As I was drinking my Pepsi during lunch, I looked at the tin and read the Calorie/Nutrition contents. It said calories:155 per container. It made me ponder a little about the Nutrition facts. There is not a single packed food item one could see in this country that does not come with the Nutrition facts. The reason must be the FDA regulations. Even Haldiram's Rasgulla tin, though packed in India, comes printed with the Nutrition facts.
It does give a very good insight into what kind of food one is dealing with. It helps one to understand a food or drink better before consuming it. It would be so nice if we get such an insight into people we interact with too.
One would assume it's an awesome idea to stamp people's foreheads with their 'Characteristic Facts'. It would certainly be nice to know one's fat and cholestrol content just by looking at them. Or perhaps their blood pressure rate and heart beat rate to judge their endurance before you say something stupid.
One can also be a little more creative and customize the 'Facts' differently for Men and Women. Men could have itemized information such as 'Potato chips Saturation Limit', 'TV endurance Level' or 'Sex craving limit' and women could have 'Shopping Spree Sensation', 'Footwear fantasy' or 'Weight consiousness limit'. Of course, all these in addition to the basic information. With all such collective information, one can stay away from people who seem complete nutcases. Or perhaps approach some with more ease.
This, if properly followed, I humbly think, would become a great leap in the field of effective human communication!
Couple of days ago, I was on my flight from Phoenix to Philadelphia. As the flight attendant announced the mandatory safety instructions, I was wondering what the real purpose of those instructions were, as not a single passenger to my knowledge cared to listen with the seriousness with which the instructions were given.
It occured to me that most passengers in the flight would have heard those safety instructions probably a million times before. Made me thinking why even announce when people seldom care. Such instructions would be helpful only for first time travellers or those with selective amnesia. But in a local flight in the US, I doubt how many of them could there be.
For flights operating in third world countries, I understand the need for such instructions (I remember how I stopped everything I was doing and listened to the instructions the first time I travelled from India). For most other countries, I think its a simple waste of time. One could agree and say that the airlines could possibly use the time to start serving the food a little early or on a red-eye, switch the damn lights off so that people could doze off.
Or we would know only when there is an emergency and when people scurry around to find the nearest exit! That would be fun to watch.
I was having a light phone conversation with a desi friend who lives in New York. He was watching Phillies vs Yankees baseball match on tv and as Phillies was on the verge of winning, he said something that a typical yankee fan would say when their team lose. I laughed at his reaction and said "okay!!! what difference is it going to make to us as to who wins these games anyways?"
He patriotically replied "Hey, I'm a yankee!". I laughed again and said "He! don't talk like a local" for which he replied "Yeah! I have lived in New york for about 5 years now!". I asked him "So, that makes you a die-hard fan of yankees, huh?! Its like when my friend asked all the H1s and F1s to control their emotions when they were talking too much about Obama and US elections. He asked them 'do any of you have voting rights here? Then shut up!"
My New york friend laughed at this and said "Baseball fascinates me, I even have a baseball glove in my house". I smiled, he continued "knowledge of baseball helps me have intelligent conversations at work". I agreed.
But this whole drama behind the Phillies victories in the world series is completely incredible. Most local tv channels mention Phillies at least once an hour, there is no single FM radio channel that does not talk about Phillies world series win. Wait a minute, did I say 'world series'? Shouldn't 'world' mean 'all countries'? The first time I heard the term 'world series', with my poor knowledge of baseball then (as much as I knew India doesn't play the game), I thought at least European nations paticipate in such series. Later I found out that only US states participate or even better, only US cities participate. Fantastic.
I'm not against the game, but the whole concept of having about 30 teams or so (all within US and a team from Canada) and then calling it a 'world series' is a little funny. Calling it 'National series' or 'American Championship', etc., would be a little apt. Though I hear that there are other countries that play baseball, they don't participate in such 'world series' making the whole term and American nomenclature debatable.
Nevertheless, I respect the enthusiasm and the fanfare behind the game. Living in the Philadelphia area, there has been so much going on because of recent Phillies sequence of victories. People come dressed in red most of the days to work and the HR gladly welcomes it. They even recommend every employee to sport a red phillies attire on friday and if one is not a fan, they say its a shame! Well well!
I vividly remember the day I received my Dell Inspiron laptop, back in July'05. Being my first laptop, my excitement was simply uncontrollable, more than that of a child running behind an ice-cream truck. I purchased the laptop against all thoughts by people around me, advising me that a laptop will be of no use to somebody with a PC at work. When have I ever listened to people!
After four years of merciless usage (perhaps I should call it 'rape' for the lack of a better word), I decided to part with the laptop. I decided to give it to my dad, who got addicted to using it in the last 5 months. I wouldn't lose a 12 inch beauty like that without a bigger replacement. I have always had my eye on the MacBook and thanks to iPhone, my love on Apple only got doubled in the recent times.
There I was, last week, cringing and squirming at work, waiting unbearably for the MacBook to be shipped. I even left work early and for the next 5 hours, nothing mattered in this world – it was just me and the MacBook. I wanted to explore the MacBook and I did to my hearts content.
Having used the MacBook for a few days now, I thought I'll share some of my initial thoughts on using the Mac.
For a first time Mac user, I thought there'll be absolutely no learning to do. I was terribly wrong. End of first day, I wondered if I should buy the 'MacBook: Idiot's learning guide' book (if there was one).
There is a slight ramp-up curve involved, when one starts to use a MacBook. If somebody tells you that Macintosh is intuitive, laugh on their face. Seriously, do it. (I can't imagine the number of calls Apple customer service gets from people asking simple questions like 'how do I install this application? Or how do I disable applications from start-up?')
Most tasks which seems like a childs-play in a PC are not in a Mac. (I can't believe how many times I would have googled/asked my friend Amar for even simpler tasks, such as - how to make the Mac recognize my canon camera once I connect it!)
Wait a minute, my view has been too lop-sided, talking only about the cons of the macbook. All said and done, MacBook is a very successful product. It indeed has a lot of good features.
First comes the hardware. Their design definitely is much better than other PCs I have seen/used. With a light single-solid-aluminum unibody enclosure, the laptop is overall thin and light, yet being strong and durable. I certainly feel good when it sits on my lap.
Trackpad: My most favorite feature of the laptop. There is no specific mouse button, the trackpad is one large button. The trackpad seems so large, I can almost sleep and roll on it. And the umpteen cool 'jing-chaks' like pinch-the-trackpad to zoom in/out, rotate-fingers to rotate images, two-fingers-swipe to scroll, three-fingers-swipe to flip photos/pages, four-fingers-swipe to move windows and twenty-fingers-swipe to cast a vote at the White house. No, there is no twenty fingers feature yet!
Interface: Some of the cool features like Expose and Spaces, ichat (with video), Dashboard are definitely cool despite one's doubts of ever using them.
Other minor yet noticeable features such as magnetic charger connector, doorless CD slot, large separated keys, bright LED screen are certainly nice and does grab one's attention.
Overall, MacBook has definitely been a cooler gadget. But for some initial start-up glitches, I have been a satisfied Macbook owner.
I don't think it can ever match the intuitiveness of a PC, but only Apple could make a laptop like this!
If you want to watch a movie, which does not have huge up's and down's, yet trying to keep your attention in its own steady pace, maintaining the subtle day-today humour continuously and a fucking hilarious 1-minute climax, Extract is the movie you should watch!
P.S: I so am attracted towards owning a 5-series BMW and be the owner of a factory (in India).
I took over 120 pictures to get about 4 shots I liked. I was quite satisfied, yet exploring my areas of improvement. Here is the setup I used (in case anyone is curious, I used the comb as the point to focus, as I expected the water to splash at the precisely that height and there was no other way to focus the water droplet!):
The other day, I also happened to read at somebody's Flickr photograph that that was his best photo and he would have died to take that picture 6 months ago. He also said he isn't sure where to go next. I was thinking about what he wrote. After a discussion with Amar, the guy who inspired me into photography in the first place, I realized maybe, when one feels they are perfect in what they do (and attained a relative success), they may stop doing it completely.Today at one of the meetings at work, I heard somebody on the phone say a name called 'Shaayaamaala'. She seemed to be our client contact and soon everybody started calling her 'Shaayaamaala'. About 10 minutes into the meeting, somebody uttered her name once again and I had a sudden realisation that the person's name could actually be 'shyamala'. It never occurred to me that it could be an Indian name. As I was secretly laughing at the discovery, my super-smart project manager called her 'Shaayaalaama'. God help the names!
The way people named themselved and places must have gone through some complicated algorithms somewhere in the past. It can't be this tough for people of one geography to clearly say the name of someone from a different geography.
One of the my collegues (a desi who got his citizenship in this country recently) said that he is going to 'kali-fornia' that upcoming weekend. I asked myself 'really???!!'. I know people can screw-up certain names because of their cultural differences and language problems. But someone who has lived in this country for a long time should be able to say 'California' pretty neatly. I have never understood the logic behind people mispronouncing 'California'. But atleast I guess it's better than those middle aged desis who call it 'kali-porn-ia'!
One can argue that being a proper noun, names of people and places can be called however one likes to. But thats just plain stupid. This basic cultural difference can go a long way, I still get a hearty laughter when I think of this Cindy-Guindy episode and habanadha episode. Language is a great source of humour I think.
Nevertheless, I like blogging more than ever these days. The more meetings I attend at work, more thoughts I get. I'm telling you - people are so funny!
This afternoon, I was driving back to work from lunch and I was talking on cell phone. No hands-free, no speaker phone. Regular hand held style. State-law here restricts usage of hand-held phones while driving. I saw a cop in distance and immediately switched to speaker phone.
A strange thought occured to Kabali. He has been driving cars for about 6 years now. He loves driving so much and believes strongly if one loves to do an activity, one performs well in that field. Also, because of cell phone driving, he has never committed any mistakes such as having the car shift lanes without control nor run over the curb nor miss a traffic light.
But not all people may be good at such multi-tasking. Some people do screw up. It was mentioned in the web somewhere that more than 30% of accidents in the UK last year were due to cell phone driving.
Kabali's argument is that the IQ level of such people must be quite low. Yes, IQ level!
Here is his recommendation: When a cop pulls over, he should conduct a quick IQ test on the driver. If the IQ level is good enough, the cop could conclude that the person is capable of multi-tasking without any problems and should let the driver go. If the IQ level is low, then he can issue a violation ticket for cell phone driving.
I'm basing the argument on the logic that every single human being is different and that their capability on doing different things vary too. Having said that, I don't understand how the law and order can be so generalised. Atleast in areas where it could be customized for people, it should be.
Kabali honestly thinks so.
Update: After the last post, I got a new camera and did a super cool trip this weekend. I'm feeling happy!
Indian restaurants in the US are strange in more ways than one. Though most of them do a good job in serving the food right, some simply don't. They rather specialize in screwing up things like professionals.
Outside India, most Indians know enough not to compare home food (or even food from restaurants in India) to food in US desi restaurants. Restaurants capitalize on this very idea. They effortlessly let the quality of food slide, but try in despair to infiltrate into other areas.
Maybe the hospitality matters.
Most restaurants make sure the guests half-way through their meal need to be asked 'how is everything'. I wonder what might happen if one says 'the food sucks!! '. Most waiters are uber-confident about the reply that they don't even wait to hear from the guest.
There have been times when I have asked for water and got looks as if I was asking for a good share in the thousand shares of Google the waiter owns.
To get a better feel of the (in)hospitality, one should enter a restaurant at 9.45pm, when the closing time is 10pm. The waiter might expect the guest to decide till the dessert, before even one is shown a menu card.
It eventually becomes a discovery that quality of food and hospitality are perhaps not the only reasons one goes to restaurants. Like most others, I have this habit of not eating the same variety of food in the same restaurant for the second time.
The other day, as I was browsing through the menu at this Indian restaurant, I found something called “Motor Pun'ire”. I almost thought it was a new dish, before I realized the intended name is actually “Mutter Paneer”. Whowould imagine mis-spelling to this extent?! Looking through the other items such as “Alu Motor”, “Chicken Mosolla” the laughter was more satiating than the food in the first place.
One infers the name of the food hardly matters either.
Despite all these, I for one consider going to an Indian restaurant a regular activity - as I believe "eating Indian food is the best thing to happen, especially when one does not have to cook them". I happily let go on a few other things.
I sneeze. I drop the phone in my hands. I bend down to fetch the phone and the pen in my pocket slips. Trying to grab the pen, I drop the phone again. I miss the pen anyways. It bounces away to glory only to hide itself under the desk. I get the phone first. I try for the pen next. I crouch, bend and stretch myself to a crazy yoga position and reach under the desk. An abbreviated moment of stretching and twisting later, I find the pen and rise up fast, only to bang my head against the corner of the desk. The reflex makes me bend again, this time with more agility and with cartoon birds flying around my head. Only a moment later I realize that the water cup on the edge of my desk had been tripped by the bang. Trying to save the computer and other accessories from any more inundation than it had experienced in the past, I open the drawer with haste to fetch some napkins. The drawer door hits my knee hard enough to make me squirm with discomfort. The phone rings. I pick the receiver, only for the already entangled phone wire to snarl with the mouse wire. The receiver hesitates to reach my ears. Mouse refrains to let go. The flood on the desk spreads uncontrolled by the napkins. I am on the verge of sneezing again. I sit right there enjoying every moment of it as a habit of mine!
There you go...a snapshot of one's life!!
