend into Monday, I went to a Vietnamese restaurant today, where 95% of all food had some coconut as ingredient. The most delicious of all was the coconut drink. Oh, until today I had never eaten a dessert than had 3 types of beans.

Since I have been eating so much for 3 days, I know it is not a good time to check my weight now. Of course I am going to start exercising any day now. After all I stopped exercising only a couple of weeks back!

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Speaking of customer support...

While on this subject, I called Air India's toll-free number last week to get my return tickets confirmed. I was expecting to interact with a dumb automated phone system for 5 minutes, choosing various options before reaching a human to talk to. (You know how it is, "If you are calling about flight ticket confirmation, please dial the biggest prime number between 2317 and 5234"...) But surprise! Before I could even hear two rings, a human somewhere in a call centre in India had picked up the phone and asked me how he could help me. I was startled and astonished at first, but delighted at the same time. Either Air India has too good a customer support division or they hardly have any customers. Looking at how full their flights get, I think it is the former. Go AI!

Hoping to return from stone age!

My call with Vonage went way too well today. I was able to speak to a representative without any wait at all, which made me initially suspect that I dialed a wrong number. After I convinced the representative of my plight, she made me go through the usual drill of rebooting every equipment from the cable modem to the toaster and microwave. There was also the usual "hold down the reset button for 45 seconds", "Pull the power cord out while holding the reset button", "take two deep breaths", "Imagine yourself in a beautiful garden", "put back the power cord", "pray to your favorite God", "observe the little LEDs on the router", etc. Finally she said "We have determined that your router has gone bad". Phew, I knew it for the last three days! So they are sending me a replacement quite soon. Looks like the ordeal is finally going to be over.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Stone age, here I come!

Vonage's banner ad asks us to get rid of our stone-age phone service company. After the trouble I am going through in the last couple of days with Vonage, I am ready to go back to stone age myself.

Most phone companies in the US, both traditional and mobile, don't care too much about people like me who need a phone connection for only a few months. They would rather go after the customers who are ready to pledge their souls to them. So I did not have too many options when I needed a phone for a short duration. I had to end up with Vonage, the new, cool, hep and happening VOIP phone. I was indeed surprised about the ease of obtaining the connection and setting up the equipement.

Two days back their LinkSys router started giving problems. Without being instructed, as if it has a soul all by itself, it is rebooting itself every 30 seconds or so! After having gone through all the diagnostic information available in their manuals (as a true engineer), I decided to call their customer support. I know some of you are already grinning. Though I knew the ordeal wasn't going to be smooth, I was not prepared for how it actually turned out. I ended up waiting 115 minutes (yes, almost 2 hours) waiting for a customer support representative to talk to me. Instead of at least playing some music, they were content in playing a message that repeatedly said they were 'sorry' about the delay I was experiencing and they 'value my loyalty' as a customer. I think they were trying to push me to some kind of trance by playing a repetitive hypnotic message. But after listening to this message a gazillion times in 2 hours I decided to hang up.

Not all was lost, though. They have e-mail support facility. So I shot off an email to them describing my situation, hoping they would sympathize with me and do something. Of course I received immediate replies to my mails, but their help was not even as valuable as the paper on which I printed out the procedure they asked me to perform. (Stand on one foot facing East and chant "Vonage" three times. Now turn North and walk two steps and so on ...) I know I am not a networking wizkid, but I am sure I know more than their 'experts'. But to be fair to them, I guess they are used to talking to customers who cannot tell their zip code from their IP address. So after two days of struggling with the router, it is still rebooting every 30 seconds and I am watching it's little blue LEDs blink all the time. I have no hopes of the situation improving any time soon. Unless I am ready to listen to their trance inducing message for another couple of hours. Meanwhile I wonder how people used to communicate in stone age. Smoke messages?

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Intruders at midnight

Last Saturday I went to sleep as usual at around 11:30PM, hoping to get a pleasant and long night's sleep. At around midnight, as I was falling into deep sleep, there was a loud thud followed by banging on my front door. Before I could figure out what was happening, three people had made a rather forceful entry to the house, loudly shouting my name. I was surprised because I don't have too many enemies, especially in Austin. Ultimately when I gathered my wits and my shirt, wore it reverse in a hurry and walked out of my room, I got a huge smile on my face. It was Manju, Sandhya and Anoop Iyer with a huge birthday cake. I came to know later that Murali had also been a part of this heinous plan.

Yes, last Sunday was my birthday. I don't really celebrate my birthday. If I am in Bangalore I take my friends out for lunch because they don't let me skip that :-) But that was not how things would go while I was in Manju's town.

So in the next 15 minutes I had cut the cake and had cake frosting smeared all over my face, but Manju tells me he skipped the more rigorous portions of birthday celebration, which I believe often include birthday bums culminating in slight dislocation of birthday boy's hip bone. So thanks Manju and co for celebrating my birthday and sparing my body in shape. Yes, a dinner is due from me.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Manoranjani!

Last Sunday, I went to a program called 'Manoranjani', organized by Austin Kannada Sangha as part of Rajyothsava/Deepavali celebrations. It is an entertainment program organized by Association of Kannada Kootas of America (named so that it makes a cute acronym - AKKA). This was a fund raiser program to help educate poor children in Karnataka. The artists (entertainer is a new way to describe the profession) were doing it without any renumeration. While Ramesh added star value to the show, Sudha Baragur stole the limelight with jokes, most of which were new to me. She got a standing ovation that she richly deserved. Shylaja Santhosh was the comperer and she is easily one of the best in that job. Ramprasad and B.R.Chaya did all the singing. I had not known much about Ramprasad earlier, so I was pleasantly surprised to listen to his very good singing. Chaya was good as always, but she kept on insisting to increase the volume of her microphone, making her voice too loud, dominating over the musical instruments and Ramprasad's voice! Her husband Pani (I am not very sure about the name), who was the musician, tried telling her this, but a husband asking his wife to reduce her volume is as likely to succeed as Azim Premji convincing Deve Gowda that the infrastructure in Bangalore is crumbling.

The other noticeable thing in the program was the dinner. God bless the person who made that Bisi Bele Bhath. Kudos to the organizers for bringing such a wonderful program to a small city like Austin. I have one nag, though. Call me a nitpick if you wish. The president of the Austin Kannada Sangha, Ravi Kumar, while he speaks decent Kannada while off-stage, ensures he speaks only English while on stage. Ironically he gave us a lot of good information about the Kannada Sangha and it's activities, all in English. I found this really strange.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Lack of concentration

I think I am sufferring from a low concentration level now-a-days. Of late, I tend to have a number of things to do and since I keep context-switching all the time, my brain's caches remain mostly empty (not just cold). Of course the rains in Bangalore were really devastating. Yes, I know that India has offerred to open the LOC to help the earthquake victims in POK. I really wonder if Saurav Ganguly will ever come back into the Indian team. I am trying to serialize and organize my work so that this lack of concentration problem does not occur. High fuel prices are hitting all the economies of the world quite hard, not to mention India. I have started making very initial arrangements for my return back to India. But the way Indians won the match made me wonder if the match was fixed. Oh, so where was I? concentration. Yes, the concentration of orange juice I bought last week was very low. On the positive side, my skills in TT and foosball have improved dramatically. But I still feel Starbucks coffee is much better than Ritazza. Hey, what am I talking about? I must do something before this problem of lack of concentration starts to really hurt.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Linux geekiness scale

This is the Linux geek scale I came up with. They are in the increasing order of geekiness all through. I am sure it can take _many_ more additions. So suggestions are very welcome.

Update: Ananth's comments have now been merged into 'mainline' with minor modifications:)

Novice:
*) You say "Linux? What's that?"
*) You pronounce Linux as Linux, not Lynux.
*) You know Linux is something other than Windows!
*) You have seen Linux on your geeky friend's PC.

Beginner:
*) You know who Linus Torvalds is.
*) You ask "Are you running 'Linux 9'?"
*) You have tried to install Linux on your PC.
*) You know that what a distro is and you know the name of the distro you tried to install.
*) You know what KDE and Gnome are.
*) You know how to install software on Linux.
*) You know how to enable MP3 support in RH based distros.
*) You have argued with your friends that Linux is superior to Windows.
*) You have made at least one customization to your KDE/Gnome desktop.
*) You can differentiate between the kernel version and the distro version

Getting there (It gets interesting now):
*) You know where Linus Torvalds works.
*) Your PC boots into Linux by default, not Windows.
*) You have tried compiling your own kernel.
*) You know what LD_ASSUME_KERNEL is.
*) You know how to get on to #kernelnewbies
*) You ask a question on #kernelnewbies without someone invoking "lxrbot rules"
*) You use your own kernel on your PC.
*) You have posted a mail to LKML at least once.
*) Your post on LKML was not flamed at.
*) At least one of your patches was accepted into mainline Linux kernel.
*) You find a lengthy discussion about comparison of rpm and deb formats, pretty interesting.
*) You think vi vs emacs war is holier than Iraq war.
*) You think KDE and Gnome are too earthly, so you use Metacity or something more geeky.
*) You use underscores to highlight words (_thisway_)

Geek (not Greek) god:
*) You have uninstalled Windows on your PC.
*) When someone asks you a Linux question, like "I cannot connect to the Internet" or "I cannot login to my system", your response is on the lines of "Have you tried this with latest mainline kernel?" or "Did you compile your kernel with CONFIG_XYZ option?".
*) You know the difference between Ubuntu and Debian.
*) You believe "mutt" is the greatest invention after sliced bread.
*) You are capable of retrieving you box even after hozing the bootloader
*) You have tried one of -mm or -rt trees on your PC.
*) You have successfully compiled your own glibc and installed it on your system.
*) You have successfully submitted a patch to libc-alpha list.
*) The default runlevel on your desktop PC is 3 because you think anything with UI is too dumb.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Seven years in this industry!

On 12th of this month I completed seven years in software industry. It doesn't seem like a big deal now, but I still remember the early days when I used to look at people with 5 years of experience and think they were 'super-seniors', as if I was never going to be like them. Time flies and it flies concord, not Boeing :-) Looking back, I think I was expecting to learn a lot more in 7 years when I started off.

Anyway, it is time to look back at these years and wonder - "Whoa, I am growing old!". To my contemporaries - just think about this : most of the people coming out of colleges now don't know that Internet without Google could exist - they take Google along with roti, kapda and makaan as basic necessities. Going further, most students in high schools and colleges probably don't know that STD phones didn't exist a few years back and there was something called trunk call. They think trunks are only for elephants. Most kids in primary schools aren't aware that there could be a world without mobile phones! Looks like generation gap doesn't really need decades now, it happens in 10 years. People like me _almost_ belong to previous generation already. :-(

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Human behavior

I read an article about some riots in the US today that set me thinking about the human behavior.

We are used to seeing people not following rules, accepting (demanding) bribes, being corrupt, rioting, behaving rudely in public and so on in India. We tend to believe that most of those behaviors are fundamentally native to our people, something that makes Indians, Indians. When we visit developed countries, we appreciate the way they keep their country clean and the way they seem to be more honest, following the rules, polite and so on. However, some incidences and circumstances bring out the devil in people in all countries. Think of the riots and cops going around looting houses in New Orleans after Katrina. Think of Government's decision about handing out huge contracts to companies they prefer. Consider for a minute why people drive so horribly in New York and honk at will. Think why the subway entrances in big US cities are not even as clean as our Majestic bus stand.

I think many people are fundamentally scums, irrespective of which country they are from. The chances of these scums exposing their real behavior is inversely proportional to them being caught in the act and being held responsible. This chance is _very_ low in India, so there is nothing to deter these people from being that way. The same people behave much better when they go to, say, Singapore because they know that their a**es will be kicked if they don't behave. The same rule applies everywhere. Secondly, the number of such scums in a society depends on how the society is built up. I guess some of the western European countries have had the best such societies for many generations, so crime rates are lowest there, people keep their country clean, bribery and corruption is lowest and so on. We in India, over centuries, have built a society that does not reward good behavior nor punish bad. So it is a fertile place for people to grow up without many of these good qualities in life. These things can't be changed overnight. I think it will take a few of generations. I hope we start at least now.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Duh!

Here is a proof to show that Linux on desktop is coming along really nicely. Today I was able to see something that I have seen only on Windows, that too not in recent times. Error messages of this type used to be common on Windows, especially if you used any software from Netscape. Looks like Linux desktop is going in the right path, just a matter of time before it catches up with Windows.

(Click on the pic to enlarge it.)

Monday, October 10, 2005

Coconut oil in your petrol tank!

Some university students in Newzealand claimed that coconut oil can be used as fuel in automobile engines. If that ever reaches mainstream, our cities are going to smell like Kerala-style restaurants! A whacky solution to the pollution problem as well.

This immediately brings to my memory one Ramar Pillai, who, around 1997-98, claimed that he could 'make' petrol out of just herbs/shrubs. Now that was some news! Here was an idea that could solve India's fuel woes as well as parthenium menace ;-) But alas, his trick was busted after a few days, but he maintained that his 'trick' was 'genuine'. I read a news after a few years that the Pillai guy continued to happily use his own herbal petrol in his TVS50. If he could _really_ make fuel out of some flora, I would expect him to at least become rich enough to drive a Merc.

Okay, back to coconut dudes of NZ. They claim that this is a possible answer to rising fuel cost woes. Well, I for one am totally against this whole idea. Do they know that we are already paying 12Rs for a coconut in Bangalore? If your family is from the west-coast districts of Karnataka, you know that pretty much all of the daily foods have coconut as an ingredient. So anything that can take the cost of coconuts up, I am against. Also, if cost of coconut oil doubles, what are Indians going to use in their hair? Petrol? And make it easy for bride-burning in-laws?

A stock-market tip - time to buy shares of parachute coconut oil company!

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Summer's over!

Today, for the first time, I had to turn the AC at home from 'cool' to 'heat'! So summer is finally over! I can't believe the speed with which things changed. Just 10 days back we were seeing all-time high record temperatures in Austin (107F-42C) and today (50F-10C) it feels like all that was a distant dream. I know I am extremely under-prepared for the winter. When you suddenly realize that the warmest clothing you have is a half-sleeve polo shirt, you know it ;-)

Friday, October 07, 2005

Technology for the sake of technology

Don't get me wrong. This is not a rant about everything related to technology, nor am I a technophobic. Though it may seem to be so, it is not directed at anybody in particular ;-)

The promise of technology has always been to make our lives better. But what I really abhor is people getting so blinded by technology that they forget that that all this is supposed to make our life easy and better, and just believe that if anything is new and funky, they need it! You know the type - "Your camera has 10 megapixels? mine has 11!", "I can watch NDTV on the (crappy little) LCD screen of my mobile phone.", "I can sync all my e-mails to my PDA from my laptop and (with squinty eyes) see all mails on it." This is exactly what the companies selling all this stuff want. This is what the Governments say helps improve the economy, through 'solid retail activity' and 'consumer's confidence in economy' or something like that.

Again, don't get me wrong. There are millions of products of technology that have improved our lives, but almost all of them come with myriad features that are just of snob value. When I buy something I try not to be blinded by the feature list, instead ask myself how many of those features do I really need. I don't need to browse the web on the tiny screen of my mobile phone. I don't need to see my e-mail on a PDA - my life is much simpler so far. I don't need 300 channels on my TV. A car that can zoom from 0 to 60 in a couple of seconds doesn't have any advantage in Bangalore. I don't need a watch that can show time at 50 cities of the world. When I see a product whose instruction manual looks like 'War and Peace', I know to stay away from it.

I have seen a person who had a fundoo home network, it let him log into his home computer from office and then turn off/on lights at home. He couldn't answer my simple question - "Why?" I think these are the type of people that inspire thoughts of toasters that can get on the Internet. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who are unable to use all the rich features of their gadgets is increasing, approaching 100. But these are the same people who jump at the next version of the gadget which has EVEN more features!

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Whats the color of your sox(cks)?

Ananth has written in his blog something about various colors of sox(cks) available in the US, and people paying thousands of dollars to see them. The whole thing seems to be related to this game called baseball. This is in fact my reply to his blog, so read his first!

Well, all I know is my white sox(cks) sometimes turn red when soiled, and remain red sox(cks) until they go to laundry, when they turn white again. If I yank(ee) them too much, they get torn and go out with trash! This sox-yanking costs me a few dollars, not even close to $1025 :-)

So isn't baseball the game where they hit full-toss balls out of the ground? I know what Ananth will now say - full-toss balls travelling at 90mph in the general direction of your nose! And is this the game where the whole (and ONLY) US competes for the world (or universe?) title?

Monday, October 03, 2005

Another weekend post

I watched another Kannada movie, "Joke Falls" today. Chauffeur-driven car (thanks to Manju), a good movie and good food at Sarovar, and you know your Sunday hasn't gone wasted! With this movie, I have now watched more Kannada movies (in a movie hall, not at home) in these three months in Austin than in the last 3 years in Bangalore. Thanks to Austin Kannada Sangha for bringing a number of Kannada movies (both of them!) to Austin during this time. They have improved their website as well, things WORK now! What they could do better is ask the volunteers selling tickets and the ones who make announcements (about Rajyothsava celebrations, incidentally) in the movie hall to speak in Kannada. There is no need to prove that you know English and I can pretty much guarantee that every person who is watching a Kannada movie obviously knows Kannada!

I have started borrowing books and DVDs from Austin public library, so evenings are pretty eventful now. Lack of TV pinches once in a while, but for most of the time I don't miss it at all now. But here is a guy who would miss the TV if it was taken away from him for a day - the guy who set Guinness record for non-stop TV watching! His first name is Suresh, but he is not Indian. He apparently watched TV for 69 hours and 48 minutes, with 5 minute breaks every one hour. I know what you are thinking - you could beat it, right? But I guess the challenge here is not falling asleep for three days straight. But you have not heard the funny part yet - why does he do all this - this is straight from CNN website: "to raise awareness of suffering children" These are things that make you go "Huh?". Probably the children suffering due to excess TV watching? Oh, I now remember - I too watched a couple of DVDs this weekend. The purpose was to "raise awareness about suffering children and poverty in Africa" :-)

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Oh Jeeves!

I heard today that www.ask.com is dropping it's well known butler mascot. This reopened my memories from far back when I first started using the Internet. I started using the net first when I was in college, in 1997. The SJCE-STEP was the only place in Mysore with internet access. Around ten 286 and 386 PCs shared a dial-up speed connection and we surfed the web using Netscape Navigator 4.x, which used to take hardly 2 to 3 minutes to load when starting up. As part of our intense research for our college project, we would go to rocketmail.com or mailcity.com and send 'test' e-mails to our friends sitting at another PC across the hall. After this, we would run to our friends to see if the mail really reached! Once in a while mails would reach, and by then our quota of 1 hour of browsing would be over. We would return home with an aura around us of having tamed the net.

Almost all our searches were done on Altavista, because we did not know any other search engine. I came to know that there was something called lycos when they bought over mailcity. Sometime during 99 I discovered askjeeves. ask.com was known as askjeeves.com during then (roughly 99-2000) and it was my favorite search engine. I don't know why, I just liked it's interface and I was happy with the search results it threw up. All this until I surrendered to google, like millions of others. I can't think of ask.com without Jeeves mascot. To me it is like google without it's colorful letters, IBM without it's 8-bar logo, Mysore without Chamundi hill, pizza without cheese! I will miss you Jeeves!

Talking about the internet, it is interesting to see how it has progressed in all these years. These days you can open a mail account on hundreds of websites and effortlessly receive thousands of spam mails every day. You can search for just about anything and google will return a couple of hundred thousand results in 0.00234 seconds or something around that. It is nice to see people making best use of the search engine technology to search for - Pamela Anderson. Yes. Lycos says the most searched phrase on their search engine in the last ten years was this woman! She fought off a close battle with "Britney Spears", "Las Vegas", "WWE", "Pokemon" and so on.

Monday, September 26, 2005

How to cheer up a bored mind!

There are dull weekends, but this one set the bar for me. I think a good weekend is not just about doing a lot of exciting things, it is a state of mind. (which means I don't know what the heck it is). I started reading a book by Dave Barry, the king of humourous writing himself; watched two movies on DVDs, but all things I did this weekend to cheer my mind up came to naught. Of course, "Riding in cars with boys" sounded far more interesting than it actually turned out to be. It was a good movie, but quite depressing.

One thing that many do when they are feeling this way is to eat chocolates. Chocolates are supposed to trigger feel-good chemicals in our brains, called endorphins. But I find that any fat-laden food will also help. Why is the nature so unfair to people who are concerned about putting on weight? Why does it have to be chocolates or fried foods that trigger these little bastard endorphins? Why couldn't it be broccoli or lettuce?

I realized that I have spent more than three months in Austin now. I am now thinking more about what I am gonna do after I go back to Bangalore, than what I am gonna do in the remaining months here. That shows I am now 'over the hill', so to say, with respect to my this onsite assignment.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Rita disappointment!

With Hurricane Rita not causing as much damage as initially feared, most of the country, especially Texas, should be breathing a collective sigh of relief. But I am sure there are few who are disappointed a little bit, okay, I know there is at least one for sure, that is me!

The amount of preparation that went behind preparing for this hurricane here in Austin was seen to be believed. People, having seen TV reports of Katrina, took Rita seriously, a bit too seriously. Austin was shown to be right in the path of the hurricane and though we are around 200 miles inland from the ocean, people were taking no chances. By this Wednesday most stores had run out of bread, water and other essentials. I went to buy some stuff on Thursday and found that people were filling up their Ford-250s with all the water and food they could find in the store. I found one woman buying loads of toilet paper. I really wondered if this was a part of some special plan to handle the hurricane. I heard that some people bought enough water to last a month. Well, if the hurricane had really stuck us, the one item we would find in abundance and not need a bit would be water, right? ;-)

I on the other hand decided to go very light on preparations for the hurricane, you know we Indians are like that! I live on 3rd floor (Ground-Second-Third in the US as against Ground-First-Second-Third in India), so I figured I would remain dry until the water raised almost 20 feet!

By Friday, it was clear that Austin was well clear of the main path of the hurricane, so the euphoria had come down. But the way events unfolded today left everyone dumbfounded. Not a single drop of rain, for heaven's sake! Not even some dark clouds in the sky. It was just like normal here, temperature at around 100F. I had hoped that it would at least rain a couple of inches, so I could still brag that I was in the hurricane path. (You know, when I was in Austin, there was this huge hurricane, roads filled with water and I could just swim to work instead of walking... something like that). But alas, Austin was left high and dry. What an anti-climax! Looks like we are going to continue to see temperatures in low 100s for a few more days.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Hurricane naming

More about hurricanes, the topic that is the flavor of the season.

As hurricane Rita prepares to run down the US gulf, meteorologists have a huge problem on hand - no, it is not the destruction she might bring with her. What can Rita possibly do that Katrina couldn't? New Orleans mayor to hurricane Rita : "Madam, we already have enough water in our city. We don't want any of yours, thank you. We could even gift some water to you."

The problem meteorologists are facing is - they have only 4 names left for hurricanes and storms this year. Apparently they come up with 21 names at the beginning of the year for the hurricane season (around January to around December). Each name begins with an alphabet from A to W, skipping Q and U. Names are alternatively male and female. Male names were added in 1979 (to silence women right activists, I guess). Names are rotated every seventh year. If a hurricane causes extensive damage, he or she is dropped from the list ;-).

This year they may run out of names and so they are planning to name the extra guests Alpha, Beta and so on. Equally effective, but far less glamorous! They could get a few interesting names from India. What names best suit the worst hurricanes? Yamaraj? Hidimba? Ghatothkaj? Lankini? Bakasur? Okay, may be Yamaraj is not such a good one...

Monday, September 19, 2005

Kannada movie!

My friend Manju told me that a Kannada movie, "Joke Falls" is coming to Austin next weekend. So I quickly checked the website of Austin Kannada Sangha to see if they have more information about this. But alas, looks like their website has been recently 'upgraded/redisigned', by which I mean we can't find any good information on it anymore. They are running a poll named "What do you think of the new AKS website?", with the following three options to choose from:
1) Think? I use it
2) I love it
3) I will send an email with suggestions

Yes, that's it. There is no option that says "Sucks". Looks like the third option covers that. Intelligent people.

BTW, I came across pictures of a couple of 'leading' stars of Kannada movies that made me wonder "How much money did they get JUST to wear a dress that is so awful"? and "What was the costume designer of the movie smoking when he/she came up with these designs?". See for yourself here and especially here. After all, Bangalore is home to too many fashion designers, so they could have gone to any one of them to get the dresses designed. Or may be they did!

Friday, September 16, 2005

Innovation at it’s best

Here is a fine example of how US leads the world in technology and innovation. Gillette, as you know, has been helping us fight one of the biggest problems plaguing mankind - the stubble on the man's face. Gillette were one of the first to market 'safety' razors, which means you can 'safely' cut off your nose or ear with those razors if you are not careful. They were the first to introduce the twin blade razors during early 70s in the US and 3-blade razor during the 90s. Their innovation also included the Aloe strip that is found on their Mach3 razors. This strip has a unique property of enhancing the price of the razor without providing any material benefit. But then, another company, Schick, beat them to the next number. They were the first to come up with highly innovative 4-blade shaving razor. That must have been a dark day in Gillette headquarters.

But then, we are talking about a company which boasts more about innovation and technology on their website than NASA or Intel do. So it was obvious they were not going to sit quiet. Their research teams set out to find out what number comes after 4. Within a couple of years, they knew it. This week they introduced - suspense - hold your breath - the world's first Five-blade razor system!!!!! Don't believe me? See for yourself. So I guess you get the picture of what shaving razors will look like in 2010. There will be more blades than can be fit on the razor, but there is the long handle to be made use of ;-) Or probably razors will look like cheese graters.

Where does all this leave India? We are still stuck with age-old 3-blade technology. It looks like nuclear technology and high end computing and encryption technology reach India faster than this razor technology. We are stuck with yesterday's shaving technology, Shah Rukh Khan's smooth cheeks notwithstanding. It is high time Topaz blade company in India put some money into razor research. (clue: Just find what number comes after 5 and you have it. Better patent it now). Meanwhile, I am too scared to try the 5-blade variety from Gillette. I will stick with my Electric shaver. It may have 100s of tiny blades, but it takes far more effort to cut off my nose or ear with it.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Bilingual blog

I made my other blog at http://huchumanasu.blogspot.com bilingual, in Kannada and English, so that it can be read by everyone. Of course, what I say there may not make sense for everyone! Sometimes thoughts in our mind get horribly diluted by the time they are put to words.

If you want to enable Kannada fonts on your computer (XP/Linux), go here and read easy-to-follow instructions: http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kannada_Support

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

C & H

If you love Calvin and Hobbes, here is one of the best ever. ("Y" as in "Y do we care?" I am LOL) http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ch/1994/ch940912.gif

Monday, September 12, 2005

Travelogue Part 2

I am back with Part 2 of my blog. Shows how 'eventful' my weekend has been ;-)

The next day (3rd Sep) began with drive towards Newark, New Jersey. By noon we were in NJ. The first thing thatsurprised us simple minded Texans was the way people drove there. We had to quickly remember our driving skillsfrom Bangalore to acclimatize ourselves to driving here. Honk if you are happy (or sad or neither), never leave more than 2 inches of space between your car and the one in front and so on. After checking in at the hotel, we decided to check out NY in the evening, taking the train to Newyork Penn Station from Newark Penn Station (ugh! very imaginative naming!) At the Newark Penn Station, it appeared that they had outsourced the information desk and "May I help you"counters to friendly neighborhood thugs and cheats.

A long walk around the Times Square, the famous curved facade of the Nasdaq building, along Broadway and other 'famous' roads made a memorable evening. It was niceto see so many people walking on roads. We quickly learnt that we can cross roads almost any time we want. Of course, cars can honk at us any time they want and we can shout at them when they do it!

The next day we started with Ground Zero (where the WTC buildings once stood) and quickly proceeded to Liberty and Ellis islands. Any trip to NY is not complete until you have taken your picture with lady Liberty. The immigrantion centre museum at Ellis island was very informative as well. Tip to future visitors to Ellis island: Don't eat at Ellis island food stall if you are a vegetarian. It sucks big time.

Rest of the day involved a visit to the American Museum of Natural history , The Central Park and Madame Tussauds wax museum. Madame Tussauds looked far less impressive here compared to the one in London. No Amitabh Bachan, no Aishwarya Rai! Our evening was dedicated to seeing the Empire State building, the tallest now in Newyork. But most of the evening was spent in waiting in a queue there. But it was worth the wait. Clear skies offerred a majestic view of the city all around. Made me remember seeing Paris from the Eiffel Tower.

The next day morning (5th Sep) Ananth took us to his cousin's house in NJ where we had a fantastic brunch. After days of eating McDonands and such stuff, not to mention burgers at Ellis island, our tastebuds were treated to a sumptuous fare.We later left to see the the Longwood Gardens on the outskirts of Philadelphia. It is a nice botonical garden, but for us it was only an opportunity to take pictures, especially for Ananth with his SLR. Later in the day we returned to BaltimoreAirport and rest of the trip back home was eventless.

Here is a panaramic view of Manhattan and other areas from Ellis island. If you care for more pictures, go to http://sripathi.fotopic.net

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Travelogue Part 1

This is a travelogue of our trip to DC, Niagara falls and NY last weekend. It was my first trip to the eastern part of the US. Ananth, Murali and I planned a 5-day vacation to during labor day weekend. The photo here shows the amount of driving directions I had obtained :) Find a lot of photos at http://sripathi.fotopic.net.

It started with a flight to Baltimore airport on 31st Aug. The super-shuttle ride from the airport to our hotel was a memorable one. The driver insisted on driving in two lanes all the time, and often grossly over the speed limit! Just when we were wondering if the road rules are different in Baltimore, a cop promptly pulled us over.

The next day began with a taxi driver trying to con us, immediately making us feel very homely :) But rest of the day went very smoothly in Washington DC. The new security restrictions in the city make it far less enjoyable experience, however. We were only allowed outside the distant fencing of the White House, and we missed the ticket to go inside the Capitol building. To go any closer to the White House, we need to obtain a letter/pass from our local senator six months (yes, six months) before our visit! But I am not complaining too much about not going into White House because. Well, it was obviously white in color, but it really did not look too impressive. We then saw the Washington Monument. In fact it is difficult not to see it if you are in DC, it is a tower 555 feet tall! We later saw the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, WWII memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Here is a picture of the Capitol building.


The next day started with a long drive to Niagara falls. Driving directions given by mapquest (Yes, I used a Microsoft website) ran us through many green, beautiful country roads in Pennsylvania and NewYork states. Niagara falls had a huge waterfall as expected ;-) But the first thing that caught our eye was the board "Sardar Dhaba"! You know you are near Canada (or Jalandhar) when you see that board. We really enjoyed our stay till late in the night at Niagara falls. Toronto offers a beatiful skyline on the other side of the falls.
More later.

Friday, September 09, 2005

Katrina aftermath

I am back from the long weekend vacation and am still trying to remember all my gazillion logins and passwords. I have decided to use Revelation for remembering my passwords. With that, I will only need to forget one master password!

I would have written about my trip to the east coast, but Katrina is still a hot subject, so some more about it. It is of course a big tragedy, possibly the biggest natural calamity in the US history. However, I can see some humor in the way the aftermaths are going.

First of all, the 'Superdome' in New Orleans. Only now are people wondering why a board there spelt it as 'Superdoom'. Now people have been shifted to another doom (dome), the Astrodome in Houston. Apparently law and order in New Orleans was also washed away in Katrina fury, so now it is normal to hear gunshots there.
News reader: "Here we have some clips from violence-ridden streets of Baghdad, where our armed forces are engaged in pitched battles with terrorists to protect democracy and liberty of Iraqis. Oh my God, wait! it is not Baghdad, it is our own New Orleans!!!"

News channels and news websites are the only people, I think, who have benefitted from the evil hurricane. However, only a few fortunate (!?) news reporters actually went to where real action is. Many less fortunate ones ended up reporting in a very excited voice, anything and everything related to Katrina in their own hometown. This is something I saw on a local TV station (I am really not making this up!): A TV reporter with an empty parking lot behind her: "THIS VERY SPOT right here is where the truck collecting Katrina relief materials stood till a few hours back, before it left to New Orleans". Desparate, unlucky news reporter!

Gas prices have shot up to all time highs as an effect of the hurricane. We paid 3.5$ per gallon during our trip last weekend. It may be simple for Californians - they just need to transfer their entire salary to gas stations owner's account now. The only place that doesn't need gas could be New Orleans, where people now depend on small boats and kayaks for their commute. It's time they built some Kerala-style backwater resorts in New Orleans to attract tourists.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Long weekend!

Going off for the long weekend. No blogging for at least 5 more days.

Monday, August 29, 2005

Katrina!

No, wait. Don't get excited. This is not about the Kaif girl in India. This is about the huge hurricane named 'Katrina' that is hitting New Orleans as I type this! The met department is about to call this the 'American Tsumani'. This is one of the series of interestingly named hurricanes that hits the US coast evey year (George, Dennis, Ivan, etc). It is normally the Sunshine state - Florida that welcomes all these evil hurricanes and packs them off to other states to cause further damage.

Katrina was named a 'Category 5 hurricane' (evil witch from hell) till yesterday, but apparently today it has subsided to 'Category 4 hurricane' (just plain witch from hell). I guess the Mayor of New Orleans will be happy : "Hurray, Katrina is gonna submerge our city in only 20 feet of water, not 22 feet as we had feared!"

It was nice to see the amount of preparation that goes behind welcoming the evil hurricane. Most of the people are evacuated from the cities in the path of the hurricane, unless you are a media person, in which case you will be travelling INTO these cities with your video camera! It was also very nice to see the amount of responsibility shown by the city Mayor in handling the situation. This no doubt keeps the death toll low. I heard a CNN report about a huge hurricane that hit New Orleans in 60s that caused, quote, "more than 60 deaths". Apparently it is a record so far for the city. Our Mumbai broke the record by 10s of times very recently. That shows how badly prepared we are to face natural calamities. Life is cheap in our country because we have so many people, so apparently we don't care.

We have a trip coming up this weekend and I am wondering if Katrina is going to create any problem in our trip. In case YES, I hope it will at least be the other Katrina ;-)

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Barsana Dham

Today I had been to Barsana Dham. It is a spiritual centre and US centre of Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat. It is located a few miles outside Austin among a lot of greenery and calm atmosphere. It houses a Radha-Krishna temple and meditation halls among beautiful landscaping and ponds. Their way of worshipping resembles the ISKCON way, involving singing Bhajans and dancing. Today they were celebrating Janmashtami, so it was grand.

I am not really very religious, so the place did not make a significant impact on me. But I am amazed at the following it gets from both Indians and natives here. The dedication shown by a few people there really surprised to me no end. Another interesting thing I have observed is the effect of music on devotees. Most of these worshipping methods involve a Bhajan that starts slowly and picks up pace and volume with time. By the time it ends, many of the devotees reach a state of mind that cannot be explained very easily.

My thoughts about religion and God are not in line with their practices, hence I must restrain myself from judging their practices. However, another thing there today was totally in line with all my beliefs - free food. At any point of time, the food court was drawing two times as many people as the main hall where today's festivities were on. I could see that a number of people were there to enjoy a good evening socializing with others, enjoying free food and having a walk in the serene surroundings of Barsana Dham. I call it a valid purpose in itself, because I am part of that gang ;-)

BTW, their websites are IE only :-( They strictly prevent you from getting in if you are using any other browser. Also, while their website is loaded, (really! I am not making this up) it disables copy-paste functionality on the entire OS. Very surprising to see the lengths they go to safeguard their copyrighted stuff, especially considering it is a spiritual/religious organization. However, I tried to load their website on Firefox in Linux, and bingo, it went through :-)

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Bored as hell

This work week has been one of the slowest moving ever. I have not been this bored at work in a very long time. With no plans for the weekend, I expect the same sullen mood to reign over the weekend as well. As a result I may blog a lot.

Oh, I added word verification for comments to my blog. If you don't know about this, it is a simple mechanism to ensure a human is entering data into a web form, rather than a web bot. Pretty common in sign-up processes on many websites now-a-days. Yesterday within a few minutes of posting my new blog entry there were 8 comments to it. Just when I was wondering how my blog became so famous so fast, I saw that all of them were unsolicited junk from automated bots. one was screaming that I had won a Gateway laptop, some wanted to give me millions of dollars for no good reason whatsoever, and one desperately wanted to sell me cheap viagra :) It was a reminder about the importance of network security, spam assassin software, etc. It is a bloody deadly world out there on the web.

Friday, August 26, 2005

The Texas State Capitol

Though Austin is only the fourth largest city in Texas (Houston, Dallas and San Antonio are bigger), it is the capital of the state! Since it is the capital, it gets to have the Capitol building that houses the state legislature. The Texas State Capitol in Austin is one of the most beautiful buildings in Austin. All the modern spanking new buildings around it only help to enhance, not diminish it's beauty. Though Texas state has a history of around 150 years, this building was built in 1888. Made of red granite rock available right here in Texas, this is the second largest among the capitol buildings in the US, second only to the national capitol in Washington, D.C. However, it is taller than the national capitol!

We have Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore which can be compared to the Capitol in beauty and elegance. However, what sets Capitol far ahead is the ease of access to general public. Almost all rooms of the fully air-conditioned building are accessible to visitors, free of cost. The Government has also arranged for free guided mini-tours inside the building. Capitol sits in a vast campus covered with green lawns. A small museum near the Capitol lets visitors learn a lot about the history of Texas. This weekend I went to the Capitol late in the evening at around 10PM and found that the simple flood-light arrangement enhances the beauty of the building even further. I just sat for a long time admiring not just the building, but the system here that allows such an easy access to the state legislature building to the general public. Could that ever happen at Vidhana Soudha?

(Click on the pictures to see bigger pictures)

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Google 'talk'

I, as well as many of my friends are normally suckers for anything that Google dishes out. So when I heard about Google's latest IM client (www.google.com/talk), I jumped at it immediately. It is not a YM-beater at the moment, but knowing Google, I expect it to improve drastically in the coming days. However, one crib about Google remains - it sometimes leaves Linux desktop users high and dry. They did a great job with supporting standardised interface in Gmail and Blogger, but we are yet to see Picasa, Desktop search and Google Earth being ported to Linux. I am sure they can, if they really want to. But they are on good track with Google talk - it supports Jabber protocol, so our good old Gaim works just fine for text messages.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Six flags

The last weekend was quite eventful. We rented a Chevy classic, which makes enough sound to scare the driver whenever he presses down the gas too hard. We went to the Six Flags at Fiesta, a huge entertainment/theme park near San Antonio. I define these parks as places where we pay a hefty fees and in return they scare the shit out of us! I still get goosebumps when I remember the scary rides I 'enjoyed' in Las Vegas a few years ago. That is when I had decided that "If I want to get scared so much, I will rather drive on Bangalore's roads". So I skipped some of the scariest ones in Six Flags, like the "Superman Tower of Power". Call me a sissy if you want.

Six Flags houses one of the most famous rides in the world, a huge wooden roller-coaster called "Texas Giant". If you watch History channel regularly, you would have seen this! But it was closed for maintenance this weekend. One of the rides, I think it is called "Texas Tornado", is insanely scary. It uses a huge vertical swing to swing people hundreds of feet in a circular motion. In case there is a mishap when it is swinging at it's top speed, I think it will behave like a huge catapult, hurling people hundreds of feet away, possibly just out of Six Flags area. It could be good idea to build a hospital just at that place, they can save on ambulance costs. This is how a conversation there may go:
Doctor : "Nurse, any new patients today?"
Nurse : "Hmm... Let me see... (looks into the sky towards Six Flags with a binocular).. Yes, I can see one coming in"
A HUGE THUD... and the doctor is now busy.

The other thing about last weekend was the temperature was in low 100s (roughly 40C), so that was taking fun out of rides at Six Flags. If the women there looked hot, this was the reason behind it :-) But for the same reason men and everything else were hot too, so we had to be careful ;-)

Testing blogging thru mail

Hari, Seema, I'm trying out blogging by mail. I agree that it is quite
convenient, I stand corrected. I will also try the Word plugin when I
boot to Windows. Thanks!

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Lotsa links

Added a number of links to the.... you guessed it, 'links' section of this blog. Mostly they are links to other blogs - result of the new-found interest in blogging among my friends. Many of them are trying novel ways blog - e-mail, MS-Word, etc. Only one question comes to my mind about these funky ways to blog - "Why?".
My own album on fotopic, of course, is the first link. Hari's blog was the first blog among us. You can expect any topic here from nerdiness to Bangalore's traffic. Ananth blog is advertised in a negative sort of way - 'Random' thoughts of an 'uninteresting ' 'teetotaler'. Too many negatives here, huh? Comes with a disclaimer as well ;-) Chinmay's blog is now confirmed to be alive, with the second post in. Random scribbles?? Seema's blog scared me first - I read it as Mind Read, but it turns out to be just Mind Speak. Hopefully her own mind. Last link is "Get Firefox". This is for those who are stranded 2 years back in time, stuck with IE. Girish too has a blog and a noble intention behind it, but I can say it is alive only after I see the second post.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Independence day!

Last Sunday evening, as India was celebrating Independence day, I was doing something that would have made Gandhi proud - I walked miles together, not because of my patriotism, but because I had lost my way trying to explore some place near Austin's town lake. If you know how Austin's weather is in summer months, when the everyday temperature reads like FM station frequencies - (97.8, 100.3, 103.1, etc) you know that walking miles on hot asphalt is not among the most comfortable things to do. I must have lost at least a pound during that walk. But I found my lost pound at Pizza hut in the evening. This is one of my lost possessions I would have loved not to find back!

Speaking about Independence day celebrations, The India Community Centre, Austin is arranging India's independence day celebrations this weekend. It should be good to see people, who have gained their independence from India, celebrate India's independence day. I wonder if the Indian communities in England too celebrate it. Imagine Indian community chief in London (who, btw, would have taken up UK citizenship two decades ago) saying: "This is the day we got rid of the British". Well....

Friday, August 12, 2005

Be-ka(ca)r in America!

Some of you may know how this feels. Living in a small city in the US and not owning a car. If you don't know how it feels, I will explain. Imagine you are in Bangalore and you don't have a car or a bike (I know it is hard to imagine that, but give it a try). Also imagine auto-rickshaw-wallahs are on strike and so are 95% of the BMTC drivers. You should be getting the picture now. Now you just need to imagine that the nearest grocery store is 2 miles from home :)

In my previous visit to the US I had not lived a single day without a car at home. I had never boarded a city bus in the entire 1 year I lived here. But this time around, no escaping from that. We only rent a car on some weekends when we feel like driving a bit. Luckily my office is right next to my apartment, so it is faster to walk to work than drive.

To give it's due credit, Austin does have a fair network of city bus service. But the biggest complaint is that there are no buses to our place late in the evening. By late evening, I mean 6PM! But when the buses do ply, they make an enjoyable ride. Neat, nice, nearly-empty buses with good AC and cheerful drivers. Just 1 Dollar gets you to ride for 24 hours. Surely the bus service should be one of the biggest loss-making companies around here! Add to that, there are these 'Ozone action days' when the ride is free. I really don't know how these ozone action days help ozone, I have started liking ozone now!

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Ping-pong

I and Murali found Table Tennis tables with nobody to use them. So we decided to make the best use of the opportunity to achieve mastery over this game. We were no strangers to the game. I was already well-versed with it, having played it as many as three times in my life. Murali was even better than me, having played, probably, twice as many times!

Our first task was to buy TT bats and balls. After having browsed all the sections in the nearby sports superstore, including the entire treadmill section, all of basketball equipments, etc we finally stood in front of TT section trying to decide which one we should buy. The range offered was quite good. But for seasoned professionals like us, making this choice was easy - just find the cheapest! After we found the 10-dollars full-set, we were still wondering who would buy the higher priced ones - some of them as much as 40 dollars for just one bat. We found a Chinese-looking guy picking up one of that and exclaimed "Moron! He must be blind or totally dumb. Why should one pay 1700 Rupees for a TT bat!".

We are quite happy with the way our games are going. Sometimes others join us for a game. However, our cheapo bats can't understand all their professional top-spins, cuts, smashes etc, in fact such extravagant shots end up being counter-productive! So they try all the stylish shots, start cursing the bats with some choicest words (like @%$!@#&@#@ and @#$$*&!@!) and end up losing the game to us :)

We have now learnt to trust the intelligence of Chinese-looking guys with anything related to TT. However, we are not complaining too much about our TT equipment, as we are winning games!

Friday, August 05, 2005

Didn't I tell you?

Didn't I tell you everything is bigger in Texas? Look at this Texas Lone Star. I guess this star should be called 'Superstar'. Rajnikanth, serious competition here.
(This Texas Lone Star is in front of the The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin.) It also houses the only Imax in Austin, but it mostly runs only documentaries and informative films.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Everything is bigger in Texas!

This is something you will see in quite a few places in Texas, especially on t-shirts: "Everything is bigger in Texas". Well, I don't know about 'everything', but the state surely is and the vehicles people drive surely are.

The state is too big. Being in Austin, which is almost at the center of the state, one needs to drive at least 5-6 hours to reach the state border in any direction.

Texans seem to love trucks. They want the biggest, baddest trucks even though they use it only to go to their office and HEB/Wal-mart. I think pulling a huge truck out of a narrow parking lot gives them a sort of kick. The people who park their shiny new BMWs/Hondas/Toyotas next to these trucks pray to the God the most! Some of the trucks, like Ford-350 and Dodge Ram 3500 are obscenely big. They are big enough to be run as city buses in Bangalore ;-) If Indians continue their new-found obsession with big cars, they may eventually sell such trucks in India. If that ever happens, I think bike riders will consider passing UNDERNEATH these monsters, just like they pass all around the small cars now. "Hey, how did the underbody of my Dodge truck get dents?"

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Bought a digicam!

I bought Canon A520 digital camera last week. Quite happy about it so far. It has more 'picture modes' than the number of places I am likely to visit while in US. The tradition, followed all over the world, predominantly by males, when they buy a camera, is to post a picture taken in 'macro' mode using that camera. No, this is not about show-off. Just following an age-old tradition. So here I go: