Is life one long rush hour?

Everyone must go here and read the article immediately.

The premise: Put one of the best living classical violinists, playing the most elegant music that has ever been written, on one of the best violins ever made (a Strad from the 1710s, if you must know) in front of a rush hour crowd.

The question: Does beauty get recognized?

Read the whole thing, it's worth the time.

India Rising - order out of chaos?

Just found this fantastic video online.

In the last few years, everyone in the US has seen and heard and read ad nauseum about the Infosys campus and the call centers that are the symbols of the "New" and upcoming India. In this video, you can see, perhaps for the first time, beyond this hoopla. See the shantytowns in Bombay with Pentium PCs at work inside broken down hovels and the buzz of activity in a Delhi bazaar. You'll see young Indians making statements that may surprise many (for example, a young tutor says "A child in the 7th grade in India is at about the same level as a child in the 10th grade in the US"). I, for one, am not among the surprised.

India Rising.

Things seem to be finally getting to the point where the organized chaos that is India can be appreciated for what it is. And full credit to ABC for actually making an effort.

Tom Sawyer and me

What do I have in common with Tom Sawyer? Among other things, we're not fans of Monday morning. He had his reasons, and mine is having to get up at 4AM to catch a plane.

And now, bright and early on a Monday, I'm hanging out in SFO. Why? The flight is delayed. Why? They don't have de-icing equipment in San Francisco, and the plane is frozen over.

So how is a plane de-iced? Carefully, I hope.

Women without spouses

From the NYT of the day. I'm sure the content is interesting, but full marks on geekery (and zero for readability) for the title.

51% of women now live without spouse.

Positive reinforcement

Toss him a Mackerel.

A very cool holiday season...

It's been a pretty cool holiday season so far. It all started a few days before Christmas, when I lost my cell phone. Luckily, it turned out that it had fallen out of my pocket in the cab. The cabbie drove back to my office and returned the phone to me, and refused to charge me for the extra trip. A nice feel good holiday season gesture.

Then I tried to make last minute plans for Xmas week. After a small amount of searching, we found a fantastic dog-friendly B&B in Napa. Not only did we get welcomed with cookies, mulled wine, dog biscuits and open arms, we had a very relaxing few days there. They went out of their way to accommodate requests, Mocha had an enclosed yard to play in, they made restaurant recommendations and reservations for us (dog-friendly places all, I may add) and in general let us relax. On the day after Christmas, full of good wine, good food and good cheer we sadly left Beazley House. But not before making plans to go back there soon :)

And to top it all off, I have just discovered Librarything. Just what my Monica gene has been craving, ever since I started trying to catalog my books last summer. This weekend, I will be happily cataloging my books and buying a life membership. Many thanks to Sashi D for leading me to Librarything.

Cheers all, and wish you a wonderful 2007!

Another little snippet

I've blogged about life's little surrealities before. Well, here's another one for you. Why would a company's firewall block access to the BBC, but not CNN or Al Jazeera?

Indian names

A funny Indian recently said "...is the name I was registered under as birth, which got corrected to its current form through successive but fortunate clerical accidents. Indian names, in addition to being complicated, also have the tendency to get changed at will by random disinterested parties, without an explicit audit trail."

Just wanted to share it with you all, and direct your attention to this very funny piece about South Indian names. Here.

Beantown, now in India

While the original Beantown gets a flavour of India (see previous post), India's own Beantown now proudly calls itself that. See this:

Bengalooru. Meaning, City of Baked Beans. A very nicely written, and funny article from the Economist about place names and name changes.

As it rightly asks, why are only English speakers expected to kowtow to name changes? The French say Edimbourg, the Italians say Pechino and the Germans (and Dutch) say Kapstadt. And they all get away with it. Woe betide the English speaker (accented or otherwise) who dares mispronounce Edinburgh, Beijing or Capetown. Should we be flattered that expectations are higher for us English speakers?

Namaskar, Boston mein apka swagat hai...

Taj Boston.

Don't remember seeing a Taj in Boston? Right, that would be the Ritz Carlton. Indian Hotels (owner of the Taj Group) just signed an agreement with Millenium to complete the purchase by Jan 11, 2007. See link above for more details.

More collective nouns

Sent to me today:

An insecurity of Type A personalities.

This one I just had to post!

How to write a biography

On second thought, how to write almost anything.

I am not on BBC

This is going to sound strange to most people. So I must first explain that I have been receiving emails intended for her.

Careful/interested readers of this blog may now skip to the next post :) This note is intended for the people googlewhacking the BBC presenter's name, finding this blog and writing to me.

I realize that if you're a huge fan, even the remote possibility that I may be your idol is a stone that must not be left unturned. Therefore, let me first assure you that I am not the person on BBC you've been drooling over. You're welcome to read my blog and comment, but messages sent to me will not miraculously find their way to the woman of your dreams.

For the more paranoid/suspicious among you, a simple assurance will not be enough. You may want to explore this blog a bit to satisfy yourselves that I am a real person with a life of my own. Knock yourself out. It will turn out that I'm right and you're wrong. My dog bears witness.

If you're still unsatisfied, let me just say:
(1) It's highly improbable that your Nisha Pillai manages to do her BBC gig from San Francisco.
(2) There are over a billion Indians (not counting the ones living abroad). There's a remote possibility that more than two Indian women share the same name, *and* show up when you googlewhack the name.
(3) I'm willing to bet good money that she of BBC fame does not need to worry about dog drool on her keyboard.

Gapminder.org

Adblock

Everyone must watch this video. Now. Yesterday. I promise, this is fascinating. Plus, he's funny. I mean, who else describes Out of Africa as "Robert Redford falls in love...and the sun sets...and it is *yust* beautiful". Really. Watch it now.

Whoa

Has everyone seen this? Intrigue at HP.

Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction. Or I'm down the rabbit hole and haven't realized it yet.

Video clip du jour

Courtesy Jon Stewart. Behold the esteemed Senator from Alaska explaining the technical intricacies of the Internet to his fellow legislators. Click here.

Review du jour: The Great Railway Bazaar

Here's that review, finally.

First of all, I *loved* the book. The Great Railway Bazaar has certainly earned its place in the "Best Travel Books of all Time" lists. Like all good travel writing, it is much more than a description of places, people and culture. There's a great deal of philosophy, bits of fantasy and most importantly, a great deal of humor. For instance, here's a description of the Pakhtoonistan issue which rocked Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 70s:

"...was a few villages of armed Pathan tribesmen, supported by Russia and Afghanistan, who were threatening to secede from Pakistan, declare a new state, and deriving their income from dried fruit, become a sovereign power; the liberated warriors would then compete in the world market of raisins and prunes".

Pithy, to the point, and (to me, anyway) hysterically funny. Most of this sort of humor dies down in the last quarter of the book. At that point, Theroux had been in a succession of trains for three months on end. By the time he gets to northern Japan and the Trans-Siberian railway, the writing has touches of the fantastic about it, and detached descriptions bordering on hallucination abound. For instance, there's the Russian railway conductor who pummels a local within an inch of his life and kicks the poor man out of the car, and returns with Theroux's soup, bowing obsequiously. Anyone other than an emotionally exhausted man would have remonstrated with the conductor, but the author quietly drinks his soup and walks back to his car and to bed.

I won't give away the best parts of the book except to say that Theroux skilfully conveys the flavors of each place he passes through. I read with avid interest his description of traveling through India and could not help laughing out loud at the caricatures he draws of various Indian characters. While there's certainly a bit of exaggeration in places, and he goes hopelessly wrong on a few cultural nuances, none of it is serious enough to detract from the sheer unputdownability of the book. In short, highly recommended.

Discovery du jour

This is interesting enough to warrant a blog post of its own. Just discovered The Indian Economy blog. Just what I've been looking for.

A very squid weekend

Would you want to eat this?



I am taking a class on Marketing Research, and spent this weekend trying to figure out a way to market squid products. We had a ton of data from real-world concept tests available to us, and our project assignment was to pick a concept that could be successfully marketed nationally. While the process of framing the question and sifting through the data to make decisions was fascinating, I now know more about squid than I ever wanted to. Squid pro quo.

Sympathy in Kliptown

This story is from a week ago, when Clayton took us to Soweto. We stopped in Kliptown to visit SKY's (Soweto Kliptown Youth) community center. This is one of the poorest sections of Joburg, the housing is all informal. The people live in tin shacks (sheets propped up against each other), there's no running water, the "shops" are part of a room in the houses where you can buy one matchbox at a time (because the average person in the community cannot afford to buy a dozen of them). There is no sewage system, of course - so there are open drains everywhere. There are banks of broken down toilets distributed in the community that are emptied once a week.

As he walked us through the community, showing us around and introducing us to people occasionally, our young guide told us: "Yes, we're a poor community. Thank you for coming to visit us instead of stopping at the bridge, taking pictures and driving away. I do want to tell you one thing: please visit us as friends, because that gives the community hope. We love having visitors. But don't feel sorry for us because we're poor, we're rich in love. We feel sorry for you because you have George Bush as president".

The world is a very small place.