.. and boredom breeds bad parodies

my contributions to future generations:

Cayney Dumptey sat on a Vol
Cayney Dumptey had a great fall;
All the Bernankey's donkeys and all the Hank's men
Couldn't put Bear Stearns together again.

Ding Dong Bell
Lehman's in the well
Who put her in?
Little Dick Fuld Thin
Who pulled her out?
The KDB rich and stout.
What a naughty boy is Dicky this time,
To try to drown poor Lehman 'coz of subprime !

and a hope that the nano fails..

Tata and Buddha went up a hill
To fetch the Nanos faster;
Didi pulled Buddha down and broke his thorny crown
And Tata came tumbling after

After a long hiatus, I have rediscover'd that distinctintly male art of Coccooning a k a Crawling-Into-Your-Cave a k a Being-The-Incorrigible-Couch-Potato. The smarter ones call it Introspecting ("Honey, I can't take out the trash. I need to reflect on my day").

Not like I lead a very active life on normal days. But as I lay in my rather overspacious bed at home, curled up with limbs stretched at impossible angles (vaguely resembling a very ungainly flamingo on dope), reading material on one side, a pillow on the other and music all around, I was happy. At peace more like. The kind of silent happiness that makes one feel all's right with the world. The kind of happiness that you usually get when you are spending a nice long vacation at home. It was raining heavily outside. The steady drumbeat of the rain on my window only broken by the occasional bark from a Very-Irritated-Because-I'm-Wet Labrador. A warm and fuzzy trickle of thoughts and memories in my head.

It struck me that familiarly breeds comfort. Life always seems better around the past. The old sofa that I slept, studied, ate - and oh yes, sat - in, complete with ancient ketchup stains. The 20 year old dining table that I hid under as a bachcha. Songs that I grew up hearing. Memories of our home and ancient Honda Accord back in Ras Al Khaimah. Snapshots of a time gone by.

Things come full circle I guess. Wherever I go, whatever I end up doing, nothing 'gets' me like the things that you grew up with. For me, that would be reading endlessly. Long walks. Doodling. Mallu songs. Amma's chai. Going to the supermarket (I love the smell of supermarkets. And department stores. So much that I seriously consider retail a career choice. Even now). I swear by Honda.

It's funny - the things that define you forever. And the people that - for good or bad - change you. Friends from school who have grown up and are raising families of their own, but still game for a snigger or two. The pretty girl in the front row you perpetually had a crush on. Cranky teachers. The bullies you had to pick fights with.

Sigh. Freud was right.

Patriotic? Me?

taking off from this interesting post , and based on a very vocal argument i had with a friend a couple o' days back:

Am I patriotic?
The short version answer: I dunno..
The much much longer version answer:

Am I not patriotic? I remember that the Father of Our Nation was born on October 2nd and killed on January 30th. I diligently mark out the dates for festivals and make sure I send out greetings to all & sundry. And attend the 'festival special' lunches and dinners at the various restaurants in town smart enough to cash in on this. I attend flag hoisting at the Indian embassy in Leonie Hill on August 15th and belt out the national anthem (err. some facts are slightly altered for effect). Doesn't that make me a true-blooded son of the Indian soil? (really expensive soil now though)

Ain't I patriotic? Sure, I support the Indian cricket team. Sure, I was delighted when Abhinav 'Businessclass Shooter' Bindra won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. And hurt when Sania 'Aint she a babe' Mirza lost to Sanchez and crashed out of Wimbledon.

Patriotic? Me? Yes saar! my top five favourite dishes are all Indian as they come, right from dosa and chutney to rice and dal. No pizza for me, thank you ma'am! Mcdonalds nahi! Pasta? Perish the thought! Just lassi, no coke. Books? Indian authors,I like a lot of 'em (despite their highly overdone metaphors and tortuous sentence constructions). Inspired by a good friend, I am in a cycle of reading up on Indian political history. Doesn't all that make me an Indophile?

Yes I line up on Friday nights at Jade to catch the latest Bollywood flick. Given that, on an average 11 out of 10 Hindi movies are abysmal and vacuous (even by the standards for B-grade movies), this is not an easy task. But this regular desire for a taste of what is the most popular form of Indian culture, should mark me out as a true lover of my hipshakin', bhangra dancing country, no?

All of this sounds incredibly trivial. But this is what most of us bestow as our tokens of love acknowledging our motherland. The casual gesture to remind ourselves that we are Indian, although we live comfortably outside India, earning in a currency that exchanges in the 30s -40s into Indian rupees, and where the roads are less chaotic.

Is India-love so popular among my generation because the country is suddenly on the must-see / must-invest / must-watch list of the rest of the world ? Because, for once, by being Indian we are betting on a winning horse? Because we are no longer considered another Third World Nation? As I cynically told someone, patriotism is at an all time high now that the Sensex is close to 20000 (yes yes i know, the 20k Sensex days are long gone..sigh).

When does a country need its patriots? Obviously during its darkest hours. Would I actually step up and decide to go back if India went into war? Heck, even in it's shining years I'm thinking twice about living in Mumbai - forget crisis situations. Would I give up my comfortable stay to return and help make things a little bit better? Ain't calling myself patriotic just talk till I actually put my chips in?

Is what most people call patriotism, just a need for reflected glory? ('hey the world's richest man is Indian! guess what, I'm Indian too. See, that means LNM and me, we're similar - see?'). Every time an Indian wins a beauty contest, or features on some list of the Who's Who, we jump in glee.

Is there real patriotism among a nation's people who are quick to label their compatriots as upper caste, lower caste, Madrasi, Bengali, South Indian and a zillion other categories, and then treat them with the appropriate amount of contempt and disdain? The bigotry is very much there.

Sure, I love India for it's sheer freedom. A country that gives people a chance, even to the unluckiest of us . A country that has embraced capitalism so ecstatically that consumers are spoilt for choice on everything from tv channels to low cost airlines to mobile services to formal shirts. An India with so many educated, ambitious people and a demographic weighted so heavily towards the young. A country where every individual can (and given the frenzied media industry, this is not too much of an exaggeration) actually stand up and be heard. I love the 'India shining' story to bits. And wholeheartedly believe in it. Yes I want to change the world and India in my own specific way, hopefully doing something I get a lot of kicks out of. But is that patriotism?

Things to do in boring (is there any other kind?) meetings

Dedicated to a Certain-Someone-Who-Spends-All-Her-Time-In-Meetings :)

* Adopt a bizarre twitch (e.g. flicking your head irregularly, twitching your eye or bursting out with sporadic coughing noises)

* Go dressed as a sumo wrestler. Everytime someone says something, get up slap ur arms and thighs, stare menacingly and tell them you 'respectfully disagree'

* Mentally rephrase sentences heard so they rhyme

* Draw cartoons of your colleagues

* Answer all questions with "That would not fit in with our strategy and vision", and promptly start crying if anyone disagrees

* Blow spit bubbles

* Translate your favourite poetry into your mother tongue, in your head

* Count how many times they use the word 'strategy' or 'vision'.

* Picture all your colleagues as extraterrestrials, and you are the subject of an alien experiment (this should be easy)

* Everytime you speak up, make a clicking sound with your tongue (or maybe a 'ding')

* Keep digging into your handbag like you're frantically searching for something and walk out of the meeting every 15 minutes

* Blink wildly and then close your eyes really tight to see a variety of blobs, stars and flashes. Try to make out shapes and see if your subconscious is trying to send you a message

* Pretend you're a Labrador. Anytime someone looks at you, stare at them with your head tilted, grinning and your tongue lolling out

* Clean and polish your belly button

* Calmly have a nervous breakdown

* Count the number of double chins in the room

* Practice trying to make the speaker's head explode. Using just your force of will, try to make the speaker's head blow up.If the meeting is bad enough, you may want to change strategy and try to make your own head explode

* Keep making interruptions every 10 mintues with "What's the next item on the agenda?" or "Can you two go over the details later?"

* The Robot -- This one is from one of the Dilbert-series: During a meeting, you are a big robot. The bridge is in your head and you are the captain of the robot. You can give the robot orders like 'head 5 degrees starboard' and just move your head a bit to the right

* Act like you are taking notes, but actually compose the Mills & Boons novel you are secretly working on

* Every time someone proposes something, ask them "so what would be the effect of inflation on this" (this is actually guaranteed to flummox anyone)

(Source: mostly cogged from the Net )

Today's definitions..

From Investopedia.
TERM OF THE DAY - MARCH 24, 2008

Young And Wealthy But Normal (YAWN)
What Does it Mean?
A class of self-made millionaires that live relatively modest lives. Instead of spending wealth on gaining luxurious items and living expensive lifestyles, these individuals prefer to make contributions to charitable causes and spend time with their families.

Investopedia Says...
The concept of social responsibility may have contributed to the emergence of this new class of wealthy individuals. All in all, these individuals can be a great benefit for society because they redistribute a vast amount of wealth for social good. However, it may be difficult to become a YAWN because it can be very tempting for wealthy young people to be drawn to more extravagant lifestyles


Neat :))

watchables...

very nice History channel documentary on the Angkor Wat...Courtesy NJ.

1 week and 3 days to Cambodia! Can't wait to get away.

This weekend's dose of escapism...

Movies are my way of getting over those things that refuse to be simply gotten over. (somewhere along the way, books have stopped serving that purpose. I just don't want to touch a book when I'm in the pits.)

And I found 2 absolute gems this week. God bless the NLB. And McDs for delivering all night. And my folks for not bugging me when i didnt want to be bugged.

Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. Not the greatest of movies made. But it hit my personal top-o-the-charts for sheer entertainment value. Paul Newman's very cool portrayal of the wild wild west's most affable outlaw. Redford's icy laidback Sundance Kid. The final shootout scene with the Sundance Kid covering for Butch Cassidy as he runs into an open area. The faceless menace of the lawmakers persistently on their tracks. And most of all, the snap-crackle banter between the two. right to the very end.

(After trying to shake off their pursuers)
Butch: I think we lost 'em. Do you think we lost 'em?
Sundance: No.
Butch: Neither do I.

(When Sundance finds Butch kissing and hugging Etta, Sundance's girlfriend):
Sundance: Hey, (pause) what are you doing?
Butch: Stealing your woman.
Sundance: (scratching his butt) Take her...take her
Butch: Well, you're a romantic bastard, I'll give you that

unmissable.

Double Indemnity. For over 4 years my favourite movie featuring 'a-meticulously-planned-murder-gone-wrong' was Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (Rope being a close second). Until I saw Double Indemnity that is. Dark. Gripping from the moment Neff starts narrating the story into the dictaphone. And the dialogues that under any other writer or director would have been just cheesy, but here (with Raymond Chandler's take on the orignal novel, and Billy Wilder's direction) are incredibly stylish. Like this classic exchange:

(When Neff tries to flirt with Phyllis Dietrichson, the femme fatale in the story)
Phyllis: There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I'd say about ninety.
Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Neff: Suppose it doesn't take.
Phyllis: Sppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Neff: That tears it.

With it's brooding feel, and flawed characters, this movie is a must-watch. Wiki tells me it's considered the best example of film noir ever.

Damn, they actually don't make 'em talkies like this anymore. Somehow now everything has to have a psychopathic slant to it. Like we have to explain the reasons for why someone can actually kill another person. Like it's not just for greed. Like one has to show a hundred blood splatters to depict violence. I think the only recent movie in this genre that passed muster would be Fracture.

what's the word to describe..

..the feeling you get when you stare out your 50th floor office window over the expanse of Singapore's CBD, see an amazingly beautiful day, the whole world waiting to be explored, friends to make, conversations to have, music to hear....

...and then a shrieky female voice explodes in your ear "where's that memo I asked you to make?!?!!"

a few cribs on..,

I enjoy cribbing.. it s a catharsis.. nothing soothes my sidey soul like a few hours of complaining to all and sundry. The only reason I hang out with the boys on Friday nights at a pub over a round of beers is because it guarantees me a captive audience for my rants. I can spend hours complaining. no toilet breaks even. no pit stops to catch my breath. Bellyache about the entire universe. and then some. I can crib about cribbing.The happiness is all in the journey, honey.

And being a perpetual cribber is like being the eternal pessimist.. it's a win-win scenario (to quote -blech! - stephen covey). If things turn out better than you expected, you can jump in joy (hey, i may be a basketcase, but i'm no masochist). If they turn out as bleakly as you predicted, you have the pleasure of tellin 'em all "hahah suckers! I told you so".. it's foolproof. not a hitch.

and of course, one never runs out of things to complain about.. work. family. friends. the u.s presidential elections. the indian stock markets. the neighbour in the next cubicle who snorts everytime he laughs. bosses who insist that if something cannot be put on powerpoint, it ain't worth discussing. colleagues who think that Convertible Bonds are a british secret agent's sports car. a maid who does better disappearing acts than david copperfield. ad infinitum.

It's my way of maintaining equality of happiness in society ..bwaahahah

movies i caught up on..

The Golden Compass...film version of Pullman's novels, something I've been wanting to read for some time. The philosophical undertones in the movie are easy to see.. the questions of free will, and of the very unique idea of treating one's souls as existing outside the body. But all this was lost in the juvenile dialogues. a movie for kids based on a book for grownups. Neither here nor there.

Gattaca...Being a fan of Uma Thurman's oomph and Ethan Hawke's very laid back acting style (Reality Bites, Before sunrise), this movie was a definite watch for me. What I thought was a sci-fi flick turned out to be an absolutely excellent movie on genetic discrimination in a totalitarian society, and how one individual survives this (Tagline: there's no gene for the human spirit! Tacky. But likeable all the same). A wishy-washy ending prevents this from being a classic though. Very watchable.

Gaslight... A husband's deliciously devilish manipulation of his wife's psyche.. to convince her that she's losing her sanity. Brilliant script. And a wonderfully vulnerable Ingrid Bergman. Charles Boyer was awful though - you know from the moment he steps on the screen that the guy is pure evil. No subtlety. I wish someone would do a remake of this. Damn good!

The Bad Sleep Well... The fact that this 60s movie grips you despite having what anyone today would think is a very cliched storyline, says a lot. Japanese drama on white collar crime and revenge. Worth checking out..

the good, the bad and the highly confused

It's very hard not to be cynical (Warning: grumbling and self pity coming up)

Try explaining 'human goodness' to a person in a floodswept country ignored by their fellow countrymen and pretty much the rest of the world. Or to a person in a nation perpetually torn by civil strife and bombing by self-declared superpowers. Or to an
economist.

Interestingly the original cynics believed in virtue being the be-all of existence. Ironically, the very essence of being a cynic now is in believing that there is no virtue whatsoever. In seeing the world as driven by naked interest and a desire for self-preservation. Adam Smith's invisible hand. A free market.

If one were to look at life as a set of bets (which is what it ultimately is, aint it? a birth at one end, a coffin at the other and a series of choices in between?), any poker player or trader worth his salt will tell you that you should always play the odds. Never bet your house on winning with a pair of twos. Or hold out expecting to get a royal flush. And when 99 out of 100 times one can clearly see that looking out for oneself is 'smarter' than being the idealistic-guy-left-holding-the-ball, it's a no-brainer what the odds are in favour of. Why on earth are people so obliviously stupid to actually choose to be good and kind?

Coming from a country where 'jugaad' is a skill to respect, where a man's worth is the acres of land he owns, where religion is the refuge of every scoundrel, and where something as blatantly superficial as arranged marriage is actually preferred, keeping one's moral compass tuned can be a a daily chore. Any idiot who tells me crime doesn't pay clearly has their blinkers on. As Shaw said 'the power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.' Or like the Kurosawa movie, the Bad Sleep Well.

Cynicism is one step away from discarding any affection one has for your fellow human being. I am slowly being convinced about what I read once of religion, virtue and ethics being the greatest inventions of a very smart minority. Time to cancel my monthly donation to the cancer society me thinks.

Is there any hope for a pygmalion effect? Will people actually live up to a higher standard because one expects them to?

Sigh...Everytime someone I look up to turns out to be just another selfcentred crook, I go through this screw-the-world ranting. And then after a couple of days, I keep doing the bouncing back to being stupidly idealistic and blindly optimistic. Only to feel like an idiot everytime the real world hits me square on the kisser. Which is probably why I was never any good at poker..

having my cake and eating it too..

ruminating on Harika's interesting viewpoint and Sawg's quite perceptive comments to it..

Some random thoughts:

what is compromise anyway?

clearly it cannot be defined by something as simplistic as 'making a tradeoff'. Any decision involves making a tradeoff - which is why it's called a 'decision' in the first place. So what kind of decisions are categorised as compromise,versus one that's just a good or a bad decision?

A good decision would be one resulting in the optimal solution, given the problem, the resources and the constraints (strat consultant!).

But a compromise? ah, that would be where you make inferior (suboptimal) decisions because of the X factor. X here would be: what you think your friends should think of you, or what you want your better half to think of you, or what you want society in general to think of you.
(right about now is when you should yawwn, and click the red x at the corner of the window.. coz it's going to get way worse).

One basically compromises something not because, deep inside they want to or think it's a good idea, but because it's 'expected' of them, or because it's part of the process of granting and receiving favours.

Point being, I repeat (since I love hearing myself talk, and it saves having to think of new ideas), a good decision would involve tradeoffs too. But in a good decision, you know you are doing the best given the constraints, the right solution so to speak.

So, if A and B have a difference of opinion, a compromise would be where they finally do something that is:
(a) not what A thinks is right, but B insists on, or vice versa or
(b) something that neither A nor B thinks is right, but is somewhere halfway.

The idealistic scenario would be where they work out, rationally, as mature individuals, what is the optimal (i love that word, makes me sound learned) solution, irrespective of what A or B 'want'. For normally, any person would 'want' everything. But there's no free lunch.

Problem being that rarely are things so cut and dried that you can find the 'right' solution, and rarely are people rational.

Why then would A defer to something that A does not like but B does? Maybe because A thinks that's easier than having a bad argument with B ? Maybe because A wants B to like him/her ? Maybe because society expects A to defer to B? Or as in a Nash equilibrium, it's not the best payoff, but sometimes just the most stable one.

(It cannot just be because A wants B to be happy, because then clearly, in A's utility curve, B's happiness is the most important criteria. In which case, A would be satisfied with the decision, and by definition it would not be a compromise)

So is compromise inevitable then? A game of give-and-take where i let you win once, and you let me go the next time..

but won't this subject the people you keep close, to the kind of score-keeping ("you 2 me 0"), history-quoting("remember in june 1986 i agreed to your idea"), transaction-scrutinying oneupmanship, that are a norm in business negotiations?

I can understand doing so in a business deal or even in society in general, but shouldn't we keep our closest relationships, unconditional? A chicken game is worth worrying about in a competitive environment, me thinks!

More importantly, don't all the small compromises we make deviate us - a little more each time - from what we wanted. Finally, after some 10 years, we realise we've made so many small compromises, we are miles away from where we should have been. The wannabe sportsman who ends up an insurance clerk at 35 because he didn't give it his all? or the once-budding musical genius who didn't want to take the risk of not having a secure 'corporate career' and decided to work at both in parallel, and at 40 realises he's done well in neither? very familiar stereotypes, both.

Like I heard in an interview with whitecollar conman Jordan Belfort, most criminals don't start off committing big crimes. They start with one small act, one minor breach of good faith ("hey, it's only 100 dollars from the till, who'll notice?"). Then its another small act, and another, and a few more (each one just a marginally small wrong as compared to the immediately previous one). Pretty soon, they are so far away from where they started off, they're full blown antisocial elements without even realising it. Isn't that first small act also the first small compromise?

I'm sure few bureaucrats in India start their careers thinking "Ok, I'm going to be the most corrupt guy here after that Karunakaran chap". It's usually a small favour for one somebody (because he's the Minister's son's best friend's neighbour's maid's relative's cousin's wife's friend), and then another small favour and so on.. and before you know it you have collapsing bridges and pilfered animal fodder.

While it is nice to think that one can fight for the 'right' solution to any problem, life clearly doesn't work that way. Compromise saves time, money, effort and unwanted headaches in most cases. Live today, fight tomorrow, i guess.

Maybe that's why, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them" (Thoreau).

Ahh, to be like Sinatra sang:

"For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!"

the tragedy of the colon and the right parantheses

Thoughts straying from Varsha's post on the history of someone now more famous & loved than mickey mouse, the mona lisa and audrey hepburn combined: the ":)"

However, me thinks the ubiquitous smiley is a highly abused and much overexploited symbol. For example,

Bush46: "PM, Condy & I think it's time we invaded your country :)"

GeneralPM_43: "screw you George! u americans with ur nuclear missiles, ur Wall street and ur Jessica Alba (who I luvv btw), u think u can dictate terms to us Pakistanis? :)"

Bush46: "But Pervvy dude, ur country's going to the dogs. In fact, even the dogs are trading u up for Rwanda :) :)"

GeneralPM_43: "u wouldn't dare George! one whimper out of DC and we'll unleash fireworks that make sept 11 look like a highschool prom :) :)"

Bush46: "point taken,Perv, but am giving you time till the elections only :) :) :)"

GeneralPM_43: "hey where are all the hot women who're supposed to be in this chatroom?"

(please note the ':)' sprinkled like confetti)

My point being, people have resorted to abusing the smiley as a tone sweetener i.e. as something that is supposed to somehow magically make a harsh diktat sound softer or a rude comment more polite. Like the people in senior management who send me emails like:

big.bad.boss @ lootthecustomer.com wrote:
J, u have to be in office from 9 am to 10 pm this saturday :)

jayesh @ lootthecustomer.com wrote:
But..but..i promised my fiancee i would attend our wedding

big.bad.boss @ lootthecustomer.com wrote:
be here on saturday or expect no bonus this year :) :)

see the point! people are using the " :) " as a protective shield to hide behind while firing verbal salvos. And worse, sometimes its hard to gauge how serious someone is, because they insist on using an insinuating smiley to sound 'cheerful'.

Someone should invent an Insincere-O-Meter, that measures how genuine a smiley really is.

So, email exchanges among politicians, bankers, diplomats and the like, while peppered with them happy symbols, will set off alarm bells ringing. In fact we should insist them politicos use the :) in all their statements, just so we can measure their insincerity levels.

For eg. something like Sonia Gandhi saying: "We have made a promise to the people of the state that we will provide them good governance and we will try and keep to our promise. :)"

should set off sirens blaring. It would make for interesting conversations.

From what i've seen, the :)'s been used to mean a lot of things including:
:) "i'm happy" / "am cheerful" / "that's a joke - laugh damnit" / "i find that funny"
:) "sarcasm intended"
:) "that's ironical"
:) "that's nice!"
:) "charming"
:) "i think ur cute"
:) "see, i told u it was lee harvey oswald"
:) "the matrix has u"
:) "i know ur sleeping with that hussy u call ur secretary, i m divorcing u"
:) "i'm just practising my smileys"

Not to mention, the various mutations of emoticons that we see. Someday, someone's gonna create an entire language out of these. Here's a Marge Simpson: |- |@@@@@8-) and a skateboarder O-\-<].

Make no mistake: i love them emoticons! They add the colour and the inflections and all the eccentricities that make interacting with people (and some netsavvy labradors) enjoyable. But just because one has a first finger and ring finger (the last for the shift key), does not mean one has to go haywire with the emoting.

Damn you chatters with your insincere smileys :)