Category: News

The Power of a Sorry

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was visiting her grandmother in the village. The village was a beautiful place and she had many friends. There was only problem that reared its head every so often: she hated to apologize. Having to admit she was sorry for what she had done was so dour to her existence that her grandmother decided on out-of-the-box techniques to make things easier for her. When she stalked off with her nose in the clouds and a pout big enough to scare the cat, her grandmother told her, “You don’t have to say ‘Sorry’, just tell me what your mother is wearing.”

Ha! But the little girl was too smart for that, she answered resolutely in Tamil, “PODAVAI! You think I will say ‘SAREE’? ”

Looks like my grandmother’s trick would not have worked on Scott Forstall either. He was ousted from Apple after refusing to sign a apology or taking responsibility for the poor quality of the maps on iOS.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57542297-37/apples-scott-forstall-ousted-over-maps-apology-wsj/

It looks like Mr Forstall learned from his company though:

http://www.examiner.com/article/uk-court-rejects-apple-s-apology-to-samsung-orders-apple-to-do-it-over

The UK court rejected Apple’s apology to Samsung as ‘not an apology’. Ha!

PS: For all those smart people out there, who think they know the little girl; I am not the little girl in the story above (Just saying)

The Mosquito Waltz

Visit my parents in the evenings, and you will find them waltzing to the rhythm of the evening sitcoms, with a spring in their step, either smiles or scowls on their faces and dancing to a tune that unites them against their enemy of the evening. Their dance is not all romance, though it makes for a wonderful scene. They are fighting mosquitoes. They hold something similar to badminton rackets and they sway them through the air. These rackets send minute shocks to the mosquitoes and squelches them.  I told them to choreograph their performance to some catchy tunes, but they don’t listen.

 

Mosquito Dance

Now imagine if I walked into their home one fine evening and found them with big, yellow sten guns and shooting with some nimble footwork , jumping behind sofas, putting James Bond to shame? I have to admit watching them waltz with badminton rackets conjures better images in my mind.

Yet that is what they would be doing if they got themselves a Bug-A-Salt.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444657804578048483443945820.html

 

Inventor demo bug-a-salt

(Inventor demo for the Bug-a-salt gun)

This wonder supposedly takes pests down by shooting salt tablets at them. I can’t imagine what would happen to the salt plastered walls of houses where humidity is high.

Just another product?

Who knows?

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Data Storage & Retrieval

I remember using floppy disks. Not only that. I remember feeling pretty good about myself. You know? The cutting-edge-technology-feeling and all that. The parents were still writing in Diaries – pah!

Then, CDs came along and all the ‘important documents’ I had on floppy disk were not transferred to CDs. I don’t miss them anymore, so I guess they weren’t that important. At first, I dismissed these little things till I started missing the important things too. Like this wonderful video of the daughter, when she was about a year and a half or two years old. She could sing this poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘When at home alone I sit’

When at home alone I sit
And am very tired of it,
…
High o’erhead the Bumble Bee
Hums and passes.

storage

I remember wondering what she was jabbering about till I caught hold of 3 or 4 words in the poem that weren’t entirely masked in baby-tongue and my heart swelled like a balloon. I pulled the proud-parent-act and promptly recorded it to show her children. I used to sing it to her every now and then, but I had no idea she had memorized the whole thing. That video is sitting in some tape somewhere that I can’t access anymore.

Of course, books as we knew them for the past 500 years is changing too. The e-books have wormed their way into our way of life.

Then I read this news article about how scientists encoded an entire book onto a DNA strand. How are we extract the contents out of a DNA strand though?

http://www.zdnet.com/harvard-scientists-encode-an-entire-book-onto-dna-7000002879/

Now that is something that is really interesting……can I infuse my DNA with the book and hope that the part of my brain that fuzzily recorded the little daughter’s song in my head would merge and help me when I retrieve the book?

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King Retains Throne; Panthers Flee

The place: Kulu Manali

The time: Two years ago

The post dinner walk found us looking contented and laughing like jack-a–es as loudly as possible to frighten the panthers that were rumoured to be there. We settled down to sleep with an unsettled question hanging over our heads. Damocles could have slept better with that sword of his hanging over his head. Was the panther really there? The night was dark and slightly chill. It must have been around 1 a.m. when a growl woke me up. I shrugged it off and tried to get back to sleep, but before long the growl grew to a full fledged ROAR. I sat upright in bed and tried to wake the husband. He wasn’t there. Another roar erupted – this time much louder than the previous one.

I was alarmed to hear it from the bathroom. Could a panther really have come in? I nudged forward with a hard-bound book in my hand. (Something tells me that I would have thrown the book and run like a screaming banshee if a panther had emerged, but still)

I’d like to think the panther came and got frightened away by the husband’s bravery. He slunk back into the shadows at the roar of a greater master. The G.master, in the meanwhile, was not in a good shape.

The events above happened when we tempted the Gastro-Gods. It all started with some one extolling the virtues of street food. Apparently, the essence of good food comes from a chef who doesn’t waste his time washing hands and utensils. So off we went looking for a ‘Dhaba’ after getting some yogurt and rice for the kids from the resort. We walked down a steep hill(this is Kulu Manali remember), past some bridge of some sort and in a quaint grassy place was nestled the shabbiest shack with some garden chairs. We were given glowing reviews about the food by the receptionist at the resort. We Namaste-Bhai-ed him and settled down.

I still remember the dinner:

  • Egg Curry
  • Butter Naan (The butter was taken with a spoon lovingly dipped in hot dirty water and slathered on. I could not see a refrigerator on the premise, but then, if they could have a fridge, they would have put up a few more garden chairs to ‘expand business’)
  • Paneer butter masala
  • Buttermilk
  • Butter shahi mushroom (Duh! Clearly, he can’t store the butter without a fridge)

One cannot say whether the butter was the culprit or the oil or the eggs. But what did happen was a violent upheaval that frightened panthers. The husband had a combination of several things going on – diarrhea and dysentery and vomiting prominent among them.

Two years later, stomach flu hit the family. It started with the daughter, and then the son. Since they both insisted on staying close to me in their moments of distress, I joined their party. We all merrily used the bathroom and threw up freely on sheets and pillow covers. The washing machine groaned its way through the pile, but we got by.

The husband clearly forgot about his brave days of frightening the prowling panther away and said he was strong, and that was why he was unaffected. I don’t think there is such a thing as a jinx, but if there was, this was surely it. Panthers and mountain lions were seen packing their bags in fright when the husband’s stomach heaved.

We all got better, but he remains the king of stomach upsets. Why did I think of all this?  I just read this article about this NY Times correspondent getting the goods from an innocent looking mango and could not help thinking of our own gastro-adventures.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/when-the-mango-bites-back/?src=me&ref=general

Handler in trouble?

The world is agog with the fact that His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_harry) otherwise known as Prince Harry .. er .. erred.

I have no problems with Prince Harry making a public spectacle of himself. If that is what he wants, so be it. The man is 27 years old and if he chooses to dance naked in front of some girls in Las Vegas when they have their cell-phones out for clicking pictures in the middle of the night, so be it.

My problem is that his ‘handlers’ are in trouble for this indiscretion. Does a 27 year old need a ‘handler’ to tell him that imitating inebriated babboons is not a good idea.

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/royals_furious_over_prince_harry_ZxI4elJOFPQJV41P0A89sI

Even a prince should get that. Right?

Olympic Jazz

Olympic Jazz

The general boasting of nations in the Olympic arena was too much for me. Not to mention that every single interview underlines the age. ‘Only 16 and so poised’
‘Barely 17 and already making the world sit up’

What’s the point of all this? Makes me feel like an aging rhinoceres whose rampage is slowing and hair is graying.

So, I turned to Music – I have been listening to Jazz on the radio. I am no Music Maestro (Apart from my performing on All India Radio a couple of times: https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2006/10/16/background-music/) I have no credentials in the Music department. Yet, the Jazz spurred me to heights I hadn’t imagined. I would listen to a random song played by a Brazilian or a Spanish artist I hadn’t heard of earlier and words would leap into my mouth. There I was singing of Love and Life and Heartbreak with perfectly fitting words.

It was too good to be true. And then I realised what was going on. Everytime I had one of those flashes, some brilliant music director in India had already whacked the tune. All the old brain was doing was retrieving the cached data from the rusted corners and belting them out again. For some shining moments, I had envisioned my creative side flowing and A.R.Rahman coming to me for lyrics and tips. Sigh…

So, in the absence of seeing myself as the shining beacon to the music world, I have decided to devote my talents to analyzing our recent performance in the Olympics.

Some folks have come up analysis such as Medals per billion people, Medals ranked by GDP etc.

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/07/summer-olympics-medal-gdp-charts (the bubbles at the bottom of the chart represent India)

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/08/10/the-us-olympic-medal-count-isnt-as-impressive-as-it-looks?google_editors_picks=true

Gapminder.org is a pretty interesting place to while away your time with stats and graphs by the way.

But nobody sees the bucking pace that India is setting.
This is US’s performance in the Olympics over the past 20 years:

THIS is India’s:

Look at that graph and wipe the Usain Bolts and Michael Phelpses from your mind and tell me India is going the right way. (0-4 in 20 years, but nobody can deny that that trend is what we are looking for)

Help! Hindu God of Olympics!

I know why India does not win the Olympics. Hinduism, for all its openness and boasting of having over 3000 gods does not have a Major God for Sports. A random page says The God of Sports is Lord Subrahmanya.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_is_Hindu_god_of_sports
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murugan

A Mythology refresher: Subrahmanya is the one who was challenged to a race around the world thrice against his brother.(http://hinduism.about.com/od/lordganesha/a/Ganesha-Tales.htm)

Subrahmanya had a peacock and flew off, while his pot-bellied elephant brother had a mouse to run around the world. Long story short, Subrahmanya and his peacock lost the race to the elephant brother and skulked off to brood at a hilltop in Tamil Nadu. (I don’t know why Wiki answers proclaims him to be the God of Sports) Anyway, I thought the Lord Subrahmanya was only famous in Tamil Nadu, which is famous for idlis, filter coffee and curd rice (none of which are exactly high up on an Olympic sportsman’s diet you will agree).

In other news, Karnataka is in drought and Rs. 17 crores have been set aside for drought relief. When it comes to drought relief, what are the measures you can take to alleviate the water problem? Illogical solutions to this question will not be tolerated easily.

Think.

Right answer: 17 crore rupees is being set aside for performing pujas at temples across the state to entice the rain god to perform in the State. Nobody is gullible enough to spend all that money on one temple: 34000 temples across the state will perform the same puja on the same day and rain will come.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/south/karnataka-temples-to-hold-prayers-for-rain-today-bill-will-be-17-crores-248142

Now you see why we need a famous God of Sports having at least 34000 temples? If we had set aside an Olympic Coaching Fund and organised a prayer to appease the Sports God at the same time, while feeding our athletes curd rice and idlis, we might have won the Olympics. Alas! Hinduism in 5000 years did nothing towards this end and we are forced to pray to Gods who have to cut themselves free of their main task and take on Sports overtime.

Olympian Diet
Olympian Diet

What’s an Indian Olympic Athlete to do against these enormous odds?

Yammer Yammer Chatter Chatter EMail Email IM IM

I heard about Salesforce’s product, Chatter, as a means of evaluating employees a few weeks ago.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1842019/evaluating-employees-based-on-influence

The product is supposed to add a tangible component to the intangible factor of employee chatter and tried to put an algorithm around influence. Chatter is hardly the only one trying to address an office audience. Yammer is trying something similar too.

Are we adding yet another source of noise around ourselves to make us busier than we already are? We maybe – according to one study an average corporate worker sends/receives 105 emails a day. It looks to me like we are over-communicating already.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/life%E2%80%99s-too-short-for-so-much-e-mail/?smid=li-share

Not to mention that instant messaging over Skype(or similar) is used over and above the emails. Instant messaging requires one logged on at all times to be abreast of the fast flowing message river. A few days away is enough to overwhelm the stoutest of souls when they get back.

What about influence: Does every job function require influence? I am not sure. I don’t think every single job profile requires influence around the office block.

Will products such as these affect the introverts in the office or help introverts since they can resort to technology instead of meeting people? It takes all kinds of people to contribute in their unique and creative ways in order to achieve something.  Can we generalize and assume that only those actions with influence are important.

Ten years from now, we may have embraced the office chatter and influence algorithms for them to become a part of our daily lives, or it may not have gone well or we may have moved on to entirely different paradigms 3 times over.

Am I a busybody or am I busy?

Everyone loves being busy. My son, for example, spends many hours being busy. For one so young( a year old); one would wonder why he is this busy. All one has to do is walk into our home when we are loading the dishwasher to see the domestic chores he has to handle. (Try constantly climbing onto the dishwasher lid when the relentless mother is pulling you away from it, or face the frustration of having his unloading efforts thwarted at every stage) He has the additional responsibility of identifying objects of a questionable nature and then tinkering with them. Working on finding questionable items of high impact require several skills at once. Tinkering with the empty battery charger, for instance, is a low-medium voltage exclamation mark from the parent, opening the vaseline bottle and looking like a shimmering idol in the evensong after liberal application a medium exclamation – the real crowd pullers are the remote and the phone.

The point is: he is busy.

The daughter is busy too. Her priorities are different from the son’s, but she is busy nevertheless. She is busy playing with her friends, busy making her room a mess, busy making cards that her callous mother throws away.

Which brings me to the husband and I. We are busy too.

Being busy is exhilarating. Makes you feel wanted and keeps you occupied, which is why so many of us fall into the busy trap.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/

The article, like many others, made me stop and ponder about our lives. How much of what we do is necessary and how much of it is noise? How do we identify the chaff from the grain when we are busy running after the chaff and the grain in the whipping winds?

Heralding the Vegetable Orchestra Era

Something tells me this is going to be the next ‘in-thing’ at South Indian Brahmin weddings:
Chinese vegetable orchestra
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/weirdnewsvideo/9138002/Chinese-brothers-create-orchestra-from-market-vegetables.html

Let us list the potential positives:
1) It has vegetables and no meat. “We are very chaste you know?” a Meenakshi Maami or Chachu Maami will proclaim as they swallow a burfi whole (with the silver lining).

2) The first set of weddings to have it will be talked about in glowing terms till the next wedding has the same thing. Then, that wedding will talked about in glowing terms and so it goes.

3) I am sure paying these artists will be expensive and therefore, tie in nicely with the unnecessary-exorbitant paradigm. Maybe James Band can diversify his talents in the direction. Who is James? And why his band? (Please go here for answers: https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/?s=James+Band)

In short, James Band was the illustrious band that performed at my brother’s wedding, confused music with noise and received glowing tributes from one and all.

4) There is no active participation of the audience required. One can flit like butterflies or flies near the show, smile vaguely and flutter away towards the edible end of the hall.

5) In general, we like things that knock the wind out of ya. This one has wholesome yams & potatoes.

6) It has a wind instrument touch to it that appeals to South Indians – one can make it loud and also ignore the artistes and turn to look at the cut vegetable show on the side. A simple Google search throws all of these different things one can do with vegetable cutting. I must also point to the fact that weddings now have a vegetable show where one is allowed to go and see the creative pursuits of the wedding contractor’s vegetable carver. Of course, the v.carver is never there to see/hear the appreciation, but a true artist does not wait for them apparently. He has the next set of carvings to get to.

Given that our food decoration wonders stop at the star-shaped carrot like in the dish below(The mother made the dish for the Cancer Institute Foundation fundraiser, but we were tasked with decoration and we pulled off the only thing we are adept at ), we can but marvel at the ingenuity while listening to the vegetable band:


7) The whole lot of the ‘instruments’ can make its way from Srinivasa Maama’s wedding to Vaidyanatha Iyer’s wedding and then morph into kootu at Pataamani maama’s daughter-in-law’s seemandham.

It will be nice to be able to look back at this post a few years from now when the vegetable orchestra is the in-thing.