A "match" made in heaven...

So the two tennis greats, from two slightly overlapping eras squared off in Seoul this week in terrible conditions. Sampras, the 14 time championship winner, all of 36 squared off against his 25 year old opponent, and top-dog of the day Roger Federer.
It is terrible heartache to take sides in such a match. Both guys are champs in their own right, and they have squared off just a few times in their actual professional careers almost 4 years ago, with Sampras on the verge or retiring, and Roger's stars were on the ascendance.
Although Federer did manage to beat Sampras in two sets straight, you have to hand it to Sampras - he has been out of touch for a while now. But what is so great about the match is probably not the match that either played itself. In fact, it probably was never the epic it was made out to be. But to see both players on court square off against each other was an amazing feeling - both players are clean - with very little emotion to show on court (although I'd say Federer is more prone to show off his frustration when things are not going his way, but that doesn't happen too often!), and have excellent all-round games unlike some other one dimensional characters (big serves, or clay court specialists). Rafa is amazing too because the clay court takes a horrendous amount of stamina to last on - but then he needs to start winning something other than the French Open each year to get to Roger's level.
Its a shame the two couldn't play each other more often during Sampras' professional career. That way we wouldn't have had to sigh and say "If only he were a little younger, he'd have given Roger a run for his money". Sampras was my tennis hero - and still is - but to me Roger is the epitome of everything that a coaching video manual translated on to the tennis court means... He has a shot for any and every situation - and he rips it like nobody else I've ever seen (Rafa is close...) - I don't even think God comes close to that perfection.. And he has warned his opponents, that he is going to get only better!! God have mercy on his opponents on the tour - its a lot easier than competing against him!!

White in skin, not in deed..

"Get fair!" screams another racist advert on the telly..
A fair lass, who was fair initially, and was touched up with a dash of eyelash/mascara, applies a magical cream for 7 nights religiously, and then finds her visual appeal return - CAUTION - you need to be cute/hot/fair and a combination of all three to qualify as a model for the ad. The incredulous ad actually may translate into gullible buyers, and looking by the revenue-ad cycle I guess it does!!

One of the famous quotes
"Its not how you look on the outside, its how you are on the inside" - by someone ugly...

Its not good enough if you look good or have a good body - its equally important, screams the racist ad, that you are FAIR! Remember, white = pure, black = evil.

We've been servants of FAIR masters, long before the Brits set up shop in slum-hole Calcutta. Its bad enough we have a flaccid self-image concomitant with under-achievers and people with severe image issues. We need to look FAIR as well. 90% of the brown skinned population is a huge market for the racist pandering multinationals to tap.
Black is beautiful - brown is beautiful - white is pale, a euphemism for cold, dark dank winters.
We need to break the mental shackles of such cheap gimmickery. There is a lot to do to make us white - on the inside - and when that is done, it will shine through a whole lot better than any hundred rupee fairness cream can ever do.

As the author of this piece, I would like to claim that I'm neither black, nor white. I like the Chinese analogy of race - God (or General Mao for all I care) was baking biscuits (not cookies, the american kind) - some of them turned black because they were overdone, some were white because they were undercooked, and some turned brown because God just didn't get the time right. The yellow ones were the golden ones, and were just right!
A thought for the day perhaps..

WANTED : A used workhorse!

As my search for a good vehicle continues, I meander down the lane of buying a used car. I'm quite tired of hearing the pros of a new vehicle - but quite frankly unless you are buying anything less than a mercedes/ferrari/hayabusa or any other "lifestyle" vehicle - it simply doesn't matter how much cash you spend on it - you own a vehicle that everyone else owns, and the damn thing depreciates faster than a randy american chicks reputation after prom night.
So I've narrowed my search down to a diesel workhorse - a Palio from FIAT to be precise - simply because I want lower running costs, and of course a really low investment cost for the next 2-3 years. While the Getzes and Swifts are within my reach, I don't want to whittle away a few grands just for the fresh smell of a new car - I just need a cheap and safe mode of transport.
So if I can actually get one in the near future I'd be happy with it - or else I'll have to go throught the harrowing torture of buying and maintaining an expensive vehicle, which does the same thing that any used vehicle does at half its price. There are issues though - my knowledge of diesel engines to be precise are pretty much text-book bound - I know the working parts of them, their compression ratios, their rpm's, issues with fuel quality, and the pitfalls of a rattling engine during higher revs etc etc. And the fact that the Fiat Palio Diesel is a defunct vehicle in this country. But then how many cars can boast of a 1.9L engine, and a 13 kmph mileage on a liter of diesel? Thats almost twice the mileage to an equivalent petrol chugger. Impressive!
I'm not impressed with any other diesel power plants in the country. The fiestas are out of my reach for the moment - and are quite and overkill. I hope the search for this vehicle ends well, because quite frankly I've been quite appalled with the 2 vehicles I've seen today!

Are you God Fearing?

Its a very queer sounding phrase.. And I don't think I've quite heard it outside south India, let alone India!

Am I god fearing? Absolutely not!!!

I would like to think I am God loving - but I am not that either - I'm not a complete agnostic, and I'm quite selfish if and when I ever turn to God. But then that's about it. I love the sanctity, the purity, and dignity of the rituals which are so much a traditional part of my community. I do it, not out of love/fear of God - but I see it as a long lost link to my traditional orthodox past. And I don't lose any part of my individuality in doing it - sometime it makes me feel like I belong, and I think sometimes I do crave that acceptance having been a nomadic mutt in my upbringing.

So do I fear God, for he may smite me from the heavens above? No - I don't fear Him - I fear taxes, credit card bills, and the mad-cap drivers of bangalore and the occassional bad-hair day, yes - but not God...

I think He is very deceiving in his design - its like the mob boss you've jilted by doing business with someone else. He gags you & brings you to his lair - and then he never touches you - but he conjures up all these beautiful ways of killing you and your family.. and you weep - you beg for forgiveness, and you swear a life-long loyalty to him lest anything ever happen to your progeny. And after a lot of humming and hawing he gives you the reprieve.. and a harsh warning - you go back counting you lucky stars. True power lies in the catch and release technique - if God were to smite every sinner, the earth would be a very desolate place. And considering christianity's take on original sin, we'd all be out before the first ball was bowled!

Most blog writers are annoying - addendum..

I just got a new perspective on the - purpose of blogs - apparently a blog is meant for losers to talk about their rather "exciting" lives..
Now lets evaluate as to what constitutes an exciting life
1) Drinking chai at barristas/cafe coffee day/mocha
2) Bitching about colleagues because you don't get along with them/ they are too cool for you
3) Bitching just for the sake of it..
4) Stuff you did during the day (not very different from the life of most other people anyway)..
So to me if this is all the content you have, and about a million people blog about the same topics, you just seem to get me to press shift + delete onto the great limbo of blogosphere hell. If you make it an interesting read with apt phrase usages, witty quips or wodehousian language constructs, you just score a lot of points with discerning readers like me..
Remember you are unique just like everyone else. In the paradoxical irony, lies salvation for your trite blogs. Spice it up a bit - apply a little thought to it - or atleast develop a thought process that would produce blogs worth reading!

Most Blog Writers are Annoying..

When I started Randomly Coherent, blogging was at its infancy.

There is no 'subtle' difference between normal, essay-like writing or story-telling - and the farce that is the blogger's weapon of choice - utter chaos, random gibberish and sentences which absolutely do not lead to any sane logical conclusion.

There are very few serious bloggers - and they, more often that not, use succinct language constructs and of course blog about serious topics, and try to drive home a point. Subtlety, maybe the occassional quip are the icing on the cake - not the cake itself (ever had a cake made out of cherries and frosting?).

Trouble is when people try to force you to read their blogs. I'm always on the lookout for a fresh perspective, and a new point of view in the digital world. But when horrendously structured sentences, with no logical link between them pass off as a "let me rant and rave here" blog, well, it really irritates me - give me something worthwhile to read. DaVinci or Picasso did'nt draw doodles on canvas. But then not every blog is a digital picasso. And probably it shouldn't be. But what it can do is inform, maybe educate, or titillate. Whatever the intent, the means to do them should always be the same - well-structured and to the point. Remember, when you try to get to someone, if you start rambling they are probably going to punch you in the face (rare), doze off (popular!) or just shake their head/s (indian elephant syndrome).

And I will stop my blog right here - anything more and I know I'd lose my audience. So blog freely, but blog responsibly.

Quote from the most famous son of Yorkshire (in India atleast), Geoffery Boycott, aka Boycs:
"That blog is utter rubbish... My mom could blog better"

Back on Track

Hi
And I'm back .. brash, bold and beautiful, adjectives you'd never associate with me.
Fine, read on, do me a favor and type in your comments below.
Appreciate it, you can spare some time from forwarding those chain mails, doodling, or working.

Last blog..

This is gonna be my last blog in a while.
Am in the process of shifting and re-orienting , and have a busy schedule ahead of me :)
Wish me luck !

Left wing with BBQ sauce

The Great Gatsby
Not a mean break to comment on F.Scott Fitzgerald's take on the "American Dream" and its "destruction". Just another dollar chaser's dream crashing and burning. A journey through the seven seas, to get to a land diametrically opposite, to find something, while trying to lose all that is your own. Bequeathed by generations, destroyed by us. There is irony here. India is a mini-america now. You are never too far away from it. I'm preparing for a reverse cultural shock. Something I love to brag about, something I am going to go through soon, when I land, I hope.

Moored
Am looking at Micheal Moore's take on America. Branded left-wing, anti-American, anti-capitalist, socialist, his vitriolic style and method of getting his point across has won acclaim among the foreign press (French poster boy). It's all boiled down to name calling : traitor or not, rather than have a healthy debate on the points he has raised. But to be fair, if I were an American I'd be baying for his blood too. Its interesting to see a rabid left-winger trying hard, to push for a paradigm shift in politics in America today from popular right-extreme-right convictions. In fact Moore has a parallel in indian intellectual circles, in the form of a frail woman, Arundhati Roy, who wields the pen, and talks about her books and convictions from time to time. Her take on the genocidal tendencies of successive Indian governments, using "terror" as an instrument of subjugation and putting down civil rights, may seem to be the case of unbridled vitriol and paranoia, to us seated in the middle class, but you cannot dismiss her lightly. We tend to gloss over gross rights violations, partly due to impunity on the part of the police and the failure of the judiciary in convicting just about anyone guitly beyond reasonable doubt. It's ironical to call America the land of the free with just under 1% of its population in jails, and sharing 25% of the world's inmate population. Which begs the question : Is crime rampant in the more poor countries , or is it worse in the country which has and controls 3/4th's of resources available to mankind?

Euro Furo

Aye Caramba !
Portugal trump Dutch and Greece wallop Czechs.. my my , I'd have bet 100$ the other way on both those matches. Sheesh.. Bad guessing I guess :)

Growing Pains

Kids are inherently silly and are prone to easy manipulation. Its fun to toy with them, and keep them hanging from a thing rope from time to time. They are almost like people but so much easier to fool, unless they are retarded already. I mean , who hasn't grown up with their parents telling them the most atrocious lies. You don't come to realizing you have been duped until you are out of your teens and staring down possible family commitments. You think about the false promises, the campaign of disinformation and the constant threat in case you tried to call their bluff : You might think you were living under the George Bush administration!
It's fun to see them try though, their efforts are honest. Sometimes I feel growing up is a part of undoing education. You may learn new things, but you lose something most important that kids have : impulse. Kids say and do the darndest things and put their politically and morally correct grown ups to shame. I headed to a friends place some months ago, he showed me a tire strung very high to a tree and asked me if I wanted to take a swing. I said no : Was thinking , fall, health insurance and recovery period. As a kid I had my elbows and knees scratched so bad my mom thought my skin would never grow back in those places.
It doesn't take much to entertain a kid. Growing up is such a bitch.

Shakespeare's Foible

I think Shakespeare's play "Merchant of Venice" is one obscenely racist piece of work. Have that today , and you will hear from left wing groups , blacks, Jews, and everyone. The tone is explicit in the hatred towards Jews. Its possible, for the mood in those days to have been anti-Semetic , and that Shakespeare did nothing but reflect those views rather than present his own, it just doesn't seem right. In today's context its stereotypical and bigoted. Also Portia's arguments in court *where she gets to be a lawyer through deception* to save Antonio's ass, seems like she needs a little Law 101.
Anyway, its too anachronistic to have such stories to be played out in this day and age. Was just watching an episode of "The Family Guy" Where Peter Griffin , the dope, bastardizes "The king and I" to such an extent its more like a 30th century porno flick, and is loved by the audience. Isn't that what it's all about, selling smut to the audience , because the audience wants smut? Does the audience affect the paint brush on the canvas of an artiste or does art influence and shape public perceptions? Never can tell, the audience will always be protective , cover their ears and run off when they see or hear someting contrary to their belief. Farenhrit 9-11 seems to be one of those left-wing conspiracy theory documentaries, I'd love to go watch it. Screw you "White Chicks" .

Movie Time..

I love horror movies. Sadly they don't make too much of it and most of them end up in the comedy section. I was scared out of my wits as a 6 yr old watching evil dead , now when i see it i start laughing! Exorcist is still a creepy movie , i cant wait to see the beginning of the exorcist :)
Am watching stephen king's "pet sematary", love his books, takes a little imagination and his words to make the spine tingle. good works in the pipeline i hope !

Ring Ring..

If I go to the movies, spend 8$, and I hear you sit behind me with a cellphone with a ringtone set to Hillary Duff's latest, I will have your balls along with my pop- corn. I bloody swear I will. If it says cellphones off , there is no reason you need to take that call. You are not important , and please don't spoil my movie going experience.
And grandma who can't understand what the fuck is going on in LOTR 3 because you haven't seen parts 1 or 2, take a fucking hike, read the book or watch the movies. Please STFU and stop asking : Ooooh who is he.. oh the guy you already told me about 5 mins ago and 5 mins before that.
It isn't too much to ask for you to keep your mouth shout, or chew some popcorn or stick a soda in your mouth. I recommend an adult pacifier for the itchy inquisitive movie goer who cant comprehend something as simple as the Hollywood movie. It aint rocket science.

You've got mail!

It's amazing how the internet has changed the way we meet new peoplle. I've known quite a few friends with a penchant for chatting endless hours on end , in brainless chatrooms, who have actually hooked up with another person. Although I can't vouch whether they form the perfect match, it seems a swell idea. You can have a life spending endless hours on the net instead of going out to socialize. Turns closet freaks into amiable party animals? Maybe , maybe not.
I remember subscribing to some kid magazines, back in the olde days. There was a large 2 page section in this magazine called Target, devoted entirely for kids who wanted to make "pen-pals". Eager kids would put up their name and address and anyone could reply stating their interests. If they found you cool, they'd write back. It was 15 years ago but long distance phone calls were out of the question. It force you to sit down and devote a ream to writing about things. Did'nt matter what. Whatever was on your 10-year old mind. I wrote to someone. He never wrote back. That was the end of it. But I would read about these kids who'd write in and say how they had made new friends. I gave up after that one effort. Maybe the kid died, or maybe he hated my guts, whatever. No idea. Just some village kid, after all.
The internet is a nice way for shy people to start out making new friends. You need to sift through a lot of coal and rock to find a diamond. Be safe, and use good judgement. Everything isn't black and white.

Garfield the movie : Recipe for failure

Some comic strips never make good movies. Garfield is definitely one of them. Cartoons have been stagnant for over 40 years thanks to lack of tools for better animation. Better tools have definitely driven animators towards easier and faster creation of their favorite charachters. Garfield is so 80's and somehow doesn't fit into the type of humor one expects these days . South Park is the benchmark for satirical humor today. Real crappy animation doesn't stop it from making a point. Garfield has all the animation but its a conecpt gone as stale as the Disco era. Yawn . The concept and execution suck so much I will never ever go to watch it . Ever. Not if my life depended on it. It sucks , it fucking sucks , that's the end of it. No garfield you are not funny any more , may be 20 years back when we had nothing else to read on the Sunday comic page we laughed at your antics. But when you do the same thing over and over and over again for 20 years , people get tired and bored. Reinvent or perish.
I implore people not to watch the movie. The end of the world is nigh.

Land of the dweebs

Was watching an ad on TV : Oral B - Brush Up. It's a product you slip on your finger to brush your teeth.
It's ironic with the Atkins craze, Americans don't find time to brush their teeth. If its something of a convenient way to clean your teeth after meals, I wonder why nobody thought of a way all these years.
hmmmmmm ..
Its called a toothbrush

The flame dies here!

Interesting news byte

"PT Usha declines last-minute invite"

The IOC *Indian Olympic Committe* 's gaffe. A committee whose primary aim is to send more accompanying members than sportsmen to the Olympics. A shining example of all the Olympic gold's that India has ever won (Just 3 medals in over 70 years of participation and none of them gold!). A very interesting statistic. And the only member who came ever so close to making it in the top 3 , has been snubbed in a manner that can only happen in a country like India. The only athletic achiever in a nation of 1 billion had almost been given the cold shoulder in a bizzare act of ungratefulness by the IOC. The last minute invite didn't go down too well with the former athelete and she declined the invitation.

It's very easy to fix blame when it comes to the lack of genuine athletic talent in India. The lack of infrastructure, no money, lack of proper diet, lack of decent playground parks or recreational areas and the genuine attitude of people towards sporting activity in general. It's quite ironical, with fewer people having a genuine interest in any athletic sporting activity , the field is quite open (Forgive the pun, I assure you I do not have the Times of India syndrome).

In comparison the Chinese whip (literally) their atheletes into shape. I have seen videos of a four year old chinese girl who was unable to stay upside down while was beaten with a cane, while she was still in that position. The poor kid cried her guts out. What, you may ask is the penalty one has to pay for Olympic glory ? Pretty high I guess, to be the best in the world and to be settle for nothing less. It's often a matter of national pride, and none of that seems to be evident the way the IOC bears itself. I bet that Suresh Kalmadi doesn't know the first things about sports. Its a vicious cycle of putting dinasours in positions where vision, forthrightness and youth are important to drive people. I don't envisage any hope , direction or improvement with politicians at the helm. He did set a goal of 10 golds in 2000, well surprise, surprise it fell through. Even hockey doesn't seem to be a sure bet for a medal these days. The only other country which is consistently as bad or worse than India is Pakistan. Let's just not go there, terrorism isn't an Olympic sport yet folks.

If it weren't for cricket, Indians wouldn't be playing any sport at all. Alas, cricket isn't an Olympic sport.. yet :)

Pun Intended..

So my friend showed me there was more to the Times of India website (www.timesofindia.com) (than the sorry excuse of a website they have, and I'm just referring to the content). I was browsing through the ePaper version, which took a while to load, even on my cable modem and 802.11g home network. So finally when the page did load, I got to read the actual Indian newspaper, a nice touch I thought. But my eyes kind of skipped the whole TOI crap on top and I skimmed to some neat pictures and color photographs of gyrating Bollywood Stars, for a moment I though I was on page 3 of the rather infamous Bombay Times. To me the whole facade seemed like some cosmo-vanity fair hybrid. And all this from a newspaper which claims maximum circulation , although they always seem to be at loggerheads with Hindustan Times every year after the "results" are out.
To me, the day the newpaper group got into Entertainment and promotion for movies, it sounded the death-knell of good journalism. I have been reading this newspaper since I was a kid, what we have now is nothing but a pale shadow of the past. Changes are obvious and forseeable , but what peeves me is the abysmal quality of news reporting. Somehow the seriousness has all been squeezed out of the news , and all that is left is a cheap thrill tabloid report. What really baked my noodle were the "eye-catching" headlines I read :

"Anastasia is Mys Paris" // Sports
"Married Sehwag turns Bachelor, of Arts" // Sports
"In the house , now for the party" // Politics

Oh, my god, this is awful awful pun. This is just a sample of an endless bevy of bad rhymes, something you'd see upfront on the TOI website as well. Most of them are childish and some of them don't even make good puns. It just seems like a bad punch line taken out of the Sitcom "Friends". Does TOI consciously make an effort at producing such terrible headlines? You know what I think ? That they actually have a "Pun Department" , which takes in all the blase headlines and news reports from the reporters and the editor, and make an effort to see the pun in every situation. Haven't got a pun ? Improvise . Still not working ? Jam a few terrible non-sensical words .. Still doesn't work ? Use Hindi too yaar.. Amazing, you just gave a bunch of college hippies from South Bombay some brilliant work to do. Thank you for ruining journalism. Thank you for ruining a good newspaper and making my mornin coffee taste bad. Thank you for making reading in the Bathroom a whole shitload of pain. Get the pun , eh Times of India ?

QOS : A Case for Air-India

Air-India is India's flagship carrier for destinations in India and abroad. It has been providing civilian transport and disaster relief for nearly 70 years. What started off initially as Tata Airlines, has now rooted itself, as a loss making Public Sector Unit (PSU), with a diproportionately large number of employees on its pay-roll to ever make profits.
Indians who have ever travelled abroad and who have ever travelled Air-India would talk about the uniqueness of Air-India as opposed to other airlines. What normally gets them talking, is how every one of them has been ill-treated by the cabin crew and dismiss it as a junk airliner running on onygen provided by the federal government. What is not unique is the innumerable number of complaints the passengers seem to encounter whenever they set foot on the airliner.
It takes a lot of guts to be the devil's advocate, I must admit. I also would ask you to not call my client (in this case Air-India) the devil. Lets just call it the alleged devil . Most of your charges will not stick by the end of my blog.
A lot of sympathy that is generated within me for the airline may be partially attributed to the fact that my fathe ever worked there. What you see as blatant partiality, I like to call insight. I have heard my father talk about his work, and the people he ever worked with and it tells me a lot about the charachter of the organization.
For anyone who has ever come down to India and went back, was asked this one question : "how would you, if you could, summarize India in a nutshell?". The reply is swift :"Are you crazy, there is no way you can summarize India in a page, or a book". There is a word though :"multi-dimensional". To me this little aside captures the essence of Air-India the bloated organization. Its a company trying to find its feet in the myriad of people manning it. To me, its the heart and soul of being an Indian, in a way. We find India, too, in a very similar way. There is little understanding of the effort to push India forward, but the effort does come from various quarters.
As I talk to people, and I recount their experiences which have almost always been in the negative, it just seems to be plain hyperbolic extensions of "He said, She said" and making that apply to their experiences. Self-deprecation is a wonderful thing, and it is very common among Indians. What is also common is to bring anything and everything, Indian, down with the person. I have heard absolutely ridiculous comments from people : " The cabin crew attendant refused to give me head phones and instead asked me to sleep and not disturb him ", to " they refused to serve me food without onions in them". Most of these people also harp on the wonderful services provided by British Airways and such in comparison. I have travelled by these airlines, and as a guy who speaks French as the only other International Language, I find it very alien in these airlines, have had problems aplenty with lost luggage and not too friendly people at the check in counters either. I ask these people how do they measure QOS on airliners; they can not reply. To people who find it difficult to even eke out the 1400$ for the return fare from the US, expecting amazing service, the Queen's banquet as cuisine and having the cabin crew be your personal slave, means QOS , I'm sorry you are grossly mistaken. If you do expect that kind of service bump yourself upto club class or First class. But please be reasonable.
For old-timer Indians, Air-India is a very comfortable environ to travel , since they do not have language barriers. There is a certain degree of compassion toward a fellow Indian you can only expect from another. That is something even a courteous German or a British cabin crew member may not be able to provide.