Category: Daily Notes

I know it not, but for us, this past weekend was. We still have tendon muscles all around my thighs and spinal cord sending painful singnals all over the body: We laboured to install ceramic tiles in our front porch. If you had told me last weekend that I would do this, I would have simply admired your sense of humour. Surprisingly, something in me ignited and here i am, talking about a do-it-yourself ceramic tile installation!

Harini resents how life would have been if we had been in India. But here in America, there is only two options -: find a do-it-yourself manual for literally anything: from delivering a baby at home to building a nuclear bomb! or engage obnoxiously priced contractors, again, for everything : to blow your leaves in fall to move your ass from the living room to dining!

And thats how we ripped off a 70 Square feet carpet and installed about 70 ceramic tiles. Let me tell you a secret : Go and pay a cheap damn contractors and get it done! unless, you crave for the honour of being I-can-do-anything homeowner.

If you had read my earlier posts, you might have guessed that we would have shown up at one of the Kadri’s live shows here in new york city. And we did and as expected, it was enthralling. We were there last evening, the second of the three nights in a row fusion Jazz-Carnatic Sax performance by Rudresh Mahanthapa and Kadri Gopalnath at the Asia Society on the east side of Manhattan. The troupe moves to Philedelphia on Sunday.

[We were told that cameras were strictly prohibited. We managed to escape from this felnoy!]

The performance is composed jointly by Rudresh and Kadri and they named it Svajanam-Kinsmen, aptly so, since Rudresh is an American Indian with roots somewhere in South India. Apparently, Rudresh is an ardent fan of Kadri and that it was his life’s dream to do a stage-show with Kadri. That said, Rudresh is no less a star, his latest CD, ‘Mother Tongue’ is being voted as ‘One of the top 10 Jazz CDs of 2004″ and I promptly grabbed one from the AsiaStore!

The theme was not necessarily a fusion performance, Rudresh made it clear before the start of the show. Kadri & co performed what they were good at, Classical Carnatic while Rudresh & co engulfed us with some alto Jazz. There were occasions when they performed some pieces from the other side but the innovation in the show was to have every person on stage perform a 1-1 sequence with every other performer on stage.

A.Kanyakumari on Violin was cool and ruthless and she showed no signs of strain or uncomfort even in the fastest of the notes. Rez Abbasi, another new york-based musician of Indian sub-continent origin, was equally good in electric guitar getting applause from Kadri himself on occasions. Elliot Humberto on drums was very isolated at the back of the stage, but took no time to capture the attention of audience with his expressions and body language. When his turn came to do a solo run, he made sure that we remember his name for few more months at least. Carlo deRosa on Acoustic Bass didn’t get a chance to show his talents but it felt that he was key to the whole music ambience in the hall. Gautam Sriram accomponied Kadri with Mridangam and had a real challenge from Elliot.

The King of the stage, Kadri, was flamboyant. I should say an equivalent of a master blaster. I can vouch that he had no notes infront of him but knew exactly every second of the music by heart. His body language was agile and passionate. He was perhaps saying to everyone that he was playing it more for himself than for our pleasure. He stole the audience on his very first piece. It was rightly chosen fast-pace, head-nodding, foot-tapping, adernaline-pumping one. Everytime he was done with his portion of music, he removed his mouth piece and retired his hands on the floor behind him and was relaxing. But what drove me nuts was, after a few minutes, he would pick up his mouth piece, clean it up, assemble it back into his garlanded Sax, tune it and then….he plays…it was absolute timing for his next piece in the sequence. I really went nuts after watching him do this almost everytime. Perhaps, this is how great musicians are. I was happy I had a glimpse of him playing live for all I knew of him was only from the CDs I have heard. Rudresh carried himself thru very elegantly, playing his Jazz pieces with a natural style of a african-american Jazz player. He ensured that he stands next and clearly watches Kadri make love with his sax for he must have wanted to do this so badly. But both Kadri and Rudresh appreciated each other frequently. The respect they had on each other was pretty evident whenever audience applauded Kadri would point to Rudresh. At the end of the show, after introducing everyone, Rudresh introduced Kadri, ‘Let me introduce to you all, The Emporer of the Stage, Kadri Gopalnath…’, the literally packed audience were already standing up for an ovation.

I thought for a second if I should go down to say hello to Kadri, I very well know another chance so close wouldn’t come soon. He was already swamped with fans and perhaps, other local friends and families that I figured it will be too late. We were as such very happy that we could make it and on top of that, the music was truly a joy to be part of.

If you are fan of music and fan of Kadri Gopalnath [ Check http://www.kadrigopalnath.com/], do listen to this wnyc interview of kadri before he goes live tonight in manhattan. A must listen. A genius he is, but really naive the way he speaks. Rudresh jumps in to help with American english and explain what kadri is saying in his south indianized adorable english.

[Kadri with Rudresh innovating for this weekend’s show. Src:AsiaSociety.org]

I was about switch away from WNYC FM when I thought I heard a familiar saxaphone scream. I was right. It was Kadri Gopalnath. It was nice to hear something totally different from the war in iraq and drug lords of columbia. Kadri is in new york city for the next few days for a world premiere performance at the Asia society with Rudresh Mahanthappa, who I read is a relatively popular american indian jazz pro. Kadri is also scheduled to air live on WNYC’s SoundCheck tomorrow at 2 PM EST. You can hear him chat live with John Schaefer on the web.

This show is part of a broader 3 month long Indian heritage and vision series at the Asia Society, New York City, co-sponsored by the obscure India Brand Equity Foundation.

We are in Akron, Ohio, a small deserted town 30 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio. Since this is our second three-day weekend trip in the last two months, atleast a few of my friends/colleagues have assumed that we are just travelling all the time!

We are here to celebrate the first birthday of Sruthi, my friend’s sweet little playful daughter.

The last time we were here we spent the nights playing board game, Risk. We enjoyed it so well that we made sure we play it this time as well. It wasn’t as much fun as last time ( there were more poeple lastime) but we still had a good time last night. This morning Ganesh took us to LaserQuest, a high-tech laser gun hunting indoor game. Though its an indoor activity for middle-aged kids, we enjoyed it very well. A lot of things specific to kids or teens is America is equally or more fascinating for us ( and I suppose for most of the first generation Indians) since we never grew up seeing/doing any of this.

On our way back, I couldn’t stop dragging Ganesh & Harini into a store when the sign outside read ‘Giant Book Sale’, ‘80% off’…who wouldn’t? They were distinterested, but i persisted. After a half-hour soul search for the books : ‘That I will buy, will try to read someday’, I got two good ones from the biography sections, ‘leadership’ by Guliani and ‘Yanni in words’ by Yanni. ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom is already on its way to our home from Amazon marketplace while I am right now in my second but much more revealing reading of ‘7 Habits of highly effective people’ by Stephen Covey.

The past two weekends were gorgeous with sun showing allout naked. We must have been missing warm weather so badly that we get so ridiculously excited to see a bright sunny day. What we do with it is out of question ( since we don’t do anything ) but the cheer and excitement it brings in is a good feeling. Today is also looking awesome and we will heading out soon to get our skin cell refurbished for the week!

On friday night, we saw ‘Mumbai Express’, the latest kamalhassan movie. I would say the movie was ‘good’ [Kamal could have killed us with another ‘Alavandan’, so I don’t mind giving ‘Good’]. Two phrases would perhaps sum up the movie easily : ‘Comedy of errors’, ‘Old wine in a new bottle’. I thought ‘Panchathanthiram’ was better.

Nothing more can I say about Kamal’s performance, it is ‘as good as it has always been. Perhaps, only less romantic. The story, screenplay is a slamdunk for Kamal. Even if it isn’t obvious, there are shades of Crazy Mohan’s touch all over the place. I still wonder why Manisha is still cast as lead in Tamil movies. There must be more than what the skin says!. Pasupathy, I felt, could have shaved off his villianic attitudes and stares a bit for there was very little to be ‘comical’ for him anyway. Ramesh Arvind, as always, stands out, which is why ‘Panchathanthiram’ still felt better to me; Kamal-Ramesh Arvind-Jayaram is a lethal combination for comedy. Illayaraja can be identified on occasions. Unless you are intelligent, you shouldn’t care why this movie couldn’t have been ‘Chennai Express’, whats the deal with Mumbai when everyone simply speaks Thamizh?

Heard from someone who saw the opening show of ‘Chanramukhi’ that Ranjini has niether lost his star attraction nor his on-screen gimmicks. Perhaps, they have only become worse!

Until next…

1680 AM is a popular Indian FM station around the area we live here in NJ. When I am on the road, I sometimes switch to it if i feel like listening to hindi songs when every other FM station feels kind of dry. If not for those songs, I prefer not to be on 1680. Especially, i am tired of their silly advertisements. Supposedly middle-aged Punjabi nani shouting with her husband insisting he should get her chicken tikka masala for dinner from that one and only restaurant in the whole nj because its the only true punjabi food! We all know how most Indian restaurants here run their business, so lets not even go there. So these and other such funny ads for ‘Lion Mortgage’ and ‘Honda dealer’ sometimes make me quickly switch back to my other favourite stations like NPR or Smooth Jazz.

Today is one of those days I felt like finding out what was going on the world of EBC radio. In a few minutes came an ad for a Wells-Fargo mortgage broker. Two Indian ladies chatting , eloquently mixing english with hindi, about how nice this broker ( who is another Indian lady, obviously ) was. Run your own imagination on how original they tried to make this coversation (as if these two ladies are neighbours secretly talking to each other thru the gaps of a closed window!).

Suddenly, one exclaims, “Oh, She is aa dumb professional yaar’.

For a second, I went berzerk, wondering what the heck was she saying. Is that a Indian-American slang that I never knew? Holy moly, I must be missing a whole lot from my fellow citizen’s vocabulary.

Few minutes went by, I couldnt stop thinking about what she was saying. I soon realized I was the one who was dumb. This is a hindified english ad for gods sake! Apparently, She was simply saying ‘Oh, She is Ek Dhumm professional yaar’.

Wishing you all a happy and colorful Thamizh New Year!

I was on a call this morning with our offshore partners in India discussing some stuff related to work. Two words came out frequently from pretty much everyone dialing in on the call from India ( There must have been at least 8 individuals from Bangalore and Mumbai ).

1. Doubt. ‘Bob, I have a doubt on this?’, ‘My next doubt is…’. This was one of the first things I learnt when I started working in US. Thankfully, it was only my second or third day, and I was talking to a senior HR lady(from India), to whom, I had asked something like ‘ I have some doubts?’. Perhaps, she had her own revelation in her past, She instantly explained to me the difference in asking the same question as ‘I have some questions?’. I guess it is a cultural thing, in which to Americans, ‘doubt’ implicitly means a negative connotation. Usually in America, you doubt someone’s ability or character or you doubt if something is worth its price or status. For eg ‘I doubt if she can complete it’, ‘I doubt if this food is healthy’ etc. Though I understand how common the usage of the doubt in Indian classroom, and now in workplace is, there are subtle, but important, differences in the meaning of words in various parts of the world that we should attempt to adapt it accordingly once we learn about it.

2. Actually. ‘Actually, we….’, ‘Actually, there…’, Actually, can you…’. A lot of guys on the call started their sentences with ‘Actually’. I think this is simply an acquired habit more than anything else. I still remember how Azharuddin used the word ‘like…like….like’ about 20 times before he completes two or three sentences. This is not a bad thing though; but too much of a one word’s usage within a short speech will drag the unnecessary attention. The one thing I can suggest here is to consciously introspect what and how we speak and correct it.

There is a lot of urban rumours about cell phones. Noone really has proved anything, at least not scientifically. I remember seeing a small piece of sticker in every gas station’s pump, warning not to use cell phone around the pump. I never gave a thought around it, but just assumed, as we usually do in lot of others things in this modern life, that it would be some serious stuff. So I have grown used to now leaving the cell phone inside the car deliberately everytime I move out to pump gas.

Apparently, a researcher is claiming that a cell phone warrants no danger in a gas stations whatsoever. This is one more reason to believe that ‘static electricity’ is the culprit in most gas station accidents than a cell phone. If you have experienced ‘static electricity’, better be happy. It is annoying and almost always happens after you leave your car after a drive. Even though it is an equivalent of a slight prick, it is terribly irritating and you just can’t avoid it. The excess charge in our body must get released and your next contact with a any metal will likely kill you for a micro second! In most cases, doors knobs/handles that you touch after you hop out of your cars will honor you with that static.

So be more careful with your static and less cautious with your cell phones when filling up gas. Neverthless, these urban legends have become so much a part of our life that you have follow the rules even when you know they aren’t really harmful.

Most of my readers, including non-techies, must have at least heard of spam, even if they don’t understand what it really is/does. In my own definition, ‘Spams are the evils of Internet’! Spam is a computer software, usually referred in the industry as ‘spam bots’ (shorter version of robot), that simply send junk emails to every email id that it can get a hold of. If you have ever used Hotmail, I am sure you have experienced spam in the form of most popular spam emails : viagara and other ‘enlargement’ pills! As for blogs such as this one, Spam comes in the form of comments. These are a different kind of the same softwares that mocks as a blog reader automatically posting unwanted, unrelated, junk comments. More or less for the same stuff we get in Hotmail : Viagara, Online Poker, Online Gambling, Porn websites and all other sorts of sneaky stuff.

When I upgraded to WordPress version 1.5 recently, I turned ON my comments in this blog for anyone to post, but I had also turned ON the filter system that blocks unwanted, crap comments. Thanks to that filter, in two days, It has filtered 250 comments! I guess, thats a small number, when compared to the real damage it can create. Imagine, if the spam software simply runs overnight bombarding like an AK47, 100s of comments in my blog every minute; my site’s database would literally scream at somepoint and miserably die! My site’s host, TotalChoiceHosting, even with name Total Choice, will obviously have no choice but to shut down the site, of course, without my permission. I wouldnt blame ’em.

I guess, my site is in the black list, so no matter how i try, spam is going hit me hard. I can only hope I am equipped well enough to combat. In the meantime, if you ever comment, don’t add any links in your comments unless you want to check if how my spam filter works! No one is commenting anyway, why did i even write this?

I guess I judged it as spectacular just bit too early! Someone was looking at this web site in internet explorer and the links on the side and layout in screwed up. Apparently I didnt realize it since I use FireFox!

Should I blame Internet Explorer or WordPress or the popular Firefox. I would have blame the usual scape goat Microsoft I guess.

With the new tool and some combating armour to tear down comment spammers, I am unceremoniously reopening the comments for this blog! If you have something to shower me, please do. If you hate me, assume you never read this post!.

You might be wondering about the new look of this blog. Thats the new beauty of the latest version of the WordPress software I am using to run this blog.

I have only one thing to say about my upgrade from WordPress 1.2 to 1.5. – Awesome! It was a breeze and took me less than 5 minutes. It gives me much more features and control over what shows up in this blog and thats freedom and power to me!

WordPress Zindabad!!!

We are back from a culinary weekend ! ( meaning we had food, we went out to eat, we come back home for more good food! ). The only the other thing we did to spend our calories was to talk, talk and talk and laugh out as much.

Text messaging is something I have never used. I never had or used a cell phone when I lived in India and as far as I remember, text messaging was never mainstream in US for ‘cultural’ reason. Anything that strains more than a few cells of their body, Americans will whole heartedly reject it ‘culturally’. Text messaging is one of those victims. I bought into the American idea of our mouth being lot mightier than our fingers ! so I never bothered to try it.

All that changed after I got married to Harini, who is our family SMS queen. So I have been cajoled into using SMS in past few months and between us I sometimes find the patience to send text messages. But when I read the news about the fastest SMS champion in the world, I wonder if it is really true that ‘Nothing is Impossible’. Thats a daunting task to type a complex sentence as the following one in seconds:

The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human. – Try to type this message in your cell phone and if you could do it in 47 seconds on less, Boy! You are the new world champion buddy. [Craig Crosbie of UK fingered it 48 seconds. Karan Sachdev, who fingered it in 66 seconds is India’ SMS King ]

I am proud to hold the second best timing in our two-member family ‘world’ series championship!

We are off the windy city for next three days to meet Ramesh & Hinduja. Dan & lavanya will be joining us on friday night and we hope to have some good time before we return back on Sunday.

When I first went to Chicago years ago, the pilot of the flight, right about the time we were landing down, told us a fact that I still seem to remember for some reason : Ohaire airport is such a busy airport that airlines make bargains with air-traffic officials right on the air to get a slot for landing. So luxury airlines get to land faster by paying a higher premium while discount airlines go round and round above the airport, at times for more than an hour before getting a spot to land in Ohaire. Not sure how far it is true, but I remember it 🙂

Narain karthikeyan, who is also from Coimbatore (guess who else is?) and who was also hanging out in X-Cut-Road, KG Theater and ooty junction right around the same time when I used to, recently took a really great honor of being the first Indian to drive in Formula 1.

[Narain with his driving Jordan partner. Src:DancewithShadows]

Had not for that scintillating experience in Indianapolis GrandPrix in the July of 2002, I would have underappreciated this feat of Narain. Let me tell you this, Don’t judge F1 by what you see in Speed channel. Because it is all still believable until you witness it in person. It is spectacularly unbelievable. We witnessed on that hot summer afternoon something that was literally heart shattering. Yeah, thats the right word – Shattering, it wasnt for the faintest of the hearts. At the peak of the race, I couldnt believe my eyes when I saw cars zipping thru at over 250 miles per hour around the meticulously designed tracks. I guess thats faster than sound becoz I could feel it. The sound of screaming engines will hit our ears only a few seconds after we see the car around the corners. If you are brave enough, you could probably try to take the ear buds off of your ears for a few seconds, as the cars pass thru, but then get ready for your strings to be torn. There is a reason why they give those ear buds for free.

[Narain with a stamp of India all over his helmet. Src: F1racing.net, DancewithShadows]

When you think about the fact that a human being is actually controlling the cars at that speed, you just cannot comprehend it. Imagine, looking ahead and except for the black track ahead of you, everything else on either side of you moves past you at 250mph. When you are in that speed, even a tiniest of the mistakes will move out of the tracks!

The truth is it is an extraordinary task to drive a F1, let alone win, let alone win it consistently like Schumacher. I read this scary fact : Karthikeyan lost three and a half kg during the 310-km race but coped well with the heat and physical demands of driving there.. Narain lost close to 7 pounds in that span of 2 hours or so that he was inside the car with inside temperatures 50 degrees C in his recent drive in Malaysian Grandprix.

That narain is also a son of my soil (!) is yet another reason we are planning to be in Indianapolis this summer with him.

This weekend will go on my records as one of the happiest – I cleared GMAT with 91 percentile(690)! As you could have seen from my lack of presence in this blog, I was busy with studies for the past three months. The efforts paid off and hard to believe my dream has come true. There is still more to do until I secure my admissions but then this one is a major hurdle and I am extremely gratified to have crossed it with good score.

This success has even more significance to me personally, because I had given this test exactly one year ago and failed miserably! I realized what it means to take an exam when you have lost touch with your ‘academic” instincts in so many years after school. I had written this note in April of 2004, but decided not to post it then for some reason.

I had a pathetic day at the test center. I couldnt stand the pressue of the situation and gave up. I could justify my failure with several reasons, but in the end nothing matters. I did really bad and gave up on it. May be I had way too high expectations of myself, only to fall. But, I aint giving it up and will challenge it again. – 04/10/2004

Today, I take extreme pride in having tried again and won over it. Thanks to Harini, without her I would have given up on this ambition altogether. Thanks to everyone else who was supporting, the most significant of them is Lord Ganesha who must have given that 20% luck factor for those answers I gave in a hunch!

Will be back with more spirit.

Yesterday was one of the beautiful days in Jersey, I was driving with windows down. Positively don’t remember the last time we drove windows down. That pleasure didn’t last long though since we are treated with some rain this morning. Little mountains of dirty snow still is piled all around the streets and here comes more of it today after noon.

Its real amazing to watch people drive (and see yourself drive!) here in falling snow and in heavy rain. This is probably the only time I have seen cars moving around the posted speed limit. On a normal day, if a car is driving slow, (meaning on speed limit or little under), 9 out of 10 drivers would ditch it as some poor old double-lensed grandma (Naturally, she sees two cars for every car on the road!). So on this rainy day, as I witness the cars move slowly, my strange mind wonders why the hell all the grandmas and grandpas are out so early in the day. But I failed to realize that I am myself acting like a petrified grandpa grappling the steering wheel with both hands, fixing my eyes on the every lane ahead, eyeing the speedometer every 10 seconds and turning the wipers up and down repeatedly after a truck splashes a chunk of the dirty rain on to my windshield!

I understand grandmas are adorable, but…try not to get mad when she is driving at 35 mph (on a 60 mph zone) and holding you and an entire fleet of cars behind, at her mercy? Its tough.

I just learnt today that kriuba cycles 8 miles each way to work! In Chennai? Yes. First, let me say, Hats off Man! You deserve a pat from every other Indian citizen.

[kriuba leaving to work from his chennai home. That really looks like a saturday morning jolly ride to local park!. Source:Kriba.com. More pictures there]

Knowing he works in a high-paying IT job in chennai and is also a popular speaker around the town, you would imagine he drives a Ford or Hyundai, or at the very least, a Maruthi 800( which he does own, apparently, but contrary to what I thought, he cycles to work saving the 800 from the maniacal chennai traffic). I have to agree that he could give a lot of professional cyclers a run for their money if he really gets a bicycle with gears.

The timing of this post from Kriuba has a little significance in my life. Come March 13, I am completing my full 6 years of life in America as “Alien Worker” ( Anyone not American is a Alien! OK, Let me not get started! ). Consequence of a stupid but still idealistic goal of returning to India in 6 years, we dont have a “green card” today and will have to go on a yearly renewals of our status from now onwards. (Did you say “enough”?) . My beloved home state in America, New Jersey didnt give me a driving license past March 13 and we havent received our legal documents yet for me to extend my license. So I was wondering yesterday that the only way I can legally get out of my house is walk, run or cycle! A bicycle seemed a sensible idea considering its about 6 miles each way and that the cold winter hasnt seen it way out yet. That was yesterday and Kriuba hit the chord with my thoughts today!

So stay tuned for pictures of a drenched cyclist on a cold winter morning.

Someone forwarded me this today, I think it deserves a read and a bit of contemplation. – S

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh.

It was observed by L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1950’s. “Man thrives, oddly enough, only in the presence of a challenging environment.”- L. Ron Hubbard [obscure Scientology]

So, put a shark in your tank and see how far you can really go!