As we go on...

Short Tale

2005-06-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

I really admire Ammani and Anjali for their remarkable short tales. I have given it a shot as well...Its my first try at a short tale so there may be some rough edges.

His nostrils were flaring, ‘We are proud Tamilians. Look at Japan, Korea and China...our language has got to be our identity.’ The minister was delivering his speech popularizing tamil medium government schools and colleges in Tamil Nadu. The people were in frenzy, admiring the minister for his glorious vision of a Tamil Renaissance.
Speech over, the minister retires to his quarters. His attendant enters. The minister has just received a phone call. It was his son…from Harvard.

Who are you when no one is looking…

Scary thought

2005-06-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

I am not going to take too much of your time here. I was thinking yesterday, why is China's large workforce base looked upon as an asset, and India's large workforce base looked upon as a liability. I asked a politically inclined friend and his answer was very scary. Education. The majority of the Indian workforce is educated at least to a college undergraduate degree level and that makes them more of a liability than an asset. Are you able to see the implications of this very dangerous situation? Truly mind boggling and very scary!

P.S: Chord, I have done a spell check on this post ;)

How do we define success PART 2

2005-06-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I really appreciate all those who took the time out to contribute to this academic discussion. I felt that I couldnt do justice by just posting my views on the comments section.

1) 'The want of more money can lead to no mental peace'. That is the biggest urban myth of all time. I dont believe how it has lasted so long! Trust me, you will not hear a Bill Gates say that, you will not hear a Steve Jobs say that, you will never ever hear a Rockafeller say that! The only people who will actually say that are Rock stars like Kurt Kobain who was so screwed up in his head that he had to trust a shotgun more than his instinct! The statement I am speaking about has been coined by the poor and middle class (henceforth reffered to as poor) who secretly want to live a rich and famous lifestyle but just cant and so just come up with a baloni 'fox and the sour grapes story'.

2) 'any thing that ur inner heart feels as succes and u achieve it is the REAL ONE'. Ok, let me take this one. Well, there is an 80-20 rule in todays society. 80% of the worlds wealth will be concentrated in 20% of the worlds people. So this means that 80% of the worlds people will not be having a lot of money. So, to cover up for that they got together and said, hey lets decide that money should not be an indicator to success, and it should be left to ourselves to decide whether we are successful or not. And since 80% of the worlds people decided that, its a more popular ideal! Again, pure Baloni!

3) 'can u consider urself successful if u r not able to contribute something valuable to society'. Well as I said before, what will you contribute to society when you are broke yourself? A check of happiness? Now I am sure that some idealist will come forward and say, well we can volunteer our services and impart education to the poor people. Yeah rite! like any of us have done that for a continous month! If you want to feed a thousand people a day, I respect you and I salute you. But to do that my friend, you need money...lots of money!

4) 'it is important to have peace of mind also as an important factor' Tell me my friend, how can one have peace of mind when he is in 30,000$ student debt! A lot of my friends here in the US are here on student loans, and a lot of my relatives have thousands of dollars of car loans, house loans and what not! If you are not mentally screwed up, money can buy you peace of mind! However as I said before, if you are like Kurt Kobain, then you are done for!

5) 'success is what u feel inside'. Another of the very popular urban myths made by poor people, for poor people! Just a very gross justification of their lack of wealth.

How would you define success

2005-06-11T00:27:00.000-07:00

I was having this very interesting conversation with Ms V, a very talented writer, whose blog can be reached at vidiyeah.blogspot.com

She was telling me about what she defined success as..and i kinda very vehemently disagreed with her. She will write on the comments section to tell about her idea of success:) i am not going to tell u her story..but i will tell u what i define as success.

I believe that measurement of ones success has to be attached to something tangible...and the easiest way to measure success..also the most accurate is by seeing how wealthy the man is.

Because the way i see it, 85% of the problems that occur in daily lives can be solved with money.

But before i elaborate on my views, I want to hear what the majority of people think. It would be nice if u guys could write in a line or two what would make U, not sachin tendulkar, not anybody else, but U feel that you have achieved success.
I have a feeling that this is going to get very interesting.

Full Time Spectators!

2005-06-08T17:26:00.000-07:00

If you are Indian and you are reading this post, by the end of it you may probably want to try me for treason and sentence me to some island with a weird name for the rest of my life! Why? because i am going to tell you some facts.

I have tried for years to understand the reason behind the almost maniacal craze for cricket in India! If there happens to be a match well...everyone who was normal until yesterday begins to act, walk and talk like a cricket guru! You may not know what is '2+2' but you would definetely know the average of Rahul Dravid in his last 11 innings...upto the last three decimal points!!!! I mean who exactly are you to tell me how Saurav Ganguly must have captained the team whenthe last time you touched a bat was six years ago...how exactly can you tell me how Sachin Tendulkar's batting stance should be when your only cricket credentials are 'substitute' in an Inter school cricket team! When India beats Pakistan in a cricket match, we spend 50 rupees to buy crackers and burst them in the middle of the road, we call it being 'patriotic', yet when we are asked for 10 rupees to feed a homeless child by some NGO organization, we shrug our shoulders! That is indeed the 'definition' of patriotism! Man..Gandhi is going to be so proud of us!

I thought about it for a little while, and then I realized maybe cricket is the only sport that we Indians are crazy about, because we are basically lazy people..sports like football, hockey, basketball and even tennis are no good for us...why? come on ask me why! the answer is because they get over too soon! Cricket is the only game that stretches on for long enough so that every lazy bone in our body is satisfied! because how much ever you try, u cannot have a five day long 100 meter dash!

I starkly remember when I was in school, and there was a match in Chennai, and my high school declared a holiday. I was left thinking..what were they trying to teach me!

As they say in Yankee land..Come on guys...be a PLAYA!

Trust and faith in the Google era!

2005-06-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

Its an open fact. Humans are most untrustworthy of all living species!Your grandfather may say, gone are the days when a mans word was his honor. But guess what, even his grandfather would have said the same thing. As far as i think, trust was never an option throughout human history.
But the irony of it all is, most of business today is based solely upon one trait that humans totally lack, Trust!
A small example. Have any of you thought why Google is offering 1 GB of space in its inbox and encouraging the 'never delete a message' cult? Think about it. When you buy something from an online website, all you give to complete the transaction is a number and an expiry date. Most of us are anyway on insecure servers. If you are in India, then its even more unsafe. But this actually makes me happy. Because millions of dollars of business transactions are being carried out based on pure trust! Man finally we have evolved. One renegade programmer in amazon.com, becasue he has access to a huge database of credit card numbers can play around if he wants! And in an interview with Kevin Mitnick, one of the celebrity hackers, he said that he was amazed at how this credit card system works online with such a low level of security! I mean come on!
Coming back to Google. They are one of the greatest business stratergists I have ever come across! First they restrict the number of email accounts they give out, making it something of a prestige issue to have a gmail account. And once the prestige factor has kicked in, they make it more widely available, and in a short span of time, they have monopolized the email domain!
Dont delete anything! Ever thought about that? Well, your inbox contains a lot, and i mean a lot of information about yourself. And its being updated everyday with latest information about yourself. If you notice, Gmail also has an automatic send message saving system. Which means that basically everything you know about you is known by the Gmail database also.
In this age, Information is priceless. All that Google is looking towards becoming is the worlds largest database. In short, they want to be able to know everything about everyone. Such a position in the online world would be very enviable. its infact the next most ambitious project after Bill Gates dreamt of putting windowns in every home.
I have seen people revealing all of their choices and likes and dislikes and for christ sake even their phone numbers on Orkut. Think about this, how many years would a Marketing Surveyer have had to take to get this much of information out of you. Infact nowadays, if a government needs to find some information about you, I am so sure that getting access to your gmail account will give them a better idea than even looking through your Social Security database! Does anyone actually realize that we are meticulously documenting ourselves in a very very clear manner.

Honestly, I dont know if this is good for us or not, its very very very creepy though, that someone knows me almost as well as i know myself.

Big Brother never had it so easy!

Concept of creating wealth

2005-05-31T18:12:00.000-07:00

Making money has always been one of the foremost things on my mind. Nah....dont judge me...dont tell me if money is good or bad! its what you do with it. Greed...has always been an emotion thats been so badly treated for centuries! what exactly do u not like about greed? i asked someone whats it that seperates greed from ambition? arent they exactly the same thing? well...am yet to get a reply! all the computer science graduate students here in the US... are they here because they are passionate about some weird computer language? gimme a break man! i am passionate about technology is usually just a cover up for the 'how much do u pay per hour' question. someone once told me if its not need, then its greed. well...i need more:) so am i more needy or more greedy? i really am waiting for a day when people will say 'i am greedy' with the same fervor as saying 'i am ambitious'.
Concept of creating wealth has changed drastically over the years. How can you stop a kid from playing video games when the Time magazne reports a kid of just 17 years making 6000$ "testing" video games. Tiger woods makes 25 times the money he makes in a year playing golf by just wearing a stupid Nike hat. I paid 28$ to buy that stupid Nike hat. Do u think Tiger is more passionate about playing golf or wearing a stupid hat? Take a guess. 50 cent, former drug dealer, nine bullet wounds on his jaw, chest and where not, hires a Harvard business graduate to account to manage his finances for 120,000$ a year. I am yet to see any person with a Masters/PhD degree in the technical or business field making more than 200,000$ and thats after working 40 hour weeks on a job.
Be proud to be greedy. Money is not good until u have it!

Newspapers...A Negative way to start the day

2005-04-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

My typical day used to start with a coffee and a copy of the New York Times (the Hindu when I was back in India). I was under the assumption that this was the perfect way to start a day, and I used to look down upon people who never read newspapers. But come to think of it, is that really the right way to begin a day? Because the front page of any of the newspapers, be it the NY times, or the Hindu or even the local neighborhood newspaper contains information about tragedies, bomb blasts, cunning politicians, briberies, scandals, accidents and Michael Jackson!
Of course, this is not to say that there are absolutely no success stories on newspapers, but you have to search through piles of garbage to find it. The way I see it, Newspaper, T.V and media in general thrive on negativity. Why else are 90% of headlines about what has gone wrong in the world? And i seriously dont like a negative start to my day.
So nowadays I try and read some kind of positive material, maybe spiritual, something like Dale Carnegie or Debra Fine..or even a novel, so that I have some peace and calm before the rigor of the day sets in.

Feminists Feminists!

2005-03-24T01:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I was reading through the blog of this incredibly talented lady who calls herself 'Madmrid', her blog can be checked out at http://www.basicallyblah.blogspot.com...One of the most striking things that you will notice about her blog is that in her profile, she describes herself using just one word...'feminist'. I was kind of startled, because if one has to identify themself by a 'movement', then they have to be pretty attached to the ends.. so I was almost like...Easy baby!!

Speaking about feminists....I do think that they are a little hypocritical, I do agree that not all are the same and that there are good feminists too (in Mars) but then think about this....havent we so often heard about feminists wanting more reservations in parliament, corporate offices, heck even in the buses (Atleast in India) we have priority seating for three kinds of people...1) Disabled, 2) Elderly and 3) WOMEN!!!!! I have faced the utmost insult when I sit in a bus in a seat thats meant for women...but because I respect the fact that women are truly equal creatures, I didnt stand up to offer my seat to the standing woman....and then the woman( a very young and fit one at that) tells me to get up, and it was more like 'dont u see that this is the womens only seat?'... Man someone give me equality here because now I feel like the exploited sex!
Have we heard of any 'feminist' campaigner ever speakin about reservations in the frontline positions of the army or the navy? I dont think I recall that...suddenly they come up with this amazing notion that 'we are for peace' and that 'we dont like war...too much blood!'. Dang!
Equality it seems is not exactly equal either!

Anyways am finally back in Buffalo after a nice, much needed vacation in Chicago...i have attached a snap with this post...

On the Road again :)

2005-03-09T16:59:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I am going to Rochester, and i am eagerly awaiting it because for the first time after I came to the US nearly 5 months ago, I will be travelling long distance alone :) I have driven to NYC, Pittsburg, Chicago and Philadelphia but it has always been with a group of buddies. Hopefully I should be able to salvage a camera from one of my buddies and so will keep updating with the photos on the blog. Of course Rochester in itself is just one and a half hours away from Buffalo, after that I would be going to one of my family friend's house in Clarks Summit, which is like three hours away from Buffalo. These people are friends of ours since the old days when I used to live and study in Muscat, Oman...after that they moved over to the US, and we stayed on in Muscat, and then came back to India for my undergrad school...so its been kinda 8 years since I got to see them...
Oh and the reason I am going to Rochester...well is to attend an interview with State Farms Insurance for an internship :) Road trip in the US is really a lot of fun. But what is equally a lot of fun is preparing for the road trip....I really enjoy the part in which I burn CDs that i want to listen to in the car, get to Mapquest.com and get the directions...most of my travelling I prefer to do it alone...well not many people agree with me...people tend to argue that when you travel with friends as a "huge gang" you would have more fun...I do realize that 90% of the world thinks this way...however my arguement is this...you travel to experience something new..and that experience can never be complete if you are with friends. And my definition of travelling is not going to NYC and taking a look at the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building and Central Park and getting back home. You guys may call me weird, but I would really enjoy getting lost in New York, fumbling my way back with the help of maps, using public transport to get to places, and for those of you who havent tried it...trust me, that ten minute chat with a taxi driver in a foreign location can really add a new dimension to your travels. Of course...I am yet to meet a person who actually agrees to my definition of 'fun while travelling'. Which is why I think they came up with a different word called 'sightseeing'. Most of the travellers today according to me are sightseers.
Of course my road trip to Rochester is just going to be for a professional reason and to meet a friend and I will be back in 24 hours to Buffalo...

Just to watch it go!

2005-02-26T21:22:00.000-08:00

Just around two months back, I was asked by a friend of mine, who has been a major source of inspiration in my life, what my dream in life was. I said that I just wanted to clear school with a decent GPA that is well above 3.25, and get a decent 50-60K job in the United States. The guy smiled, waited for a couple of seconds, and then asked me a question that has practically changed the way I think now! He asked me ten years back, when you were in the 10th grade, fresh in school with all those rosy dreams and ambitions...was this the same dream that I had? I was stunned.....because the answer was no....I dreamt of owning a yellow custom made lumborgini,a couple of lakeshore estates, visit a new country every month....
What had changed? Why have my dreams scaled themselves no so drastically? Was it because I realized that owning a lumborgini took a lot of effort....and I was just too lazy to put in the required effort? What I mean is that...something must have drastically gone wrong if my dream car has gotten reduced from a bright brand new yellow lumborgini to an old second(or maybe third) hand toyota corolla which every Indian immigrant to the US seemed to have! Dang! I was shocked for a couple of hours....not because my dreams had been reduced, but because of the fact that I was constantly reducing my definition of excellence....I was setting the bar lower and lower with every passing year...
And then this guy told me something very important...he said that my income would never exceed my self image. That one statement has such a profound meaning that when you really think about it. Most of us are so deeplt trenched into what I call this survival mode...that we just cannot get out of it.
I dont want to be in survival mode any more. Perioid.

For the moment?

2005-02-23T21:05:00.000-08:00

Hey folks,
Just the other day i was reading about Bob Marley, sometimes I just am so bored that I jst put in some famous persons name on google and just read whatever pops up! I was surprised to learn that the Rastafari relegious sect, of which Bob Marley was a part, reveres the ex-King of Ethiopia, as a living god! And to tell you the truth, I hadnt heard any of Bob Marleys compositions before..so I loaded an mp3 of one of his songs...it was called Buffalo soldier. The lyrics went something like this...Stolen from Africa, Placed in America, fighting on arrival, fighting for survival. The whole song was more like some kind of nursery rhyme, and before I know it I am singing along with him! And my room-mate, he comes up and gives me that I am going to kill you look! Man...some songs just put a smile on your face!
Come to think of it, music was supposed to be a form of relaxation, but quite frankly I dont use music for relaxation no more! Gimme a break guys...how can a song in which this famous white rapper tells you how this guy killed his pregnant girlfriend in a fit of rage, in the most graphic detail be deemed as relaxation? And at the end of my day, when I am already saddled with enough troubles and worries of how to submit my assignment due on the next day, I have to also worry about this singers mom who use to beat him and then sleep with another man! Man the world is crazy...anyways I will be off to listen to some Eminem now! I need to relax!!!
Mannie

Mundane Thoughts

2005-02-23T16:59:00.000-08:00

Hey folks!
This is the first time I am actually writing a blog enty! I like to refer to myself as a computer-savvy person, and like to call C (the computer language) my mother tongue, but somehow I never actually realized the potential power of a blog until god knows why but today.
I am pretty much interested in almost everything that makes the world rotate. Travelling is one of my passions and I am sure that I will be doing a lot of it soon enough. And writing is another one of my passions...so my dream job would be that of a travel writer! And I dont know how many of you share this...but the obscure the country is, the more interested I am to know more about it. i remember so many times how I have spend hours reading about these little countries like Togo, Nauru, Benin and so on, that 90% of the world doesnt even know exists! And given a choice of travelling to say...Paris or Khartoum, I would be the guy who chooses Khartoum. So i can say I have somehow inherited some of Vasco Da Gama's genes.
As I write this, I am pretty sure that there is not going to be a fixed place when I will be updating this...probably I will be writing from my computer lab, a coffee shop, or even my toilet seat! Oh crap! I just want to show off that I got this incredible powerful laptop just a couple of months back so I will just go ahead and say it rightaway!
Peace Out!
Mannie