Ultimate Enigma

Vegetarian India

2006-08-14T15:40:00.000+08:00

The mythbusters have been called in!

I've always had the impression that India has more veggies than non-veggies. But CNN-IBN's joint survey with The Hindu has concluded otherwise. And not by any small distance. What's more, the southern states have between 2% to 8% veggie populations, while up north Haryana & Punjab have one of the highest veggie population spreads. Wierd stuff :-)

I survived!!!

2006-08-13T23:46:00.000+08:00

Yes, one and all..... I survived. And I'm overjoyed that I did! And no, I'm not talking about the Survivor show, or even a Triathlon that a few of my friends completed today. I'm talking about Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna. I survived KANK - just about, but I did. A chewing-gum couldn't have been stretched more. Kyunki Saas and Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki anyday for me over KANK. What made the survival even more admirable was tha fact that the theatre did not even have air ventilation today. It was hot like hell, and Karan Johar's melodrama and symbolism took a heavy toll. But.... ladies & gentlemen.... I survived...

Dasavatharam - The 10 Avatars

2006-08-13T14:28:00.000+08:00

In Hindu mythology, Dasavatharam is the story of Vishnu taking 10 forms through the ages to rid the world of the prevailing asuras of that time.

Now, Dasavatharam has come to a mean a world-record of sorts. One of all-time Tamil cinemas best actors Kamal Hassan has started out on movie with this name where he will star in not 1 (as in most of his movies), not 2 (as in Apoorva Sahodarargal a.k.a Appu-Raja in Hindi), not 4 (as in Michael Madana Kamarajan (MMKR)), but in 10 different roles. One of the 10 characters is even going to take his Avai Shanmughi (Hindi: Chachi 420) role to the next level by playing a full-time lady character.

If there is anyone who can pull off something like this, its gotta be Kamal who has throughout his career already showcased some of the most versatile roles Indian cinema has seen. Dwarf in Apoorva Sahodarargal; 4 completely different characters in MMKR - including a 'Palakkad' tamilian (Palakkad is a place in Kerala on the Tamil Nadu border, and the tamil from there has a lot of Mallu thrown in); an extremely real-like old man - one of the roles in his double-roled Indian; a mentally unstable, 'Sri Lankan' tamil speaking Tenali (and as any tamilian will tell you Sri Lankan tamil is quite different from the Indian tamil); a pyschotic in Guna; a GodFather-like character in one of my all-time favs Nayagan; the philosophical, disfigured character of Nallasivan in Anbe Sivam; the grand mother-like character of Avai Shanmugi (in a remake of Mrs. Doubtfire). The list really can go on and on. And I haven't even gone into his older movies simply because I haven't seen anything older than these. Talks with seasoned Kamal followers will inevitably bring up movies like Punnagai Mannan, Oru Kaidhiyen Diary, Sigappu Rojakkal. And in virtually every movie I have named thus far, Kamal has played a completely unique role. Thats the greatness of the man, and I am forced to say, Bollywood, or even Hollywood for that matter, is probably yet to see a more versatile actor.

Dasavatharam will be yet another milestone in a career that has already spanned 40 years.

Oh, and by the way. If the 10-roles weren't enough to drag you to the theatre, perhaps Mallika Sherwat in a negative role would be...
Music is by Bollywood's current in-thing - Himesh Reshmiya.

India Online

2006-08-13T13:30:00.000+08:00

An Indian village in Haryana, though yet to get its 1st Internet connection, has gone online to let the world know about themselves and to ensure that word about their problems gets highlighted to the people who can do something about it.

Project SmartVillages has launched with Hansdehar, a 600 hectare (6 sq. km) village with less than 2000 residents, being placed on the web. Project SmartVillages has the plan to get more villages added to their web rolls over time.

While its an idea to be appreciated, I wonder if it will make any difference to the people of Hansdehar or any other village in India. Will India sit up and make a difference simply because the village is online? Everyone knows that isn't how Indian politicians work.....

News source: http://www.ibnlive.com/news/village-uploads-itself-onto-internet/18400-3.html

Life in the fast lane!

2006-07-31T12:49:00.000+08:00

Screwed up last couple of months at work - well, not the work itself, but rather the hours having to be put in just to keep up with the inflow of work. Anyways, today I decided to make time for this rather neglected blog of mine :-P So here goes....

An extremely late post about a road trip to Gua Tempureng. One of the bigger road trips I've made in years... bigger i mean in terms of the number of people. 10 of us in 2 cars, night driving, rain driving, night driving in the rain, this road trip covered it all. It also included a splash 'n' dash drive in rain so heavy that I couldn't see the tip of my own car. (Thank god that that trip was only for a couple of blocks :-p) The trip was basically wasy back in May, so I'm not kidding when I say I dun remember most of the details. But I remember having loads of fun, and the caves we went into were beautiful. Sad that none of us wanted to carry the extra weight of tripods thru the watery caves. So couldn't capture any of the beautiful marble formed inside the limestone caves. But definitely a place I'd recommend one to go :-)

Due to my rather weak memory, I'm not going to write down details of the trip in general, which Preeti has already done on her blog. Lap it up at http://angelsera.blogspot.com/2006/05/long-overdue-gua-tempurang-1.html. The 2nd day about the caves itself is yet to be completed :-)

Soon after the trip, I was off for 2 weeks to Singara Chennai. I'm not sure where my time there went. After I returned, I didnt seem to have done anything. My 1st week I guess kinda disappeared in trying to arrange a get-together of family & family friends for my parents' silver jubilee anniversary. The 2nd week was a whirlwind affair. I met my friends for dinner a couple of times, dinner with parents and bro a couple of times, and I was back in Singapore :-( Just wish holidays didnt fly past so quick :-(

And I came back to Singapore to see a flood of work piling on my plate. Slowly n steadily after 3 weeks of maddening hours, things are finally settling down. I just cant understand how a few of my friends have been managing such hours for the last 2 years :-s. 3 weeks, and I was ready to scream.... these guys have been doing similar stuff day in, day out; week after week. Hats off to you my friends (you know who you are!).

Aside this, I got a few interesting topics I've wanted to post on... Lets see which of them I remember, and how many of those I get the time to actually word out :-)

ps: I'm not even gonna read this again for typos cause if I do that, I'm gonna click on "Save as draft" and this post'll never see the light of day.

A new record!

2006-06-18T03:55:00.000+08:00

Just touching 2 months since my last post - this is a new record even for His Laziness (thats a reference to me in case it wasnt obvious :-p) Not an extremely huge amount has happened since then except a roadtrip to Gua Tempureng in Malaysia in early May, and a trip home at the moment. Its high time I write about the Malaysia trip :-p and I should get around to it before my leave ends :-s Tomorrow night mebbe - the Italy vs USA match just became interesting, so Im off to watch that :-)

Life after Hong Kong !!

2006-04-23T10:23:00.000+08:00

More than a month since the Hong Kong trip, and its been back to normal ever since. Work's been steadily increasing with new roles moving to my team coinciding with a couple of people quitting the company. So apart from work, nothing much really happening. Occasional evenings out for beer, a few dinners thrown in here and there, 1 or 2 movies, and cricket over the weekend. That pretty much sums up the last few weeks for me. Its a boring life after all.

PS: This post is just a release of frustration :-p Sooooooo pls ignore my arbit ramblings :-p

Photos of Hong Kong and Macau

2006-04-03T23:51:00.000+08:00

Photos of the early written about trip can now be found on my flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adityakrishnan/sets/72057594097721290/

In order to accomodate more photos, the images were uploaded only at 800x600 resolution.

To Hong Kong and beyond!!! - Last day

2006-04-02T16:48:00.000+08:00

Packan's uninterest in the Giant Buddha (and his interests in enjoying an assortment Hong Kong Dim Sums) meant that Day 5 saw me take a lonely trip to Lantau Island to catch a glimpse of the Po-Lin Monastery's Tian Tan Buddha. The Buddha is the world's largest seated outdoor bronze Buddha (yeah thats a very precise winner in the world's largest category). The Buddha is around 111 and a half feet in height, and on a very clear day can be seen from as far as Macau - though from what I've seen of Hong Kong, I don't think such a clear day has been seen in recent past. The Buddha is beautifully peaceful and looking up into his half-closed eyes seemed to impart a calm into me as well. The Buddha is seated on a lotus, beneath which is a museum housing some of the artifacts of the Po-Lin monastery. The monastery itself, is a stone's throw away from the statue.

A short walk from the Giant Buddha takes you to the Wisdom Path. This is a recently contructed outdoor replica of the Heart-Sutra, one of the world's best-known Buddhist prayers. In appearance it is wooden stakes planted to form the symbol infinity. The Heart Sutra is a depiction of perfection of wisdom (do not ask me how), and Lantau's newest tourist attraction has been built on a very beautiful landscape overlooking a steep, forested slope down to the sea.

There was a path leading from the Wisdom Path upto the top of Lantau Peak - Hong Kong's 2nd highest peak in the world. Shortage of time (I had a flight to catch in about 6 hours' time) prevented me from taking the rather unused path right to the top, but I still decided to go as far as I could to catch a glimpse of the scenery from up the slopes. Boy, was I glad I did. How much ever I tried, my amateur photography skills meant that even the best of my photographs could not capture the beauty - you could see the mountains dip down to the ground, a short stretch of beach leading to the lovely blue sea and somewhere far beyond the sky met it, where you could never point out. The overhanging clouds gave it an overall surreal look.

Time to head back, and a quick lunch later, Packan and me walked down the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui one last time and headed to the Avenue of Stars. The Central skyline was markedly clearer this time compared to the last time we were here. A few quick snaps later, we headed back to pick up our luggage for the journey back to what we now call home - big bore Singapore.

To Hong Kong and beyond!!! - Day 4

2006-03-31T07:51:00.000+08:00

Monday was forecasted to be Hong Kong's coldest day of the season. And early on Monday morning, my friend GS and me had to cancel plans to goto Lantau Island to see the Giant Bronze Buddha thanks to the rainy whims of the weather Gods. Instead we slept in late and went for an early lunch at the Branto @ Lock Road - an Indian restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui. (Aye Kay recommends Branto by the way).

Post lunch was visits to a shopping centre on the water front - Harbour City adjascent to the Ocean Terminal Center. Infact at the time we were there, Queen Elizabeth 2 was anchored in Hong Kong. Oh the ship was huge. I haven't been this close to a luxury liner before :-P so it was pretty damn impressive. A lazy round around the shopping center was followed by an even lazier walk around the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui thinking, with amazement, of the differences between Singapore and Hong Kong. Later in the evening GS and NMK were seen off (the 2 of them left a day before Packan and me).

Packan and me then made our way down to Hollywood Road - so named for the fact that almost all English movies shot in Hong Kong shoot atleast a scene somewhere along this road. Hollywood Road, one of Hong Kong's ladder streets, is also popular for antique shops. The ladder streets are an interesting concept - much of the inland part of Hong Kong is hilly, and given the lack of overall space in the island, hills couldn't be an excuse for not inhabiting the area. Then again, going up and down steep slopes isn't a very appealing option for most people. The solution, streets which are completely made of steps rather than the convention vehicle-friendly roads :-) Cool concept, yeah? Well, it goes a step further. One of the roads up the slope has a complete covered escalator from Hong Kong Central all the way to the Mid-Levels. Known as the Central-Mid-Levels escalators (ain't that a creative name :-P), this is the longest outdoor, covered escalators in the world. But there was space to build only 1 set of escalators. So during the morning peak hours until 10am, the entire length of the escalators are moving downwards to facilitate people movement towards Central, and after 10am the escalators move upwards to help people against having to walk up the slopes.

Soho is yet another street in the mid-levels, and is a popular place to go for food & beverages. It is a really tiny area, so most of the restaurants are really small, and can seat probably at max about 15-20 people at a time, but we could see practically every conceivable cuisine around. We had dinner at an interesting looking Mexican joint called 'Taco Loco'. I just found out that Soho actually stands for 'South Of HOllywood road'.

The evening was rounded off with a visit to the Night Market at Temple Street in Mongkok. For those familiar to Chinatown in Kuala Lampur, Temple Street is pretty much the same. An ideal place to look for 'genuine imitation' products :-) Luckily the rain that had been coming down since afternoon finally stopped soon after we got to Mongkok, giving us the freeodm to look around night market at leisure. A couple of cheap watches and a jacket were what brought my last night in Hong Kong to a close.

To Hong Kong and beyond!!! - Day 3

2006-03-30T09:01:00.000+08:00

Day 3 actually saw the 'beyond' part of "Hong Kong and beyond". Started off the day walking to the Tsim Sha Tsui ferry terminal and caught a First Ferry vessel to Macau. Macau, a small state on the South coast of China, was a Portuguese colony all the way until 1999 when it was handed over to China. Macau is now a 'Special Administration Region of China'. Macau started off as a valuable port controlled by Portugal, but slowly lost its prominence as Hong Kong's influence in the region increased. Macau is really a very small city/town, but in recent years has made itself known as the Las Vegas of the East - the gambling capital of Asia. Apart from the booming casino industry, the old Portuguese architecture is a thing of interest in this quaint little town where the good ol' scooters seem to still be in fashion.

Our 1st destination at Macau was Largo do Senado (roughly translated to 'the Senate Square'). This is kind of the town centre and has an open-air shopping area look to it. All the buildings around the square are from the 'old' days, so some look really quaint & beautiful - you know the arched doorways, wooden shutters over the windows and so on. It was a Sunday afternoon, so you had the young crowd out in full force walking around the narrow streets around the Largo.

Some way down the street was the Santa Casa da Misericordia - a good looking church for the Holy Mother Mary. The church was very resemblent of the Portuguese churches in Goa, and extremely serene and peaceful. We spent a few minutes at the church (a silent prayer or too) and then made our way up a narrow steep path upto the Macau Cathedral. Until not too many years ago, this cathedral was Vatican's appointed High Church of the China, Taiwan and Macau region. Again a few silent minutes were spent at the church soaking in the beauty of the many statues and the radiant stained glass windows.

We then made our way to Sau Paulo (or the Cathedral of Saint Paul), rather to whatever was left of it. The Sau Paulo was one of the biggest cathedrals in Asia in its time (16th and 17th centuries) until a fire destroyed all of the building except for the front facade, and thats all that remains to this day. Now ofcourse, its become a major tourist site, and I cannot believe anyone would be able to take a photo of the Sao Paulo without inadvertently taking the photos of 50 other people in the process.

Looking down upon the Sao Paulo is the Fortaleza do Monte, or the Mount Fortress. The fort now hosts a museum, but the old cannons used to protect the town of Macau still stand around the fort. From the courtyard of the fort, you could see the entire shabby looking Macau town.

Back down from the fort, we made our way back to the Largo do Senado and then onto the Macau Tower. If I remember right, placards at the Tower claimed the Macau Tower to be tallest 'tower' in the world. The word 'tower' technically disqualifies all buildings in this comparison. There was the option to sky dive (a controlled free fall) from the observation tower atop the Macau Tower. For those not so keen on taking the leap, you can also take a walk around the observation tower. We did neither, because of both the hole either would have made in our wallets, and also because we wanted to make our way to our next stop as soon as possible. A disappointment brought back from the Macau Tower was the presence of 2 young fully grown white Bengal tigers in aan approximately 7 feet by 20 feet glass enclosure at the base of the Tower. The Tower was apparently conducting an awareness programme about the white tigers, and for the purpose had kept these tigers on display near all the photos and postcards informing about this big beast. It was extremely disappointing to see these normally majestic creatures reduced to living in such a small space with rubber chewing toys and a children's slide as company.

The Sands Casino was my 1st visit to a Casino. But having a complete grip on my luck (the lack of it), I decided I wouldn't be punting my money and instead moved around the casino enjoying the atmosphere and supporting my 2 friends who decided to take on the house and managed to atleast double their investments. Owned and operated by Las Vegas' famous Sands, Sands Macau is one the popular casinos in Macau, though the biggest one is Lisboa.

A race against time back to the Macau ferry terminal, another First Ferry vessel and 3 hours later we are back in Tsim Sha Tsui. A Thai restaurant open at almost midnight was life-saver at the end of a rather tiring day.

To Hong Kong and beyond!!! - Day 2

2006-03-29T09:15:00.000+08:00

Day 2 was a very "Japanese-tourist-like" affair. (You know the way Jap tourists go around, covering as much as possible and being exteremely shutter-happy...) Anyways, this is what happened.

We wanted to start the day on a very lucky note - so went to Wong Tai Sin, also known as the Temple of Luck. This temple is famous for its fortune telling, and many people/devotees come to be told of how the next one-year would pan out for them - yeah they can only see as far ahead as one year :-) What you need to do is get a can filled with 'fortune-sticks' and then shake the can up and down until one of the sticks falls out. Each stick has a number tagged to it, and you give the number to one of the sooth-sayers around the temple (there are a handful who know English) and they will tell you what Wong Tai Sin has to say about your future.

Our next pit-stop was further inland on the mainland to Sha Tin in New Territories - another temple; The Temple of 10 Thousand Buddhas. The only fact we knew about this temple was that it had around 500 steps uptil the top. So while we walked around looking for this monastery, we saw some buddhist statues and a huge flight of stairs. And all around as we climbed, we seemed to see Buddhist memorials (kind of equivalent to a Christian cemetery-except that this was just a 6inch by 1foot marble plaque per person, and was arranged along the walls). And after climbing all the way to the top, we found that we were in the wrong place. We must have looked really wierd to those who had come to pay their respects to the deceased - taking photos of their memorial area. Anyway, after making our way back down, we found a narrow path that led to the actual monastery, and made our way up the correct flight of 500 steps. All along the steps were statues of atleast a few thousand Buddhas of all shapes and sizes - infact there was no 2 statues that were the same. Tall, thin, stout, angry, happy, smiling, scowling, with animals by their side, with weapons in their hands - you had every look imaginable. At the top was the temple with small Buddha statues lining the 4 walls of the temple from ceiling to floor. It was quite an impressive sight.

Our plan was to go back to Hong Kong island in the evening, so from Sha Tin, we made our way back to Tsim Sha Tsui for a very late lunch and then headed out Repulse Bay on the south part of the island. Apparently the name was given after the British 'repulsed' the pirates who used this part of the island as a base to attack ships travelling to mainland China. Repulse Bay is basically a beautiful beach and also has a walking path beyond the beach along the rocky shores of the island. Being in the south of Hong Kong (and far from Central), this area is largely residential, and from the looks of it, its a really posh residential area.

Further away from Central took us to Stanley Market an open-air street market that is supposedly famous for the bargaining opportunity it throws up. As it happened, we were a bit late in reaching there, and shops had started to close. So a quick look around, and we headed back towards Wan Chai in the north on Hong Kong island. Wan Chai is basically the commerical area, and we walked around a few shops and then took a tram right through the city to Causeway Bay. Causeway Bay stands on reclaimed land is an extremely busy shopping area in the nights. Even as we walked around Times Square (not to be confused with New York's Times Square :-p) , we saw some WTO protests happening right in the middle of the road.

Post-dinner saw us back across the bay at Tsim Sha Tsui, at the Avenue of Stars which is Hong Kong's answer to Hollywood's Wake of Fame. This is an especially beautiful place because it sits on the waterfront in full view of Hong Kong's skyline across the bay. Sadly, the day we were there, it was an extremely smoggy day, and the skyline wasn't too clear.

To Hong Kong and beyond!!!

2006-03-19T19:51:00.000+08:00

In my previous post I mentioned an upcoming trip to Hong Kong - well this is my attempt at keeping the memory of the trip alive...

We (NMK, Packan, another friend and me) made our way to Changi airport early in th morning of the 10th of March and took the 3 and a half hour low-budget Valuair flight to Hong Kong. A good 2 hours after landing, we checked in at our hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui (southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula on the mainland across the bay from Hong Kong) and made our way to Hong Kong city centre (known as Central) by the subway also known as MTR and spent the evening roaming around the city's huge buildings including the International Financial Centre, Exchange Square and Chater House - the last being mentioned for the sole reason that it houses the Hong Kong branch of the company I work for.

A bit of a walk around the place, found the place selling ferry tickets to Macau (which we would visit 2 days later) and then made our way to The Peak by the 1888-built Peak Tram - a winch-driven, rope-pulled tram that literally goes up the slope of 'the peak' in the middle of Hong Kong island. Amazing scenes (albeit extremely hazy and foggy) greeted us atop the peak where we spent a couple of hours waiting for sunset, and later getting a night glimpse of Hong Kong city. Pictures were taken by the dozens (and a few will be uploaded to flickr in time to come)

The view could only keep out our hunger for a while though and so we made our way back to sea-level and went to Lan Kwai Fong for dinner. This is an area thats really filled with evening entertainment spots, pubs and restaurants. Later in the night, we took the ferry across the bay back to Kowloon. These ferries are those which have existed from those days when Hong Kong island did not have any road/rail links to the mainland. And even in today's day & age, a ticket from Hong Kong Central to Tsim Sha Tsui costs only HK$2 (approx 40 Singapore cents and 25 US cents). A slow walk, enjoying the sights and sounds of Tsim Sha Tsui took us to out hotel where we finally called it a night.

More to follow in later posts.

Do you agree??

2006-03-15T01:29:00.000+08:00

A depiction of life today - do you agree??

Over the last 3 weeks.........

2006-03-06T11:52:00.000+08:00

Again, a solitary post preceded my disappearance for more than 3 weeks. So for those who care, here's my "I'm alive" message. Very much alive and kicking :-) So what have I been upto over the last month or so....

5th Feb - Me and a couple of friends (including Angelsera) made our way down to the Esplanade Concert Hall for Zakir Hussain & Co's Kaleidoscope of Ryhtms.

Apart from India's great tabla player Ustad Zakir Hussain, the show also boasted of some of the world's greatest melody performers - predomintantly from the world of percussion - Melodic drummer & Grammy winner Terry Bozio (who has performed with Mick Jagger, Dweezil Zappa); Latin percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo; son of Ustad Allahrakha and brother of Zakir Hussain: versatile tabla player and recent Bollywood music director Fazal Qureshi; Maharashtra's foremost exponent of the Dholki and other folk percussion Vijay Chauhan; renowned classical violinist Kala Ramnath. The biggest puller for me (apart from Ustad Hussain ofcourse) was U. Shrinivas. I had heard him playing the instrument that he has made his own in the Indian classical scene - the electric mandolin - earning him the name "mandolin Shrinivas". The show was not disappointing in the least. Zakir Hussain played the table as if he had a hundered hands, and after each of them displayed their prowess by playing the lead instrumentalist, the show culminated in a medley of all these world-class players taking the stage together for an amazingly out-of-the-world medley.

A few weeks later, on a lazy Saturday evening of the 24th, me and a couple of friends attended a drama by Hindi comedian Paresh Raval. The play was entitled "Naughty at Forty" and showcased the hero Manu (Paresh Raval) playing a 30 plus bachelor with a rather loud and nasal mother who had kept her husband under her thumb for the last god-alone-knows-how-many years. The play progresses into Raval's love story with a lady, Monica, he met at the bus stop on his way to office. The real fun start after they are married and the bahu-sasuma fights start and poor ol' Manu being caught in between (Sasuma also takes this opportunity to show us the complete repertoire of her nasal cavity). An entertaining couple of hours spent there. I'd recommend to anyone who gets the chance to watch this drama.

The following day, me and yet other 2 friends headed down to Changi for the Asian Aeroshow 2006 - the last time the bi-annual Asian Aeroshow was being held in Singapore (it is moving to Hong Kong from 2008). The fly past air show was quite cool with planes from the F16 down to the brand new Airbus A380. Wow, I knew that plane was huge, but seeing it fly just marginally above was terrific. I was really keen to goto the standing display of the A380, but in classic Singaporean style, the queue to that area of the aeroshow was so long that it would have taken us atleast 2 hours to get to it. Deciding its not worth the effort, we made our way back having enjoyed it's display in the air.

Oh and over the next weekend, me and 3 others including Packan and NMK are going down to Hong Kong for 4-5 days. So thats my contribution to the blogosphere for the next few weeks I guess :-) Naah not really. Am sure Hong Kong will have plenty of stories to tell !!!

The Life of Mother Teresa

2006-02-15T10:12:00.000+08:00

I simply had to take time off from my busy schedule (what else can I blame for having only 4 posts in 2 months :-p) to put this up :

Malayalee director T. Rajeevnath has set his minds on making an aunthentic biographic movie on the life of Nobel Peace Laurette Mother Teresa. A very noble aim, and having managed to get many Hollywod production houses interested, I'm sure it will be well-taken.

Obviously, however, the actress playing the role of the late Mother Teresa would have to be selected carefully keeping in the mind the personality she will be depicting, and after much consideration, Mr. T. Rajeevnath has approached (**drum rolls please**) Ms. Paris Hilton. Yeah you read that right, if you don't believe me read it here.

But wait, someone as knowledgeable as Mr. Rajeevnath would be able to explain his views - most will know how Paris refused to pose nude in an edition of Playboy. Well, given the stature and social position of Paris, Rajeevnath sees her actions as being very chaste. Boy, if only he did a Google Image search for Paris Hilton, he'll know how 'chaste' she is :-p

Ant and the Grasshopper

2006-01-24T22:47:00.000+08:00

Got this as an email forward today, and it fits in quite well with the Indian scenario. You all must have heard of the old "the Ant and the Grasshopper" story. If you haven't its recapped below:

CLASSIC VERSION...

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

--------------------------------------------------

MODERN VERSION...

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

BBC, CNN, AAJ TAK, NDTV show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticizes the Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper.

Opposition MP's stage a walkout.

Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.

The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by BBC,CNN, AAJ TAK and NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice".

Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Friend.... or Lover....

2006-01-14T10:45:00.000+08:00

Found out today that the word 'friend' has its origins from 'to love' - meaning that 'friend' literally means 'lover'. And this link can be seen in the ancient Europena languages of Latin and Greek, and even in English about a millenium ago.

Latin:
friend - amicus
to love - amo

Greek:
friend - philos
to love - phileo

Old English:
friend was originally freond
to love was freon

Wierd isn't it how words change meaning over hundreds of years :-)
Read about this at dictionary.com

The Superhero inside you!!

2006-01-07T14:50:00.000+08:00

via Mitali Kini's Blog Zone!

Who is the Superhero hidden inside you??

Your results:
You are Superman
Superman
90%
Spider-Man
75%
Robin
65%
Supergirl
55%
Iron Man
55%
Green Lantern
45%
Batman
45%
Catwoman
35%
Wonder Woman
30%
The Flash
30%
Hulk
30%
You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Wow

2005-12-08T01:33:00.000+08:00

Link.

Take to the skies in 'Indian'

2005-12-08T01:18:00.000+08:00

Indian Airlines has (finally) re-branded itself. With the word 'Airlines' dropped from its name, it hopes to detach itself from the rather dismal brand image built by Indian Airlines over the years. Personally, I believe a complete change of name would have a better impact, but I guess dropping 'Indian' from its name would have been a political disaster for any Government. As it is, the 1st look of an 'indian' aircraft is great. I simply cant overstate my joy that they have dropped the idea of having the 'black' nose - which I cant understand why they had in the 1st place. It just sucked for a plane to be given a black nose. Read more about the new brand livery here.

Air India is not far behind with announcements a couple of days ago that they are looking to re-design their cabin uniforms.

Related:

India's Aviation Minister Praful Patel has been named Asia Pacific's best Aviation minister of the year.
Airbus believes India's avaiation sector is gonna grow fast, by buying about 1000 planes in the next 20 years.
Vijay Mallaya owned Kingfisher Airlines hopes to start international flights in next 2 years. Thats definitely ahead of his A380 orders being delivered.

Aish in comic role

2005-12-06T02:07:00.000+08:00

Well, she isn't doing a comedy movie or starring as a comic. What I meant to say is that she will be starring in the French silver screen version of the comic series 'Asterix & Obelix'. She is slated to star (though her role isn't known yet) in the 3rd movie in the Asterix series - Asterix and Obelix at the Olympics. This movie apparently will have Jean-Claude Van Damme playing the role of Gluteus Maximus.

The earlier 2 movies in this series were:

Asterix and Obelix take on Caesar, released in 1999
Asterix and Obelix Meet Cleopatra, released in 2002 starring Monica Bellucci in the lead role of Cleopatra

Houston Diary

2005-12-06T01:14:00.000+08:00

It's been a week since I landed in Houston, and the USofA hasn't made much of an impact thus far. Well, on the other hand, most would also tell me that I'm seeing the wrong side of the US, what with Houston being a rather boring place at the best of times, and me being put up at a Hotel in downtown Houston has kind of resulted in me experiencing the most boring place of Houston :-p. But still, all I can see is all I can experience, right?

Anyway, going back to last weekend, the flight from Singapore to Newark (a town on the outskirts of New York - infact, most people working in the Big Apple live in and around Newark, and travel to Manhattan and the likes on a daily basis). Anyways, as I was saying before I interuppted myself about Newark, the flight from Singapore to Newark was great. Amazing really. It was more than 18 hours long, but hey Singapore Airlines is a lovely way to fly. The wide, luxourious seats (which can became as flat you want), the plenty of leg-space, the lovely, ever-helping air-hostesses. Oh! did I forget to mention I was flying SIA Raffles (business) class. Well, yeah I was (my company paid for the tix - I'm really not that rich :-p ) Btw, at the SIA Raffles link, you can read about the space-beds, which is what I was talking about too!!!

At Newark, I had to change to a domestic flight to Houston, and changing from an international to domestic sector, I had to re-checkin, and pass security check and everything. Heck, these guys are paranoid. Not only do they take my picture and finger print when I entered their country, we also had to remove our shoes and send them in for Xraying when crossing security check :-s. But it did make me wonder - how do Singapore and others manage to check shoes for 'forbidden materials'?

And well, after the SIA flight, reality was only a short wait away. An extremely cramped aircraft met me at Newark, and I had apparently chosen the day when travelling in the US is always at its annual highest - the Sunday evening of the long Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone is returning home after spending the holidays with family around the country. As a result, there was a 30minute wait for the aircraft to leave the airport terminal, and get its turn at the head of the take-off runway. I'm not kidding, there were 12 or 13 aircrafts already lined up at the runway when we joined the queue. And this is despite there being a separate parallel runway for landings - which was also having a continous stream of planes touching down. Heck, I pity the poor air-traffic controllers that night (mebbe its like that every night for them). And to top it all, it wasn't the nicest weather that evening. After take-off, when the plane crossed the rather low-lying clouds, oh, it was a wonderul sight. Out of my window alone, I could see 5 different aircrafts, at different levels above and below ours. What a sight. Was quite out of the world.

Anyhow, obviously flight was late arriving at Houston, and then we had to walk across 3 terminals (our plane landed at one, but the luggage was being sent to another - dont ask me why) and 40minute taxi ride later, I checked into the hotel at about 1am - absolutely dead-tired. I was awake enough to do some quick math though - I had travelled for more than 22 hours in a span of 24. The most I've travelled in a very long time.

I'm gonna stop writing now, cos I'm at work and have taken too much time off for now. Soon (I hope) there will be an update on whats happened over the last 7 days out here. Until then, adios.

And then there was silence

2005-11-23T14:31:00.000+08:00

I return to my blog after a rather extended period of silence. The usual excuses prop up (no time, lots of work, etc) but I guess the fact is that I really haven't been in the mood to write anything. Have been reading lots of other blogs reasonably regularly, but haven't really felt like commenting on any either, even though on some posts I have had strong opinions. I've noted down various things I wanted to post about, but everytime I thought of writing out my thoughts, I decided to "do it later". I wonder.... is the interest dieing out??
...I guess I will know once some more time passes by...

Anyways, this weekend I'm off to Houston (on business for 2 weeks) and New York (on a personal detour for 2days). Will be back in the middle of December. And guess what, during my return I'm gonna be spending my whole birthday in the confines of an aeroplane. Yeah - I'm boarding the SIA New York-Singapore flight the evening before my birthday, and will land on the morning after my birthday. Never done that before!!!

Want to make more money??? Easy... Just pay more taxes!

2005-11-08T14:05:00.000+08:00

If you are in Holland, there is an easy way to make some extra money.... Just over-pay your taxes. Yes, you heard that right. The Dutch government gives 5% interest on any excess-tax that is paid to them, which is beyond the market rate!!

More here.

Travel Watch

2005-11-04T17:02:00.000+08:00

Travellers out of Mumbai just got more choosy- the Wadia group has finally launched GoAir. They are starting off with just 3 sectors - Mumbai-Ahemedabad, Mumbai-Goa and Mumbai-Coimbatore; with the Coimbatore sector tickets priced at Rs 899.

One thing though.... their 'Book a Flight' section does not work on Firefox :-s The only selectable destination is Mumbai even when the origin is changed out of Mumbai. Better change that soon Go!

Playing the Suber Sub!!

2005-11-03T11:21:00.000+08:00

The Super-Sub rule has been employed in international cricket for a few months now and over this period more and more cricketers have come out against the idea as it currently is employed. One of the latest to voice out his opinion in this direction is the captain of the World Test Team Graeme Smith. The general consensus is that the Super Sub rule favours the team batting first to a great extent. And this is basically true, since it can be assumed that most captains would name the first-11 with an 'assuming-we-lose-the-toss' mindset and then add the super-sub who would be most useful if they won the toss. Thats no doubt the best way to use this rule.

But Rahul Dravid in the 2nd and 3rd ODIs against Sri Lanka has used the Super Sub to hedge the risk of losing the toss. This was espescially the case in the 2nd ODI at Mohali, where it is a known fact that spinners would struggle when bowling in the 2nd innings. With this in mind, Dravid had selected an Indian-11 that would be very strong if they bowled 1st, and added a pacer - Sreesanth as the Super Sub to bolster the Indian bowling department in the event that India lost the toss and had to bat 1st. This way, Dravid retained the option to replace a spinner with a pacer - a better option had the game gone that way. As it turns out, India won the toss and bowled 1st, which meant that the Super Sub was wasted, and many felt that Dravid had made a mistake in this regard. But in my opinion, it was a calculated decision by Dravid (and probably Chappel as well) to use the extra player to hedge a major risk rather try to have extra resources when things were already going your way!!

The fact that Raina was the Super sub when Dravid intended to bat 1st in the 3rd ODI also indicates that this is the thought-process of the Indian captain. This time around, India lost the toss, and the Super Sub was made use of - and no big fuss was made of his choice of Super Sub. Would it have been the same had India won the toss again... well we would never know.

I was waiting for the team for today's 4th ODI to be annouced to see if Dravid continued with this line of thinking, but looks like apparently not, since Raina is the Super Sub and Dravid has decided to bowl 1st, ensuring that the Super Sub will play a role in the later half of today's proceedings.

2005-11-01T09:57:00.000+08:00

Happy Diwali! Diwali ki Hardikh Shubkamnayein! Deepavali Nal-Vazhtukkal!

Wishing Everyone a Very Happy, Prosperous & Colourful Year Ahead!!

Enjoi the festival of lights!

Raised by the Sea

2005-10-28T12:39:00.000+08:00

The Boxing Day tsunami that lashed the Indian subcontinent coast last year washed off the top of the ground in many places. At Saluvankuppam near Mahabalipuram, the tsunami exposed parts of an ancient Pallava temple built more than 2000 years ago. BBC carries the details.

On Tomorrow

2005-10-28T11:14:00.000+08:00

My post featured for the 1st time on Tomorrow

On the Ground

2005-10-28T09:54:00.000+08:00

Starting 10 days ago, Cricinfo has taken blog-debates a step further by starting 'Wicket-to-Wicket' - debting forum where the leading Cricinfo authors present their varying views on any pre-decided topic. The 1st topic taken up is, unsurprisingly, the use of technology in the game. With the recent experiments with technology usage during the Super Series between Australia and Rest of the World, pretty much the whole cricketting fraternity has a view, an opinion on technology's place in cricket - and much of these views are passionate! With writers as adept as Sambit Bal, Amit Verma, Martin Williamson et all, Wicket-to-Wicket has presented itself as a forum for a well-analysed discussion on this topic close to heart of many cricket-lovers. Read the discussion thus far here.

------

In the cricketing vein, any follower of cricket would know that the little master Sachin Tendulkar made a comeback after 6 months of injury layoff on Tuesday as he blasted his way to 93 runs in the 1st match against Sri Lanka, in the process dismissing all discussion on whether he would have what it takes to return to international cricket. During the lunch break after the Indian innings, Anand Vasu's article on Sachin was posted on Cricinfo, and this is a piece worth reading - all the more if you are a Sachin fan such as I. I espescially liked the last paragraph, and I quote below:

As he walked back to the pavilion, raising the bat to acknowledge the raucous applause of a grateful Nagpur crowd, the Sri Lankans would have heaved a sigh of relief to see the back of that No. 33 jersey. One is not sure why Tendulkar chose that number on his comeback, rather than the customary No. 10, but hey, it hardly matters what number plate you hang on some machines. A Ferrari is still always a Ferrari.

------

On a related note, many would be aware that Ganguly was omitted from the Indian side for the 1st 2 matches of this series against Sri Lanka on grounds of injury. But his century innings for East Zone in the Duleep Trophy tie against South Zone indicates that injury is no longer a concern. Given Ganguly's century, will the selectors (who meet later today to pick the team for the next 3 matches) decide to give dada another chance to showcase his skills? Well either way, 1 thing looks pretty certain. All those who invested in PublicGyan's prediction of Ganguly losing his captaincy by end-2005 are sure to be richer by tonight - whether Ganguly is selected in the team or not, Dravid will be captain!!

Best Wildlife Photographs of the Year

2005-10-21T16:02:00.000+08:00

For some reason, I am greatly attracted by photographs of wildlife in their original environments. The Worldlife Photographer of the Year competition organised jointly by London's Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine is enthralling. Not all the entries are available online, but the winners in 5 categories are up here.

My favourite is this:

Shooting in Singapore!

2005-10-21T09:30:00.000+08:00

Shooting for Krrish delayed my journey to work yesterday morning by more than 45 minutes - a normally 25-minute long journey took more than 1hr 10minutes as 3 lanes of Shenton Way (for those who dont know, this is a major road in the central business district(CBD) of Singapore, and usually at morning peak hours all of the 5 lanes are jam-packed) were closed for public and were being used for parking of the movie trucks and movie cranes etc for a scene of Rakesh Roshan's new venture at Lau Pat Sat, a popular food court in the CBD.

At lunch, a couple of colleagues and myself decided to goto Lau Pat Sat for lunch to see if we could catch some 'action', and when we landed up there, it was a massive crowd waiting on the Shenton Way end of Lau Pat Sat. And in the centre over there was Hrithik Roshan on the road (in those blocked lanes) dressed in that black over-coat of his, and the black mask. And he stood there with back to us, looking at a mirror and combing his hair, and combing his hair, and combing his hair, and did I say ''combing his hair'?? Oh my God, he combed his already-combed hair for so damn loooooonnngg. (Couple of my lady colleagues were squealing for him to atleast face us and comb his hair :-p)

Oh and once the hair was combed, he spent the next few minutes adjusting his 'black' trenchcoat. And there was an assistant standing nearby holding 5 similar looking trenchcoats - and he was not a very tall person - the poor guy was holding his hands above his head to keep the 'backup' trenchcoats from hitting the ground (remember that Hrithik is on the taller end of the spectrum). Anyway, after what seemed like ages, the crane nearby started to hoist Hrithik up onto the clock tower of Lau Pat Sat - yeah Hrithik had a harness under the trenchcoat, and that was probably what needed the loong adjustments.

Then we went in for lunch, and 40minutes later when we were out again, Hrithik was still on the clock tower, awaiting his 'flying' or 'jumping' scene to a building across the road. And according to Divya he was there for much longer :-s

Krrish is being shot in Singapore by Film Kraft Productions making use of Singapore Tourism Board's 'Film in Singapore! Scheme'

Weekend Update: Hrithik suddenly experienced a free-fall scene in real life as a wire holding him at over 50 feet from the ground snapped and hurled him straight down. What would have been a fatal fall was luckily broken by a shop canopy which had been put up to to stop the rain. More can be found here. The dedication of the man - he was back shooting withing 1 hour after the fall!!!

10 Greatest Desi Mysteries Of All Time

2005-10-14T01:28:00.000+08:00

Taken from the latest issue of the the Outlook. A quick entertaining read. Source.

1. How does Bappi Lahiri get through an airport metal detector?
2. Why would anyone want to learn the ‘Art of Living’ from Rhea Pillai?
3. Why use the term ‘bad hair day’ when you can say Abdul Kalam?
4. Who finances a Dev Anand film?
5. Who watches it?
6. Why are there 50 ways to leave your lover but only five ways out of an aircraft?
7. How many Suhel Seths are there exactly?
8. What will happen to the acting repertoire of Rajnikant when the smoking ban comes into being?
9. Why are the gyms still packed when it’s Adnan Sami who gets all the girls?
10. Navjot Sidhu.

When Law means nothing!

2005-10-08T02:43:00.000+08:00

Many of you would have heard about the total lack of security at the recent election rally of R.P.Churasia, BJP's Bihar assembly candidate from Nokha village when a man walked onto the rally dias brandishing a pistol in each hand and opened fire, hitting former Union Information & Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in the arm. My initial reaction was 'Oh that Bihar, its going to the dogs!', and I would have changed the channel and gone on to watch something on ESPN or StarSports, but the newstory continued, and it just went from bad to worse....

The shooter had been surrounded by the party supporters, and was brutally assaulted, literally lynched. And lynched to the extent that the local police pronounced him dead and took him to the local hospital morgue, where a doctor declared him still alive. (This bit, I only saw on TV and cannot find any website running it). The guy is still in coma, and has been shifted to Patna from Sasaram (a town near Nokha) for further treatment despite worries that the transit could kill him. I saw some nauseating images on TV on the BJP workers/supporters attacking the guy with bamboo sticks and somethings that resembled baseball bats, and even going to the extent of jumping and stamping on him. For God sakes, he is a human... Granted that he tried to take a life, but to want to beat a man to death... thats just disgusting!!! After searched high & low, I found The Hindu carrying an photograph of the former assailant. I must warn you, the image is highly graphic, and please proceed at your own discretion. Link. Not sure how long they may keep this article on their site, so I have also placed a copy (hence its still very graphic :-p) of the image here to show people how barbaric the human kind can be.

And a local Nokha police official has the audacity to say "Honi ko kaun tal sakta hai?" which roughly translates to "Who can stop one's fate?". Indian (Bihari, to be more precise) police for you ladies & gentlemen!

Home Sweet Home!

2005-09-28T20:05:00.000+08:00

Sunday 25th was a day I had been looking forward to for the last couple of months. I started my 3 week-long vacation in Chennai, India. Flying by Indian Airlines (:-s) my hols started off on the wrong foot as the aircraft from Chennai reached Singapore 3 hours late, delaying my flight by 3 hours too. Anyways, as they say... better late than never.

Was in Chennai for a couple of days, now in Bangalore to spend 3 days with my cousins and will be back in Chennai tomorrow. Oh mom's food - fantastic!!

A Day to Remember!

2005-09-27T00:39:00.000+08:00

24th September 2005. 7.15pm at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. A. R. Rahman makes his entrance at the top of the Singapore leg of his '3rd Dimension Tour'. The next 4 hours were awesome. Song after song he kept us entertained. Yeah they dropped the '3d' part of the show for their Singapore appearance, but heck, who needs 3d images when you have that awesome music. As I write this email on Monday evening, my voice has still not returned to normal, and a sore throat is the only physical remains of the merriment of that day!

The crowd was, sadly, so-Singaporean in the sense that the crowd was so behaved.... only clapped when the sing ended - no clapping to the rhythm of the song so much so that Hariharan, Blaaze and others had to push the crowd to sing and clap along... atleast thats how it was until the 'break'. Yeah, I add the apostrophe for break 'cos that was how that piece was advertised... as a filler for the performers to take a break. But I'll be damned if anyone in the crowd walked out to take a break.Renownedd drummer Sivamani held the whole packed stadium to their seats as he slowly converted a fusion piece with Levon and Attila into a Sivamani solo. Oh that man simply breathes percussion. The speed of his movements almost made one feel like he must be having a couple of extra hands hidden somewhere :-s

And all the big names in the Indian playback industry were there - Hariharan, Sadhana Sargam, Udit Narayan, Madhushree, Karthik, Kailash Kher. And no, I haven't forgotten Chitra... its just that she deserves a mention all to her self. Her voice is simply amazing, and I just couldn't have enough of her! I know I'm repeating myself, but what a show, what a night! Its gonna be a night I'll remember for days to come. And I hope that ARR can enchant us once more sometime soon! Long Live ARR! Longer Live His Music!!

PS: A friend found someone who had actually spent their time at the concert noting down the songs :-s, so here it is if you are interested.

Hi Hello!!

2005-09-19T00:56:00.000+08:00

Salaam Namaste was the next to be ticked off the list by Aye Kay. And it was a well-worth outing. Starts off as a brilliant comedy starring the entertaining Saif Ali Khan of Hum Tum fame and the adorable Preity Zinta of Kal Ho Na Ho fame. Both imensely likeable characters (Nikhil Arora & Ambar Malhotra respectively) who come out so natural that you can really connect with them having fun. The movie starts off with them disliking each other having only heard of the other, and as with many other Bollywood flicks, they go onto falling in love - all the while, the comedy keeping the audience thoroughly entertained.

Here's where the movie was, in my opinion, at the most professional. Them falling in love was not depicted in the standard Bollywood's moving-close-to-each-other-and-moving-away-at-the-last-minute style, but rather taking it the full way which, in my opinion, is the more professional and accurate reflection of life today. There were scenes of them in bed together and stuff, but nothing that was what I would call obscene. Yet, I would be terribly surprised if the version I saw was the same that was being telecast on the Indian silver screens - and if it is, then hats off to the Bollywood industry and the censors, and more importantly for the Shiv Sena for not demanding the scenes' removal - everybody grows up I guess.

The movie has its share of seriousness and the director has tried to make up for it with a rather overdose of slapstick comedy in the last 15 minutes which, depending on your mood at the time of watching the movie, can swing from mildly funny to outright irritating. Anyhow, Abhishek Bachan's narration through the movie is quite good and he tries to add-on a lot in the final few minutes as he tries to play the Robin Williams' character of Nine Months. In addition to this lift from Nine Months, there appears to be a lot of comic influence from the ever popular serial Friends.

Oh and I forgot to mention Javed Jaffery. An interesting Bihari character who doesn't stop pointing his middle finger at any point in the movie, and well his character really has to be seen to be appreciated. So go watch Salaam Namaste, its worth a visit to the theatres. I would love a 2nd visit myself, but I'm unlikely to be in the majority on that choice. Happy viewing!!!

Cinderella Man

2005-09-17T10:54:00.000+08:00

Given my recent blogging trends, if I am writing a post it usually means that I've just watched a movie and wanna share my thoughts about it, and this time around its Cinderella Man. Directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe - the same combination from the mutiple oscar winning 'A Beautiful Mind' - and Renée Zellweger, the movie is based on the life story of the early 20th century American boxer James J. Braddock. The story is about an up and coming boxer who loses his way up the boxing ladder due to the Great Depression following the 1929 Stock Market crash. He struggles to make ends meet for himself and his family, and hunger and lack of practice meant that he kept losing the few boxing matches he got a chance to take part in. Finally, with the support of his long-time manager and friend Joe Gould (played by Paul Giamatti) he gets back in shape and starts to climb his way up until a match is setup against the World champion of the time.

Overall, the movie appears to have a Rocky touch-and-feel to it, espescially in the 2nd half as Braddock trains to get himself fit for the matches. Ofcourse, Rocky was an out and out action movie, but this one was more realistic (probably because its a true story :-p). The way the character of Braddock was depicted as an inspiration for the whole country - fighting back from the downs of the world to regain what he has once lost - it was something very well done, and I think the character portrayal was something that stood out even in A Beautiful Mind. Overall, a movie definitely worth watching - possibly an Oscar nomination for the director.

Rs 1,000,00,00,000 shredded down the drain!

2005-09-15T12:35:00.000+08:00

You read that heading right! Rupees One Thousand Crore are to be shredded because they were in the basements of Mumbai banks and got damaged by the now-infamous floods. Attempts are on to dry the notes, so as to be able to count them, following which the RBI will be shredding those notes.

On a related topic, the RBI has found a huge number of counterfeit notes - over 1 lakh notes worth over 2 crores - and has issued a public warning to be aware of counterfeits at large. I still remember the times in Chennai shops (not sure if it was the same case in other parts of the country) 7 to 8 years ago when the 500Rs note was still new, everytime you handed over a Rs500 note, the cashier would turn around and compare the numbers against a known set of 'possible' counterfeit bill numbers.

Damn. That 'I still remember' statement makes me feel olddddd.

Canon S2 IS

2005-09-06T02:08:00.000+08:00

Over the weekend Comex 2005 happened at Suntec, and I got myself a Canon S2 IS digital camera. 5 mega pixel, 12x optical zoom. It rox!! Here's a pic of it!

The Canon S2 IS

Samples of some pix taken thus far with it:

Waiting for the MRT

Outside my friend's office

Looking down from the Esplanade

In the midst of nothing!

The Fullerton Hotel

Copywood

2005-08-30T21:52:00.000+08:00

Bollywood has fast turned into copywood with so many movies nowadays being flicked - or inspired as the new directors' term seems to be - from old movies and those of other languages. Sarkar's the one to really stand out among the previous movie - ofcourse an imitation of the world class Godfather. Just now was randomly browsing some websites, and found that a new movie "Ramji Londonwaley" is being released starring tamil superstar Madhavan. The name of the flick struck me as interesting, and I looked around for their website (which wasnt tough to find at http://www.ramjilondonwaley.com/ :-p) And as expected, yet another flick being flicked. This time from a Tamil movie - Nala Damayanti. The Tamil version has a cook from Palakkad (a village-town on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border - and my home town incidently) who flew to Australia to make some money to pay for his sis' wedding, and the movie is an entertaining comedy about how this poor, vegetarian village-boy starts to adjust to a foreign city life. But I wonder though... surely Bollywood doesn't have to even copy the lead character's name?!?!?!? Madhavan was Ramji even in the Tamil version.

Dining on a bamboo raft with tigers alongside exotic fishes surrounded by native drum rolls!

2005-08-29T11:34:00.000+08:00

Sounds like Africa? Well not quite. It's Singapore actually. Atleast, if Mr. Tay Kheng Soon's idea for an Indo-Pacific Cultural Centre in downtown Marina Bay comes a reality. At first read, the entire idea sounds sooo unrealistic that I was surprised Today actually ran it as their 'cover' story. But the glamour-loving awe-struck part of me was simply blown away by the grandeur of the design. A 20-story vertical zoo, dinner on bamboo rafts set sail, an aquarium with creatures from Indian and Pacific oceans, a suspension bridge, and cable cars connecting downtown to Little India and China Town.

Overboard? Hell yeah! But it most certainly will put Singapore in completely different map from tourism point of view. Forget the IRs dudes. Do this, and you'll have people queueing up till Madagascar to catch a flight to Singapore.

PS: If anyone finds a link that contains pictures of Mr. Tay's design for this Indo-Pacific Centre, please post it in the comments section. Judging by his designs for some of his other 'ideas', these designed should be really worth seeing.

All Tied Up!

2005-08-23T22:56:00.000+08:00

2 weeks since I went anywhere near blogger. And today finally some free time. So just thought will atleast make sure that the Blogger.com guys dont shut down my blog for lack of use :-p So here's me saying "I'm still alive" to the cyber-world. Hopefully will get kicking again sometime soon. As it is at the moment, work's been making sure that I dun have a life outside of it. Well, just one of those phases I guess... errr.. 'hope' should be more like it! Anyways, outside of work, haven't had much to write home [read as 'blog'] about. Gotta do something soon man! Or atleast catch up with what's been happening across my blog rolls for the last 10 days or so. Thank God I atleast like what I'm doing :-p if not the hours would have killed me by now :-p.

Cyber world - seeya soon. Hopefully....................................

Snippets

2005-08-11T11:32:00.000+08:00

As always, when I'm too tied up with work, the only post I can come up with - Interesting news articles I came across:

Get too many speeding tickets & parking fines? Fret no more. Get your insurance company to pay your fines. Bisso company of Sweden is the 1st to take the step.

Planning a trip to Spain? Don't bother to take your swimming 'attire'. Swimmers have been facing stinging attacks from increasing numbers of jelly fish. The cause for the increasing jellyfish population?? As always, global warming increasing the proliferation of the jellyfish, and illegal fishing of turtles which has reduced the number of jellyfish's predators. Nature again showing man that what you sow, so you reap!

Next time you hear a noisy car alarm outisde your house... don't try what this guy did to 'silence' it. Possibly having watched too many "Wild, Wild West" movies, probably the only way he knew to 'silence' anything was to shoot it down :-p It's an even bigger 'No-No' when the car isn't yours :-p

And that's all for now. Have a lush and bindaas weekend everyone, and do find some time to rock up to your fav restaurant for your masala-rich ruby murray. And ofcourse spend time with your cockapoo or labradoodle. And don't potty-mouth those poor chuggers who are just doing their jobs.
- Any of that not make sense to you?? Then get yourself the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary which has now been expanded with a host of new words. What's more, the rising global influence of India is depicted by the new 'words of Indian origin'. And for those with extremely fluent potty-mouthing skills, there are now 350 officially recognised ways to insult a person - some of newer ones of which can be found here. Interestingly, there are apprently only about 35 ways to compliment somebody :-p.

Sarkar

2005-07-31T10:44:00.000+08:00

2002 saw him releasing Company & Road. 2 good, short, entertaining movies where some superb acting (Vivek Oberoi in Company, Manoj Bajpai in Road) and haunting music (ganda hai par dandha hai in Company, road ke har mod pe from Road) really stood out.

Then came Darna Mana Hai, Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon, Ab Tak Chappan, Vaastu Shastra, and D. Hardly entertaining, mostly irritating. But with Sarkar, Ram Gopal Verma is back to his old ways.

Sarkar is, in my opinion, a very professionally (read as Hollywood style) taken movie. None of the unnecessary song-and-dance routines, great sound track to back up the on-screen events - the best of which was a rendition of "Govinda, Govinda, Govinda". Listen to the full track here. There was a small love-story angle, but that died off abruptly early in the movie with almost no lovey-dovey scenes. RGV stuck to the main theme of the movie well, ignoring everything else.

Acting-wise, no one needs to say anything about Bachchan saab. Ooops, I need to be more specific, nothing can be said about Bachchan-senior that hasn't already been said. A stellar performance in the kind of role he has totally mastered over the years - the stoic, unshakeable old guy whom few are willing to cross. But Bachchan-junior was a revelation for me. I usually find him to have not pulled any significant acting job. But here, its different. In the 2nd half of the movie, he plays a close resemblance of the 'Angry, Young man', and does that superbly. I think it is a first that I walked out of a theatre thinking that Abhishek has added a positive value to the movie. Added to the good acting, is some really good dialogues through most of the movie.

That the movie's central character is based on Mumbai's Bal Thackeray is made greatly obvious by Bachchan senior's look. The red tikka on his forehead and the large rudraksh in his hands are huge identifiers.

There was a few scenes which were a little lame, such as when one of the characters was cornered by his enemies and was trying to escape from 20 of his captors... and does so with ease. It is a little lame the way that escape happens... but those are minor incidents that last a total of 4 to 5 minutes tops. So its easy to accedit it to the Bollywood factor and leave it at that. The movie is short, hardly touching 2 hours and, for what it is worth, Aye Kay gives Sarkar a full thumbs-up and suggests to those who haven't seen it to pay a worthwhile visit to the theatres.

I couldn't help it!

2005-07-25T08:07:00.001+08:00

I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation.

- From the back cover of my housemate's "The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde" - the only page that I could read completely was the back cover :-p Wonder why anyone would put in sooooo much effort to understand his rather complicated writing style - but that is why his works are all classics :-s

Side-step: At the moment I'm in the midts of reading 3 books - each temporarily suspended to make way for the next - all 3 fairly intersting, though likely only the 3rd would be known by many.

The Killer's Game, Jay R. Bonansinga. A story where a former hitman believes he has contracted a cancer, and rather than live through the pain decides to issue a huge 'contract' on himself, only to realise that the docs messed up his reports. An attempt to escape from his own contract.
Indian Killer, Sherman Alexie. A native American, adopted at birth by a white couple, who as he grows up starts to have an identity crisis.
The Half Blood Prince, J.K.Rowling. The 6th book of Harry Potter. Need I say more!

Not being a very avid reader, 3 books at a time is extremely strange by my standards :-s Hopefully I complete all.

Get-away Spot

2005-07-19T22:43:00.000+08:00

Working life can often get very frustrating, and usually very stressful. Atleast for me it does, and I need a get-away place where I can be by myself and calm myself down. My extremely short temper can be blown very easily, and my get-away place is the only thing that can keep me in check. For many years now, the sea-side had been this place for me - and over the last year, the Esplanade had become a favourite haunting place - partly because it is not far from the city and I could drop by on my way back from work. But more so because I had a direct bus back from there to my place, and this meant I could be there a long as I wanted without needing to worry about the long walk back to an MRT station from the Esplanade (no train station nearby). Having shifted houses a couple of weeks ago, I was kinda disappointed that I would not be able to make my way back via the Esplanade... but today, on my way back I found a bus that goes from Esplanade to my new place as well. :-) Esplanade, here's to some more quality time together :-D

Things I never thought I'd hear

2005-07-19T22:19:00.000+08:00

This weekend (another busy one) there were 2 instances that left me totally bewildered.

1st. At a lunch hosted by a colleague, my colleagues introduced me to their kids as "beta/beti, uncle ko hello kaho!"... Uncle?? When did I become uncle? What happened to that li'l innocent kid who came to Singapore for his studies hardly 5 years ago. Uncle.... and me?? Ouch that hurts.... :-s

2nd. On my way back from the above lunch (which I went to straight after a cricket match), in a very crowded MRT, I was standing in front of a pram with a li'l boy sitting quietly. All of a sudden he became noisy, and kept asking his mom to pick him up. His mom tries shush him into sitting quietly again, but fails miserably. What does she do then, she points towards me and says something like "be quiet, or else this guy will take you away" :-s Granted that this lady spoke in Chinese, which I understand not a word of, but I've been around enough kids to make out from the mother's body language - "rona band kar, nahi to gabbar singh tujhe le jayega". Me and Mr. Gabbar Singh in the same position :-s Hullo!!!!

Oh and as a side-track, today I completed a year at my first job :-) not bad for the innocent li'l kid who left home li'l more than 5 years ago.

Hypocritic? Not at all.

2005-07-13T00:28:00.000+08:00

Lindsay Pereira has this rather critical piece on Indian hypocricy on Rediff today. While it may be slightly overboard, most of it certainly reflects Indian society perfectly. Prestige, shame, disgrace all words thrown about in Indian socities, espescially if someone you know is involved in one or more of those items in the article. Yet.... its changing. The new generation is definitely open-minded. Yes, the modernisation, or westernisation, or whatever else you may call it, has it own deficiencies. But, overall it does benefit the society in general to be more open than for such items to be the 'forbidden fruit' when the tag itself is enough to ensure that it is tried out. Haven't you noticed, everytime there is a board on a wall that says "Fresh Paint, Dont Touch", you'll find people touching to check if it really is so :-)

Well, anyhow, not withstanding the rather 'touchy' topic that Lindsay has penned, the article is worth a reasonable chuckle (if not a whole-hearted laugh) at the liberally applied stereotypes.

Weekend News

2005-07-11T01:03:00.000+08:00

My 1st post from my new PC. I finally went and bought me PC from Sim Lim Square this evening, and its just kinda on the way to being totally up. All the Windows updates (yeah, I'm a Windows fan, and not a Linux fanatic), Norton scans have all been setup, but re-installing of the OS is such a pain - it takes ages to get the PC configured just right; the quest is still on towards that, and this quest is likely to extend into the wee hours of the morning. Good luck @ work tomorrow for me :-s

As for other weekend news, spent saturday at a charity event from work followed by yet another Hindi movie, which led to yet another depressing dissappointment. This time the cause was Dus. Anyways, ended up at the movie with (among others) Divya, Deepak & Ashwin. Ran into plenty of other people - colleagues, relatives, uni classmates - and not one of them had found the movie interesting. Well that was just another 2 and a half hours totally wasted.

Sunday was spent doing some odd jobs around home, helping a friend shift houses and ofcourse the earlier mentioned PC-buying & setting up session. All in all a pretty tied-up weekend which disappeared faster than ever, and now its already back-to-work time. Hopefully me new PC will take me through till next weekend safely :-)

Paheli

2005-07-04T12:14:00.000+08:00

Went to see Paheli last night. The only time I felt more bored at a movie was at M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Village' - I kept waiting for something to happen, and kept waiting & waiting & waiting. Paheli was not quite downright terrible, but was something pretty close to that line. It didn't keep me captivated, didn't have any great acting that stood out, Amitabh comes in with yet another 'special guest' appearance but doesn't do any justice to his acting expertise.

Things to take away from the movie - Juhi Chawla looked amazingly pretty :-) I will say the moview was well-taken, but lacked a substantial story & the little story that was there had been stretched extremely thin; made worse by some pretty uninspiring songs causing more delays.

Anyway, thats all for now. Still got no PC at home (probably wont have until the next weekend), and not much free time at work to update my blog regularly from here. So likely to have few (if at all) updates until next week.

Quick update

2005-06-26T09:59:00.000+08:00

A major lack of updates over the last week has been due to major activity at the workplace together with being in the midst of moving houses; its been a pretty busy time. But I had to take a few minutes off to inform the world about an incident that happened with my dad when he was in this part of the world a few days ago.

My dad was travelling to Indonesia on work, and had a multiple entry visa for Indonesia. His company had applied for this visa a few months ago after he had travelled there on a single entry visa for an urgent issue. Now he had flown down from Chennai to Singapore, spent a few hours at his Singapore branch with his colleagues who were flying out to Jakarta with him, preparing for their presentations. He flew to Jakarta later the same day, and at the immigration at Jakarta airport, his passport was confiscated, and he was informed in no fewer words that he was "in custody" and would be "deported back to Singapore" immediately - the reason... his visa is not valid because he hasnt used it within 90 days of it being issued. Yes, it does state this requirement on the visa itself, but to be honest, its one of the few details that is not bolded on the visa, and is hidden in the middle of a long paragraph of text.

Now, the reason I find this ludicrous is that Indonesia only recently announced 'visa-on-arrival' for Indian passport holders. And what I cant understand is why would any country have such a condition saying "I will allow you to enter my country how many ever times you want within one year, provided you come here within 3 months" :-s I would not have expected this sort of condition with any visa, least of all with Indonesia, which to be best of my knowledge doesn't have any problems with illegal immigrants overstaying their welcome.

Modernising the Game

2005-06-26T09:30:00.000+08:00

Until last week, pretty much every Cricket follower would have agree that Cricket ODIs had become repetitive & predictable. Then the Bangla boys drop-kicked the Aussies. A once-in-a-blue moon occurence no doubt, but still a break from the monotony of the game. The twenty-20 version of the game is steadily gaining ground in many parts of the cricketing world - England (having pioneered it), South Africa, Pakistan & Sri Lanka, with even Australia grudgingly playing a Twenty-20 game as warmup for their tour of England.

My point here being that ODI Cricket as such takes an extremely long time and is losing to other sports (except in the Indian subcontinent), mainly soccer. And thats where Twenty-20 has come in to make the game quicker, and more adrenaline pumping - where the batsmen can come and go bang-bang all over the place.

The other way to increase (or retrieve) the interest in the game, is by attempting to remove the monotony of the game - and this the ICC is trying by accepting the suggestions to allow soccer-style player substitutions and allowing the fielding captain to decide when to use the fielding restrictions. This I believe will make the game lot more interesting... atleast I hope so.

Going to the Beginning

2005-06-18T00:37:00.000+08:00

It used to be not so long ago that after I watch a movie, the immediate next few hours would be spent savouring it, or ruing it... and the next day, life would go on as it did the previous day. But now, the very 1st thing I do after catching a flick is to come up here and type out my thoughts on what I jus saw. Its almost as if the world would stop if I didn't. Huh!! Why risk that happening... here's my take on the beginning of Batman.

This rather cautious review of the movie by Sushil earlier today is rather flattering in itself. What I got from the movie was rather below expectations. And mind you, I went with almost none. I went for the flick at the insistence of a friend, added to a curiousity in me, having grown up watching the Batman cartoon-serials. (I call it cartoon-serials because in the middle of each episode, cartoon figures would come up during the fights with placards saying 'Bang', 'Booom', and my favourite 'Kapoww'). But yeah coming back to the point, the movie's storyline is weak to say the least. The League of Shadows that has been 'saving' cities from corruption over the years is hard to sell, and the movie makes a rather pathetic attempt at it.

Anyhow, given the plot, the movie does go deep into how Bruce Wayne develops the fighting skills that make Batman who he is, and that is one of the better parts of the movie. Having decided the plot, they do stick totally to it, and I give them credit for that. So once you can buy the plot, it is quite entertaining.

As an ordinary viewer, a major disappointment was the action scenes. They were in plenty, but in an attempt to make Batman appear extremely quick, fast camera movements are used in dark settings, and this tended to leave a dazed appearance on me. I mean you knew that Batman was beating the living daylights out of the henchmen, but you needed to imagine a large part of the fights because you couldn't really see his action all the time.

But personally, they made up for that by the primitive Batmobile. It is mini-tank with all the features that one expects in the Batmobile. But the one thing that won it for me, was the firing mode of the car, where the drivers seat turns down such that the driver ends up with his stomach lying on the bottom of the car (still strapped in the seat ofcourse) and can see directly in front through somewhere around the radiator, with his 2 arms holding guns/weapons around the headlights. I'm finding it difficult to describe, but maybe its best to say that it appears like a robot shaped like a car would :-s And the car-action was good. (I'm a sucker for high speed chases by the way)

I've avoided mentioning the plot at all here to give anyone planning to watch the movie a full chance to enjoy the movie, and its 'climax'. But in closing, all I'd like to say about this movie is that if you don't watch it, you wouldn't be missing much. Having said that, I wouldn't go to the extent of telling anyone not to watch it. It may still be worth the ticket price.

Flying King Size

2005-06-16T22:46:00.000+08:00

Vijay Mallya's Kingfish Airlines just became India's 1st airline company to order the largest aircraft thus built - the Airbus A380s. While that is impressive and good news for the Indian aviation scenario, it does indeed surprise me that Mallya would take up such an expense barely weeks after the airline's launch. It could well be a gimmick, but its a damn pricey one, for 2 reasons.

One, an A380 would be an absolute waste for domestic travel - the volumes would simply not add up; so lets assume that the A380s are for Mallya's plans to fly abroad. But, given the amount of lobbying Jet and Sahara had to do before being permitted to fly international, I wonder how & why Mallya thinks that he has that covered - that too in India, where there is no guarantee of who will be in power when the time does come.

But more importantly, no Indian airport can take the A380 as yet, and as far I know, none of the airports have come up with concrete plans or schedule to upgrade to support the flying giant. So Mallya seems to be way ahead of time with regards to the A380 in India.

The point to be noticed though is that the A380s are scheduled to be delivered only starting 2010 - perhaps Mallya is confident that he can puch for Mumbai or Delhi airports to be upgraded by then, and also that his political clout (he is involved in active politics in Karnataka) would be strong enough to get his take his airline international by then.

Does Customer Care?

2005-06-16T22:09:00.000+08:00

I read this article in today's Today on the train to work, and one of the totally mindless conversations that my friends and I have had during the years in NTU came to mind. That conversation was where we compared customer service in India & the same here in Singapore. It was unamimous - Singapore is no place to expect any care as long as we were customers. An analogy used by the author in the Today article was so apt:

Take the example of a chess game. The King may not have the sweeping power of the Queen or the long-range ballistic aggression of the rook and bishop, but its safe existence is essential to keeping the game alive and the other pieces in the game.
.
Therein lies the quintessence of the relationship between a service provider and the customer: Without buyers, sellers cannot exist.

As the article goes on to point most people in a position of customer service in Singapore are either unhelpful, disinterested, or outright rude. This is one area where I honestly believe that India has much to offer to Singapore. Indian companies really take their customers seriously, and usually go out of the way to make them feel wanted & important - basics that can help a business retain their customers. Let me not include IA and AI in this, as they are but exceptions to the norm - they seem to hate any person who flies with them, and I should know... having flown them 7 times in 4 years. But, thats another story for another day.

My theories were reinforced tonight, as I was waiting for my take-away dinner at Pizza Hut. I asked the girl at the counter if my dinner was ready. She responsed "Let me check", and walked away, straight to a table to take an order, and from there to the next. And I was still waiting for her to check for my dinner.

I'm not saying all Singaporean companies have a don't-care attitude, there are many who do go out of the way to keep their customers happy. Like, for instance, this article later in the same paper:

"So when it rains, potential customers who need to cross over may be hesitant. By providing the shelter, we hope that not only people who intend to shop, but also people passing by, will come into our store."

OG @ Orchard Point offers an umbrella service for people crossing the road, helping them to the sheltered walkways across the street. Usually when I'm out, and it starts to rain, my thoughts are "s**t, what a pain". With potential customers in such an attitude, to make an impression is easy - the slightest of actions can go a long way, and this is what OG is doing, and in the process convinced CentrePoint to do as well.

Way-to-go OG. With more like you, Singapore may yet become a customer paradise.

Google Me!

2005-06-15T00:12:00.000+08:00

In a narcissistic bout, I Googled for myself (Aye Kay) to see where I stand -> and guess what!!! My blog's numero uno in the Google list. Me, myself and I find a mention in 5 out of Google's top 10 in this search.

Here are the occurences as of 00:00 hours on 15-Jun-2005
#1 -> Ultimate Enigma (Link to main page)
#2 -> Ultimate Enigma: Rakesh et Vimmi.... aka Bunty aur Babli (Link to one of recent blogs)
#3 -> Blogger: User Profile: Aye Kay (Link to my Blogger profile)
#6 -> nimbupani | l33t... (Me during one of my more ignorant times on Divya's blog)
#7 -> nimbupani | Kuala Lumpur Diary Day One (Me again commenting on Divya's blog about her KL trip where I had met up with her & Deepak)

And yeah, if anyone decides to mention that 'Aye Kay' isn't common, so its very easy to get to the top of Google's list.... well DON'T :-p. It ain't my fault I don't use my actual name to blog :-p.

And yeah, since I am on my vanity spree - my blog reached 1000 over hits. Wait thats not the best part - it started from 0 (zero) only on May 15th. So its 1000+ hits in less than 1 month.

Again, if you want to point out that every page refresh increases the count and that free counters aren't always reliable.... well again DON'T. (:-p)

PS: Congratulations & bouquets are welcome. **gives a shy, modest grin**

Ramayan - Mickey style

2005-06-14T10:38:00.000+08:00

Just got this sms from a friend about a minute ago, and it so appealed to my PJ-senses that I simply had to put it up. So here it is. Njoi -

Donald had a fight with Mickey, and banged him against a wall. Micky began reciting the Ramayana. Why?

Answer: Because he became WallMickie.

hahaha. lol. rofl. hehe. (I actually wanted to add the sound effects here, but this will do)

A MacRitchie Walk

2005-06-13T15:45:00.000+08:00

On the Sunday just past, I decided to take a trip to MacRitchie Reservoir and take a look at the HSBC Tree Top Walk. I had vaguely heard mention on this in one of the pamphlets that regularly found their way to our flat mailbox from the building's management office. A few weeks ago, a colleague mentioned the same having spent a saturday morning there. After planning for 5 weeks, with the plan being cancelled every weekend due to some or other engagements, I finally had a weekend morning with absolutely nothing planned. I planned to wake at 8am, hoping to leave by 8.20 and reach the edge of MacRitchie by 8.45. After delaying to skip the rain, I reached MacRitchie Reserve Park an hour later than scheduled.

I enter near a dam and walked along the shoreline and saw beautiful streched of greenery all around. Walking further away from civilisation, there was a section of the sea protruding into the land where small turtles swam around, came on shore as though curious at those big things with a shiny front that gave out flashes of light at irregular intervals (cameras), and would rush back into the water as soon as they noticed sharp movement of any kind.

After spending a few minutes enjoying the open sea and the calming effect of the complete greenery, I made for the path towards the Tree Top Walk (TTW). Signboards indicated that the Walk was 5.2kms away. I started out briskly carrying only camera, walking through a canopy of rain forest plants. It was so beautiful to walk under the trees with the sun's rays not shining directly down at any point. And for a change the path was not concretised, but was left the way nature had made it - stones and mud (which was not helped by the fact that it had been raining less than an hour ago) - but that just added to the fun.

I enjoyed walking along the trail, stopping ever so often to take pictures of all and sundry. For the 1st time in Singapore, I heard birds chirping away to glory in their melodious splendour. And each step seemingly taking me further away from civilisation. After the 1st kilometre, the shore could no longer be seen from the trail, and I assumed that I was infact heading inland deeper into 'the last rainforest of Singapore' (yes there are boards all over asking people to preserve the last rainforest of Singapore)

After walking for almost 4km, there was light at the end of the tunnel, and I assumed that I was nearing the end of the trail to Tree Top Walk. I walked towards the end expecting to be in the middle of no-where. Instead found myself at the entrance to an extremely huge, Golf Country Club. The wilderness I was enjoying suddenly gave way to a paved road which appeared to be frequented by vehicles.

Just as my disappointment was starting to push its way through, I found a family pointing at bushes along the side of the roadand talking about birds. And in my mind, I was thinking 'poor souls, its only in Singapore that common sparrows would be such an attraction'. But as I walked towards them, I saw that infact just beyond the bushes there were a large number of monkeys hanging from trees above. Yes, real live monkeys, doing their monkey things, and not stuck in behind cages in a zoo, and in Singapore at that - a country which 'prides' itself in not allowing even a crow to fly around. It was a pleasant surprise indeed.

Anyways, the walk through civilisation was short enough - a few minutes at most - and the last km to the TTW was along an uphill road that was among the most steep roads I've encountered anywhere outside of the Ooty hills (then again, I haven't really travelled that much, so it isn't really a big thing). But this last km took more out of me than the previous 4.

Anyhow I made it to the Tree Top Walk in 1 piece and found out that this was a long (250m) suspension bridge stretched across 2 hills, at a maximum height of 25m above ground level. Oh the view was exhilarating. You could see for miles, and is definitely one of the more thrilling sights I have seen. But as I reached around the mid-way of the suspension bridge, it became apparent to me that the middle of a swinging suspension brige high above the ground is not the place to be alone for someone who suffers from a fear of heights, albeit a minor fear.

Anyhow, I did make the other end quite successfully (the bridge is quite narrow, so the Singaporean efficiency had forced the walk to be one-way, meaning that there was no turning back for me), and even stopped to take photos of monkeys calming looking at the wierd folks who kept pointing and staring at them :-)

There on began a long downward journey to the base of the opposite hill, the whole stretch from the start of the TTW till the base another approx 4km. Once on level gorund, I had the option to walk back the way I came, or continue in the other direction making a circular route around MacRitchie. I chose the latter, mainly because there were direction signs pointing to something known as Jelutong Tower, and I was keen to find out what this was. So on I went until I reached this wooden structure that was 7 storeys high. Braving the fear of heights yet again, I walked to the top to get another breathtaking view of the rainforest all around.

The walk back from first went past stretches of golfing greens, followed by trails along the shoreline. The shoreline trail was quite empty and at numerous times I had the feeling of being in some Hollywood movie, marooned on some deserted island with the sea on 1 side and forested land on the other. A couple of times, a propeller plane even flew over the sea adding to this effect :-)

Along this final stretch, I saw 2 monkeys... one which was striding confidently towards me along the trail, and when I paused to take pictures, it slowly swung itself over the edge of the trail into the water, and swam across to the opposite bank - the 1st time I've seen a monkey swim. I wonder then why in zoos they keep monkeys behind water-filled moats if monkeys can infact swim. I wonder... The 2nd monkey I saw was one that came out of the trees on my side, picked up a discarded potato chips packet and put its hands into the packet looking for food. It was quite hilarious to look at, and almost human infact. :-)

By the time I made it back to civilisation, I was tired and exhausted, having walked almost 15kms in just over 3 hours - walking nonstop except when I paused to take pictures, and to catch my breath after cimbing the 7 storeys of Jelutong Tower. I was dead tired by the time I took the bus home, but it was worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip through nature's splendour, and all of a sudden, Singapore felt a much nicer place to be in than it was earlier that day. The tragic part of the story - for the last 1 year, I've been staying 10-minutes away from MacRitchie, and I discover the beauty of the place a few days before I shift my residence. Damn, why didn't I pull myself to go there earlier.

I will put up a few pics (nothing great) on flickr over the next few days when I an find some free time.

PS: I'm not sure who would read such a long blog :p thanks for spending time for those who actually reached this point ^_^ :-)

Animal Trouble

2005-06-13T10:44:00.000+08:00

A couple of news snippets that caught my attention, and thought I'd share them with the world :-p

~ Holy Cow?? More like killer cow. And its getting what it deserves. A mad cow in Nigeria has been arrested on charges of murder after it ran into a guy on the side of the road, doing what men do on the side of a road.

~ Kitty waste gets a whole new meaning, as a couple of cute li'l kittens burn down their owner's house.... after they shortcircuited a fax machine by strategically urinating on the electrical printing components. And after the incident, firefighters have informed the public that their cats & dogs should be more careful when they decide to relieve themselves.

~ A Scot was the fastest to shave. An Aussie was slightly slower, but far smoother, and therefore, overall better - he beat competitors from over 27 countries in the World Championships. And after that the Scot says that he can go faster back home, but in Aussieland the hair is thicker, and skin softer. Well, shearing 12 sheep in 15 odd minutes isn't too bad either.

~ And finally, a Spiderman who does not have a history of spider bites - a Frenchman climbed 62 stories of a Hong Kong building with his bare hands, and no ropes. And no, he didn't use the staircase :-p.

A pessimistic hit at GoI

2005-06-09T13:26:00.000+08:00

The Government of India is probably the most infamous government in terms of starting off on huge projects that end up either never getting completed, or getting being so late that it gets outdated by completion. Here's my take on a few 'high-profile' activities in progress, and being planned.

1. The Golden Quadrilateral Project
An ambitious project to link the 4 metros by 5,846-kms of 4-lane expressways is something that I have been trying to follow in the news regularly. It has been my opinion for a while now that this is a project, if completed, that will help improve the transport infrastructure in the country, and atleast place it at level not too far below the developed countries. But a look at the official status of the stretches under construction indicated the Indian lethargy in action- almost all the stretches shoul have been completed by end of 2005, and already most of them have been delayed by upto 18 months. And I'm pretty sure that as we get closer to these 'estimted completion dates' these dates will be further pushed back.

2. River Linking Project
Another project that if implemented will help the whole country tide over various natural disasters. In our country where 1 part of the country can be facing drought even as another part of the country faces ravaging floods, the linking of rivers can help take the flood waters away to the drought-affected regions. That the government takes this project very seriously is reflected in this speech by the Secretary for Water Resources A. K. Goswami. The UPA Government of Manmohan Singh also indicated an eagerness to keep this project flowing. This project has come about as a directive from the Supreme Court to be completed by 2012, but already the GoI has indicated that the earliest it could finish is 2016. I'm willing to bet that there will be further delays.

3. SWAN Project
Standing for State-Wide Area Network, this is a new initiative that GoI has nodded for - a Rs. 30b project to provide citizens with a eServices outlet for various activities required with the government. The tentative plan is to provide every citizen and business in India with a unique number (equivalent to a login) for these eServices. Now after the fiasco in delivering of the voter id-cards (which I believe is something that has still not been completed all over), I would believe that the government has learnt that such things aren't as easy to do as simply stating the plan. How long do you think this project is going to take?

Changing face of Indian businesses

2005-06-09T11:29:00.000+08:00

On a pet topic of mine - airline travel in India, Air Deccan has kicked-off a battle on Indian streets to take on the war in the skies. Now all you need to do to buy a ticket on Air Deccan aircrafts is fuel your car. Rediff has more on Air Deccan's plans to sell tickets via HP petrol pump outlets across the country.

Still on the Indian aviation industry, Jet Airways has been accused by an American company called Jet Airways Inc as being funded by Al Qaeda. In return, Jet (India) has found that the President & CEO of Jet Airways Inc has a history of litigation and debt non-payments and are suing the US company for libel. Jet Airways' official press release further talks about litigation over the patent violations in using the same name.

On the business front, a good sign is Bank of Baroda - they've been in the news offlate for various good business reasons. They have recently announced Rahul Dravid as a brand ambassador, redesigned their logo to reflect their new brand-name, and also plan to start 24-hour services. They followed that up with an annoucement that they plan to setup an arm in Mauritius, and have also been permitted to expand to Hong Kong and Leicester in UK. Its great to see Indian national banks come to terms with modernisation and build their global image. And all this comes within weeks of BoB announcing a 35% dip in profits for the last quarter. As the saying goes, better late than never.

Staying with the finance sector, the GoI is all set to approve the merger of the rural regional banks of 6 different nationalised banks - again in an attempt to put the economies of scale to use in the evolving/modernising markets

Indian politics - inconsistency at work

2005-06-07T07:21:00.000+08:00

Indian politics are abound with examples of 'leaders' making about-turns, corrections to their statements, and even totally denying what they may have said in front of a video camera. Sometimes I cant help but think how these flip-flop (borrowing the term coined by US Prez & his cronies) gentlemen & ladies can ever lead our country anywhere but backwards. Nevertheless, I guess the nation has greatly been supported by a few strong leaders who stand head & shoulders above the rest - if not for Atalji, the NDA government would never have been formed, much less survived a full term. And with his retirement imminent, and Advani all set to take his place as the leader of the NDA alliance, it begs the question if the huge number of parties that make up the NDA would ever be able to provide the sort of unequivocal support that Vajpayee had, and to Advani at that.

Which brings me to what triggered off my line of thinking - Advani is known nation-wide - probably the world-over - as a staunch Hindutva leader. The numerous yath yatras over the years, fighting for the temple over Babri Masjid, plenty of anti-Pakistan statements (though this has definitely reduced/ceased over the last 6-7 years, not unrelated to the fact that BJP was in power. Yet, in Pakistan last month, he makes statements like 'Babri Masjid was the saddest day of his life' and statements praising the secularity of Pakistan father-of-nation Jinnah - the very same Jinnah whom India & Indian history books credit with the partition. But let us set aside the latter for now, since this is a question of history, and history can never be proven, and it is easily rewritten. But that still leaves the 1st statement on Babri Masjid - the statement coming from a guy who brought heated up the atmosphere at Ayodha on the D-day some 13 years ago, the guy who for legal reasons claims that he asked people to stop, but for pratically purposes just murmurred 'stop' with no intention of making anyone 'stop', the same guy who in the 5-6 years following the D-day held many rath-yatras from different corners of the country, all culminating at Ayodha in an attempt to stir the Hindu public into action.

An huge turnaround from this person who probably had the biggest role to play in the nation's biggest 'disaster' since Independance. That one incident has probably pushed the country further back than any other incident - and this in every walk of life. But 1 thing you must credit this guy with is that because of him, and his tactics in Ayodha, he managed to cultivate a strong Hindutva following, large enough to finally give the Congress a run for its money. And continuing on the same, he has now had to make about-turns to make himself appear secular enough to be the PM of India - a post which is most likely to be his if NDA can pull back a victory 4 years from now.

When IA and AI lose airtime

2005-06-05T02:08:00.000+08:00

For ages everytime a Hindi or Tamil movie (I cannot talk for any of the other languages for lack of exposure to them) have wanted to depict someone travelling to or within India by air, they've always used an Air India (if they wish to show an international arrival) or an Indian Airlines (for domestic arrivals) aircraft landing at the airport runway. AI and IA have been the sign of India airtravel literally for ever.

But 2 of the newest movies that I've seen are possibly showing a changing trend. Both Banty aur Babli and D have used Jet Airways aircraft - in B&B, Jet is the aircraft shown to transport the Reserve Bank of India's gold; while in D, a Jet Air taking-off symbolises Desu's wish to migrate to London.

Hmmm, perhaps a clear sign to our national carriers that they gotta pull up their socks pretty fast...

Its 'D' movie to miss

2005-06-05T01:34:00.000+08:00

The 2nd weekend in a row, I ended up at a Hindi cinema to watch a new release. After last week's entertaining Banty aur Babli, 'D' had a lot to live upto - which it didn't even come close to.

For anyone who has seen 'Company', D would be like a total remake of that - but a poor one at that. While D does have the expected gundaa style, the action of a typical Mumbai-don blockbuster, it doesn't stand out. The acting in Company was much better, and the music such as Khallas & Ganda He lingered on after the movie. D was average entertainment - though it was quite fast moving. It ends rather abruptly as well which was another let down.

Not withstanding the fact that 2 movies follow an almost same storyline, the characters depicted in the 2 movies are what can be termed a generation apart. While Company is expected to portray the lives of, and the falling apart of, Mumbai-don Dawood Ibrahim and his protégé-turned-rival Chotta Rajan. D, on the other hand, is supposedly a fictitious story. Deshu (the lead character played by Randeep Hooda) is the poor son of a police constable, and his gang became known as D-Company -> far too consistent with the life of Dawood Ibrahim. The movie ends when Deshu eliminates his mentor Hashim-bhai's gang after a fall-out.

Having said this, if anyone is really interested in seeing Mumbai dons smoking, drinking, shooting and simply aish kar-ing, then go watch this.... This will be the last real don movie coming out of India for a very very long time.

A full-time south Indian

2005-06-01T16:43:00.000+08:00

As the saying goes, you can take a tamilian out of south india, but you cant take south india out of the tamilian. Well it doesnt go exactly like that, but something there about :-p

Anyhow, the reason that this came up: what do you expect your diet to be if you travel to Iceland? To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. But i definitely didn't expect to have what our Prez Kalam-saab had - hot vadas and sambar. Yup, he is in Iceland and enjoyed his meal of vada-sambar so much so that he recommended it to others around.

Full story here.

All that thinking about vada-sambar had made me crave for the times I've sat at home and had mom's piping hot vadas. :'(

Its all about batteries!!

2005-06-01T13:40:00.000+08:00

Who invented the battery? Who coined the term 'battery'? Which is the most common type of battery used in space technology?

Try your hand at these, and a couple of other battery questions at Rediff's battery quiz.

Rediff regularly comes up with these so-called 'quizzes' where they pick up 5 interesting multiple choice questions. Their range of topics are quite varied ranging - in the last 10days they covered topics from from indian budget airlines to the origins of credit card to the history of Adidas. Inevitably makes for some good (*interesting*) reading.

When Time brings back a movie

2005-05-31T18:12:00.000+08:00

What do Satyajit Ray, Guru Dutt and Mani Ratnam have in common? The smart-***es out there would say 'they are all movie directors'.... and they would be right, though only partly. They are all Indian movie directors whose movies can be found on Time's list of the top 100 movies of all time.

Of the 5 Indian movies that made the cut, only 1 is from my lifetime (infact from double my lifetime :-s) - Mani Ratnam's Nayagan, an all-time tamil great. But this article on Rediff listed out synopses of the other 4 movies as well and I found myself quite interested in the movie. So if any of you in Singapore know where I can get hold of these other 4, please drop me a note - and if Nayagan or Schindler's List or The GodFather are anything to go by, then Pyaasa (Guru Dutt) and the Appu trilogy (Satyajit Ray) would definitely be worth watching.

Rakesh et Vimmi.... a.k.a Bunty aur Babli

2005-05-29T01:21:00.000+08:00

Saturday night was spent by visting the theate to watch the latest Hindi movie - Yash Raj Films' Bunty aur Babli. Overall feeling: great entertainment.

Plus points:

Quite humourous.
Some good acting by both leads - Abhishek Bachan (Bunty) and Rani Mukherjee (Babli).
Rani looked gorgeous and her dresses were inch perfect - most parts of the movie anyway.

Minus points:

Cant use logic to follow the movie (which may not be that much of a bad thing - with the routine of daily life, this nonsensical humour is pretty darn close to the best medicine)
Rani Mukherjee during the song 'Nach Baliye'.
My fav Aishwarya Rai in the 'item' number 'Kajra Re'.

***-*-*-***

Yeah I'm not great at giving a movie reviews, and well, you can find a lot of the Net anyways. All I wanna add here is that the movie is real fun. The basic story line is that of a 2 young ambitious people Rakesh (Abhishek) and Vimmi (Rani) living in 2 different towns of UP are sick of their respectful lives and wanna make money and get some fame - so they make their way to Lucknow and then to Kanpur. By then they realise that today's world only screws it up for honest people. So using the aliases Bunty and Babli respectively they take to a life of fraud, scam & crime. Their tricks & schemes earn them wide-spread fame across the nation's papers and at the same time provide an enjoyable flow of entertainment for the movie's viewers. The funniest part is when they manage to convince a 'gora' that the Taj Mahal was for sale/rent and got paid for that (with commission). The dialogues and screenplay at this stage was simply hilarious.

Amitabh Bachan's entry (yeah, he's in this movie as well) as the police Deputy Inspector of Police chasing the con-team is also quite funny. He starts of with an old joke about a Makhi and Machhi going for a movie. Well, for the punch line go watch the movie. :-)

As for Rani... she looked really well and truly ravishing through most of the movie. Except during the song 'Nach Baliye'. This song starts off with Rani in a extremely low cut short leather top and shorter skirt. It just didnt suit her figure and to be honest, it was almost nauseous. I cant remember what else she wore through that song, but there were a couple of other costumes as well which were not in good taste as well. Though there was a scene with some huge long curtains (more like loooong strips of cloth) hanging from the roof to the dance floors with which the 'extras' played around and gave scenes some overall good appearances.

The biggest disappointment that I took back from the movie was Ms. Rai. I had read Rediff's review of the movie before leaving for the show and it raved about a 'hot, hot, hot Aish'. As it turns out, Ash looked quite ordinary - well below her par. She did, however, have her midrif shown through her 'item' number and her 'jhatkes' were... well keeping in mind the language used on this blog, let me just say, they were captivating. To be honest though, this wouldn't classify as a standard Bollywood item number, and I should probably be calling it a 'special appearance number' instead. The Qawalli in itself (the music) was quite good.

What else is left to say about the movie - its got a pretty Bollywoody feel-good ending which is great since we dont come out of the movie thinking 'they shouldn't have ended it like that' or 'that would've been a better way to end it'. All-in-all it was a great time, and I recommend that you do watch Bunty aur Babli, and get totally entertained by the entire cast.

And oh yeah, Jet Airways and the new Suzuki SWIFT get immense screen coverage, and its a huge bit of advertising, especially for the newly globally launched SWIFT.

PS: With this movie, Rani Mukherjee has smooched her way onto an unique (atleast I think its unique) priviledge list: she has smooched a father and son actor pair in Bollywood films - Mr. Bachchan Jr. in this film (as part of their nuptial night) and Mr. Bachchan Sr. in the awesome Black. (This was brought to my attention by my housemate as part of a post-movie discussion)

Infact, this is also the 1st time that the Bachchan dad-son combination have worked together in a film - there are some good dialogues that play on this as well towards the end of the movie: things like Rani telling Amitabh's character "Aap bhi beedi pi rahe hain bachche ke samne?? Aap to inke baap ke tarah hain... Aapko samjhana chahiye tha!". Very interesting!!

**Hindi-to-English Dictionary - in order of use in this article**
item: A genre of song found in almost all Bollywood movies off-late where one of the beauties of Hindi cinema dance to entertain. Usually this song has no impact on the movie's storyline.
gora: Hindi slang for phiranga.
Makhi: A fly
Machhi: A mosquito
extras: All dancers apart from the main stars taking part in a Bollywood dance number.
jhatkes: A dance step where flexibility of the hip is a must.
phiranga: Hindi for Caucasian

Note: The Rani Mukerjee collage displayed above was compiled from wallpapers seen on Indiafm. Please do visit their website if you wish to get any of those pictures.

Desi Blog Meet @ Singapore

2005-05-28T18:20:00.000+08:00

All Indian bloggers à Singapore, the force beckons. Kaps has put in a gr8 effort to organise a bloggers' meet at Singapore. The details from his blog:
Date – 5th June (Sunday)
Venue – Starbucks @ Plaza Singapura
Time – 4 pm
Code of Conduct – No Singlish!
Anyone who can make it, please drop of a comment on his blog.

Latest addition to the Periodic table

2005-05-28T00:28:00.000+08:00

I got this joke as an email forward. I've read it years ago when it was last going around - as they say what goes around come around. Anyways, i read this... again.. and really had to put it up on my blog. I run the risk of isolating half the world (the dominant half possibly??)... but here it goes...

Element : WOMEN Symbol : WO+
Atomic mass : Accepted as 53.6 Kg; isotopes may vary from 40-200 kg.
Occurrence : Copious quantities in all urban areas.

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
1. Boils at room temperature
2. Freezes without any known reason
3. Melts if given special treatment
4. Bitter, if incorrectly used
5. Sweet as Honey if given a proper treatment

CHEMICAL PROPERTIES
1. Have great affinity for Gold, Silver and a range of precious stones and absorbs great quantities of expensive substances
2. May explode spontaneously without prior warning and for no known reason
3. Insoluble in liquids, but activity greatly increases by that
4. Most powerful money reducing agent known to man

COMMON USES
1. Highly ornamental, especially in sports cars
2. Can be great aid to relaxation

TESTS
1. Pure specimen turns rosy pink when happy
2. Turns green when placed behind a better specimen

POTENTIAL HAZARD
Illegal to possess more than one, although several can be maintained at different locations as long as specimens do not come in direct contact with each other.

!! WARNING !!
PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO THIS ELEMENT CAN CAUSE SEVERE FINANCIAL HEMORRHAGING AND MENTAL DISTRESS. BE CAUTIOUS AS ABOVE PROPERTIES ARE SHOWN BY ALL OF THE SPECIES

Ladies, spare me - but this was too good to not put up!!!

Red's the Way!!!

2005-05-22T10:32:00.000+08:00

Ever felt that you see more sporting winners wearing red than any other colour? Ferrari in F1 over the past 6~7 years, ManU in English football in the start of this century, The Chicago Bulls over the last years of the last century... heck even last night, an intensely close soccer game between Manchester United (in black) and Arsenal that went into penalty shootouts, saw Arsenal (in red) steal a victory and the FA Cup. How much of a role did their uniform play in this victory? According to Nature magazine, it may not be as insignificant as one would normally attribute to a uniform.

Maybe the Indian cricket team should make a switch to red uniforms as well... Maybe thats the key to knocking the Aussies off the top. Hmm makes for some thinking.

Who's who in GoI

2005-05-22T08:10:00.000+08:00

Anyone who has followed any amount of Indian politics, would know how different and varied our 'leaders' can be. Rediff has come up with this interesting piece -> the top most of the Indian Government. Majority of the ministers mentioned though seem to be in the list for achieving nothing (or almost nothing anyway) - interesting that Indian Governments always seem to have more of these guys only.

But this one halfway thru that article really takes the cake:

A RAJA

Minister for environment and forests who is unable to explain why the tigers have gone missing.

Dazzling Ash @ Cannes

2005-05-17T00:10:00.000+08:00

The Cannes film festival started almost a week ago, and I've been meaning to put up this entry since then, but have finally got around to it.

If you didn't see Ash on Day 1 of the festival, then you've missed something awesome. Click here to see pics of her as she walked in to give the inaugural speech at the event - becoming the first ever Indian film personality to do so. And she looked simpy gorgeous... but, I guess you've checked that out at the link above.

Off late she seems to have been having a lots of international PR exposure. First with David Letterman, then 60 minutes, more recently on the Oprah Winfrey show, and now the Cannes inaugural speech, for which by the way, she looked gorgeous. (I found this link containing the videos of all 3 interviews, though I haven't tried the downloads out yet - scroll down the page)

She seems to have made herself a permament event at Cannes - this is her 4th year in a row that she's been here. Her first time in 2002 was for the screening of Devdas. She was back in 2003 as a jury member. And 2004 saw her at Cannes to promote 3 of her films. Its great that Ash is getting the widespread coverage that she is. The sudden surge in recent publicity does seem to highlight the posibility that she is infact trying actively to land a Hollywood role. Perhaps, the rumours of her starring as a Bond gal may come true sometime in future after all. Oh man, would that be a great Bond movie or what? :-)

For all those Ash fans out there, this is a link to her pics on Day 2 of Cannes 2005. By the way, did I tell you that Ash looked absolutely gorgeous on Day 1 ;-)

Ultimatenigma Hitz

2005-05-15T10:49:00.000+08:00

Finalli I got round to setting up a hit counter for my website today courtesy of free counters @ Bravenet.com. My ego demanded that I set the counter to start from a relatively high number (to make up for the last 6 months of lost Hitz :-), but then decided to take today as a fresh start.

So here it is - UltimatEnigma begins its Hitz today!!!

Fly India! Fly!

2005-05-14T16:50:00.000+08:00

Many of you have probably heard of Kingfisher Airlines' launch earlier this week. For those who haven't, you can read about it on Kaps blog. This takes the number of Indian airline banners to 7 - the others being Jet Airways, Air Sahara, Alliance Air, Air India Express, and ofcourse the 'pride' of India - Indian Airlines and Air India. The fact that competition will improve the 'value' (read as importance) of us customers is just the tip of the iceberg (**atleast I hope so). The fact that budget airlines have entered, and others more will be entering, the Indian airspace. With Kingfisher's launch, India now has 3 budget airlines in her skies - with Deccan Air (been around for a year or so) and AI Express which recently launched with a flight from Kerala to the 'extended Kerala' (the Gelf).

The best news though isn't that - its the list of budget airlines lined up on the runway. SpiceJet is all set to launch later this month while Go Airways is set to taxi to the runway sometime in September and Magic Air is planning a winter launch. And it still doesn't end here - the competition in the market is driving IA to make plans to give its subsidiary, Alliance Air, a complete makeover into a budget airline. So by the end of this year, India could have upto 10 airlines in the sky - half of them low cost carriers. Oh man, are the Indian Railways watching? They are gonna be given a major run for their money in the near future.

Quirkies

2005-05-13T00:08:00.000+08:00

Yeah its been a busy week thus far, so ve hardly had the time to browse the net - let alone blog. But these articles beg that I put up another section of "Quirkies"

Quirkies is a section that will link up to any interesting article that I may have come across recently. Likely to be something that very unique and something to lighten your mood!

The Rooster has its victim!
The Chinese consider the Year of the Rooster unlucky for wedlock. Furthermore, this lunar year started late, and the 'lucky' day of lichun (start of spring) fell before the Rooster started began to crow. Despite all the ill-omens, Yu & Fang decided to get married, and the result - the groom broke his hand when jumping on the bed. Though the modern-thinking couple believe the cause is not their misfortune, but rather the fault of the hotel for not providing beds safe enough to jump on!
Read More here.

Beer stops drivers during rush-hour!
No. It ain't a case of mass druken driving. A beer truck carrying crates of beer overturned and spilled 2184 cases of beer all over a Toronto expressway. Who said you can't go surfing without a coastline :-p
Read More here.

However entertaining that these 2 articles may have been, this definitely has to take the cake - or rather...
This really takes the cookie!
110 people ended up winning US$ 100,000 or more in a single lottery in the United States. And the expected number of winners was 4 or 5. So how did the remaining 105 people win?? They ate at Chinese restaurants and selected numbers that their fortune cookies told them. Don't believe me? Read more here. Well as it is said - That's the way the cookied crumbles.

Google Web Accelerator

2005-05-07T18:03:00.000+08:00

Something I find myself doing on the Net very often over the last few months is visiting Google Labs to check what is the latest addition to their innovative repertoire. And today's visit found Google Web Accelerator. As with any new release from Google, they promote the installation as a beta version.

What this aims to do though (if you didn't quite get it from the name) is quite simply to accelerate your web access. How it works is explained in their FAQ section. And the best part - the beta version has been designed to work with Mozilla Firefox and IE (I wonder sometimes why anyone wastes time building stuff for IE ) - though for you anti-Windows guys, you're gonna have to wait a bit as this version only works with Windows NT and XP.

Now, though I've installed this to give it a shot, I'm not totally confident of using something like this when I access any confidential material such as my bank accounts and such. Well, there is an option to disable the Web Accelerator temporarily - I'm gonna pray and hope that, unlike some Microsoft aps, Google applications do what they say they are doing.

A Monotonous Life!

2005-05-06T11:49:00.000+08:00

23 days since I last blogged. Delay not because I lost the interest to blog (something I feared when I started my blog late last year), but rather as a result of being hard-pressed for any free time whatsoever. My job (I work at a multinational American investment bank) has been keeping me extremely occupied during the weekdays, and the weekends inevitably have a few hours of work carrying over from the preceding work - my nature of job has some unenvious tasks that require that it be done only over weekends/holidays. Atleast one day every weekend is pretty much devoted to cricket (the game, not the insect) with my colleagues. We've formed a team to take part in the Singapore Cricket league - and the lack of any cricketing discipline shows quite markedly as we suffer ignominious defeat after defeat. Infact, through contacts we've heard other teams mock our team. But hey, we'll not stay down much longer - we'll get up and fight back. And then we'll show them...

Now back to where I drifted off from (apologies for the outburst-the successive defeats are getting rather personal) - the rest of the weekend usually flies away before I can think 'weekend'. And then I'm hit with yet another violent bout of 'Monday morning blues' - I personally think the attacks have been getting worse every week. Its usually a real crawl to work on Mondays and then the routine sets in - again.

Don't get me wrong - I love my job. Its just the monotonous nature of life surrounding it that is getting to me. I know what I need to do to kick-start me out of this - a holiday to some place out of Singapore. Laziness and lack-of-time play their own parts in ensuring that this doesn't happen :p

PS: As I end this blog, I'm not entirely sure why I'm putting this up. Heck, I think I'm simply trying to get away from the routine at work. In all likelihood, I'll read this entry in a while and say "what the hell was I thinking when I put that up". But hey, who cares. Atleast today I can feel I didn't let my monotonous schedule take its own course - small thrills in an otherwise drab life.

Sex no bar - Aussie bar-bar!

2005-04-13T17:51:00.000+08:00

It is 23rd March 2003. The venue was South Africa. Millions & millions of cricket fans across the world sit glued to their TV screens in the hope of witnessing a fascinating tussle for Cricket's crown between the world's best team and another that had dramatically improved as the tournament had progressed. India lost its match of the tournament (quite badly) to Australia, but improved in every following match and beat teams like Pakistan & England with relative ease. They didn't lose any further match and made it into the finals. Australia had no such stories. They played, and they won. They made it to the finals on virtue of not having lost a single match in the tournament.

Australia were hands-down favourites to beat India in the finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003, but everyone expected a fight - and a good one at that. What happened was this - it was anything but a contest.

Forward to 10th April 2005. The venue is again South Africa. The fan following was markedly less, but the occassion was no less important for the players. India and Australia lined up to lock horns for the Finals of the Cricket World Cup.. again. Though this time, instead of Sachin, Saurav and Dravid taking to the field, it were Mithali, Amita and Anju. And this time again, India had made the finals having lost just once in the tournament, and Australia had reached unbeaten. It started as a close match, but quickly degenerated into no-contest. Australia win the Women's World Cup... also.

History repeats itself. And have placed Australian cricket at the pinacle of the game, in every version of the game!

PS: for the non-Hindi understanding readers, bar-bar is the Hindi term for 'again & again'.

Sky Burial

2005-04-11T23:07:00.000+08:00

Sky Burial - An eyewitness Account of China's Brutal Crackdown in Tibet, by Blake Kerr

This was the last book I read, and was a first-person account of the happenings in Tibet after the Chinese occupation. Like most writings about military occupation, this book doesn't leave you feeling very good about being part of the human race - the extent of the crass, savage nature of the human race comes exposed in this documentary as the author relives the scenes that he witnessed during & after the Tibetan rebellion on October 1st, 1979. As a recently graduated doctor, Blake Kerr's trauma at not being able to help the injured & dying in the wake of the Chinese police brutalities on that day leave a strong mark.

What started out as mountaineering-hiking holiday with a long-time friend, ended up with the 2 friends becoming part of the Tibetan underground as they tried to help the injured monks & other Tibetans, knowing that if they got caught, they would be sent straight to a Chinese prison. The book progresses, as the 2 of them manage to escape from Tibet and enlighten the world on the happenings in this quaint, Himalayan region. As the book progresses, he returns to Tibet in an attempt to study/investigate the 'family planning' policies imposed by the Chinese on the Tibetans, and how abortions & sterilizations were forced to become the way of life for Tibetan women.

I'm quite sure that there are other books written on this topic (or other similar ones) which I'm sure are as (or more) haunting; and I do not plan to suggest that this book is a 'must-read'... but, if you do come across it, and can stomach some really abusive human behaviour, do read this. It's something that I'm fairly confident you will not regret reading.

Google Sets

2005-04-07T16:01:00.000+08:00

Everyone who has spent anytime on the web, knows about Google, Google News, Google Mail and so on. For the 1st time though, I came across Google Sets. Quite an interesting 'application' from Google Labs.

This has been available since 2002, but never to the best of my knowledge has it been publicised by Google. Probably because although Sets is quite cool, it has absolutely no usefulness :-s

The name's Craig. Daniel Craig.

2005-04-07T07:13:00.000+08:00

The latest replacement for Britain number 1 spy - Agent Double-O Seven - has been announced by Barbara Broccoli, the producer of the hit movie series James Bond. As per the tradition, yet another Briton - Daniel Craig - has picked up the baton against crime.

Though, after the super-popular, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig is a relatively unknown name (atleast definitely to me), but apparently he is quite well known in land of the Queen. How will he measure agains the other greats who have spent time at the pinacle of crime-fighting; only time will tell. In the meantime, Daniel Craig will be heard saying the (arguably) most famous line in English cinema atleast 3 times. Link.

Quirkies (April 2nd)

2005-04-02T23:32:00.000+08:00

Quirkies is a section that will link up to any interesting article that I may have come across recently. Likely to be something that very unique and something to lighten your mood!

Size does matter!!! Even in fast-food!
An ad for KFC has been banned in the United Kingdom because their ad seems to indicate that their burger is bigger than it is in reality. The fact that they named it 'mini', and the fact that it was charged at less than 1-pound, apparently isn't enough to suggest that the burger is infact, 'mini' and small.
Read More here.

When Cyber-space and reality come together, disaster is round the corner!
A chinese man who had been spending way too much time in front of the new generation's idiot-box (the online gaming machine, also known as a PC), has stabbed a co-gamer to death because the co-gamer 'sold' his cyber saber sword to a 3rd gamer. Probably the guy thought that since a felony in the game isn't punishable, a murder isn't in real-life either.
Read More here.

How perverted can people be?
Swedish clothes maker Lindex actually released a girls' top (and we are talking about baby girls aged 1 to 2) that looked like bikinis. Yeah you read that right... a bikini-style dress for baby girls aged less than 2. Thankfully they had enough sense after some serious criticisms from a Norway minister to take this piece of 'merchandise' off the shelves.
Read More here.

Quirkies

2005-03-28T01:13:00.000+08:00

Quirkies is a section that will link up to any interesting article that I may have come across recently. Likely to be something that very unique and something to lighten your mood!

Its a big 'NO' for pants!!!
Sumo Wrestlers in Japan (where else?) have categorically declared that pants are a no-no inside the sumo ring despite the fact that many kids now days feel shy to be seen in the traditional almost naked attire of sumo wrestlers; which has led to dwindling numbers of kids taking up sumo wrestling.
Read More here.

Museums' latest worry - to stop paintings from being added to their collections!
Since ever, museums have always been on the lookout for their artifacts being stolen. But, with Banksy on the lose, they are now begining to worry about how to keep their inventory from increasing. Banksy, a British graffiti artist got his work displayed among those of elite artists on the walls of 4 major New York art museums - the only drawback: the displays stayed up only until noticed by the museum authorities.
Read more here & here.

Snooze No More!!
Do you suffer from the snooze-bug? Do you spend more time sleeping after hitting the snooze button than before the alarm went off? Then Clocky is for you! Clocky will make sure you get up on the first ring of the alarm, after all atleast then you know where your clock is!!!
Read more here.

Rocking mallus!

2005-03-27T11:34:00.000+08:00

Until recently, the only avial I had known was what my mom (and my grandmom as well) made once a week for lunch. But now, avial literally stand for rocking mallus.

Avial is a mallu rock band I came across at Ashwin's blog. I followed it up with some determined Googling, and found that they are also known as 'Jigsaw Puzzle' (both their names are most certainly unique, to say the least )

Watch their music videos here.

Find more about Avial a.k.a Jigsaw Puzzle here and here.

You'll also find some discussion (& some real good links) in this blog by Mads. I should let you know that his site is quite slow and you may get the impression that it is a broken link, but give it time and it will open up, sooner or later.

Is 'Killer Waves' helping?

2005-03-23T15:43:00.000+08:00

If you don't know about the Boxing Day Tsunami disaster, then god alone knows where you have been. The devastation that was left behind by the sea was unprecedented; hundreds of thousands were brutally killed, millions left homeless; thousands of acres of land ruined. Pictures of the disaster were flashed across absolutely every TV channel, newspaper magazine and all other conceivable forms of the media.

Last evening, on the bus home, TV Mobile was telecasting an episode of Channel 5's latest TV series "Killer Waves". The general outline of the program was to showcase the family of victims, to show how the 'killer waves' have affected their daily lives; how it took their beloved away.

It led me to think if such a telecast is needed at the current point in time. Most are still recovering from the disaster; and such a program can only lead their minds back to the savage actions of the seas. A deceased's aging mother weaping on the screen for her loss; his son clutching onto a school bag gifted by his father days before the disaster - such scenes can leave nothing more than more trauma for any affected person.

Arguably, the intent of the program was to enlighten people about Tsunamis in general; their raw power, their intense potential to destroy. But maybe this isn't the time to remind people about it. The wounds from Dec 26 are still fresh in many. Perhaps such telecasts can wait until these wounds heal, until a time when such telecasts are informative, rather than traumatic.

Another trip to Sepang!

2005-03-21T14:11:00.000+08:00

For 3 races out of the 4 F1 races in Sepang, I've been there - the one I missed was because it was on the same day as the Cricket World Cup 2003 Finals between India and Australia.

There nothing that can beat the sound of an F1 engine as it decelerates from 7th gear all the way down to 2nd. And this sound just rocks at the start as 20 cars do the same almost all at once. Just simply brilliant!!

Added on 23-Mar-2005: For all my photos of this trip, goto http://www.flickr.com/photos/ayekay

America's oldest Outsourcing Venture

2005-03-15T11:21:00.000+08:00

Judging by the uproar in the US press over the outsourcing of manufacturing to India, China et al, one wouldn't be blamed in believing that outsourcing is something that has just come up in the last few years.

This article however shows that Indian companies have been a significant part of New York life for the last 40 years. Infact, they're so important, that if all this pieces of this Indian product is removed over-night, New Yorkers may just 'go down the drain'. Don't you think so?

Indian Minoritism

2005-03-11T19:02:00.000+08:00

I definitely haven't said anything like this before. I'll be damned if I'd have thought that I would ever say anything like this. But here it is - I actually think the RSS have actually said something sensible.

I do not agree with their definition of 'minority', but I definitely agree that it is India's interest to stop following this minoritism. Sadly, it is quaranteed that this will not happen in the period this generation and possible not in that of the next either. The reason for that - politics.

The number of 'minority groups' in India keeps increasing as differenct governments (usually local/state) try to asurp another vote bank by designating the people as minorities, and hence providing them with some benefit or the other. While I do not have any issue with making special arrangements for certain sections of people, such as those from the tribal region etc, it is the label of minority that will ruin India. Again the reason is simple (& the same) - politics. Once a section of people is designated a 'minority', no government who wants to be reelected will take the action to remove this label. This means that the number of minority groups has only 1 way to move - up, up & up.

I wish instead that governments gave these people purely financial support and create jobs for them. Do not label people as 'minorities'. While this can help governments get elected, in the long run, such label will definitely cause more problems that anything else. Given today's scenario, there may even be a stage where in India, the majority of people will be in 1 or other minority group!!

The Big Drain

2005-02-16T19:16:00.000+08:00

It had almost become a tradition. In India, you were considered even remotely successful only if joined the bandwagon at some stage of your life. The most common stage of course was after attaining an undergraduate degree from one of the IITs, though a BITS (Pilani) degree wasn't too bad either. I am obviously talking about the Indian 'Brain Drain' to the USofA.

For reasons ranging from stricter US immigration laws/restrictions, to an economic situation in India that favours foreign investment, this trend has reversed over the past few years. No, I'm not saying that India is attracting Americans - instead it is targeting its own. India is slowly strengthening her global economic position and more & more countries see her (& China) as the future of the 21st century.

As I was reading through some articles on this topic, I found this one, which I can recollect as one of the first I read on this topic a few years ago. Why am I writing on this topic? Well, I do not have any fondness for the USofA and have never quite understood why the 'Oh he's gone to the US, he must be a brilliant chap' mentality has become so ingrained in the Indian middle class. But offlate, a few articles (such as this) have been coming up on my favourite online destinations which led me to pen this down. And I'm glad that in economics, there is the big down that follows the up. Its not been a few years, and already the USofA is 'missing' its Indian 'brains'.

The Red Black-Market

2005-02-14T16:17:00.000+08:00

There are some people in the world who are still so backward in thinking that it is almost criminal. Mumbai's Shiv Sena, MP's Bajrang Dal are classic examples in the Indian context. But even these guys are futuristic compared to "The Committee for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice". No, I'm not kidding such a committee actually does exist. These guys are the 'Saudi morality police'. And their job scope is to:

Ensure that daily prayers are held 5 times a day
All shops close during the above prayers
No one celebrates anything apart from the Ramadan feast and the Haj Pilgrimage (not even the Prohet's birthday is accepted)
And, last but not the least, to ensure that no red flowers are sold in the leadup to Valentine's Day

As a result of this last 'task', Saudi Arabia has a full fledged black market for the sale of red roses.

F1 looks to India

2005-02-12T23:07:00.000+08:00

In a previous related post, I had spoken about how F1 cannot really ignore India in its big scheme of things. Less than a couple of weeks since then, Bernie Ecclestone has come out stating that an Indian Grand Prix will be there in about 3 years time. I tend to agree with him that the location is likely to be somewhere near Mumbai (on Mumbai-Pune expressway perhaps??). 'Cos lets face it, the money is in Mumbai (damn! I hate to admit that).

However, Bernie's lack of experience in India is showing when he says "defintely in 3 years". He obviously hasn't heard about the different stages of 'approvals' that he would need in India :p

And even after that, God alone knows how those Shiv Sainiks would react. (PS: for those who haven't heard, they have recently tried destroying the Mohali cricket pitch because there maybe a Ind-Pak match there). Seriously, these guys are plain ol' unnecessary trouble makers.

Black

2005-02-10T01:06:00.000+08:00

This is, very simply put, a big recommendation for anyone out there who hasn't seen Sanjay Leela Bansali's latest release Black to rush for the very next show. To say that the movie was tremendous would be a huge understatement. This is a movie that in opinion has the quality to grab the Best Picture and Best Actor awards in the next year. AB is as good as he can be and, quite honestly, plays his character of Debraj Sahai (the 'teacher' of a blind girl Michelle McNally) to utmost perfection. Rani Mukherjee has played Michelle quite outstandingly, though, in my opinion there were places where it could have been done better. But the kid-Michelle, played by debutante child actress Ayesha Kapoor, was absolutely brilliant. As this (warning spoiler) artice says, there are plenty of established actresses around (usually daughters of former stars :p) who can't put up performances half as well as what this little girl has managed.

Bansali has come up with an excellent piece of art here and he and his cinematographer/editors team is defintely going to pick up some accolades over the next couple of months.

Unfortunately, this could be the sort of movie that would not really hit it off with the masses and is likley to be appreciated only in the metros.

Though it's not a suspense/thriller, I know loads of people prefer to 'see' the story so I've tried not to give anything away. And I reiterate. Please do go for this movie if you get the chance. You won't regret it one tiny bit. Njoi!

PS: for those looking for a good review, here is Glamsham's review.

The Joy of Flying to Singapore

2005-02-09T13:45:00.000+08:00

Everytime I've planned to go back to my home city of Chennai, I used to curse Indian Airlines (& Air India) for being the only non-Singapore Airlines(SIA) flight flying direct to Chennai from Singapore. Understandably, SIA rates were far higher than any other flying to Chennai (direct or not). Though no one who flew them would complain about their rates, it was nevertheless out of reach of my small little 'student pocket'. AI would inevitably place its rates at par with SIA (and sometimes even more than SIA). IA would be cheaper but still significantly more than the non-direct options such as Malaysian Airlines, Thai Airways and Air Lanka.

The problem was not that IA was more expensive than the others, but the fact that it was as more expensive despite having a unique in-flight service system that somehow had a knack to make you feel frustrated with the whole experience. Everytime I flew IA, I mentally promised myself I wouldn't fly them again. But my next holiday time, I would inevitably return to them simply because they flew direct - and I was agreeable to spend that little bit more in exchange for 5 to 6 hours less of travel time (total flying time from Singapore to Chennai is only 3hrs 40minutes).

But the next time I want to fly to Madras, I will have atleast one other option. Jet Airways will be starting its daily Chennai-Singapore-Chennai flight on March 27. Sahara will also be flying to Singapore, but they are likely to start with the Delhi sector. I am almost sure that the next time I fly to Chennai it will be on Jet, but almost definitely, that trip would pinch my wallet lot more than my previous trips have.

An Indian here, an Indian there

2005-02-01T23:50:00.000+08:00

Indians can be found in almost every discipline, in almost every part of the world. It probably started with the mallus deciding to set up a mini-Kerala in the middle East (which I must say is longer that 'mini'). UK, US, Europe, Canada everywhere you will find plenty of Indians in every walk of life, at varying strata of society. But there was 1 place where no Indian had ever set foot on before, or rather no Indian had ever set tyre on before - the amazing world of F1. And here too a foray has finally been made.

Narain Karthikeyan has been in and out of motorsport news for a long time in India and even came close to getting a racing position a couple of years ago. But though that didn't work out, I am tempted to say, it was only a matter of time that one of the teams finally signed him on. And no, I'm not saying this 'cos I think he's some great talent. I'm saying this purely from a financial aspect for the team specifically and the sport in general.

Take Malaysia - a very ideal example in this context. Malaysia in the early 1990's wasn't anywhere near the F1 radar. Petronas then decided to step into the sport and sponsor the Sauber team in 1995. Since then, F1 slowly built itself up in Malaysia as locals now had a team to identify with - the Sauber Petronas team pretty much became a national identity. Every year, if you goto Kuala Lampur around the race period, you will find a Sauber car displayed at the Petronas Towers and there will be huge crowds waiting to take photos and what not. Sauber t-shirts can easily compete for visibility with either Ferrari or McLaren t-shirts. A few years later, Sepang hosted its maiden F1 race and has since become a regular feature on the F1 calendar. And now the F1 event and the whole concept of F1 is simply a craze in M'sia.

And this is where India comes in. Its a well established fact that the next century belongs to India and China. And an Indian market is a touch too lucrative for F1 to not be in it. In India the different teams have an untapped merchandise market & the possibility of vast brand exposure. I think these are strong factors for any business in the world, and F1 is, after all, one huge business. Their entry into India has come in the form of an Indian driver sponsored by Tata, Bharat Petroleum & probably JK Tyres as well, and you can rest assured that these companies will advertise that fact as widely as they can. The biggest beneficiary from this all - the Jordan team as they would, in India, become synonymous with Narain, with F1.

----------------------------------------------------

Added by Aye Kay on 03-Feb-2005:
Narain Karthikeyan: An Indian driver in a British team recently bought over by a Russian-born Canadian businessman (Alex Shnaider) .

What would the world be like without laziness

2005-01-31T01:23:00.000+08:00

During a conversation with a friend, something about laziness came up, and I started to think what the world would be without laziness. I asked my housemates about it and got responses like "it would be the same", "it would be more advanced", "it would be more efficient", "it would be hyper-active" & "it would be very mechanical".

My own feeling is that it would be one heck of a boring world. (I guess mechanical comes quite close to this). Can you imagine living a life where you would always have to do what you have to as soon as you know about it? It means absolutely no free time, 'cos lets face it - we all have 'something' to do all the time. And if weren't 'allowed' to be lazy, we would have to do that work at that time. You would have to study for exams longer than the oft-used 'last 1 month'. You would need to clean up your room/house at a frequency which is atleast 10 times higher. (For those whom it wasn't obvious, I don't like cleaning :p) Oh hell, you wouldn't ever be able to just sit (or lie) and do nothing. And this being my all-time favourite past-time, it's simply damn too difficult to imagine life without it.

What are your thoughts? I'll like to hear about how you see a world without laziness.

Rising Popularity! Increased Attacks?

2005-01-28T08:50:00.000+08:00

Anyone who spends anytime surfing is bound to know abt the surge in popularity of open source applications. The Linux vs Windows war has been on for years now and plenty has been written about it. More recently, however, it has been the gaining popularity of Mozilla Firefox that is the talking point. But this rising popularity has one big fallback - it will most certainly be accompanied by a rising number of hackers attacking Firefox.

Windows & IE have the number of hack-attacks they do simply because of its popularity. Any hacker/virus-developer (who knows why they do what they do) would prefer to target their 'work' at Microsoft products since that would have the biggest reach and can cause maximum havoc.

Yes, there will be those who argue that most virus are developed simply because the programmer dislikes Microsoft or is for Open-Source etc. But in all walks of life, when there is one single person dominating the field, there will be a huge number of those who simply dislike them. Take for example, Michael Jordan at the peak of his career with the Chicago Bulls - anti-Jordan sites were all over the place. The same holds good of Michael Schumacher. I'm not saying that they are faultless, or that there shouldn't people who dislike them - espescially in Schumacher's case there is plenty to argue about. My point here is that popularity seems to breed contempt.

Coming back to browsers. Currently IE still holds majority of the market. But it is steadily dropping. The statistics I linked above may be a bit extreme, but it does show the trend. As Firefox gains popularity, I expect the number of attacks on it will go up as well and most likely after a certain time, this rate will rise much faster than that of popularity. Lets just hope that this trend of rising Firefox vulnerability alerts doesn't indicate the same. I just hope I'm wrong cos I find Firefox simply great and would hate to have to move due to increased attacks on it.

Dan Brown

2005-01-28T06:07:00.000+08:00

I just recently read both 'Angels & Demons' and 'DaVinci Code' by Dan Brown (yeah I know - quite late, but hey, better late than never) and they are really fantastic reads. Its definitely worth getting hold of them. Both have plots so different from all that I've read before and the style of writing keeps you interested all the time. In fact, Angels & Demons is so fast moving and intriguing, I couldn't put the book down and I spent every free minute for 2 whole days (2 working days at that) just reading. That is by far the fastest I've read any book since I'm not a very avid reader.

Anyways, cmoing to the point, if you haven't read either of those, please do. It's fun and you will definitely not regret picking them up.