Chrome's Inspiration?

An artists view...



:-)
p.s: Courtesy Patel.

Be very scared!

A Thousand Words?

I couldn't help but post these two pics I saw in TOI today. They are varied and have no relation to each other, other than both having evoked strong and immediate responses in my mind.

First, Eeco from Maruti Suzuki. Somebody told me that Maruti is going to release 10 cars this year. If they are all going to be like the Eeco, I don't wanna see them!



The front of a Maruti 800 and the rear of the Omni! Wow... got to give it to the Maruti guys for creativity! But then, this is a super cheap family vehicle and starts at 2.8L. This is also most likely to be super cheap on safety features too, but does the segment that this car caters to really care about safety?

Secondly, what freedom really means can only be told by someone who doesn't have it or more so by someone who had it and lost it. This tiger sure was in a hurry to get back to his free life... and who could blame him?



Yes... pictures sometimes do say more than a thousand words.

Big!

Useless trivia... :-)

For the conscious...

I intentionally left out "health" from the title... ;-)

Funny!

Long time since I had a good laugh. :-)

Idea Sirji!

Last weekend, I was watching a football match and also a cricket match and voila, I get another pointless idea and I am bored enough right now to think its important enough. :-)

So, here goes... We have electronic boundary boards showing Ads during football. This means, its not a stagnant single company Ad made of paper and stuck on some cardboard. This is an LED (similar?) board which can show any Ad at runtime. Cricket hasn't gotten that sophisticated yet, but it will get there sooner rather than later. Lets take the case of football first. A live English Premier League game is watched in so many countries. Now, lets take a site like 888. They are a big deal sponsor in EPL and pay quite a bit to get onto these electronic boards. This site is not well known in India and the EPL folks are not going to get as much money(or viewership attention) showing this Ad while telecasting in India when compared to Airtel or similar. Likewise, the India vs SL series is mainly sponsored by IDBI Fortis, a new investment wing of IDBI bank. I am quite sure they have next to no presence in SL and hence this is meant mainly for the indian TV audiences. So, what about the Srilankans ? Wouldn't they be relate more to say, Dilmah Tea ?

In case you haven't got what I am getting at, my idea is that all the boundary boards be made green in colour, so as to make it easily graphicable, for lack of a better word. So, just like in the movies, with the help of Computer Graphics, the green coloured boards can house country specific Ads, hence increasing the sponsorship worth of events and hence more money flowing and more glamourous and all that good stuff.

There is this one glitch of the actual money paying viewers at the ground seeing just green boards. But I am sure there is some technology that can come to help in this case too.

How does it sound ? Can this fund my EMIs while the recession eats aways more jobs (me next?) ? :-)

Two Of A Kind ?

As if having one Raghu was not enough for the MTV Roadies contestant, he now has help from his twin brother Rajeev! I can't think both of them choosing to go with the exact same goatie plus bald look plus earrings etc. Orchestrated, but yet interesting ...

For some reason, I can't embed this video, youtube goof! Anywayz, here is the link. This post is thanks to my wife. :-)

The New Kali

Halloween + bored of stale costumes = Indian Goddess in a new avatar!

I am sure we will have some effigy burning and destruction of public property in India if these pics makes it some desi tabloid. ;-)











BTW, This is Heidi Klum and her husband Seal.

Need Time to See Time!

In this super charged rat race that we are all part of, the most precious possession in our hands that keeps eroding away at a pace far greater than we realize is TIME. If there ever were to be some statistics drawn on how often people look at their watches or mobiles or any device that gives them the time over the years, we would know how time-centric we have all become. I once counted more than 20 objects in my house that could show me the time at any give point of time. :-)

One way for us to reduce our fetish to be on top of time all the time is to get devices that make figuring out the current time as obscure and difficult as possible. The experience has gotta be so irritating that one should think "I am better off not knowing the time". This company, quite unknowingly, is making an honest attempt at helping us here, in the garb of fashion or attention seeking.

Here are some samples:










Now.... who can tell me the time without going through an user manual ?? :-)

Futbol Time!

Get ready people.... Euro 2008 is here! For those who use google calendar, here is an event reminder which is smart enough to adjust the start times to IST.

Goooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllll !!!!!

Thought for the day

There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

:-))))

Its Different

Nice clock to stare and spend some time on... maybe even get a bit scared.

Feed the obese!

Harry Potter Series... by far the reading/viewing sensation for kids (and also strangely some adults) of this generation is nearing the end of its money making journey. At the end of this journey, book publications, movie producers, memorabilia makers and above all the author have made millions and billions of dollars. With the final book in the series being released and a movie to follow, JK Rowling doesn't want her current supply of millions to stop. To keep the flame burning, she has some fuel in store...

What fuel you ask? Rowling reveals that Dumbledore is gay! For all non-potter fans, and I hope there are many, he is an old wizard in the harry potter books, alike Gandalf in LOTR. :-). In my opinion, this is nothing more than adding the constant fuel needed to keep the book and characters and whatever else in the minds of the fans till the movie is out. Who would really care if the old wizard is gay?? I haven't seen any of the harry potter movies to completion and neither have I read any of the books and hence don't know if this news could have any significance in the overall context of the movies or books. I would think that this wouldn't have any relevance as the genre that the harry potter series falls into is mainly for the kids and they don't need to know these kinda details. This news was probably planted to enamor the gay brigade onto the harry potter groove and get some gay pride going. Also, this helps to get some more religious controversy going which can only help with the publicity. To be honest though, Rowling wouldn't be the first to use these kinda cheap gimmicks.

At the end of the day, the already over-fed harry potter fans get some more junk food to gorge on! Keep it going Rowling, don't let anything stop you from making your money!

Informed Criminal

I watched the movie My Wifes Murder yesterday. It was touted as one of the better RGV films and something I had missed watching in the cinemas when it released. Since it is not a new release, I won't go into a review per say. Its a decent movie and could have been a lot more better.

One of the things that struck me the most was how I was thinking about what the hero (Anil Kapoor) should be doing after his wife(Suchitra Krishnamurthy) is accidentally killed by him. Before anybody starts fearing the birth of a murderer in me, let me give you the reason for the same. I am an avid fan of CSI, a crime scene investigation serial. Its been on for 7 seasons and I have watched every episode and enjoyed it thoroughly. During the course of all these CSI episodes, I have seen the weirdest of cases being solved and each episode has got to be a different plot than any other that has been aired. Hence you understand the different methods used by criminals in committing the crime and the different methods used by the investigators to catch them.

By CSI standards, this movie has a lot of scope for improvement. Lemme give examples.

1. The hero mops the blood of his wife off the floor. This is absolutely useless as CSI usually have a torch which emits a certain kind of light that has blood glow in the dark, even though the blood cannot be seen by the naked eye. He had to use bleach to make this torch useless, but then, someone using bleach only for a portion of the house will also give rise to suspicion.
2. The hero dumps the body in a water body inside some forest. He places the body inside a cardboard box which he had taken from his house and dumps the body with the cardboard box. To keep CSI off his tail, he should have ideally disposed the body without the cardboard box.
3. If he was trying to make people into thinking that his wife was murdered by someone else and body was dumped, he needed to do something to make the police also think so. For e.g. he should have taken every last valuable off her body or should have cut off some portions of her body to make the police think it was some psycho at work or maybe fake a rape occurrence. None of these were done by our Hero.
4. He uses his colleagues (Nandana Sen) car to transport the body to the jungle. Another big error, as he has to now necessarily make her an accomplice at some stage, else he will not be able to explain why he borrowed her car.
5. He starts off the movement of the body from his house to the car when there were still a lot of people moving around in the apartment. Again, more leads that he has to plug in order to get his story right.

I noticed many such instances which by CSI standards would make this movie a joke. :-)

So, all in all, if someone is gonna make a murder investigation based movie, they have gotta have a plot that will have the CSI scratch their heads. If not, some sleepy couch potato like me will poke holes in the story. :-)

Disclaimer: No one be scared... I have not turned into a murderer or psycho. These are just observations. ;-)

Love-Hate!

It has rained real crazy in Bangalore for most of last week. Its good to see Bangalore at its gloomy best, reminding us Bangaloreans of the good old days. I see many complain off this gloomy weather, but this is exactly the weather that sets Bangalore apart from the rest of the big cities of India.

This being said, I share a strange love-hate relationship with all this rain.
1. I love it being gloomy, but I hate it when it rains so much that the football ground gets all slushy.
2. I love it when I can sit for hours at home without having to bother about turning on the fan, but I hate it when I have to use the water heater to have some hot water since the solar heater didn't get enough sunlight to do its job.
3. I love it when the roads are empty during peak hours when there is heavy rain, but I hate it when the period after a heavy rain results in huge traffic jams even during non-peak hours.
4. The lazy me loves it when the rain gives my car a free wash, but I hate it when my car gets a free mud coat the day after the rains.


Rain in Bangalore... You can love it, You can hate it.... you can also ignore it, :-) which is exactly what I am gonna do.

Simple?

We are moving offices soon and have been interfacing with an interior design company. In the last 2 months we have seen 2 people quit the team that used to interface with us. This would be no surprise if we were talking of an IT company and looks like there are other industries following suit. Why do people quit their job? What are they looking for? What should they be looking for?

These are very subjective questions, but if you have time, this could help you answer some questions. Though these are observations of one individual, see if you can empathize with his dilemmas, wishes, complains and learnings. :-)

A 50% Day...

Its old news that Times Of India has more Ads than news, atleast in Bangalore. But amidst all the Ads was this strange coincidence in just 6-8 pages of yesterdays supplement paper.

... and I still didn't get off the couch. ;-)

On Target!

The hutch ads have always been catchy and cute. But not so long ago, they came up with an Ad which showed that they knew their target market very well. No wonder they got bought for billions of dollars! :-)





In case the subtlety is lost on anyone, the ladies always run up the "Large" bill. :-))

Throw a stone...

There is a very famous quote about Bangalore and the high concentration of software engineers in the city. "You throw a stone in the air on brigade road and its likely to fall on the head of a software engineer". Luckily we don't have people taking the quote literally and they seem to take it at face value. :-)

Anywayz, had a similar experience in the US couple of days back. I was trying to get hold of a colleague (a desi) at around midnight US time and I dialed his number. I had accidentally dialed a couple of numbers in the wrong order and was of course oblivious of my mistake. A few seconds later a desi picks the call up and I start off confidently explaining the reason for my call. The guy at the other end is flabbergasted and is all silent. He then goes "Which number do you want?" I immediately realize my mistake and give my thousand apologies and cut the call. I then start browsing up something and some 5-10 minutes later, call the number again and guess what, I make the same mistake again! This poor chap must have cursed me the last time and gone back to bed and I wait till he would have started falling into REM sleep and I call again. :-)) This time he asked for the number more firmly and when I did blurt it out, he angrily pointed to my mistake and I gave him a thousand and one apologies and didn't repeat the same cycle after another 10 minutes. :-)

Imagine me getting a wrong number and the probability of a desi picking it! But this has cleared any doubts if any in my mind, that, the next time anyone asks me where in the US I am at, I will confidently tell them Suryanagar a.k.a Sunnyvale!!