STAND UP TO APPRECIATE THINGS!

Humour is something that no one can deny liking it. let it be jokes in a magazine, movies or even cartoons for some. I'm still a fan of tom and jerry. for more than two years i have been watching standup comedy shows. thanks to comedy central and youtube. to stand in front of thousands of people and talk about things with no script and to make people laugh is amazing.
Some of those stand up comedians are really great. I like those blue collar tv guys. recently i rented from netflix, a standup by Steve Harvey called "Don't trip, He Ain't through with me yet". This guy was so amazing, I have become a huge fan of him. Its hilarious if you really understand!
I relate to those tamil live comedy dramas i used to watch. crazy mohan, YGM, S.V.Sekar., I liked watching those live dramas. but somehow most of them who came to those dramas are of the same community and only a very few people from other community come to watch those shows. Its not easy to do live performances. I hate when people choose to watch stupid serials for hours but don't go to watch those shows. thats real talent out there and those people need to be appreciated and motivated.

a candid concern

In my office, currently there is a weight watcher program going on. every friday, people have to check their weights and people who are off their weights have to pay a penalty. so every friday I go over there and check my weight, but for a different reason. yeah, I check to see if I have gained any weight. so far no luck, I have been weighing the same constantly. I have tried my best to put some more weight, while many say its easy to gain weight and tough to lose, my question to those people has always been, how is it easy to gain weight. pizzaa, burgers, you name it, I am having it. But still my weight has never gone up or down. I don't work out either.

Man I wish I know one solid way to gain weight!

jeans don't change genes

You could live in the heart of manhattan, you could walk in the streets of paris, you could shop in madrid, you could do as many degrees as you want, you could very well use all the vocabs in english, you could sing rap and hip hop, you could change you accent, but there is one thing that hasn't changed, that's the genes. people still have their roots to however they were grown. very few have made a cultural shift. when compared to the population that's negligible. no matter what they say, they still can't change few things that have made their identity as Indians. no matter where they are, no matter how their outfits change, the inner soul remains the same.

the psychology that still works!

99 cents, 1.99, 2.99, 9.99, 99.99, 1099.99., this .99 syndrome is going on very strongly still. gas stations have that 9/10 permanently set up. i can understand for less than $100, but hdtv for 2099.99, that looks gross. may be that gives an option for people who don't want to look like a moron for having overpaid, to say "yeah i bought it for around $2000" and for people who act uptown, to say "its $2100". anyway with taxes in addition it crosses the mark. but no matter how many years this has been there it sure is true that this .99 psychology works!

tradition that continues

No matter how good your wife cooks, sometimes you end up saying "my mom used to make
it better". do u guys say that. honestly my wife cooks so good and sometimes the
best, but still occasionally if its something my mom used to make, i end up saying "its good, but its not the same as my mom makes". mostly i say it to tease her.i know its bad. i remember my father telling about my grand mothers food, but for me my mom's cooking was much better than my grand mothers. I guess it runs through generations like a tradition for many or guess its an inbuilt strategy by men to motivate their wife's to make food better everytime. but i got to tell you, that they are smarter than us and the strategy doesn't work many time.

Taare Zameen par

Its a nice film. It has taken so many years for someone to make such a honest attempt and make it big. kudos to aamir. if you think about it, when we were kids, very few parents gave freedom to their kids to get into sports or other extra curricular activities. All they were interested in, was the marks and ranks. to some extent it wasn't their fault either. they grew up in an environment where people with better marks lived a much better life than others and they wanted their kid to have a better life.

But today, things are not the same. todays kids get to learn a lot more than education. sometimes, because the kids are interested to learn, sometimes because the neighbors brag about their kids, to avoid that, sometimes, genuinely to have their kids be competitive and to have them options. but whatever, you can't deny that the kids today are in pressure to do something.

One thing that hasn't changed is that no matter what the kids are, parents want their kids to get into medicine or engineering, ultimately not leaving much option for them. with every thing becoming so damn competitive, for future generation kids, its a jungle out there man...

Did he really?

Did he really predict things. somehow i don't get it. yeah, lots of things that happened were mentioned in his writings. but most of them look to me like you can interpret them whatever the way you want. recently in history channel they were talking about how a painting by nostradamus of a tower being in fire is similar to the twin tower.

who knows he might have painted something that happened during his days. most of his paintings have always been compared after it happened. if you look at the literature, like always there are few who say he did predict and few who say those are mere interpretations. at this point i gotto join the latter. to me those meteorologist who predict the climate and the weather atleast a week before are real nostradamus!

change i don't believe in !!!

sometimes you cultivate certain habits, that even after many years it sticks to you. some good and some bad. i have this habit of checking the lock atleast three times, every time i lock something. it becomes worse sometimes. i'm sure everyone has atleast one such habit, which they would like to get rid off, but fail successfully!

few moments of lateral thinking...

knight rider!

This was one of my favourite tv show when i was a kid. it seems they are going to come up with new series. though it looks like a fiction tv show, some how i think cars that run without human driving is possible.

what you need is a system which can take you from point "A" to point "B" at a regulated speed without hitting or being hit by any other vehicle.

A perfect co-ordination between, steering, acceleration and brake could do that. You already have GPS for navigation, Lexus has automatic steering control for parallel parking. this can be extended for steering and driving when the vehicle is in motion.

Volvo and other vehicles have sensors that detect if there are any vehicles close to yours and signals. a sensor which can relate this signal to the accelerator and brake could help control when the vehicle is motion to prevent the vehicles from accidents.

A GPS with preprogrammed speed, could control the accelerator depending upon where you are. the only things that are left are stop signs and of course human intervention. if some electronic sensors are placed on stop signs which can be detected by the vehicle then that problem is avoided. for human intervention, you could always have human override, but may be humans should stop interfering!

With a handful of sensors and a desire to make it, this car can no more be a fiction.

May be it might come to existence in market in the 22nd century.

Diversity in Unity

India is known for unity in diversity. with 28 states, 7 union territories, 18 official languages, 200+ spoken languages, regional dialects, all religions, 3000+ caste categorizing into forward, backward,scheduled and around 25000 subcaste, its a tremendous effort that we have been in unity during the pre independance and post independance.

But if you drill deep down, is that true or are we living in an illusion. on one end we see states that kick people out, states that treat other regional people like enemies, states that would rather allow the water to go to the sea than to give it to neighbouring states, states that don't get attention, states where people want to merge with other countries. on the other end, within states we have people fighting for religion, caste, subcastes, etc., political parties who would do anything to get to power.

The only time we feel patriotic is during the cricket matches. i don't think, there is anything else that would unite indians other than cricket, not even speeches by presidents, prime ministers. the only other time i saw some unity visible among people was during the kargil.

we have been holding this unity in diversity for quite sometime. but to me it looks that india is still vulnerable the way it was when the britishers came to india. all it takes is that one stone that could stir this up. it could be in any form. with the current situation, we wouldn't even know that some one is already on it.

you got to be kidding me!

here are some of the international observance days

mar 21 - world sleep day
apr 29 - world dance day
oct 01 - world vegetarian day
nov 19 - world toilet day! really?

surprisingly they don't have a day for hangover. with a billion dollar industry and consumption by millions of people, they should declare a day as world hangover day. happy, sad, success, failure or whatever, for those people who set their "bar" high deserve to be recognized.

this program is sponsored by.....

did u see the funniest commercials of the year 2007. some are really funny. when i think of commercials it reminds me of my childhood days when we would be watching tv, and all of a sudden they would show a card which said "sorry for the break". it will be there for atleast 5 mins and then they would show the commercials. many might remember this. once commercials used to be in between programs and later programs were in between commercials. they churn out huge money. but at the sametime if there is one field where you can think beyond boundaries and stretch your creativity and imaginations, its the ad field. when you look at the commercials they run nowadays, some of them are really creative, they put a lot of imagination and thought in it and it is impressive. some, boy, they are as dumb as you can think. one of the commercials I like is the mastercard priceless ad. its good and it does reflect the product. but my favorite in the list would be the famous sony ericsson's "one black coffee please". To my rememberence that was the first ad that was made with class.

COOL!

Recently on our trip to arizona, we happen to go to a place called Sedona. Its a beautiful scenic place in arizona. thanks to my friend who suggested us to add to our itenary.I have never been in a snow before. the first experience to walk in the snow and to get the feel of it was amazing. I am not sure how much fun it would be to live in a place where it snows, but its worth every minute for the experience and feel of it.

what you give is NOT what you get!

This has been in practice in India for years, may be centuries. But recently i was watching a program and they were saying that this is currently becoming popular in US. In India, every region has its own name, in US they call as peer loans. Since the banks interest rates are high and varies depending upon your credit score, lot of people are preferring this. its a win-win situation for the lender and the borrower. the borrower gets it at a comparitively lower interest and the lender gets more interest for the money, than if he deposits in a fixed account. there are a lots of websites to check and be part of this growing community. However for us, this is old school and we know how it ends!

A gallon a day eats cash away

I remember in Jan 2006, the gas prices were around $2.0 per gallon. today its $3.2 per gallon. On one hand they say US economy is crashing, on the other hand the oil companies have cashed in $20 to $40 billion profit last year. unbelievable. with this profit, 20 million cars, consuming an average of 10 gallons a week, could fill up the gas for one year. Its high time they come up with more alternate sources.

What's yours?

I need a cup of coffee everyday morning. it does really energize my day. I am so addicted to it, the moment i get into the office, i log on to the laptop and the next thing, i will be heading towards the coffee machine. Mine is a coffee morning, what's yours?

Can India really win an Oscar!

Another year goes by and in the oscar the film selected by indian panel didn't make it to the nomination in oscar! I am not so crazy about india winning an oscar. but the question is can india really win it. with only one category for foreign language, with the rest of the world competing, with so many songs for no reason in our movies, with politics playing a major role in selection, its going to be tough.

May be its high time Indian cinema starts its own awards that are in competition to oscar. the indian film industry is definitely bigger than the hollywood in terms of viewer capacity. but the biggest advantage with hollywood is that all movies are made in english and are mostly from one single place, hollywood. but with so many regional language, bigger politics, bollywood, kollywood, tollywood, etc., it would be a nightmare to create an award similar to oscar that get international attention. but still i think it is doable if we have a selection panel who are not biased and if politicians are kept completely isolated. but that would be a mission to pluto!

jana gana mana........

Most of them know this is our national anthem. but how many of us really know the meaning of this. i wouldn't be surprised if many think it is hindi without knowing it actually is bengali.

We have been singing this song since we were kid and its so sad that many of us don't know what it means. honestly i didn't know what it meant. i even didn't bother to find it out until recently. we pay respect to this by standing up and saluting most of the time, but without knowing what we are singing.

It was bengali because tagore wrote it in bengali.but why would they still keep it in bengali. if hindi is the national language, then our national anthem should be in hindi.

Either they should tell the kids in the school the meaning of our anthem so that they know what they are singing or else shouldn't ask them to sing. i wouldn't be suprised either if many of our politicians, defense personals, government officials don't know what it means. Public in general most of them wouldn't know, thats for sure.

It was written by Rabindranath Tagore in honor of King George V and the Queen of England when they visited India in 1911 and if you read the meaning they praise the king rather than Mother India.

Its so unfortunate that we have been singing and paying respect to a song for more than 60 years after independence, that we don't understand, not written in our national language, which praises british ruler and not India, Great!

One thing i'm happy is that most of us who can speak only english and regional language can be proud that they could sing in another language bengali.

Check this website for the english translation

http://india.gov.in/knowindia/national_anthem.php

Electronic vending machine

I have used vending machine for coffee, sodas, chips etc., but recently i was in houston airport on a trip to Phoenix and i was surprised to see a electronic vending machine. it had sony handycam, apple ipod, canon powersot, headphones, etc., all you need to do is, insert your credit card, pick the item number and boom, the product falls into the bin, pick it up and you have bought it..

How simple it is... may be this was in existance for quite sometime, but i was taking notice of this in the airport for the first time and was thrilled.

Companies are trying everything to reach out to the people. a good step forward in the consumer market.

May be one day they might have vending machines from different retailers at one place and you could name your own price in the machine and it would go to the respective dealers and you might get a deal at the lowest price and then pick up the product and go on your way, just like your internet, the only difference is that you could pick up the product immediately rather waiting for the delivery.
Technology man!