The best advice to avoid work

...is given by Wally, of course. (courtesy: Dilbert)

Happy Children's Day!

The adults know it is Children's Day because they celebrate it. But this child apparently doesn't know that and is probably feeling insecure being in an odd place (Rashtrapati Bhavan), with odd company (President Patil) and hundreds of cameras flashing light at him. Whoever brought this kid here...

Tricolor on Moon: Not guilty your honor!

The proud moment has finally arrived. The Chandrayaan landed its passenger, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on the lunar surface on 14th November. India is now one of only four countries to achieve this feat. This is such a moment that makes one feel proud of his / her identity, i.e., being Indian. It also lets us forget all the crap that goes on in everyday life. As expected, lots of voices have been raised in the west whether India could afford such a costly program. They have been answered by the ISRO (as they are directly accountable) and by common Indians whenever they faced such queries on internet forums. Personally, I feel it would be better to ignore such questions as we are well aware of the pros and cons of such missions and we need not justify them to others.

The MIP took the following pictures of the Moon on its way -





The MIP: It was a very hard landing for the MIP as it cruised at over 1.7 km/sec. to make a touchdown on the lunar surface at 8:31 PM IST. The ISRO never made a secret that the MIP would have to crash land if the mission was to be considered 'successful'. They also painted all the sides of the box-shaped MIP with the tricolor to signify India's arrival there. Now the legal question is did the ISRO disrespect the national flag? They knew that the lander would be destroyed on impact on the moon. With it, the national flag too, probably. The code of conduct (linked to a PDF) for the national flag lays out several rules of what constitutes respect and what doesn't. What constitutes disrespect is, however, still not clear. Celebrities have been harassed by media due to different interpretations. Sania Mirza faced wrath for putting her leg near the flag. This was considered an offense. A week after almost every Independence Day celebrations, all the paper flags that are put on street corners go down the drain and nobody bothers. Not even the people who felt offended by Sania Mirza's casual attitude. Coming back to ISRO. Have they disrespected the national flag? Don't know. Can a case be filed against them? Nope. Indian courts have no jurisdiction over the moon. Any case, the ISRO says the tricolor is intact. Phew, what a relief!

BSE's address seems to have changed!

Chandrayaan's first picture

Chandrayaan has sent its first picture back. It is that of the earth taken at a distance of 9,000 km.

Dogbert mocks Indian accent

Is it South Indian or Bengali?? Either one, it's funny.

The importance of punctuation marks

What's in a name? A lot. Particularly if the punctuation marks aren't placed properly or not placed at all. e.g., A company by the name Anu's Laboratories came up with an IPO recently. Whenever this name was flashed, it elicited an awkward response. Why? Coz they would write Anus Laboratories for that company's name. That even includes some major newspapers and TV channels including Reuters (only a slight mention though in Top 3 by volume). It was only at the time of listing that I discovered it was Anu's Labs and not A*** Labs.

Breaking news: Journalism reaches heights!!

Breaking News #1: Amitabh Bachchan catches cold




Breaking News # 2: Commissioner's dog missing since 25th March



Breaking News #3: Delhi: Commissioner's lost dog is found



Breaking News #4: A cat climbs on the roof-top


Breaking News #5: Rahul (Gandhi) eats Dal-Puri for lunch

President's affection: All for the camera!

Image location: here

Gujjar Protests: Fight for the bottom of the pyramid

There's no denying that we (as a country) have had a history of discrimination. The rigid Hindu caste system had oppressed a few sections of the society. This was, no doubt, an extremely bad thing to have happened for social harmony. After gaining independence, the Indian constitution, drafted by a person from one of those oppressed sections, Dr. BR Ambedkar, recommended reservations for them but ONLY for a period of 10 years. This would help them to join the mainstream. He probably knew the repercussion (as we see now) if the time limit was not set. After his death, the subsequent governments, instead of taking stock of their progress, kept extending the period. Not just that, the vote-minded politicians even extended the scope of reservations by including all and sundry in the OBCs. Now, the whole country seemed to be backward. What next? Reservations in world jobs since 1/6th of humanity is backward, so 1/6th of the world's jobs should rightfully belong to us. Isn't it? Well, the world doesn't elect our politicians, so these guys haven't demanded it yet.

60 years on, people still feel it is a birth right to get reservation. What is worse is holding the rest of the country to ransom while doing so, like the gujjars did. They were demanding for inclusion of their community in the ST (scheduled tribe) list so that their are entitled to a different reservation. It is not that they are backward and denied reservation. Whether they are backward is debatable, the reservation part is not as they are already covered under the OBCs (other backward classes). Now they want to be moved to a different list as they feel the OBCs list has become extremely 'crowded' and getting jobs even there is difficult. Hence, the demand for inclusion in a list that is lower down the order and the protests to press for it. Now you know, what the unreserved or the 'general' category feels. Anyway, by doing so, they encourage discrimination of themselves and cry foul when others do that to them. The gujjar agitation is the scheme of things to come in the future. People will be willing to die for such things, but won't believe in such simple things as hard word. Hard work? What's that?

VC - Following LG

Lucky Goldstar..what's that? We only know LG!

Lucky Goldstar, the merged entity of two different electronics companies from Korea, shortened its name to LG, probably to make it simple for non-Koreans. Repeating two words for an electronics brand, that too relatively unknown outside the home market would have made the consumers a little tired and pissed (if the brand didn't live upto expectations). This was probably a wise move, as they were definitely not as strong as Sony-Ericsson to have two words as a brand name. But, why would a single word Indian brand Videocon do such a thing as call itself VC outside India?

The name is lengthy and/or it is difficult to pronounce? Definitely not. It is and easy to pronounce

The brand Videocon may be difficult to sell outside India: well, VC is not going to be any easier as it is still going to be called an Indian brand.

Any other reason??

By the way, the executive in charge of this mission of creating a global brand for the Videocon group is Mr. K.R. Kim (ex-chief of LG India!). Co-incidence?

Games cricketers play...

I am not that a great fan of cricket...but while switching television channels, came across a news item on the Yuvraj-Steyn face-off in the ongoing test match with South Africa. Face-off? So what? It happens in all the games, not confined to cricket, you may say. Well, there's a point here. Earlier, these were rare instances for Indians, who used to have it only with Pak cricketers and even more seldom with others. Now, it is almost becoming a norm. Have Indian cricketers become more aggressive? Have they started converting a losing match into a draw, a drawing match into a winning one?? Well, I can't say anything on that. But, the trend suggests that the non-Indian cricketers become popular (notorious) here in India once they have an ugly spat with a popular Indian cricketer. Remember the Harbhajan-Symonds rift...and the IPL dollars Andrew Symonds got after that? Would he have got that kind of money, if he and Harbhajan hadn't fought?!!! Probably not. Without going into who-said-what-and-to-whom, this post looks at only the outcome of that event that happened in Australia. Andrew Symonds got almost double the money that Adam Gilchrist got, in fact the best pay among foreign players, even though there are numerous other better players than Symonds. Anyway, that, in itself, may not be a bad thing. Except for a Steve Waugh, who gets noticed for good things, there are not many cricketers (even Indian) who do such noble things and be in the news. Andrew Symonds chose the other end of the decency-spectrum to be in the news and got rewarded. Dale Steyn, it seems, is such a wannabe and is only following in the footsteps of the (not-so) great Andrew Symonds!!

Kya aap paanchvi pass se tez hai?

Literally translated into english, it means 'are you brighter than a 5th standard (grade) kid?' Let me rephrase that question....do you want to buy a lottery ticket? Confused? Here's the explanation.....This program from 'Star Plus' is yet another reality show where people call in or send SMSs to participate. This is to a special number that charges s special price (usually 5 times the regular call/SMS charges), the revenue from which is split between the telecom operator and the television channel. Sony's 'Indian Idol 3' reportedly brought in excess of 70 million votes. That meant Rs. 35 crore in SMS revenue alone. Taking out revenue sharing between telecom operators and 50% of the net proceeds as the sponsoring telecom operator's (Airtel) share, that still left Sony with atleast Rs.10 crore. No wonder Hussain and Mini Mathur kept asking us to vote repeatedly!!

Anyway, back to 'Kya aap...?', Star Plus was the pioneer of SMS voting/participation when it started KBC. They surely are going to make lots of money with this show as well. They keep the entry question so simple that it tempts even the most resistant critic. For example, the latest question for which call-in lines are still open as I write this post, which of the following capital cities is on the sea coast - Hyderabad, ____ (forgot the option) or Chennai. Choose your pick. For such a question, surely there'll be thousands of SMSes. In such a case, there's a very low probability of selection of a candidate. Something like one in a lakh or a million. So, how different is a lottery ticket from this now??

Nano gets a warm reception

Tata Motors (Tata) is getting a lot of western media coverage these days - thanks, in part, to their bid to acquire the Jaguar-Land Rover combine. So, when it displayed its 'Nano' to the world yesterday, it would have been inevitable for those media to ignore. Here's a company that wants to be at the either end of the spectrum - to produce cologne and eau de parfum (in the words of the former Arcelor chief Guy Dolle). When Tata had announced some five years ago that it would pursue making a car that would cost about 100,000 rupees, hardly anybody outside India noticed. Now, every gesture gets reported.

The Nano (the 'one lakh' car then) had sent shock waves to its competitors even before the launch with top rival executives questioning the safety aspects of the car, among other issues. Now that more details about the car are available (it passes Euro - III norms currently in place in India), it has silenced the critics for the time being.

Tata has done very well to keep almost every detail about the car - top secret. Right from the design to the features. No body had a clue as to how it would look like. They have done a nice job there. They now face a bigger challenge - to meet the desired expectations. Remember, Tata Indica was also launched with similar fanfare and expectations. But, once people got deliveries of that car in its initial days, they were totally disappointed. Tata did some modifications, and the later versions, as we know, were accepted well. But the damage was done to the brand. Of course, it was Tata's first foray into passenger car (if you don't count Tata Sierra and Tata Estate as cars, as they were essentially built on the likes of the current 207 pick-up truck platform, not a totally different base. Let's just hope that the Tatas have learnt from those mistakes, and the Nano does well when commercially launched. Congratulations! Tata Motors and the House of Tatas. And all the very best!!!

Incredible !ndia

The tourism department can add a new chapter to its advertising campaign. After the Taj Mahal, Rajastan, Goa, and a few other places, most western celebrities seem to prefer Mumbai's slums - for leisure tourism or otherwise. This time, it is the turn of Madonna. !ncredible? !ndeed.