Normalization of India

When somebody goes to US for the first time, he/she is obviously very excited. There are so many new things to see and do, everything there seems to be very exciting and nice. This was especially true of me when I first landed in a small city called Salt Lake City in Utah in the year 2000. During then, Food-World was only just starting off in India, malls and multiplexes were still a few years away. Four-lane roads almost didn't exist either. Hence everything I saw in that small US city seemed to be wonderful. But as time progressed and I visited other places in US, I realized that all cities of the US were very very similar to each other. Similar freeways, similar roads, similar road names (Cedar street readily comes to my mind), McDonalds, Burger Kings, Mixican food joints, Wal-marts, 'Target's, down-towns with high rises. If you had seen one city, you had seen them all. Unless of course you were visiting a national park or other such tourist attraction.

India is not like this. Every city has it's own character and uniqueness. This is especially true for cities in different states, but towns within a state too are never a replica of each other. Compare Hubli and Mysore, you get the idea. The people in US speak about 'cultural differences' between various states/areas of their country, like east coasters and mid-westerners. They have no idea how much diversity can a country can possess until they learn about India.

I have observed a trend recently that is just a trickle now but I expect it to speed up in the coming years. Indian cities are slowly losing some of this diversity and becoming 'normalized'. This trend can now be majorly seen with higher middle-class and high end of the society in bigger cities, fast spreading into smaller towns.

I was in Chennai recently and since I had a few hours of free time during one evening, I roamed in and around Spencer's plaza, the most famous mall in Chennai. Outside the mall, I saw a billboard for 'Fitness One' and I exclaimed "Hey, they are in Chennai as well". In fact, most billboards were of national brands. Inside the mall, I got a sense of deja-vu when I saw outlets of so many familar brands Ihad seen in Forum Mall or Garuda Mall in Bangalore. Cookie Man, Samsonite, Pizza Hut, Subway and so on. In fact I returned from the mall being kind of disappointed, because it felt like I could have seen all that in Bangalore. I should have go to Marina beach instead, that is something that will never come to Bangalore :-)

I had believed that people in Chennai just can't speak Hindi. So I believed that anyone who doesn't know Tamil should try to speak in English. However, to my surprise I found that I was able to get more mileage out of speaking in my broken Hindi (theirs was worse!) than with English. I had found this to be true in Cochin too an year ago. So I am now convinced that within a few more years (or a decade), it will be possible to converse in Hindi almost everywhere in India.

As brands spread their wings across India, they will slowly erode the uniqueness of all places, making them look more and more like each other. It is already possible to go anywhere in India, transact on your ATM card, continue to use your cell phone, visit a cyber-cafe, buy your favorite brand's bottled water, eat your favorite food, buy a flat built by the same developer and feel at home in many other ways. As time goes by, this trend will only increase, making all cities and towns 'normalized' across India. We are miles and generations away from making our cities replicas of each other like it is in the US, but the trend is definitely in that direction.

Chennai is wonderful!

I was in Chennai last weekend. While returning, I was sitting in an auto-rickshaw to reach the airport. It was going at approximately at a speed of Mach 2, with it's wheels barely making contact with the road, narrowly missing other similar autos and cars by a distanceof approximately 2 air molecules. My mind, when it got a bit of respite from being scared to death, was thinking about this wonderful city.

Chennai has always been a fascinating city to outsiders for various reasons. This is the city where if temperatures drops below 20 degrees the entire population could go on hibernation due to cold weather. Due to this weather, air-conditioned cinema halls were common here long before PVRs and INOXes came to Bangalore. I am a native of Udupi district, which is also on the seashore and is approximately at the same latitude. But Chennai heat is different.
An outsider who is not overcharged on a Chennai auto-rickshaw is yet to take birth on Earth. I have once paid Rs.20 for a rickshaw journey and Rs.80 for the return journey on the same route.
This is a city where most restaurants are very strict about their timings. If you enter a restaurant at 1:30PM and ask "What is there to eat?" the only answer you will get is only "Lunch". It is quite likely that they don't even sell idlis during lunch hour. If you go at the right time, you will get to savour a very tasteful Sambhar in most of the restaurants. I don't like their Rasam, though.
This is probably the only state where almost all advertisements, popular TV shows and Hollywood movies are translated to the local language.
Chennai is the headquarters of the strange Tamilnadu politics. A politics where every movie star worth his/her salt dreams of becoming the Chief Minister of the state some day. Of course, the only qualification is that his/her fans should have built some temples for this star. A politics where the leaders, often called Amma or Appa, are literally worshipped by their followers, often by prostrating in front of their leader in public gatherings. A politics where electorate always gives a clear majority to one of the political part
ies, as long as the name of the party contains the letters D, M and K.

Chennai is interesting and fascinating.

Gautham, on my previous post.

Gautham's take on my previous post. I decided that it deserves more limelight than what it can get in an obscure comment in my hardly-read blog. Hence I'm posting it here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jobless that I am, I ended up composing this verse.
[Should be sung in the tune of Yankee-doodle-doodle-do!]

Shilpa Shetty goes to london
With her chicken curry
They call her paki, dog, poppodum
n' Shilpa ends up merry.

Yank-the-media out of town
Yank-the media into ground
Thrash the media once for good
And let them lay there buried.

Salman, Vivek and Abhishek
Ash is on a date-fury.
Media goes to hotels and temples
To tell us she'll marry.

Yank-the-media out of town
Yank-the media into ground
Thrash the media once for good
And let them lay there buried.!
-------------------------------------------------------------

Overreporting on Indian media

Easy question: What are the two most over-reported news items in Indian media in recent times?
Easy answers:
1) Shilpa Shetty's misadventure on English television. I never imagined that some websites and TV channels will follow the results of Big Brother just like they track cricket scores. Pray tell me, why on earth is this so interesting?
2) Abhishek-Aishwarya's marriage. I knew this was going to be big, but I'm still annoyed at how much newsprint and air time is getting spent on this. Every day there is either a new speculation that they are already married, or else, what they are going to wear on their wedding. Either way, this never fails to make it to headlines every single day. I wish they marry soon so that this madness ends. Also, I don't care if they wear jeans and t-shirt or even a lungi on their wedding day.

Looks like our politicians are not creating enough news to feed the newspapers and TV.

My prediction comes true!

One of my technology predictions has come true within a couple of months! If there is a career in predicting technology trends, I guess I am ready for it now :-)

Wish you all ....

... a wonderful new year 2007!

Vaikuntha Ekadashi

Today is "Vaikuntha Ekadashi", a holy day for most Hindus. It is believed that one must visit a temple of Lord Vishnu/Venkateshwara today because doing so will fetch a lot of 'punya'. It is also believed that the doors of Vaikuntha are open for everyone today, so if a believer dies today, he/she will get a free entry there. So it is common to find long queues at all Venkateshwara temples, from early morning all the way till late night. Luckily people don't commit suicide on this day to get their free pass into the Lord's kingdom!

People seem to believe that the God, who is most willing to grant you your wishes on this particular day, won't be so forthcoming for the rest of the year. Is the God going to hibernate for the other 364 days, or what? My beliefs in religion are a bit different from the mainstream. I don't usually get sucked into standing in those long queues at temples on this day.

Today was an exception to this rule. I accompanied my parents to the Venkateshwara temple in J.P.Nagar at six in the morning, mainly because I had to drive them there. To my dismay, I found that the queue for general entry (dharma darshan) was already winding past a few cross roads! We were in a 'special' queue, having paid a fees in advance. However, the special queue was not too short either, reassuring me that J.P.Nagar had no shortage of rich people. What disappointed me was the way people were behaving.
People just did not follow the queue. Everyone felt he/she was special enough to break the queue and walk straight to the entrance. Even when we were moving in the queue, there were people who tried to overtake me - as if I was not moving fast enough! Many did not think twice before throwing garbage on the road. Petty quarrels were breaking out between the devotees as they waited in the queue. I was thinking - these are some of the best-educated, rich people of this city. If these people don't possess basic civic sense, what can we say about the rest of the juntaa?

I think Hinduism should have included a couple of rules about civic sense. Like, "if you jump a queue, you go to hell" or "if you throw filth on road, the doors of Vaikuntha will be closed for you, even on Vaikuntha Ekadashi". Sheesh!

Power of procrastination

My inherent ability to procrastinate has reached an all-time high this December. I can't seem to be able to do anything without putting it off for weeks. I must find out why it turned out to be this way. But I will do it tomorrow. or day after ;-)

I seriously hope things improve starting with the new year.

Bad boys of cricket

Indian cricket team has finally won a match in South Africa. Going by the way they played the one-day series, everyone thought they would have to buy lottery tickets if they were to hope to win anything at all in the tour. However, miracles do happen.

One of the positives of the first test, in my view, was the attitude shown by Sreesanth. I have read somewhere that some of his team-mates don't like his extravagant mannerism and "I don't care shit" attitude. However, ever since Saurav Ganguly was sidelined, there was nobody with such a colorful personality in the team. I really liked the way he responded in kind to Nel, when he hit Nel for a six on the very next ball after being taunted by him. Contrast this with the way Dravid had responded to Allan Donald a few years back in a similar situation. What a difference!

We really need some bad guys in the team to keep it vibrant and colorful.

There is a girl...

who brings a smile on my face in the morning. I see her almost every day on Bannerghatta Road. When I start from home to office, I am always anxious, wondering whether I am going to see her or not. If I don't see her, I know that I am going to be less happy throughout the day. She never smiles at me, hardly even notices me, but I feel reassured the moment I see her.

Well, she is a traffic warden. She stands at the junction of Bannerghatta Road and N.S Palya main road where I take a right turn towards BTM Layout. Without her being there, our moronic drivers create a traffic jam at that junction within a few seconds. A messy trafficjam there affects my commute time to office and puts me in a bad mood. She is very diligent in her work and ensures smooth flow of traffic at that junction. Unfortunately on some days she does not show up, so all hell breaks loose.

Hard disks vs flash memories

A few years back, when the dot-com craze was at it's peak, when the need for storing large amount of data was growing by the minute, everyone thought the hard disk and storage manufacturers were going to have a wonderful time ahead. Nobody could think of any other technology that could pose serious threat to hard disks. Today, less than a decade since then, hard disk manufacturers are alarmed by the advances in flash memory technology. Fuelled by robust growth in digital cameras and other hand-held devices, flash memory manufacturersare seeing unimaginable growth. With every passing year, flash memory cards are almost doubling in size and prices are dropping. Today I saw that Toshiba is coming up with an 8GB SD card. It is now believed that very soon, 40GB SD cards will be common. Hard disks have traditionally provided larger sizes, faster data rates and cheaper storage in comparison to other technologies. But how long will they remain ahead in this race? It is clear that flash memory sizes will eventually catch up with hard disks in size. Will disks continue to have faster data rate and cheap storage advantage?

I predict that notebook computers will be the first to adopt flash memory. Since these memory cards don't have any moving parts, they will be best fit in notebook computers. If flash memory cards improve their data rates, operating systems could use them instead of a disk partition for hibernating. If they improve the reliability, they could replace the ROMs in computers. It could make it much easier to re-flash the BIOS and other such non-volatile storages both in computers and embedded devices. Whatever it is, I think flash memories have much better future compared to hard disks. Sandisk, Kingston, etc will do much better than Seagate, Hitachi, etc!

The Financial Expert

I just finished reading "The financial expert" by R.K.Narayan. I don't read all that much in English; I prefer to read in Kannada instead. Whatever little I have read in English was all written by western authors. Hence reading a story in English by an Indian author, with the story set in India was refreshingly different. I cannot say I liked the story all that much, but the people in the story, the way they talk, the way their surroundings are, everything is so very different and nice. I think I should read more stories of this type.

Planning my day

My employer allows me to work from home (WFH). I am proud of that, because not many companies in Bangalore give such a facility to employees. It greatly enhances flexibility of planning my day. For example, I can leave office at a fixed time in the evening, irrespective of how much work is still pending, because I can always work a few hours after reaching home and get the work done.

Unfortunately all good things come with strings attached. I have recently realized that WFH facility is slowly making me inefficient in planning my day. I no more have the pressure to finish off all my work by the end of the office day! Invariably I push some of the work to later in the night. So now-a-days I _plan_ to work the entire day - the hours I spend in office as well as the hours I spend at home. I am working from home later in the night on pretty much all days, irrespective of whether there is a requirement for that or not.That is definitely bad. I must get back to planning my work only for the office hours and work from home at night only if it is inevitable. I wonder how successful I will be in doing that.

Helmet rule

After postponing it roughly 200 times, the state Government has finally made it compulsory for all two-wheeler riders in Karnataka to wear helmets. Err... except if you are in Bellary. This concession for Bellary is apparently because the weather is too hot there. I would have accepted that argument a couple of months back when the CD politics was at it's peak in Bellary and it was generating a lot of political 'heat'. But now, I don't see how Bellary is any more hot than Raichur, Gulbarga or even Mangalore. Bangaloreans can't claim any such concession unless Mallika Sheravat visits the city. (No, in fact I don't find her hot.)

There are obviously many advantages of wearing a helmet. I have at least 3 friends who are alive today only because they wore a helmeton a particular day in their lives. However, I am seeing that helmets are now helping not just the rider, but everyone else on the road. It is normal now-a-days to see youngsters talking on cell phones as if their life depends on it. In a few years, if Darwin's theory is any true, we should start seeing kids being able to use cell phones the moment they are born. Now, you don't expect people to stop talking on their phone just because they are performing, in parallel, another activity like riding a bike or doing a brain surgery. So they hold the phone between their ear and shoulder, bending their head completely to one side and continue riding. Obviously, we can't expect such people to ride attentively. Heck, I have seen pedestrians hitting poles and parked vehicles on the road because they were engrossed in talking on cell phone. I am always scared to see such people riding a bike in front of my car. You never know when they are going to do something very stupid and end up under your car. Now, with their helmets on, they cannot talk this way while riding the bike. So it is a simple solution to this problem. Of course, people can still hands-free, but that is better than before.

We need helmets to come with built-in head phones. Then we could use hands-free and FM radio on our cell phones while riding, without having to carefully wear the earphones. Hey, this could be a patentable idea right here!

One of my recent pictures

Not bad for a point-and-shoot Canon A520?

Harangi dam

I had been on a tour of Coorg last weekend. On my way back I visited the Harangi dam. It is a relatively big dam near Kushalanagar with hardly any villages nearby, so it is a nice, isolated place. Approach roads are quite good, so it is all nice and good till you reach there. Admission tickets are only Rs.2 per head. Then come the restrictions : Photography not permitted. Public are not allowed on the dam proper. Reason? Security. I was told that these measures started last year.

I find some of these restrictions pretty ridiculous. Especially the no photography one. We are living in an age where you can see an aerial photo of your home in Bangalore using Google Earth. Within a few years it may be possible to tell the brand of the ice cream sold at Harangi sitting at your desk in front of your computer. The other restriction about not lettting people on top of the dam was also quite meaningless. Especially considering the fact that they allow people at the base of the dam, right next to the wall of the dam. We could also go into the water on the other side of the dam, right upto the wall of the dam. You just don't get on the dam wall and you are fine :-)

When will the authorities realize the futility of such measures? The only purpose these measures are serving is to discourage tourists from visiting the place. That shows in the state of the garden around the dam, which appears to have been quite good once upon a time. The wisest thing to do would have been to develop the dam into a nice tourist place (garden, restaurant, water boats, the works) and provide basic security measures to ensure people don't walk in carrying any bombs/rocket launchers/artillery tanks! They could then bump up the entry fees to Rs.10 or 20 and people would be happy to pay that.

Nationalized bundhs

The 'bundh' called across Karnataka today is (kind of) supported by our own state Government. This is funny, because when the economists are calling for privatizing everything, Government wants move in opposite direction and take up conducting of strikes/bundhs in it's own hands! What next? Government-sponsored BMTC bus stoning?

Digital generation gap

Well, it had to happen one day. There sure was going to be one day when there would be a cool new thing on the web and I was going to be too old-fashioned to pick it up. After all, how many new tricks can an old dog learn? What surprised me was that it happened so soon in my life. I am talking about the digital generation gap. The eerie feeling that creeps up your mind that you have started belonging to the previous generation and the next gen is ready to run you over.

I started using the Internet while the so called dot-com bubble was building up - mid to late nineties. So I was among the early users of many things on the Internet we take for granted now - web-based e-mail, web-based storage space, e-shopping, online chat, egroups (this was before Yahoo bought e-groups and named it Yahoo groups), etc. In the recent years I had transitioned well into a blogger's world, so I had blindly assumed that I had kept pace with the speed of the digital revolution (what exactly is that?)

I had heard about Orkut once in a while, mostly from people who are fresh out of college or who did so a couple of years back. I had conveniently assumed that it was one of the 'fringe' apps on the net I won't have to bother about. But eventually when I got an invite to join Orkut from Manju, it was time to really explore what it was all about. And what did I see? Everyone, their grandmoms and their dogs already seemed to be members of this online community! Many of my classmates from SJCE, many of my old friends living all around the globe were already on-board! There were communities that I really cared about and readily wanted to be a part of. It was as if I wokeup one morning and found that it had _snowed_ extensively in Bangalore and I did not even know about it. I was left wondering "Hey, how did I miss the bus?"

Now that I have caught up with it, I feel much better. However, I know that similar things are just waiting to happen again and one ofthese days I won't keep pace. So even though an actual human generation is around 25-30 years, a generation in the digital world will be much shorter. My guess is that people who are 10-15 years younger to us will belong to an entirely different generation altogether on the Internet. That is not a pleasant feeling, you know!

About FM radio station

With another FM radio station, Radio One opening up, the competition in the air is heating up. I keep switching radio stations while I drive (all males are genetically programmed to switch TV and radio channels at the rate of 1 channel about 5 seconds, sometimes just 2 seconds) and I have noticed that I am more often stopping at this new station to listen to a song or a conversation. So for now, Radio One is my favorite. But my loyalty can change very fast.

I wonder how people in Radio City feel about new stations coming up. They once had a share of 90+% of market, but I guess they don't have that much anymore. Radio broadcasting must be a very difficult field to innovate and stay on top of the heap.

Mad rush on Aug15

This year on August 15th, I committed one of the gravest mistakes that can be committed by a Bangalorean - Visiting Lalbagh flower exhibition on a weekly holiday, that too on the last day of the show. When I arrived at the gates of Lalbagh after several minutes of painful waiting in the traffic jam outside, the authorities there snatched Rs.50 from me and told me that I could park my car inside the bagh. They have a crooked sense of humour, I now think. Let alone park the car, I could consider myself lucky if I could just drive my car through the dense population inside! Once I (miraculously) found a place to park my car, I found that people pulling and pushing each other, cursing, grabbing each other by hair and so on to be able to make their way through the thousands of trying to do exactly the same! All this was not even inside, but on the way to the glass house. Situation inside the glass house was much more grim. Once we managed against all odds to get in, the only thing my wife wanted to do was get out of the glass house! Once we did that, the only thing she wanted to do was get out of Lalbagh!!!
To give credit where it is due, flower show was probably very good. I don't know exactly, because all I saw were the heads and backs of other people who were trying like me to see the flowers. However, being a person who allows some time to smell the flowers, I did snatch a couple of pics on my camera before we left.


You would think that we learnt our lesson by this time and headed straight back home and spent the rest of the evening in frong of TV, but no sir, we don't learn so easily. We went straight to the new Big Bazaar just half kilometre away. They were running some sale that was ending on that day, hence large crowds eager to buy anything in the store were thronging the place. This place seemed to be an extension of Lalbagh as far as crowds are concerned, but with more spending opportunites. But it took us just a few minutes to learn our lessons this time. We decided not to venture to any such places on any such day ever again and headed back home.

The city is now filled with people who desperately want to have a good time and are ready to spend for it, but the infrastructure is not catching up.

Duh!

First, South Africa pulled out of the triangular cricket series in Srilanka and the series was reduced to 3 matches between India and Srilanka. Next, the rain gods decided to pour cold water on the excitement and the series got washed out. This is probably one of the most disappointing cricket series for cricket lovers. But was this the right time to hold a cricket series in the island nation? I don't know, but it looks like they decided to hold it bang in the middle of their rainy season. Wasn't it like holding a world ski competition in Chennai in the month of April or a golf tournament in, say, northern Canada in January? I guess we need to tell the Srilanka cricket authorities: "See guys, if this is your rainy season, it probably _will_ rain (surprise!) and it probably _will_ affect cricket matches adversely. What you need to plan is a swimming competition in your Colombo cricket stadium during this time of the year" How can we pay back the Lankans when they tour India next time? Plan some matches in Chirapunji? Or probably Jayanagar Swimming club? ;-)

A new blog!

It has now been a bit more than an year since I started this blog. As an anniversary gift to 'devout' followers (I hope at least one person other than me is reading this blog), I am presenting, hold your breath and control your excitement, a second blog! The only thing better than having a crappy blog is having two of it ;-) I hope two bad things cancel it out. The second blog has been in my mind for a while now, but I was not sure how it was going to take shape. Now that I have decided to take it out of wraps, why don't you have a look at it and give your suggestions?

Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please have a look at it :-)) http://v-chitra.blogspot.com

Angry weather gods

Don't you feel the weather is turning out to be too extreme, too often in the last few years? In the last couple of years, I have heard about record-setting weather conditions all around the world. Last year, it was the deluge in Mumbai and Bangalore, the kind we had not ever seen. We also heard that the US had a record number of hurricanes last  year, highlighted by Katrina. We then heard about the unusually heavy snowfall and cold in eastern parts of US and Canada. This year, there has been a never-heard summer in Europe and North America. I read that weather reporters in Europe have been forced to get new thermometers because their existing ones were not designed for temperatures this high. Many countries are recording all time high temperatures. The evergreen England too is drying up!

Is it just my imagination, or am I seeing far too many such incidences in the recent past? Record rainfalls, record heats, record deaths, especially in the more 'advanced' northern hemisphere of the Earth. Is it all a part of global warming? Or are these the early signs of the impending obscuration/cataclysm that Hindu mythology describes as "Pralaya"?

Ban on blogs lifted?

I can access my blog again! Looks like the Government has finally lifted the block they had put on blogspot (and other major blog sites?). So did the Government finally learn that the terrorists they are trying to catch are a too smart to depend only on blogspot for communication?

Year of Linux on the desktop?

Every year, I see articles on various Linux related websites that this year is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop, the year when Linux desktop will start gaining significantly on MS Windows. This claim is then supplemented by various comparisons between Windows and a recent Linux distro (often debian or gentoo), feature to feature, proving that Linux can now do all that Windows can. You get to hear that you can use Evolution in place of Outlook, Firefox in place of IE, f-spot in place Picasa, this is my favorite: gimp in place of Photoshop. That is not all, article usually claims that Linux now supports most of the digicams, display cards, etc out of the box, installation is extremely easy and everyone, his mom and grandmom can now use Linux on the desktop. Later, it mentions a couple of applications or a couple of features that are available on Linux, but not on Windows, to claim that Linux is already ahead of Windows. Examples are command-line image manipulation utilities, richness of bash shell as compared to Windows terminal.

However, every year, we realize that the share of Linux on the desktop is just the same as last year. The number of Linux-only desktop boxes will be so few, nobody wants to mention that.

Once upon a time, people said it was because of hardware support. Then they said availability of applications. However, Linux now supports almost all normal hardware and it has applications to serve any average computer user. (No, Photoshop is not a 'normal' software, hardly anybody needs it). So why is Linux not gaining on Windows on the desktop?

The main reason, as I can see it, is the ease of use. Windows is still infinitely more easy to use than Linux. Let me give an example. I consider myself a 'power user', not an 'average' user of Linux. The wireless card and bluetooth hardware is supported by the Linux distro I run. However, I have not been able to configure them correctly till today. I agree that I have not done a great deal of research, I have not spent a great number of hours googling for solutions. But all these got configured without asking me a single question on Windows. Most people don't care and don't want to know whether they should use WEP or WPA-PSK or whatever for their wireless card uses. Most people don't want to edit configuration options for everything they do. If Windows can self-discover all these things, why can't Linux?

The reason, to some extent, seems to be the 'Linux attitude'. Linux no doubt benefits from having some of the brightest people on the earth developing it. However, the same people cannot think for the common user. They tend to call the Windows way of doing things 'dumb', because it does not let them configure all the options by hand. They tend to despise any UI, advocating that command line is the only right way of doing things. This is true in some cases, but it definitely is wrong in case of most average 'dumb' users. For example, nobody outside the Linux fanatic club would want to understand the command line options of 'cdrecord'. The other reason is infinite choice you get with everything on Linux. There is no doubt choice is good, but all choice, no standardization is not good either.

The distros are doing a reasonable job of making desktop Linux a viable option. However, they too suffer from the same dificiency. Also, they spend more time polishing their fonts or creating new eye-catching 3-d icons than making apps easy to use. yum and apt are a good step towards installing software, but they bring Linux nowhere close to Windows in this area. To some extent, the Linux model, where there is no central authority, is the cause of this. Most of my thoughts agree with this article
So what do I think should be done? Portland project , which aims to provide common set of interfaces for Linux desktop, is a right way ahead. It may finally end the war between gnome and kde. I also think the community should become more sensitive to the needs of common man. I don't how how this can happen, though. I think the Linux distros should put more thought in making desktop versions of their OS. I installed SuSE Linux 10.1 last week and found that it is pretty well integrated desktop. (Until you try to install some software you found on the web). Some say the Linspire way is correct, but it is clear that they will never be able to garner support of the community for this, which means it will never take off in a big way. Last but not the least, until we have really made Linux on desktop comparable to Windows, let us not go around claiming that we are already better or that Windows is dumb.

State of affairs/ affairs of the State.

I am appalled by the level of politics being played out in Karnataka. I have not written much about politics in this blog so far. In fact I had planned to keep politics out of this completely. But I can't really hold myself, looking at what is happening.

Today I saw on TV our elected representatives physically fighting with each other in Vidhana Soudha because of personal rivalry. BMIC project was the first major controversy hit by Kumaraswamy, who started out as a very promising chief minister. The way BMIC is being handled is a HUGE discouragement to anyone planning to invest in Karnataka. Even if I were an invester, i would wisely choose other states. The new controversy about illegal mining too started out as a way to put Congress MLAs, who had mines in Kanakapura, in discomfort. However, the grandson of soil never thought it would snowball into such a big controversy. Our MLAs, spending crores of our money, are not even having meaningful discussions on the floor of the house. The concept that the elected body should concentrate on making legislations, leaving implementation to IAS officers has been completely forgotten. Corruption is not a hush-hush word to be kept away from media anymore. People of the state are too short sighted to realize where all this is headed. Like a saying goes, "people get a Government they deserve, not a Government they desire".

With nobody in any of the three major political parties to show a better way, I am saddened when I think what the future of this state will be like.

End of sports season

Cricket got over a week back. With the FIFA world cup and the Wimbledon coming to an end this week, it suddenly feels like the sport season on television is over. Men can now return to informative(!) channels like AXN (programs like Fear Factor) and women can return to their entertaining(!) programs like saas-bahu soaps.

I lost most of the interest in football world cup during quarter final stages, when Argentina, Brazil and England went out. It was like a cricket world cup without Australia. My interest in Wimbledon was limited to Federer's finals and at some points in time during the finals, it looked like he too would lose, making it miserable. Luckily he held on. Federer reminds me of Sampras because of the way he keeps his composure in any situation of the match. I hope he wins many more grand slams.

A ripple in Karnataka newspaper industry

Consolidation among corporates seems to be in the air at the moment. The publication division of VRL group, which owns Vijaya Karnataka and Vijay Times, was taken over by Times of India group (Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd) recently. The story of Vijaya Karnataka is amazing. They entered the Kannada press industry at a stage when the industry was very mature and the existing players, like Prajavani, Udayavani, etc had long established their hold on the readers' mindshare. Nobody thought it would be possible to come up with a new newspaper at this stage and make it successful. It is like coming up with a new brand of soap today. It is easy to achieve phenomenal success in new areas by becoming pioneer in that area. Examples are AT&T, Vaseline, IBM, etc. However, entering a crowded market and winning customers over is not easy at all. But this is exactly what Vijaya Karnataka did. It is the largest circulated Kannada daily in Karnataka today.

With this aquisition, TOI group has immediately obtained reach to almost all parts of Karnataka through Vijaya Karnataka, unlike TOI which is popular only in Bangalore. Though this may turn out to be beneficial to Vijaya Karnataka, it is surely not good for me because I was subscribing to both TOI and Vijaya Karnataka. There is not meaning in reading two newspapers from the same publisher. I will have to change one. I guess I will move to Deccan Herald.

Travelling on the Mysore highway

I drove down to Mysore last weekend on the old highway (probably the only highway we will have, with BMIC getting into controversy). With most of the work of making it a 4-lane road finished, it is a pleasure to drive on the road now. Compare this with the situation even a year back, when you would choose to rather be whipped than driving to Mysore in a small car. There are a few precautions to take on this road, though.

First, you will want to know which side of the road to drive on, the left or the right. The answer is "either". However, remember that if you are driving on the right side, you must have your head lights on :-)

Second, remember that the tractors have the highest right of way on the highway. It may be belonging to a farmer and a former Prime Minister may not take it lightly if you even honk at a farmer. Tractors need not turn on the head lights while travelling on the right side.

Third, how fast can you go? Answer is "depends". If you are within 10Kms distance of any village, be cautious about people crossing the road at their own sweet pace, cattle resting on the road, etc. All the time, keep a watch for vehicles coming directly at you (their right side), with their lights on. There is no exhilaration like travelling at 120kmph and suddenly realizing that there is a huge truck heading right at your car and you may be dead meat any moment. When you reach Ramanagar, be watchful for potholes. Small cars can get lost in some of them. Also, a handful of speedbreakers are intelligently placed in places where you least expect them, so watch out. I guess politicians promise for each village, apart from water, hospital, etc, two speedbreakers.

Should I overtake from left or the right side? Answer is "whichever lane is free". It is common to see trucks/autos travelling at 20kmph on the right lane and they don't intend to shift to left lane at all, so there is no meaning in sticking to rules.

Finally, where do I eat on the way? Answer is "Kamat Loka Ruchi". It is almost a unwritten rule that all cars must stop at Kamat to experience a urban, sophisticated feeling they are most used to in Bangalore - lack of parking space. After you manage against all odds to get a place to sit, you will be surprised to know that food is expensive, but not good! Masala dosa sucks big time. Coffee is not worth the Rs.12 they charge. I know this place used to be good, but I guess they have too many customers now to care about quality anymore. I hope it is so only on weekends.

Google's software

Google seems to be in overdrive to release products. I am a sucker for Google products, so it is no surprise that I have been an 'early adapter' (AKA guinea pig) for a number of their products. I have been impressed with calendar, spreadsheet, page creator, firefox add-ons, Googleearth4.0 for Linux in the last couple of months. Gmail and Google have always been very useful. The only Google prodct that seemed to be a bad idea was the Firefox browser sync. Every time you start your browser, it first contacts Google's website and restores some information like bookmarks, saved sessions, etc. If you are on a slower connection, you need to wait for a good part of a minute for the browser to start. Browser sync also lets you store passwords, but that is a scary thing to do. I like the fact that they are coming out with Linux versions of their softwares. I tried Picasa for Linux. It runs through WINE, so it is not that good.

However much you believe in God,

You should never test your God this way.

About Presiden't speech

I got an opportunity to listen live to our president, Dr Abdul Kalam recently. In the past I have wondered why he is such a popular person. But after listening to him, I know why.

Though he cannot be counted among the greatest orators, he seemed to be able to connect with his audience extremely well. His down-to-earth nature and genuine interest in the topics he was talking about, unlike politicians (I know he is not one), were the reasons for people instantly liking him. He had brought his own powerpoint slides for his talk (his choice of colors for slides was gaudy, if I may humbly add). It was clear that he had spent time specifically preparing for this presentation. He answered a few questions from the audience so nicely and promised to answer any question we may post on his website. If our politicians want to find a role model, they don't need to look too far.

Stock market crash

For the last few days I wanted to blog about the stock market crash. All newspapers carry front page articles showing investors in dispair whenever stock market crashes ("Investors lose <an abnoxiously high number> of crores of rupees") However, they don't raise so much noise when it goes up.

Today I found this article reflecting my thoughts on this issue. (first page, at least). So I guess linking to it, in true bloggers' spirit, is good enough.

Eating in Bangalore

If you roam around the main shopping areas in Bangalore during the weekends, one thing clearly strikes you: Bangaloreans like to eat. Eat a lot. Be it a small road-side food joint like paani-puri stall or bonda-bajji shop or fruit juice place or a fancy and expensive restaurant, if it is in the right location, it is going to be crowded. If you go near Cool Joint in Jayanagar 4th block, you can see people putting their arms and legs at risk to grab their sandwich. The line at Ganesha Dosa camp in 3rd block is rumoured to reach at least a couple of kilometers. If you go to a nice restaurant on Saturday evening for dinner, you will be squarely asked to come back on the same time on Monday, because they are booked solid on Saturday and Sunday ;-) Bangaloreans quickly became rich, or at least spendy, but the infrastructure is not keeping up. If you want to have a nice, peaceful dinner during weekends, the only place to have it is your own home! If you are thinking of a second job, there is no better thing than to open a restaurant.

Time flies!

I have now spent 5 years in my current job. So far, so good :-)

Radio Mirchi

The day I realised that Radio Mirchi (I think this is their website, not sure though) had begun it's broadcast in Bangalore (93.3 MHz) was in fact one day before they came out with newspapers advertisements about their existence. But I heard that they had been on air for a while already. I was expecting them to come out with full page ads in all major newspapers the day they started out. This must be one of the softest of the 'soft launches' we have seen.

I like their tagline/slogan - "Sakkath hot maga". I also like the fact that their RJs can (and do) speak Kannada. I think they are after the FM Rainbow listeners first to build up a good listener base before taking on the Radiocity goliath. So far, I am listening. Go Mirchi!

On a related topic, we had just 3 FM stations in Bangalore till now. They differ greatly in the way they communicate with their listeners. Radiocity is the most informal ("Yo man", "hey gals", etc). FM Rainbow has the middle path ("Snehithare, Dinner Time karyakramadondige naanu nimma gelathi "). The other Akashavani station, Vividha Bharathi is still stuck in the 1960s (with a stern voice : "Shrothrugale, nimma mechina geethegalu Akashavaniyinda moodi banthu")! I think Mirchi is trying to fit somewhere between Radiocity and Rainbow in this scale.

A bit about my Delhi trip

I'm just logging a few things about my 1-day visit to Delhi this week. First of all, Bangalore airport. I have heard that the airport is asking airline companies not to introduce any more flights to Bangalore, because it cannot handle any more passengers. In this sense the airport truly represents Bangalore :-) When we got into the flight, there were enough mosquitoes to make an army of them. Just when all of us, especially the numerous westerners in the flight were wondering if we are going to survive the 2.5 hours journey among these mosquitoes, an air hostess brought and sprayed what smelt like a nice perfume. Only after a few minutes, when there were no more mosquitoes flying, did I realize that what she sprayed must have been baygon-spray-from-hell! Apparently, this spray also results in much nicer behavior of passengers towards the crew. Who would risk their life against such a spray ;-)

Delhi was nice. No, really. In my two very brief visits to Delhi, I have realized a few amazing things about the city. First, Delhi has glimpses of a revolutionary concept in vehicular movement, already popular in most other countries, called driving in lanes. Another phenomenon hardly heard of in Bangalore is that fly-over and metrorail construction actually coming to an end (I know that is hardest to believe). When Delhi'ites complain about traffic problems, it is mostly about traffic congestion. I am pretty sure they have not seen the type of jams we see in Bangalore, where all the city roads look like Kissan factory in peak hour. Except for weather, I wonder if anything is going for Bangalore anymore.

Dr. Raj

By now newspapers have written enough, TV channels have shown more than enough, people have seen more than they wanted to see about the demise of Rajkumar and the violent funeral that followed. The mayhem that accompanied the procession and funeral were really ugly, unfortunate and unpardonable. Sure, this is not the first time we have seen processions marred with violence and lathi charges and this won't be the last. So I won't write too much about it.

In the history of Karnataka, I don't think any person has ever enjoyed such a great fan following. Sure, political leaders have managed to rope in a large gathering to listen to their speeches, devotees have gathered in large numbers to listen to their spiritual leader. However, nobody, neither the great political leaders, nor the spiritual Gurus, not even kings have ever managed to build such a great fan following across all economic and social levels of a society. This is the kind of reverence politicians dream about achieving all their lives. If my understanding is right, Rajkumar was the best example of people uniting around a man based just on Kannada and nothing else. Rajkumar is great for having achieved such an iconic stature. If you are a non-Kannadiga and not too knowledgeable about Karnataka, you must be wondering whether Kannadigas are going to go on a rampage like this every time one of their film stars dies. Rest assured, anything quite like this and this spontaneous won't happen ever again. Nobody else has such a pull on the society.

The events at Rajkumar's death was surely going to be unprecedented. But what really happened was far beyond the expectation of the state machinery. How can the police control the mobs, when some lunatics think "I was unable to see Annavru's body. Obviously, it is the fault of that big BMTC bus. Let me go and smash up it's windshield and light it up as a revenge"

The fun about the Time of India...

...is that when pretty much every newspaper makes the fire in Meerut (that killed more than 50 people) the first news on their front page, TOI thinks the news about Salman Khan going to jail is more important! It is quite often that TOI puts 'masala' items on the front page (like dress code being imposed in Mount Carmel College, kids influencing buying habits of parents, etc) that appear on other pages in other newspapers. I guess their motto is "Anything for marketshare"!

Mass exodus from Bangalore

No, this is not about the IT-BT industry relocating to Chennai and Hyderabad. (I am not worried about that anymore).

Most people living in Bangalore, including Kannadigas, are not natural Bangaloreans. So whenever there is a long weekend, a very large number of people take off from the city to visit their hometowns. This happened again last week, when people took off for a 4-day weekend for Ugadi. I was one of them, trying to get onto a bus on 29th night. When my auto eventually approached the bus stand (Majestic), I noticed that traffic had piled up for at least 2 kilometres from the bus stand. I have no idea how any of the vehicles on K.G Road reached the bus stand that day. My auto driver passed through all the narrowest roads around the main road, some of the roads so narrow people fear to attempt them on two-wheelers, and eventually reached the bus stand. Once in, I noticed that KSRTC had introduced a large number of extra buses for this day, so they had piled up all inside the bus stand and all roads surrounding it. They were running a bus EVERY SINGLE MINUTE from 11PM till 11:30PM to Shimoga alone! Of course, once our bus made it's way out of the bus stand (one hour late), it got stuck in a huge traffic pile up on Tumkur road created by numerous vehicles going out of the city. It really looked like people were fleeing a disaster-hit city.

This problem will only get worse as days go by. I plan to take an extra day off in such cases and go out of the city one daysooner from now on.

Winged visitor at my home

I have always felt sorry for the sparrows, which have lost their habitat ever since our cities and towns got filled with RCC buildings. After we shifted to our new house, since there is a lot of free space all around, it is common to see many varieties of birds around our house. Today, when I returned home, I was told that a sparrow had entered the house! I found him sitting very quietly, as if it was just a stuffed model, on a CFL bulb. I am guessing it is a 'he' (and not 'she'), because he is perched on electrical equipement, which is a 'manly' object ;-) I heard that he tried to get out of the house, but could not find his way out. Since he did not ask for directions, there is no doubt it is a 'he'! He is still there, hopefully we will be able to send him off tomorrow morning. I am too scared to even switch on a ceiling fan today, what if he flies right to it? Meanwhile a lizard on the wall has checked him out from a distance. Luckily the lizard did not go too near or tease the bird too much, so they are both at peace now. Good night, dear bird!

Update (4Apr) The bird promptly flew out of my house this morning the moment we opened all doors and windows. Goodbye!

Your favorite cartoon characters now speak Kannada!

Here is a blog that has famous cartoon strips translated to Kannada. Very unique and nice. Instead of doing a literal translation which screws up the humour completely (like most commercials on TV), this blog tries to be creative with the translated text. Names are also 'Kannada-fied'. Garfield becomes Govinda, Calvin is Keshava/Keshu and Wally, the famous co-worker of Dilbert becomes (I am not making this up!) Venkatachala!!

I am not sure how 'legal' these cartoons are, I am pretty sure they are violating some copyrights. Enjoy it while it lasts!

All those who want to fly Air Deccan,

Please demand to see the plane with your own eyes before booking your ticket. Looks like sometimes Air Deccan can be just air. I think the best flying experience in India now-a-days is on Kingfisher airlines. I admire Vijay Mallya - because here is a guy who has money, is willing to spend it and knows how.

First rain of the year

It rained in Bangalore yesterday. Rains in the first week of March are a rarity anywhere in India, but Bangalore has been receiving rains during non-rainy-season regularly in the last few years. Pretty much every year, Bangalore has been receiving considerable amount of rain in March, April and May months. In fact of late Bangalore continues to receive rains all the way till November! So there is no need to be surprised. These occasional rains keep our city cooler and of course, humid.

Old timers in Bangalore are often heard saying "It used to be so cold in Bangalore during that time. Now the city has gets too hot in summer. But contrary to what they say, weather records show that the average summer temperature in Bangalore has only gone up by half degree in the last 50 years. Of course, We have fewer trees inside the city now, so we feel the heat more now.

Rains bring some miseries to me since I moved to my new house in Bilekahalli. First of all, the very first sign of an impending rain results in our area losing electricity. It is as if the rain drops, if allowed to touch electric wires, will cause an explosion or something. Secondly, due to all the construction activity and total lack of asphault on roads, roads quickly turn messy. Third, with empty lands all around, water accumulates in them and does not flow out easily. Hence I hope the rains start late this year. But I am not very hopeful!

Speaking about dust,

there is a lot of it in Bangalore. Approximately 50% of all that dust lives on my car! I am not joking, I think my car winsthe dirtiest car competition hands down at my office. It is not completely my fault, though. All those folks with glistening clean cars, come to Bilekahalli, or for that matter any area under Bommanahalli CMC once. These are areas that have no idea what asphalting is! You will see your car, irrespective of what color it is, quickly turning into a uniform dust color. Some people even write their names in the dust on my car when it is parked!

But it is not all that bad. Dust on the car has it's own advantages. First of all, safety. Miscreants are far more likely to tamper with a shining clean car than one that forces them to take a bath after touching it ;-) Even two-wheeler riders, who normally don't think twice about creaming a car in their quest to get on the footpath, keep distance from my car. Secondly, dust hides the little scratches and dents that are inevitable on all cars in the city. There is another advantage I have realized recently. Many drivers drive with high beam on. If such a vehicle is directly behind your car, especially if that vehicle is a bus or a bigger car, the light from that vehicle shines so brightly in all your rear-view mirrors that you wish you were blind! Tinting the rear windshield solves this problem partially, but nothing like having a layer of dust on the back windshield to protect you! Now I like it so much, I don't want to disturb the dust layer on my back windshield, even accidentally. Come see my car for yourself if you don't believe. While at it, please try not to disturb the fine layer of dust I have meticulously built up!

Alive!

Contrary to popular belief, this blog is NOT DEAD. It will rise from the slumber very soon. Or as a certain politician once said, it will rise from dust ;-)

Weather prediction in India

Two days back the weather forecast department (I don't call it meteorological department, sounds like something to do with meteors) announced that in the next two days Bangalore will be gripped by a cold wave with temperatures hitting all time lows. Somehow this news brought out a chuckle from me. The weather forecast in India has been horrendously off target ever since they started forecasting. True again this time, it has been sunny and warm for the last two days and there is no sign of a cold wave coming. They quickly corrected the forecast today, saying something like "When we said cold wave, we actually meant sunshine and heat"!

I wonder why is the weather forecast so unpredictable in India. I have heard argument that it is because Indians don't depend on weather predictions anyway. But I think it is in fact the other way around! We have the weather satellites (I hope we do, ISRO has been sending all those INSATs for years!), we have the computers, we have the department and people. Why do they go so wrong in forecasting weather? I have seen that in southern England, where the weather can change from pristine sunshine to heavy rains in a matter of half and hour, they do a much better job of forecasting the weather. We in India are talking about a Tsunami warning system, when we cannot predict if it is going to be sunny or raining tomorrow.
I remember watching the weather report on Doordarshan's Kannada channel a number of years back. One day it went something like this: "Rajyada uttara mattu dakshina oLanaadinalli allalli chaduridanthe maLeyaagalide. ULidanthe oNa have munduvariyalide". Gah! Weather reporters on private news channels may look more professional and glamorous now, but the weather forecast is not too better than daily horoscope. May be even worse.

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!"

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ;-)

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 :-)

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'!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?