a street car named dzire

warning: slightly long post… but hey, it is material of almost a month since my last post

no ! i haven't bought a swift-dzire... that is just clever wordplay… nor have i got anything else too... but yeah, i have been thinking... after a long thoughtful consideration i sort of started feeling that i might need a car... what with haggling with the auto drivers here (my bike does solve some part of the problem, but it is not always possible to go to places in twos...), mom complaining that i am not taking her around this #%#@%%@^&& up city and a sort of fear of hearing "what??? you don't even have a car?" after spiderman's warning, the need became real...

I had always wanted a car… a nice contemporary design like the swift… that is my definition of a small car… or the nice and majestic SUVs like the endeavour, pajero or even our own local boy the safari… in bright white with grey bumpers… or a nice sports sedan like a verna or civic… or a good big luxury car like a bmw or a merc – doesn’t matter which one, anything will do… all of their models fall into the same category for me – unaffordable… hah for that matter so do the Ferraris and Lamborghinis… btw, did I mention the swift should be in red with those sports stripes… and that sort of gives you my ambitions…

I actually wanted a car and the principle deciding factor is, well my affordability… and yeah it should comfortably seat at least 4 and maybe squeeze in a fifth… a small happy family car… and yeah sometimes I would take it to my office on rainy days and some important occasions… only… so I would not be using it everyday, but yes I would use it frequently… on most days I will conservatively drive my bike to save on fuel (indignantly denying the eventuality that I would start using the car more frequently once I have it). So these are my specs…

Looking at this, the nano came as a big boon… it was supposed to have more space than the small car I was hoping to buy – the alto… and it was at one-third the price… but I was a little skeptical… most tata cars start with a lot of problems, and problems irritate me… plus I figure that since nano is pretty cheap, it would definitely require care in the terms of proven sturdiness of the existing cars… plus thanks to a great people’s person the tatas are gonna delay its launch… I want the car now… you see I am also impatient…

So the next obvious choice is the alto… I eliminated the 800… only a second-hand 800 wud fall into the price range of the nano, but it wud give me a bigger headache than the nano which would probably come with the new-car-warranties… and a new 800… well the car seems to be finally getting old and getting phased out… plus alto seems to be a slightly better car at almost the same price… now this “slightly better car at almost the same price” is going to be the cause of my downfall, but I am blind to it…

So now I am looking at the alto… of course I will go for the highest end model… with power steering and the works… what… I don’t get a music system? That will cost me another 10k… then some more essential accessories will cost me another 15-20k… awesome… so ultimately I end up spending a lot more than the actual price I was initially looking at… and maruti being maruti wont bend over backwards to give me even a free toffee let alone the accessories… so at about 3.6lacs I will get 4 wheels and enuf space to squeeze in 4 people and stuff in one more with some more effort and tolerance from the earlier 4… mmm… what are my options?

The santro… yeah definitely it is slightly bigger… and 5 people can be squeezed in a little more comfortably than the alto… and the current offer price would work out to something that is just about 40-50k more than the alto… so here I was getting a slightly better car for just a little bit higher price… actually it is a pretty good deal considering that I am not just getting extra space, but the engine can deliver much higher power too… so in case the Schumacher in me just one day decides to poke his head out, I will be ready… plus their new petrol-lpg version is a slightly better car which is at almost the same price…

I also considered the seemingly matiz-converted-to-spark of GM… but I don’t think it is worth buying it… they don’t have enough service centers all over the country… so in case I break down in some place where there is no service center I would be screwed… unlike maruti which supposedly has a very good service network… the santro too would be okay because it is a much familiar car to the indian mechanic than a GM… and some wise know-it-all has said that alto is better than the spark because it has an electronic powersteering, while this is just hydraulic… and the resale value was also pretty low – so if, you know, I was hoping to upgrade… you know… (I know what you are thinking – this skinflint bugger definitely cannot go beyond a second hand 800… yeah maybe you are right, but there still exists that small probability called hope, that I can one day… you know… vroooooom!!! ) if only the old zen was still there… the new one seems so cramped for so much money…

Ok, so santro seems like a good choice… but then wait… the sales guy is saying something… the i10? Test drive… yeah why not… mmm a smoother and more powerful engine… electronic power steering over santro’s hydraulic… slightly seemingly bigger interiors… and beige interiors, like that babe in the ad says, it must be something worth aspiring for… how much extra? Oh that is a very small difference… plus there are so many guys out there who are encouraging me to be the guinea pig – if that is not positive response what is?

ok, so what do I get here… only standard fitment? How much more for the extra features? Adds up to around 5.5 lacs? For this car? Come on!!! for 5.5 I can get a swift, from the above dreamy ambitions paragraph, and since it is a maruti I would get better service too… but when I read the reviews the people in the back seat are supposed to find it uncomfortable over a long distance travel… with a hereditary backache problem running in the family, that is a risk that should not be taken when I am buying a happy family car… maybe a hedonistic purchase after that Harley I can think of it…

at 5.5 I can get that new wide bodied Renault… with 2 consecutive f1 championships their quality cannot come under question… but apparently the build quality seems slightly inferior… at least that is what the critics say… and it has almost come to the indica cab status, albeit a luxury cab, but a cab nevertheless. So no Renault. How about an accent or a ikon… naah… old models… I think I should consider a verna or a fiesta… or for that matter, the SX4 because it comes with the maruti service network… see I am still a very practical man… I won’t go for the Dzire – I don’t like its design… see I am still in my senses…

huh how much? 7.7 ex-showroom? And on road will surely cross 8.5 lacs. Come on!!! For that I can get a scorpio – what was the last ad – the price was some 6.7 lacs right? mmm at least it would suit my height… and I think the safari was around that price too… and I think I would go for at least the power steering and some addons, else I won’t get even a practical mileage… but a scorpio also had that modified open top model… that was around 10lacs – almost the same as the high end safari… but wait that negates the rainy day concept… this falls into the hedonistic category… so I will have to go for a safari only because it is closed…

but wait… if I am going for a 10lacs safari, why not spend a little more and go for a more reliable maruti SUV – the vitara? After all it comes with the maruti service network… it costs only around 14 lacs I think? While I am on the topic of SUVs, why not go for something like a pajero or a endeavour or for that matter why not a lexus or a hummer… ok, I think I am getting a bit sarcastic with myself… for this price I could buy myself a small house here… wait… I should not change the topic… back to cars… and reality…

Actually I could probably only comfortably afford an alto… and santro would be worth the budget stretch… a wagonR maybe too, but since I have personally witnessed its instability at high speeds, I am not too keen on it… plus I have a very valid reason – an unjustifiable prejudice… so santro it would be… but the dealers are not giving me any discounts… it would be great if they could save me the costs of the seat covers and a music system… cheapos… they won’t even give up a 10k on their margin… but discount or no discount, I think I will have to go for the santro…

Hey wait!!! What is that in today’s paper? Almost 58k off on the price of a spark??? That is cool!!! Didn’t the dealer say that it was only a hydraulic power steering on the santro too? So maybe I can get a santro like car for the price of an alto…

PS. Did I mention that I was also a little bit greedy???

a day in the life of a singapore steward…

ok. It should be “a night in the life of a singapore steward”, but technically it is not night yet... just a little late in the evening… so maybe it is still within the rules to call it a day…

call it a day? You are kidding… the day has just begun… haha got you… but yes that is the job, and when I signed the job agreement I did not expect this. Maybe it is a fine print legalese, but then I don’t have time to go back and read the 5 pound agreement that I signed… I remember I signed every page… there were a million at least… maybe come to think of it, I don’t even remember whether I got a employee copy of the agreement…

ok, what am I talking about here? Yeah that particular clause where I am supposed to have sold my soul to the devil and that I have to leave my conscience at home or some other place safe so that it does not interfere in my decisions and that I could make a un-biased decision that would make my employers proud…

who are my employers? Oh I actually always wanted to be a top race driver. But as a thick spectacled non-athletic guy who definitely could never meet the rigours of the sport financially, I had to apply for something else. Did I mention I was not very well off academically too? So engineering or anything like that was also ruled out. And I was too slow to be a pit crew…

I always wanted a hot sports car. Hot sports car attracted hot babes and I always wanted a hot babe too. Somebody told me that if you worked for some auto majors they sometimes gave cars at very subsidized rates, sometimes even free. And hot sports cars usually came out of racing companies. Maybe I could get lucky. I became a race enthusiast. But my dream of working for an auto major was not to happen since I did not possess much talent that were desired. Or so I thought…

There was one more thing I was good at – finding fault. There never was enough cheese in my cheese burger, the traffic police always picked on me, the teachers were incompetent and the subjects were tough, the buses were always late, the cabbies overcharged, the metro was underground and the flights were too high above, I didn’t have a girlfriend and my parents were not rich. Ok, got it? So this talent of mine was noticed by someone who said I was just the right person for this job. Apparently there was a very heavy turnover of people in this position and they could not take the stress.

What was my job? I just had to find fault. Find as many faults as possible to make my client’s team win. It was easy. I was so cut out for this job. But yes the stress is pretty high. Like today for instance…

The day was hot and humid – a typical day near the equator. There were predictions of rain, and that caused greater panic in my client’s team as their most significant competitor had cars and drivers that were very good under rainy conditions. Yes, that is how they tried to win the last race, but my colleagues and I did a very good job. We even got a small bonus which we promptly spent in some stock purchase as the markets were down… so we were all the more keener to get more bonuses.

Today’s race was very important to my client because it was a new track and they had to win to prove that they were ready for any challenge and that their expertise was not just due to the excessive practicing they could easily afford. So we were all glued to the race through our window, doing what we did best – finding fault.

The race started ok. Our team’s cars were up in the front places and they did not lose their positions. But then our client felt that we cannot press the panic button so early even though our closest competitor was sandwiched between their 2 cars. They felt that the people would call it unfair. I did warn them that all is fair in love and war and this was war. But my bosses and clients’ sentiments were to be respected (I would have called it their whim, but they paid my stock market investments). So we had to cut them some slack before I started doing my the thing.

I went to get myself a cup of coffee when pandemonium broke out. Some idiot had crashed out and brought out the safety cars. Luckily it was not my client’s so that only eliminated some competition. Still the race was slowing down… but my coffee was doing a good job. I was wide awake and fully prepared to find the tiniest of mistakes. What is the situation now? Oh, some early riders are jumping into the pit lane and they will get an early mover advantage over my client who has not pitted yet… haha, gotcha… the lane is not open yet under the safety car – drive through penalty. My client smiled a half smile and gave me the thumbs up – that power company which is at an all time low… here I come with my bonus.

But then the unthinkable happened. My client’s car pitted in the next round and everything was going fine when suddenly the immature upstart hastily left dragging the fuel line with him. Disaster!!! And look at the other competitor cars driving so dangerously close to this car. I mentally made a note for the suggestion of the month – when my client is making a pit stop, the others will have to wait outside the pit lane, till my client leaves it.

Ok. The crazy upstart competitor will have to be punished. Where is the rule book… where is it… aah got it… can my client be excused? oh no… I am scr***d… my client will definitely be angry for punishing his driver… how do I do this without endangering my bonus… mmm I need time to think… send that message out “stewards investigating…” that buys me some time.

There is only one way. Relative grading. I have to give the client a drive through penalty, if I don’t the crowd will just mob the stands. The hell with it, of all the days they had to be in their highest numbers today. I will give the client a drive through, but for the other competitors a drive through plus a stop go… haha… the boss will be pleased. I am a genius.

But now my client’s driver is pushed really back. The hell with him. Why could that driver not just wait for them to pull out the fuel line? I am not a magician. How do I make this @$$ of a driver win? I could do a better job than him and all those pit babes will be fawning over me… focus focus back to reality… I will really have to keep my eyes peeled to make sure that all the others can get eliminated. Suddenly my bonus seems that bit unreachable…

Damage control is the need of the day. It is impossible for the client to finish on the podium, unless they start counting from the back. And that will happen when the sun rises in the west. But how do I explain this to my dumb client??? Let me try reasoning with him. Let us try to keep them in the championship race. There are 2 ways – eliminate the closest rival’s cars and move the client’s cars into the points range.

There I see that competitor… how do I eliminate him… he is not even driving his usual aggressive style. And the other car is unlikely to cause any problems to my client’s drivers who are totally having a good time driving at the end of the line without anybody at their tails. I think I should look in the pit lane. Aah I see that driver’s dad… what is he doing there? Is that illegal… no… now he is picking his nose… aha in singapore you will be fined, maybe even arrested – is that a reason enough to suspend the driver? Hmmph no… pit crew check… no they are also fine. Who is that guy with the giant circle at the end of the stick? All the other teams are using it too… my team does not have that… so can I eliminate them all together in one master stroke so that we can have more fun with our automated technology that replaced that guy… my client is a smart cost cutter…

Focus focus… the race is almost over… I need to find something. Night race, what can I do. Hah… that silver paint? It is actually reflecting the lights and giving additional illumination to the driver… that is an unfair advantage definitely… all other cars have other colors, only silver is a metallic shine… moreover that dazzle is causing a disturbance to other drivers when they try to overtake… but that guy is not trying to overtake too… I am tearing my hair. But that unfair advantage is definitely worth exploring. Maybe after the race we can again strip him of the title…

I can’t control my glee… the bonus seems back within reach again…

PS. Sometimes I feel my client’s drivers got their licenses by bribing the officials to pass the driving test… but then I would be out of a job.

f1 revisited…

f1 formerly known as formula-1 requires a rechristening… no points for guessing what it will be – “ferrari-1” (yeah I am being sarcastic – no points for guessing this too)…

from now on Ferrari cars will be designed like this…

The other team cars will be designed like this…

The design of the cars is frozen at the beginning of every season and subject to approval of the management authorities. Any changes from last season’s design will be closely inspected and any intentions of an advantageous change will be removed failing which the team can be disqualified from the races in the season.

However the above rule does not apply to Ferrari cars and they can continue extending their design advantage throughout the season also. They can tweak their engines and make other design modifications to their cars as and when they please. They are also allowed to take the design of competing companies if required. But then Ferrari will have to submit the report on which team’s design they have used so the FIA can disqualify the competing teams from the constructor championships but they can still run around the tracks as dummies so that Ferrari can benchmark and test their design changes and whether they have made perfect copies.

And yes coming to the race rules, safety is the utmost priority of all FIA sponsored races; safety of Ferrari cars an even higher priority. So if there is any hint that there could be a potential danger on the field, the safety car will be deployed and no cars will be allowed to overtake any other car in front of it. However, Ferrari cars are allowed to brake suddenly and hit the car behind them or hit the car in front so that they can eliminate those drivers who could be potential threats once the safety car is removed. However care should be taken so that the safety car is deployed at such a time as would seem advantageous to Ferrari car positions. To pacify the fans announcements will be made that the decision regarding the offending cars will be made after the race as there were other far more significant rule breaks the stewards will have to attend to – like dismissing the pilot of the airplane that went off course to hit a skyscraper – so that after the race when the champagne and other alcoholic beverages are consumed the fans would either forget the incident or their shouts for justice will fall on deaf inebriated ears.

In case of non-ferrari cars, so much as a slight chance that the driver could have hit a Ferrari car would entitle disqualification of that car from that race. But he may be handled with a certain amount of leniency if the affected team is not Ferrari.

When the race is on, no cars will be allowed to overtake Ferrari cars. But in case of a mistake on the part of the competing teams, they will be let off with un-appealable penalties like drive through penalties or stripping down of the finish positions. The rules will be accordingly modified to make the driver’s actions as illegitimate. Like for instance, upon overtaking a car by cutting corners or jumping chicanes, the position must be immediately ceded to the overtaken driver. If however the car that ceded its lead to the overtaken car, overtakes the car again after relinquishing its advantage, then the rule will be changed as the relinquished position should be maintained for at least one corner. However, if the car still manages to overtake again despite giving the lead away for one corner, another corner will be added to the rule. This will ensure that the total number of corners available will eventually get exhausted and the Ferrari cars will get the maximum advantage till the end of the race.

If however by some impossible chance a car overtakes a Ferrari car towards the end of the race and still manages to finish the race ahead, its position will be unceremoniously stripped and the prizes will be snatched away from the driver and the constructor and given to the bawling Ferrari and its drivers in an attempt to pacify them.

In all cases the Ferrari drivers will be treated on par when dealing with other team drivers. But within the team, the designated number 1 driver decided as the one who is tall, handsome with blue eyes, well built and popular among the female fans as compared to the number 2 driver who will be someone who is pot bellied and balding and almost gives a toothless smile that is repulsive to the female fans. In cases involving disputes between the Ferrari drivers, the number 2 driver would contest like any other non-ferrari driver.

Last but not the least, Ferrari will be allowed to add more manpower into its racing team with people who are the most important part of a winning team – lawyers. This is necessary to protect the rights of righteous companies like Ferrari which is hounded by its vicious competitors. The lawyers will be present everywhere trying to find anything remotely linking to a possible sabotage of the competing teams against Ferrari, and immediately presenting evidence or the lack of it in court so that the competition can be eliminated. An example of grave sabotage includes but not exhaustively, a situation where a Ferrari driver’s pit crew member’s aunt’s cousin’s grandmother’s friend’s granddaughter is present in same premises as a competing driver’s parent auto company’s finance department’s outsourced employee from india has come looking for discarded bills for his income tax submission. Thus we see that lawyers are very essential for a racing team’s success.

At all times and not just during the race FIA nominated authorities who will closely monitor the drivers so that non-ferrari teams can be penalized for any small foot-out-of-line rule breaks so that the high safety standards for the Ferrari drivers and the concept of fair play for can be ensured for them. May the spirit of motor racing be respected.

Smart Manager Case Study: group dynamics game theory in the context of rational individuals and behavioral economics

A has n friends (A1, A2… An) where n is a finite integer. Now A is bored and decides to plan for a weekend outing with his friends but he finds it is not easy. Each of his n friends have some constraints which must be taken care of while planning for a common outing. First his n friends are divided into 2 groups – for the sake of simplicity lets assume (A1, A2,… A[n/2]) and (A[n/2 +1], …,An) form the two groups – let us call them group1 and group2 respectively.

For some reason some people in group1 have further split people in group2, for instance (A[n/2 +1],…,A[3n/4]) and (A[3n/4 + 1],…, An)… these members of group1 may go if the first half of group2 is on the trip, but they definitely cannot be made to go even if there is one person from the second half (remember the numbers are not exact but a highly simplified situation which is to be used only as an example for understanding the problem).

The members in group2 also have a similar classification, however they have the habit of reluctantly agreeing to do things that they don’t want to do for certain trivial favors like having the window seat which are easily achievable. But as a further complication some members of group2 from the second subset actually would go on the trip only if those particular members of group1 who would not come if they were on the trip, were on the trip.

One more constraint in the groups was that the requirement was that every An in the group had another An who should be in the trip otherwise they cannot come on the trip. For example let us say A1 wanted A2 to come on the trip, but A2 would come only if A3 also came, but then A3 would come only if A4 came. Even if there was a slight doubt that one of the link could be broken, then the whole group would have a cascading effect sort of.

A, who knew all this, made a very small subset made up of members of both groups – 1 and 2 who managed to tolerate each other. But the news being news and especially since A tried to keep it a secret spread like wildfire. In fact, even people who were outside the big set of all friends got to know of this planned trip. This had its own positive and negative aspects which we shall proceed to explain as constraints of the problem as follows.

Some members of group1 called in some people who were outside the initial set (A1,…,An)… let us call them An-m (A1-1, A1-2,A2-1,A2-2, A2-3 and so on…) where n denotes the nth friend from the original set and m denotes the mth friend of the nth individual who did not belong in the original set but belongs to the universal set. So what happens now is that An-m would come on the trip only if A and the rest of A’s set accepted An-m. In case they did not accept that An-m, then he would not come. Since none of An’s knew any of the An-m’s apart from that particular An, A assumed that no one would have any issues with that. But that was not to be. Some particular An’s who had An-m’s of their own, could not tolerate An-m’s of other An’s. But since the An-m’s were committed to on the trip because of A’s eagerness, the An’s now posed a new condition that those particular An’s would come on the trip only if the corresponding An-m’s also came on the trip.

Some members of group2, feeling that some other members of group2 would come only if their An-m’s would come and their An-m’s could come only if there were people – either An’s or An-m’s – with some special characteristics were on the trip. In fact this set of people with special characters can come only if there were some particular An with these special characters. So if this particular An with special characteristics did not come on the trip then the other special characteristic persons – An or An-m’s – will not come on the trip.

There were some developments also which caused the set (A1-An) to run around like a batch of scared sheep inside an enclosure.

Development1: Some rumor in the form of a news of an impending doom was given by a soothsayer. As all soothsayer predictions go, this one was also unverifiable, but caused major agitation among some superstitious members in the (A1-An) set. The An’s that were affected would come on the trip if the news was verified to be untrue. The others were unaffected and were classified as brash and adventurous by those affected (though this classification bears no relevance to the solution, it is given here to keep options open for a sequel).

Development2: The one particular An who had special characteristics was not able to go on the trip because another particular An was not able to make it on the trip for unquoted (but irrelevant to the problem) reasons. So this made sure that the others with the special characteristics also could not go on the trip.

Further complication:Now, one of the An’s thinking that the persons with special characteristics can still come if some random person with similar special characteristics was also in the trip. But unfortunately all that he had done was adding an An-m as his dependent causing a further knot in the already knotty constraints list.

Now A is faced with the dilemma of the decision. Of course going all alone on the trip is not a very exciting option. So he has to have some An along with him. So the possible solutions are:

a) A should pick An’s according to the formula


b) A should have a no-confidence motion at his house where he would give huge sums of money as bribes to members from group1 and group2 to defect from their groups into the other group and add to his bankruptcy.

c) A should go and train for the Olympics swimming and diving championships in the swimming pool that is directly below the balcony of his pool facing apartment and not worry about petty things in life, but focus on getting gold for his country.

d) A suddenly finds his job very interesting and his Boss to be an angel and starts working on a new initiative for his company’s plans for world domination

e) A should get married and add another dimension to his set (A1,...,An)

f) A should go to the Himalayas for the vacation

g) A should go to the Himalayas permanently

h) None of the above. I, like all other An’s, have a unique solution to the problem.

it can’t be that simple

Today was just another day with its own complexities that just going by it makes me want to go back to those simplistic good old days of cavemen… you know the hunt-eat-sleep-shit while on the move-hunt again routine. In between maybe you find somebody of the opposite sex and end up having a few children who once they get into the group in the playground are as indistinguishable as the kids that were born to the other indistinguishable parents like yourselves… bloody hell your find of the opposite sex maybe forgotten the next time you find another…

Everybody would be called ugh… and everything would be ugh… we would not have the complexities of niceties where we can’t grunt in front of others… when your entire communication is a grunt, then it makes it impolite not communicate and remain silent… well ok I won’t go back the bad things of how the society and culture developed the concepts of courtesy…

One of the worst things that has evolved or maybe rather devolved due to the concept of professional courtesy is that of our communication skills… we would rather be misunderstood and misinterpreted than be loud and clear… or rather convey everything risking disrespecting the other person’s knowledge and understanding of whatever we are trying to confuse him with… or rather giving out a very simple answer rather than an ambiguous statement and putting the listener in a dilemma of asking questions and appearing even more stupid. But Combine that illiteracy in interpreting the mind of the conveyor with the more tangible and logical illiteracy of the concept itself, you end up proving what you were desperately hoping to disprove.

Some wiseguy said that the toughest problems apparently have the simplest solutions or something like that… or what I would want to interpret it as is that most things that life demands are pretty simple that are unnecessarily complexified by the millions of the complex neural networks leading to the world’s greatest complexicator – the brain… umm, I guess you must have understood the intent of the previous sentence. Oh well anyways what I am trying to convey here is that we have scr***d up a nice and simple world that was one a haven for nice things that money can no longer buy… but today money can buy many things and is one extremely simplified yet complex situation that man has gotten himself into… in his ever hungry pursuit for the nice things in life he simply forgets that money can’t get those for him and instead ends up destroying those very things he set out to acquire with the simply complex concept called money…

Oh ok, you maybe asking why I have dedicated a paragraph to money, and in this seemingly incoherent scheme of things does it find a part? Actually, half a paragraph. Here is the other half. The funny thing is that we are all in this together. The more money we try to make we are obliviously building an intricate web of complexities around ourselves, and the already existing web that we have created or were left behind by others. The web unlike a spider web is not a beautiful piece of engineering but is a clumsy disaster that is just waiting to pull you down with it under its own weight and your great networking skills.

Now all of a sudden you realize that the web has become one hell of a monster and is currently in a dangerous position to suck you in and immobilizing you, and you feel that it is time you started to tidy it up a bit. But where do you start? It is like a massively multi programmer operated reckless garble that is usually seen of those evil things called “code”… a point to be noted at this point is that man having destroyed mankind with the invention of a language manages to spread that disease of destruction to inanimate objects by inventing the computer language. And getting back to the sticky thing that is our web, it is something that god could not create for us, but we are more intelligent than him when we created something called – erase and start from scratch. You know we can always erase the existing code and start from scratch. But maybe god could do that and his creations are powerless just like we are currently assuming our creations sitting inside the computers cannot erase themselves.

But yes though we secretly hope that the matrix will not become a reality, we are also secretly hoping that it would. We do not want our creations to become creators themselves and create a more complex hierarchy of more complex entities. Maybe our creators felt that way too, and as is very wisely portrayed in intellectual movies like Jurassic park or anaconda or king kong, we can’t control nature – how much ever money that control can make for us because there will always be a $@#$% who can cause havoc because of the same pursuit you are in pursuit of. That is a complex butterfly effect in itself. Maybe we should all head for the Himalayas.

PS. Here is something far more simple.

movie hitlist (or) why i should not write movie reviews

the recent slew of must watch movies I watched were a real lot of pathetically painful performers… highly disappointing and the plot has been diluted to the point of being so silly, that the only satisfaction that seems to be arising out of watching them is this blog post… at the great personal risk of a RGV-blaag kinda attack, I am writing this, although no one is paying me anything for it…

Narnia II – the sequel to the first one (the lion the witch and the wardrobe) seems to have lost all the magic… the only magic left is some set of weird creatures… sluggish screenplay and even more sluggish characters are better appreciated due to the total humanness of the movie’s leading roles… almost 90% of the movie is devoid of any real magical instance and eventually azlan the lion god finally turns up to end the movie and hence our boredom… prince Caspian turned out to be a real thespian effort and the movie’s title sounds most appropriate in tamil… Narnia, Narnia…

Kuruvi – “kuruvi thalaila panangaya vekkalam aana bomb vekka koodadhu”… this punch dialog in a way sums up the entire episode. Ilaya thalapathi’s stupidest role so far and apparently the movie has been a telugu remake. The hero is actually a superhero… a set of thoroughly disconnected screenplay seems to connect the amazing punch dialog comedy tracks of vivek… amazingly powerful, the hero takes a beating now and then just to prove that he is still human (or maybe that the director suddenly remembered that it was just too much to digest seeing people getting beaten up by a scrawny looking guy by the hundreds… and then the songs… they had crossed being awful and get beyond the point of being unbearable… in fact I could not digest wot I saw and I actually felt very full after the movie for a few minutes after it got over…

21 – can’t say much about this becos it is supposed to have heavy themes in it… Kevin Spacey, Lawrence Fishburne, MIT, Maths, Blackjack, LA etc etc… it is supposed to be so slick and aimed to amaze that they forgot what they set out to do – play blackjack… it turns out more as a thriller where Lawrence Fishburne in his huge menacing form and his rich set of studded huge gold rings terrorizes kids to give him their cash and plastic chips… it turned out to be a movie that seemed to have a lot of sign languages typically reminding me of the “news for the hearing impaired” which used to be shown on DD way back when people were really watching those for lack of better things to do.

Cloverfield – a monster movie shot with a handycam… ok sounds good… so wot wud a guy with a handycam, running around becos of a monster attack focus on? No, not the monster… it would be his stupid screaming friends… come on when people go to the zoo, and take pictures, they take pictures of other people completely ignoring the animals… no ? anyways, I don’t think the monster was worth the time… and considering that it was a handycam tape, there was not much time either…

Arasangam – never expected the thalaivar to make such a forgettable movie… I actually don’t remember much of it… captain takes a small detour from the normal plot of “his best friend did it” to something of a bigger twist… but the rest of it seems same… somebody who is conspicuous by his absence is “Wasim Khan”, but the usual losing of beloved ones goes on. Amazing use of technology though not required for captain, but as I told you, I have forgotten the plot. But the way he cracks the code from a seemingly unsolvable clue – the captain has not lost his touch… in fact he has gained a few… pounds that is… nowadays I can’t see the throat where those great punch dialogs and loads of advice comes from… and soon maybe in the next movie itself captain will abandon his reverse back kick style and just roll over all his enemies…

Dasavatharam – had to save the best for the last rite? A huge wait of over 2 years and kamal gives us this… of course there are a hundred hidden messages in the story (according to a floating forward) but this is what I saw… of the 10 avatars of kamal, 3-4 were good in terms of character strength and depth… others were maybe there just for the sake of being there… and the horrible graphics of the butterflies and the oceans… yugg… I have not even started on the make up yet… despite the 500 man hours that kamal is reported to have spent on the make up alone I see no worth in that. A total plastic mask affair which suited only the killer kamal because of his cold expressionless character… In fact given a chance maybe any tom dick and harry could have acted those parts… unfortunately the monkey was too small and mallika sherawat was too slim and sexy and maybe napoleon was an old family friend and the concept kamal married to a kamal made to look like asin would have gotten censored in a same sex marriage abhorring intolerant country (but dint Vishnu take on a mohini avatar?) else maybe we could have actually seen kamal in 15 avatars and an unbeatable entry to the guiness book… yeah the film is fast paced and you don’t get bored, but nothing goes in either… it is a crazy half baked script and even lesser baked special effects and graphics and it totally falls flat on the attempts at a crazy mohan type dialog exchange at the most serious moments in the movie… the amazing start of kamal’s entry as rangaraja nambi is not capitalized for the rest of the movie, and in fact seems totally unconnected. And the amazing musical scores are as relevant as skimpily clad heroines and bright multicolored heroes prancing around trees and fields… I fail to understand if kamal was really attempting some fancy dress ramp walk or trying to portray himself in the 10 different avatars of Vishnu… God only knows…

Indian Idly…

For the last few months, I have been idling away… yeah that is my excuse for not visiting the blog… would you believe it? I didn’t visit my own blog all this while… this is what I realized when I saw the faithful weekly reports in my mails… almost 50% of the hits on my blog were narcissistic visits by me from various computer terminals across the globe – from my home internet, the office, the client location, my house in Chennai whenever I went on weekends and every chance I get on any internet connection… though I don’t know what I was looking for visiting my blog so many times…

and then there were the other faithfuls – my regular readers who used to in their daily surfing route would pass by my blog, see that nothing is written as usual, and file it away for chat discussions to ask me why I have not put anything there… then a further drop in hits made me realize the these faithfuls had given up and were now bypassing it… one faithful even went to the extent of subscribing to my mail feed so that she could be saved the trouble of visiting it in vain and at the same time not making me feel sad that she dint read my blogs…

but even all this is was not good enough to make me stage a comeback… frankly I was running out of inspiration… for lack of better reason let’s assume that that is the reason… because I was definitely not getting screwed at work nor did I have someone like my girlfriend or relatives visiting me… fact is I don’t even have a girlfriend, and since I live in a small pigeon hole also called PGs in Bangalore, no relatives can visit me either…

so what have I been doing all this while… well absolutely nothing… and when you do absolutely nothing you feel like doing absolutely nothing and end up doing absolutely nothing… that does sound like I have accomplished what I had set out to do thereby achieving 100% on the to-do list… but when you set out to do absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing is what gets done… that is what this paragraph has conveyed – absolutely nothing…

this idle mind has not even been a devil’s workshop… on many days I had just felt like sleeping the day off and many times I have done exactly that! And the chunks of time were in such quanta that they did not warrant the start or execution of a new found hobby which was the easiest advice everyone gave when I cribbed to them that I had absolutely nothing to do… ok that is the last time I am using the word, words - actually, here.

but yes, on hindsight I did seem to have been busy for the time I have been out of the blogosphere… it is definitely not that I have been trying to find a new chair that is as comfy as my old one(as one of the faithfuls had pointed out in the comment section before finally writing me off), though that was also part of some odd jobs I have been doing… it is excuses that are as tiny as the achievements that we try to remember during our appraisals or while filling the awards and achievements section in our resumes… but small things nevertheless, they definitely translate to an excuse that actually did eat up my time…at least i like to put the blame on something that is like an excuse.

so, I think I will put those in here as soon as I manage to recollect them… some are actually funny, though it may not seem so while reading it… some are not funny, but again, as I know my readers, it will definitely make you happy (bloody sadists!!!) and that was to some extent a decent excuse as I did not seem to conveying what I wanted to convey on my blogs… I was actually losing some amount of the originality as well… even this title was borrowed from someone’s gtalk status message, and by a sudden stroke of, I would say genius, removed the ‘e’ and put a ‘y’…

anyways, I hope I am back.

..X. .X..

the seperation…

I found her in my new office… soft unassuming not so flashy and not so shabby either… very down to earth but being exploited by someone else… I saved her from that useless monster who just could not appreciate her worth... I just stole her from right under his nose.

We immediately hit it off… a sort of special bonding formed between us… everyday I went to work just to create the warmth with her… and she was always ready to tend to my tired and battered body after the bus rides… when she was with me I never felt the need to look around and this helped me to concentrate on the little work that I managed to do…

Of course there were better things to do with her around than just work… I could just close my eyes and savour in the bliss when her soft body enveloped me and massaged my muscles… or I could let it all be and just relax in her soft contours and dream on… especially on a warm days …

She was a little fat, but that was what made her all the more appealing to me… we were the envy of the whole office, each one wishing she was theirs… but we were quite oblivious to the feelings around us – she shielded me from all these negativities by keeping me happy and comfortable…

Aah those memorable days when we have had coffee and juices together… although I could have had coffee in the cafeteria, I would prefer bringing it over and having them in her company… and the many work related achievements she has helped me in… ummm on second thoughts lets not think about work now…

And then came the day of the management decision… she was made to leave… along with many others like her… they were moving older ones like her to make way for younger ones… slimmer and sexy looking… but the warmth was missing… I will never be comfortable with these new entrants… I might get used to them, but not comfy.

I tried to hold her back… went to the authorities pleading with them to release her… even made up stories to invoke pity in their cold eyes… but all in vain… I could not bear to see her made to stand in a corner with others like her for the final walk out of the doors… I walked back inside cursing my inability to do anything about it.

Damn it… I miss my old chair !!!

the rice of the fitness freak…

I recently joined the elite class of fitness fanatics… recently as in some 4mths back… so I am not a new yr junkie (just reiterating the fact I had pointed in one of the previous posts itself)… so when I enrolled it is all so impressively professionally managed… or so it seemed…

Meet the physio they say… “the” physio is actually a group of people with weird looking instruments and weirder ideas… they try to find some fault in your body when there is none… come on man, I am there not to reduce weight or make myself look like the Mr.Prefect… I am here to have a general level of fitness and stamina with a little bit of muscle toning that comes in with a light cardio workouts… which means “I suddenly have a lot of money and I feel that the corporate discount was good enough… and yeah I wont be visiting too often…” so a session of fat measurements using vernier callipers and making me stretch muscles I knew never could be stretched, they found that I had an alarming 6% body fat as against the norm of 5.5% or something like that… so now the nutritionist takes over…

And what a stunning nutritionist she was… I could hear “and here come nutri-marie at 5ft 2inches weighing 170 pounds she is one of the lightest WWE superstars around” in the background… she could stun with a flick of her little finger if she could bend it enough to flick that is… and she asks me what do I eat… and as soon as I start off she is alarmed… “what no solid breakfast?” “what 3 cups of coffee?” “what 3 spoons of sugar a day?” “what no fruits?” and “what – u eat rice? In all the meals?”

Hey!!! I have to survive…

Any south indian worth his rice would have nightmares going to a dietician/nutritionist at any fitness club… the reason – they are so anti-rice… we just can’t leave a tradition of rice hogging southie culture just so that we can try to get into that six pack ab-domain… and what is the guarantee that it will give me that… I mean unlike coffee, the wonder drug that keeps you awake as soon as you have it, wheat does not give you six packs immediately on eating it…

You go to any surd-ka-dabha and order meals… a typical one is with some 3 rotis and a bowl of rice… if you wanna substitute the rice with the roti, you get another measly 2 or if they are generous, 3 rotis… come on – don’t you know that rotis are appetizers… go to an andhra restaurant and order unlimited meals, they serve you some rotis in the start… then comes the unlimited rice… UNLIMITED – get it… if I were to shift to a roti-only-thali I would go hungry !!! for the same money I get nightmares where the rice is accusing me of baseless treachery…

Not to mention the side effects when I am watching other people around me happily feasting on the rice and biryanis… years of rice hogging has given me a voracious appetite… and that nutritionist has the cheek to advice me to have a heavy breakfast – of 2-3 idlies –if I eat just 2-3 idlies I will die of starvation (and please don’t mention that idlies are made of rice and I wont be able to have that too… worse she might ask me to have wheat idlies yuck !!!) and a lunch of 2-3 chapatis, avoid rice – and ? I mean I have to eat a main course after an appetizer round right? And have a bowl of fruit in the late evening…fruit bowls actually make me hungrier – however big they are… that is why I avoid fruits in the first place… and then the best part – have a light dinner… according to her, the lunch was heavy!!!

And where is the coffee in the picture – I need it… it is the elixir of life… Now if only she had looked herself in the mirror, she might have felt a little guilty… what was she trying to achieve, saving the food ration for herself !!!

I am sorry lady… I am not the rich-anorexic-modeling-kids you normally get as clients… I am here on a fat company discount and I am dictating my terms… I am like this only and will be for time to come… I will hog like a pig, make me run like a horse…

customer is king kong…

India is a land of plenty… plenty of people that is… my cynical argument is that that is the reason for the current economic boom and prosperity of the nation despite there being millions of people who cannot affort a basic one meal per day or a roof over their heads or even a piece of cloth to cover themselves…

Businesses in India have woken up to the sudden cash inflow… in India they see many countries – just based on the economic divide… we have people with riches competing with the richest of the world to those competing with those that are starving for basic necessities as well and millions of people at different levels in between… result – we have a market for everything… if I were to launch a simple safety pin priced at a million dollars, I would probably find a buyer, no actually, I would find many bidders for it and I could possibly sell it at 10 million… maybe more.

No this is not due to inflation… too much money chasing too few goods is not the case… yes that is there too, but it is definitely not the problem because if it were it would affect the business men as well… it is a callous attitude typically contributed by the Indian consumer himself…

If we go back to the annals of Indian history we have always had someone categorized into “traitors”… these people typically used to sell off their fellow countrymen to invaders for no better deal than what maybe they would have all had gotten had their been a united effort at nation development… but no, Indians have always thought that they were always better than fellow Indians… not that they deserve better, that they can afford better…

If a fellow Indian is getting screwed at some service offered, the first sympathy of other Indians would go to the service provider… for example, if I am in a queue for a movie ticket, the guy behind me would grumble that I am taking too much time in buying tickets rather than that the guy issuing the tickets is taking too much time to give the tickets… and the businesses make the best of it… even if they fall short on their delivery promises they would always find a buyer for their crappy service…

The finest example is the pizza delivery 30 minute promise… I have never seen deliveries happening within 30minutes… but never have I seen people getting it free… why… because we know that the guys who are gonna go hungry are not the pizza delivery guys or the pizza makers… it is the guys who ordered it… because I definitely don’t think that pizza if it were ever returned would translate into a loss for the company… because in all probability, the pizza would find a buyer among the many people who want to flaunt their buying power and are still waiting their turn outside the restaurant…

Definitely we cannot boycott the goods and services because these are bare essentials… there was a recent fwd about the real estate boom which implored all peoples to stop buying houses for a couple of years so that the builders could actually feel the impact of a joint boycott… but that mail is getting forwarded like a hot cake but in a different sense… the psyche of the guy forwarding the mail is explained using the game theory… “if I forward it to some 10 people and they boycott the buying of the flat then I would end up getting the flat cheap…” the problem with this idea is that all the people reading the forward are Indians… and hence we think alike…

Businesses no longer look at customers… they look at target segments… because things average out in a bigger population… it is a statistical funda applicable to India definitely… gone are the days when the business people used to bend backwards to treat customers as kings and that the customer is always right… wait… I don’t remember those days at all… I have only seen an attitude of “the customer is right, so what? I will find somebody else…” according to them customers are just monkeys providing amusement with their rantings… but maybe king kong would get a better response because he is a big monkey – with due respect to racism…

New years resolutions and stuff…

mmm… actually I have nothing to write about… but I did not want to give up on my new year resolutions so soon… I want to blog often… more often than I am currently doing. This is definitely not going to be a list of resolutions that I want to keep and then fail to do so and later on somebody digs up the archives and sues me for not keeping my resolutions… as if I care…

well anyways, before i start boring you I have already broken one resolution (refer above)… another one is to not procrastinate… well for those who don’t do hindu crosswords and have not come across such stupid sounding bombastic words in english, I meant – putting off work for later… so here goes my first blog post for this new year – although a little late (thank whoever thot of that “better late…” proverb…)

I actually don’t know what to write… I cannot recap what happened the whole of last year… hell I can’t recap whatever happened yesterday… my memory is so short lived (thank god for that) and so a recap of 2007 would be so factually incorrect that I would get more brick bats than the… the… the er whoever is the recipient of the maximum criticism last year…

So, I look for inspiration within… nope much as I break my head, I wont write about my new year resolutions… no way… million other peoples have written it already… and have already started following it… just the other day, just like any other day I went to the gym only to find it extremely crowded… the other day was the 2^nd of jan and note that it is not my new found new year resolution about fitness… I went to the gym just like any other day – I am a regular!!! And there were so many people there at the machines that there was a queue even at the weights section – the maximum demand for the lightest dumbells… and what a sweat everyone was working out… but wait a minute… where is that hum of the ac…

And yes of course the treadmills are the worst hit… any body and everybody is so obsessed or should I say paranoid about cardio work outs… and the first thing that jumps into the head is the tread mill… so we have a whole bunch of waist size 40s panting and heaving at the belt at a godly speed of 3km per hour hanging onto the support bars for dear life… and they will put in all their will power to make people wait for the whole 20 mins… because 20 minutes of using a treadmill is more value for money than 1 minute at the weights…

What is so pissing about the increase in the crowd and the hence the waiting time is that there is no proportionate increase in the number of pretty faces and the sex ratio… so should we safely assume that more men are getting unhealthy and our women are already possessing that perfect body… too bad that there will be more eyes for that few tight tracks doing that routine on the steppers…

Well come to think of that the new year is a time when the male hormones are at their peak… it is something like the full moon for werewolves… so women who feel quite comfortable and safe generally walking half naked into a mob of drunk sex starved local people should actually abstain from it on new year eves… especially in cities that are considered safe like mumbai, delhi and bangalore… all these liquor manufacturers must be sued – haven’t we all heard that drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco makes you impotent… then why are all these men behaving like this…

It is not just the people, but even inanmate objects like wooden platforms behave strangely on new years… like the one in chennai that stubbornly refused to support the weight of all that people on it… it was the effect of the new year moon… the hotel authorities were so careless to have overlooked the effect of new year on wooden supports… the fact that there were about a million people precariously perched on the platform to welcome the zeroes on the clock had nothing to do with it… sue the greedy hotel authorities who brought in unaccomodating hostile timber…

And then there were so many more things that happened that I have forgotten them over the last few days at work… new year now looks like years ago… to me it is just another holiday hopefully spent at home in front of the TV switching between the 8 or so free to air tamil channels that show some movie simultaneously… so while superstar is romancing nagma in one channel I wont miss out on the punch dialogs of captain on another or a good comedy track on yet another… a very nice example of mix and match at work thouch totally out of context… maybe we can launch a make your own movie idea… or a remixed movie… hmmm that sounds like a nice business plan…

So on this note I close this post… it has been waiting for a nice ending and I have been like working on this here and there… lots of things have happened already and I will have to start writing about them too… and yeah better late than never… like so many of my orkut mates who are still wishing me…

HAPPY NEW YEAR…