Stampede due to Sabotage

Stampede at Delhi Railway Station.

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee called the stampede ‘unfortunate’ and ordered a “high level inquiry” into the incident.

“We have to find out whether the accident occurred due to anyone’s fault or if it was an act of sabotage,” Mamata said in Kolkata.

Mamata Banerjee of course doesn't need to apologize, forget resignng. It was an act of sabotage!!

Derailed thinking

The Railway Budget for 2010-11 is out. One particular announcement caught my eye.

Railways to set up Rabindra Museum in Howrah and Geetanjali Museum in Bolpur -- both in West Bengal -- to commemorate Rabindranath Tagore's [ Images ] 125th birth anniversary.

Precious!!

Mamata Banerjee should also start broadcasting Rabindro Sangeet on the train platform PA system between announcements.

Burning the soul and loving it

After a year for fairly rigorous sedentary existence (bar the few arm stretches done playing badminton at weekends), there is promise and sweat in the air.

Have managed to get into my dream race - not the 7 km SCMM race, I am talking about the Great Run.

To keep my training for that on track, have registered to three low mileage runs during the spring and summer.

So, here's my schedule

1. Hyde Park Jog - 14/04/2010 - 5 km
2. Tower of London Jog - 06/05/2010 - 10 km
3. Canary Wharf Jog - 02/06/2010 - 10 km

The great thing about them is that entry is free, t-shirt is free, they are in London (home of free-running!!?) and they are well-timed (evening after office hours means free weekends).

Nice run-up to The Ultimate Event - 19/09/2010

Happiness Writes White

A lot of folks ask why bloggers are always ranting, raving, complaining, and being generally angry with the world.

Well, there is a simple answer.

"Happiness writes white. It does not show up on the page”.

Unfortunately, I like the times when I am not blogging

Terrorist attack in Pune

I had predicted a terrorist attack this year. Less as a brag, it was more a commentary on how the Indian "system" never learns its lessons and continues to make the same mistakes.

In mean, wasn't the German Bakery one of the blindingly obvious targets after the attack on foreigner frequented locations on 26/11? The attack on German Bakery feels like an execution of something planned as a part of 26/11.

Of course the attack in Mumbai hasn't yet happened. But in a way, it did.

I continue to hope I am wrong!

Great North Run - Here I come

May be God realized that I was turning into a lazy bum, and needed to get the laptop off my lap and my ass off the couch. He's given me a place for Great North Run, one of the largest half marathons in the world.

It is in September normally, so have got plenty of time to prep. But am well-chuffed to be finally running my first long distance race in the UK.

Here's to plenty more.

Beyonce wins the Song of the Year Grammy

As I said...

When the world is full of morons...

...its stupid to be sane!

To bridge the chasm

A very long time we needed the SarcMark. It is excrutiatingly difficult to write even slightly humorous mails without the fear of upsetting people. Writing masks the emotions of writer, and it is easy for the reader to misinterpret the message. After all, what we are asking him is to not intepret the message as it was written, but as it was intended. An intention is abstract, unquantifiable.

We can't get all uppity and say, "D'oh, the reader is a dumbass, and isn't getting the irony". Also, one might question, well, the old authors - of books and newspaper articles - didn't face the problem.

Well, that writing is completely different to email, or texting. Email and text can be one to many (where many can be privy to a barb sent to one). It might just be upsetting that the receiver to whom the sarcasm is intended gets it, but others cced in, don't and think that sender has actually insulted the receiver.

The sarmark eliminates that ambiguity. Great invention, I think.

Will I pay to download the SarcMark. No, I would rather insult people (Sarcmark here!)

India losing territory

Something that I always feared might be happening . China is encroaching on Indian territory without any firm challenge. They are drunk with power and have history behind them, and the Indian government lack will and courage to take on the mighty neighbours.

 
They will continue to claim more Indian territory and put Indian government on a diplomatic backfoot (if you are fighting for your terrirtory all the time, you dont really have time to look at their disputed territories and historical LOC issues). The people who will suffer are the native tribes, and long term, it will cause loss of control over the nearby areas that India continues to hold on.

 

 

Grammy Song of the Year 2010

Goes to Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it). Prediction.

In fact, going by the difference between a record and a song, I thought that it was the awesomest record (singing, music, production, mixing) but it is not nominated in that category.

The words to the song are alright, but thats not what makes the song special. The whole package (99% of it is Beyonce) is brilliant.

In case you haven't seen the song, its here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g&feature=related

Its the first song that my daughter 'tuned into'

There's more where that came from

I am one for predictions. And betting. I want to put my money where the mouth is. It also gets people who sound cock-sure to reevaluate their belief.

I get some right. Then gloat when I get it right. This is not a place to gloat about them.

I am going to make another one. And I will pray to God that it doesn't happen.

I predict that in the next year, there will be at least one significant terrorist attack in Mumbai. I don't want to measure the significance in terms of number of deaths. But its a terrorist attack, so we are looking at atleast 5 innocent people dead(one can never underestimate the impact that a single life lost has).

THis will happen because in the last year, the situation in Pakistan has worsened considerably. And our politicians, police, intelligence etc, have just found excuses and reasons for absolving any responsibility for the Siege of Bombay.

Read Outlook special issue special issue. The response on the other side has been really pedestrian - what is needed is new processes, much advanced training (not just new vests), and better communication between various teams. There should have been a coherent action plan to tackle this - as far as I know this is none.

People will die.

Nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi, gandi bhaasha nahi chalegi!!

Cross posted here.

Bound scripts, targeted audiences, massive publicity budgets, media tie-ups, and merchandising - Bollywood has indeed turned a corner in the noughties.

One clear sign of an increasing corporate hold over the film industry is the instillment of test screening. Good, bad? Well, definitely good for producers who want the film not to bomb for the lack of UAT and appeal to the widest audience possible. By the same token, bad for audiences with a keener palate.

Take the case of Ishqiya. During focus group screening, women squirmed and shifted in their seats. Indeed, they found it uncomfortable to watch. (give them cushions I say!)

Now, I wonder if Satya had been shown to such a focus group. Would Bhiku Mhatre saying "paagal" instead of "chutiya" conveyed the same nuance?

Ishqiya seems to be of a milieu where people swear to punctuate their sentences (the male protagonists are thieves, you ar*3$0735!). Indeed in my opinion, expletives qualify and elaborate the exclamation mark oh so wonderfully.

Why, oh, why, should we then curb the beauty of the rustic lingo?

Uneventful Life

It has been fairly uneventful few months. You won't have guessed looking at the update to my blog!

Really, apart from my daughter having learned to stagger (and she IS an ace staggerer!), and learning to alert us of her excretions AFTER she's done it, there's nothing much really that has happened.
You shout, nay, say calmly, "soo, soo, sheee shee, in the pottyyyy!", and she repeats, "Shee, in the pottyyyy!". Cute but deceitful!

Have been working quite furiously for the last couple of months. There's huge responsibility of making the right architectural decisions, or its literally, my (as a tax payer's) money down the drain. Yes, working for one of the UK banks nationalized to save it from going under during the financial crisis. It's difficult to keep your sanity about you, with all the chaos happening around you - absence of business involvement, poor IT engagement, EU issuing orders effectively undoing part of our work. The good part is that the work is in London, so have been able to spend them with my drunken, uncivilized daughter.

Spending time with the family also means coming home to a war-zone - toys lying around, empty coffee mugs tipped over the sofa, food (that followed a kid's mouth now embedding itself in the carpet, overflowing laundry bag, crumb-infested dining table, perpetually crumpled beds and scattered wet towels! Wife refuses to clean because, as per new rules of conjugal partnership, both husband and wife are supposed to 'share' responsibilities. I don't know who invented this drivel, but that person needs to die!!

So, you see, all in all, I have been extremely happy, nothing wrong at all, thank you very much.

Scrubs - Season 8

What's your name?

You really are new here!

IIFA Showdown-आशु आग बबूला हो गए

Rather than What's your Rashee, Ashutosh Gowariker should be asking Where's your Sense of Humour. With his humour caught in severe downturn, I wonder if the historical पितामहा will be able to make a decent comedy.

 

(BTW, the 'a' to 'e' for Marathi kar names has gone badly out of fashion)

 

 

 

Prediction for Britian's Got Talent 2009

I predict that Susan Boyle will not win Britian's Got Talent.

My money is on Diversity. I am of less sure of them winning, than Susan Boyle losing.

I think the shock value (extraordinary voice of an ordinary looking spinster) has propelled Susan Boyle in super stardom. But the novelty has worn off and people have seen in the semi-finals that her isn't the greatest they have heard.

Diversity, on the other hand, have significantly upped the ante. They are radical, nimble, and eminently likeable. And they are so many (think of their family and friends all voting for them).

And I hope they win.

Update: 31/05/2009 - Hahahaha!! Hahahahaha!!

NEWS: News Effectively Worth Squat

Why do I need to know that Mike Tyson's daughter is critically ill.

Or that her name is Exodus for that matter.

Update - More of the same.
Chitra Singh's daughter commits suicide

Article published in Integration Consortium

My article on "More the data, less the business intelligence" is published here.
On my blog here

Respect vs Authority - IT view

In one of the training sessions I attended recently, I was involved in a fierce debate about the 'need to reign in IT programmers'. A lady said that on many occasions, the programmers go on and do things as they want and there was a need to check this. ANother gentlemen piped in saying that,"this is the only profession, where you don't need to have any qualification to be called an expert in". That's where he thought, "IT ALL WENT WRONG".

The disdain was rankling. For one, I think the advances that have happened in/using IT has far surpassed anything else in the last two decades. Think of home pcs, mobiles, gaming, internet for God's sake (the lady chose to differ!!). One of the primary reasons It has happened because of the immense freedom that the IT developers get. These programmers has been either working independently or have got enough freedom in their job to go away and do something that they thought was path-breaking, interesting and fun. Because the resources available to a programmer are essentially available free, he can go about this task all alone, with minimal supervision, and funding.

IT is a field that allows for the greatest exchange of ideas, simply because you can share the essential building block - the code - with anyone in the world. You can copy already available code and create something completely new. If what you come up with is good, people will use, approve, and promote it. If not, you get feedback to improve or bin it.

To say that management needs to always reign in these guys is not understand how fundamentally different things operate in the computing world. Creativity in any field is fostered through breaking down barriers and allowing maximum freedom. It's especially so in IT. Of course there needs to be checks on what the final output is, but even here, the old way of using authority to do that is obsolete and obstructive. Rather, we now have what is called respect. If you create something great - an article, paper, code, or design - you publish it to the world. The world studies it, reviews it, and scores you on your artifact. This is much more democratic, personality independent method of weighing the value of a creation.

You see it in blogs, movie rating,articles and code. Many times the rating is accompanied with enlightened comments from the reviewers, clearly articulating what aspects they liked or disliked. This feedback is much more useful than quality checks done through a single dedicated team of people.

Of course, sometimes the artifact you create, cannot be published to the whole world. But then, you can use private cloud / intranet to access vast pool of people in your organization to review your product.

But the moot point is, in World 2.0, RESPECT WORKS BETTER THAN AUTHORITY. Its high time we recognize and use it fact to our advantage.