Probably one of the best stress busters is children. And hey am not talking about having them, am just talking about being with them. The questions they ask can be infuriating, but imagine if you ask such basic questions in crisis meetings, maybe the solutions would come up fairly quickly. A child’s question goes to the root of the problem or the reason. For e.g. he or she might start with a very basic question such as

Child: Why is the sky blue ?

You: Because it follows the colour of earth

Child: Why is the earth blue ?

You : Colour of water

Child: Why is water blue ?

You: God made it that way

Child: Why does God like blue ?

to which you dont have an answer, but then these question exercises make you think

For me the sessions i have had with my nephew seems highly therapeutic and yes, according to my better half, it does bring out the child in me. Maybe offices should have a child day once a month. Just letting one’s guard down and being the younger self can do wonders

Over the last few days, i had this great yearning to listen to some good old songs. Old here would mean the 80s and not the classic 50s and 60s. So i loaded onto my ipod some interesting numbers. One of them, am sure all of you are familiar with, was “We are the World”. Hearing it after more than 24 years it made me wonder how communities came together during those days in joint ventures to alleviate pain and suffering.

Probably it happens even now, however the likes of Woodstock, Band Aid, USA for Africa is slowly vanishing. A few years back Live 8 came thanks once again to Bob Geldof. Do they make people like that anymore, i wonder

In our country too we have artists jamming together for causes, but can we recreate the magic of any of the above in India. I am sure we can. I very much would like to be a part of that movement. If anybody out there is listening do drop me a note

Over the past few days, i have been looking at offline bloggers to blog since i do not have access to internet connection during certain times. Further, i am not a Twitter fan or a mobile blogger fan. I prefer the older blog version as it offers a window to meet a lot of interesting people. So i hit upon a couple of tools like Windows Live Writer and Blogdesk. These worked fine in my office PC, however at home i have migrated from the Windows based operating system to Linux, specifically Ubuntu. I now consider this as a better operating system to Windows. Windows to me pales in comparison for security, response times and graphics which enrich user experience. Today, i pounced upon Bilbo blogger. Maybe the developer was a fan of Lord of The Rings. This seemed to be one of the best applications i have used for blogging till now. This post is a matter of fact test post using Bilbo Blogger.

Onto more mundane things. Crisis in Office but nothing that will faze me currently. Awaiting a drive down to Chennai. More than 6 months since Sally (my car) did a long distance drive and i am longing to get behind and take her out. Also, 1 week of no work, no stress and it is going to be at home with parents and relatives. Sally needs to be treated and am planning to sit with the mechanics and get myself all greased up

Today, a good friend of mine pointed me to an article about networking sites. Apparently these are more or less used to reach out to old flames and boyfriends or girlfriends. Not to make conversation, but to find out how badly they have been doing and feel satisfied about it. Wonder if this would have been true of any social get together too. I guess so.

Am off now to watch a mindless movie about love. God, how can they take such movies where people cannot profess their love to each other till the last scene where there is a crisis and it has to come out.

It’s strange to think that your machines, gadgets or gizmos have a life of their own. Sounds like Transformers IV. But that is how i felt over the weekend thanks to my car and my stereo. My car decided that it would trouble me over the weekend so that i would refrain from a long journey. To that extent, it started making unnecessary noises in the rear and managed to blow its tires a couple of times. My wife, as any sane person would be, told me that it was time the car had a visit to the nearest garage and i as any obstinate male refused to do that. My instinct was to give it a couple of kicks, scream at the engine and wave my fists about like a shaman treating a patient. I did that and none of that worked. So i finally decided that i would take the car into the garage for a “Check Up’. The booking was done while coming back home from office thanks to my trusty mobile. The next day we thought we would step out as the city was finally flooded with sun light. I got into the basement and there she stood sedately waiting for me to start her. I did start her, eased out of the building and soon we were flying through traffic and strangely enough the odd noise did not app rear and neither did any untoward happenings. To cut the story short, i guess the car finally heard about the doctor’s appointment and all feigning of illness disappeared and she was 100% fine

The same thing happened to my stereo which for some reason would switch on all by itself, move from one setting to the other and switch off all by itself. Talking about it with my wife, we decided that it was time to now upgrade to a home theater system and at 5am, we searched on the internet for some good quality HTS. Sure enough the stereo seemed to hear us and managed to correct itself to normal

So much for mechanics and electricians. All you need to do is to give them an inferiority complex and sure enough they perform at 120% their capacity.

Am now waiting for my fridge to flounder…

 

This is my first attempt at writing a blues song. If someone does know to get it into a certain chord do let me know. I have something in mind, however let me confess that i am tone deaf when it comes to making music

 

I woke up this morning and looked to my room
I woke up this morning and looked to my room
The only thing that stood there
Was my dirty old broom

I’m gonna take my heap o truck
And drive down the delta plain
I’m gonna find me a quick buck
And pay all mah big little debt again

I opened the door and walked to the garden
I opened the door and walked to the garden
Tripped on my mama
Oh I beg your pardon

I’m gonna take this heap o truck
And drive down the delta plain
I’m gonna find me a quick buck
And pay all mah big little debt again

I got onto my troubled roller coaster
Yea, I got on to my troubled roller coaster
I cranked her up
Well she dint run, but she sang like a broken toaster

I’m gonna take this heap o truck
And drive down the delta plain
I’m gonna find me a quick buck
And pay all mah big little debt again

I drove into town, the hardware store
I drove into town, the hardware store
Said the smith, you don’t work here
So don’t come here no more

I’m gonna take this heap o truck
And drive down the delta plain
I’m gonna find me a quick buck
And pay all mah big little debt again

I drove past the plastered church, the priest waved
I drove past the plastered church, the priest waved
Son, spare the lord a dollar
You would surely be saved

I’m gonna take this heap o truck
And drive down the delta plain
I’m gonna find me a quick buck
And pay all mah big little debt again

Am gonna drive to massah Thomas barn
Am gonna drive to massah Thomas barn
If I don’t find my big little money
am gonna sail away , to Cape Horn

Yesterday late night news blared that a prominent person of India was pawed at by certain security folks while breezing through security check in the airport. Today the same thing has been thrown open into a debate in India’s principal houses. A big furor erupted and to add to the entire imbroglio another ex minister added his two bits of being searched unlawfully

In this age of fly by night terrorists and e-terrorisms what right does one have while travelling abroad. What separates us the common man from the so called VVIPs. A few of these VIPs or ministers or government officials are accused of being hardened criminals or having connections with certain anti secular forces. Who knows that Individual A is an ethical VIP and Individual B is not. In a land that has been touted to be democratic where people are treated equally with respect to caste, color, creed, sex and so on, who actually decides on these separate lines of behavior.

The only thing that the frisking staff did was to violate a policy. To this effect they should be given certain punitive actions. But to have made this into a big noise is unworthy of those individuals who actually did it. Irrespective of who we are, we are frisked and in some cases strip searched in international airports. There are cases where certain passports are tagged with double S just to indicate the fact that these passport holders are suspects and need to be specially searched.

In today’s world, frisking has become the norm, whether you are the common farmer or the prime minster of a nation. The leading industrialists and people who matter to the masses need to set an example to the common man that they too abide by the unwritten code of ethics and behind all the paraphernalia of degrees, positions and wealth they too are normal

Lady Hillary, it is time for you to set an example and next time you are in India, please insist that you too be frisked like the rest of the population.

The latest thing to hit the internet is a new search engine from Microsoft called Bing. And why is it so popular ? Probably for its search capabilities. No actually that is not the case. The popularity wars just got bloodier with Bing getting a sweet acronym….it now stands for the Anti Google campaign…Because Its Not Google !

In the Indian scene however a new war or should i say a new death has arrived. The death of the first home grown sexy woman – a.k.a Savitha Bhabi. All that you men ever dreamt off she managed to do and a bit more after that. And then the Bureaucratic machine swung into action, beheading the girl next door.

What more can the Women’s liberation and various other forums ask for with this Government. And to think that if Savitha Bhabi is dead the internet world will be clean and there would be no more of such Bhabis in action anymore. Its the case of the cat closing its eyes and lapping up the milk with the expectation that if i cannot see, so will the rest of the world

While the pundits laud at this punitive action, the wheels of reel churn along making more and more titillating movies with the concept that such scenes of bared bosoms and thundering thighs are required to unravel the plot of the movie.

I am no purist and i believe that one’s mind is one’s own censor. If it craves for lust, it will find it wherever and if avenues are closed newer ones will open up. The Indian male has thus ended up with a big libido, no release and the machinery blames the multitude of molestations on the poor woman who having exposed herself to equality is just being herself

The Queen is Dead, Long live the Queen

I received this message sometime back and i thought to myself, isnt it very true that things have changed a lot since English came into being. Language by itself is a boon to human kind since it makes people communicate with each other. Of course, we made it tougher by having multiple languages, native dialects and so on. This below list clearly defines how english by itself has changed over a period of time thus preventing Sherlock Holmes to have a meaningful conversation with the modern day Inspector Clousseau

Memory was something you lost with age
An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano
A web was a spider’s home
A virus was the flu
A CD was a bank account
A hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived

And if you had a 3 inch floppy…

You just hoped nobody ever found out!?!

After about 10 years of using Microsoft Operating System (you should by now call it MOS, mighty outdated system), i managed to shift into a linux platform. I am a newbie here as far as technology is concerned and therefore if what i write is not standard technology jargons, or if i am making a big hype on something which you folks think is run of the mill, please brush it aside and move on

So the weekend started with first taking off MOS from my system. Format all the drives and there i had it, a totally brand new like laptop. Over to the linux operating system. I have been told by many a data engineer that installing MOS is not easy and if you compare it to linux well MOS is kid’s play. So all my ears perked up and my eyes wide open, i started loading this thingy called Ubuntu. Apparently an African word, that means “Humanity to Others”, it was available free and took about 2 hrs to download all of 700Mb worth of data. Anyways, moving away from all of this tech jargon, i had my machine up and running within 1 hour will all applications loaded and a quicker speed and a better look and feel

My question therefore boils down to why is this not popular. If an technically challenged person like me could install it and get it into working shape, it could be better done by the tech savvy . So why is it not used in firms, for personal use etc. As of now it is goodbye to Microsoft and Hello Ubuntu for me