bioswami

Mallu Communists FINALLY get something right...

2006-09-02T17:41:00.000+08:00

It must take something momentous to update this *ugh* blog and it is! Mallu communists who I despaired of EVER doing anything right have finally done it. Only Linux in schools from now on :-)

Read on here:

Kerala logs Microsoft out of schools

George Iype in Kochi

The Communist Party of India (Marxists)-led government in Kerala headed by Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan is not just against American cola majors -- Coca-Cola and PepsiCo -- alone.

Nearly three weeks after the Achuthanandan government banned the sale and manufacture of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo products in Kerala, Microsoft has been logged out of the state-run schools.

Here on, nearly 1.5 million students in the 2,650 government and government-aided high schools in the state will no longer use the Windows platform for computer education. Instead, they have switched over to the free GNU/Linux software.

"We have decided that we will use only free software for computer education in Kerala schools. We have implemented the Linux platform in high schools; it will be implemented in other schools step by step," Kerala Education Minister M A Baby told rediff.com.

He said an estimated 56,000 teachers in high schools are getting trained on the Linux platform.

Asked if it is a deliberate decision to log out Microsoft from the state-run schools, the minister said, the plan is not targetted at any IT company. "Our policy is to migrate computer education to free software platforms. We want to make Kerala the FOSS (Free and Open Software Systems) destination in India. That is all," he added.

But officials said two factors have influenced the Communist government to go in for the Linux platform by abandoning the Microsoft product.

First, Chief Minister Achuthanandan has been a votary of free software. While in Opposition till May this year, Achuthanandan had sternly opposed the then Congress government's decision to join hands with Microsoft to launch the IT@School programme.

Second, free software guru Richard Stallman is virtually the consultant to the Kerala government's IT initiatives. Two weeks, back Stallman visited the state and convinced the government to switch over to free software systems in the educational institutions to begin with.

Stallman, in fact, gave a presentation as to how free software has been an exciting education and computing model in a Spanish province.

Officials say political parties in Kerala have been using the Microsoft versus Linux issue to settle scores. "The Congress government had launched an IT literacy project with the support of Intel and Microsoft. Now the Communist government has abandoned it, and wants to migrate everything to free software platforms," an official at the Kerala IT Mission Secretariat pointed out.

While in Opposition, Achuthanandan had strongly opposed the project saying the agreement between the Kerala government and the Microsoft for training teachers under the IT@School project was fraught with danger.

"Microsoft boss Bill Gates wants to push his operating system using the services of software developers who had adopted it and this was made clear by several experts in the field. The government should, therefore, be very careful when dealing with Microsoft," Achuthanandan had then written to the government headed by Congress chief minister A K Antony.

Political issues apart, the Linux PC dealers are excited about the government decision to promote Linux platforms in schools.

"We are getting lots of enquiries and orders for pre-loaded Linux operating system. The hardware sales have gone up because of this," P K Harikrishnan, president, Kerala Computer Manufacturers' and Dealers' Association said.

Some Conference!

2006-07-02T17:37:00.000+08:00

This is a photograph of the participants of the 1927 Solvay Conference. Check out the bunch. 17 Nobel Prize winners and reads like a who's who of Physics/Chemistry. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall.. a really dumb fly on the wall.. heck would have been scary to present a paper at THAt conference!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solvay_conference_1927.jpg
A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, Ed. Herzen, Th. De Donder, E. Schrödinger, E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin,

P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr,

I. Langmuir, M. Planck, Mme. Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, Ch. E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson

Madai Thiranthu, Raja and all.

2006-06-05T06:00:00.000+08:00

Its been a while since I wrote anything... Just don't find the enthu to do that.. but Vidya kept telling me to write something so I thought I might post something that I already wrote... I made a conscious decision to play more guitar this year... haven't played it at all over the last 2-3 years.. And having no cable tv in japan has helped immensely with that..

Anyway, this is a post I made to the guitar forum and discusses the tamil song Madai Thiranthu and its chord construction/progression etc. I doubt it will be of too much interest to people other than those who follow tamil songs AND play some instrument..

I thought that I would start off by posting the chords to the song "Madai Thiranthu" from Nizhalgal..

I play the song in the A#maj Scale. I don't know if this is the original one since I worked out the chords for this a few years ago, but it still works. If this is not the original scale, you can always move it around.

Ok.. the A#maj scale consists of the following notes:

A# C D D# F G A

The corresponding chords are:

A#, Cm, Dm, D#, F, Gm and Am-dim

(I apologize for being a little pedantic here but I have found that it usually helps to understand the scale first before going on to the chords).

The other thing to note is that you could call this the A#maj Scale or the Gmin Scale. The Gmin is the relative minor of the A#maj scale. (On the fretboard, you can identify this by going down three semitones (half notes) to find the relative minor of a major scale). The notes and chords remain the same except that you would start from G instead of A#. On second thoughts, seeing how the song shapes up, I would rather call this the Gmin Scale.

Anyway, let me give the chords first before a brief discussion:


Dm           Gm  A#                 Dm
Madai thiRanthu, Thaavum nathi alai naan,

Dm           Gm  A#                 Dm
Manam thiRanthu, koovum thiru kuyil naan,

Dm          Cm                    Gm
Isai Kalaingan, yen aasaigaL aayiram

Gm                     A# Dm Cm F
Ninaiththathu PaLiththathu

Intro - 1
---------

Stanza - 1
==========

Dm             A#          Gm           A#
Kaalam KaNinthathu, kathavugaL thiRanthathu

Dm               A#         Gm         A#
Nyaanam ViLainthathu, nal Isai piRanthathu

Cm           Cm              Cm            A#
Puthu raagam padaippathaale, Naanum iRaivanE,

A#        A#         A#               Cm
Isaikkena IsaigindRa rasigargaL raajjiyam,

Cm      Dm
YenakkE thaan.

The second stanza is similar.

A few things to note:

In the Gmin Scale, the chords are so:


Gm Amaj-dim A# Cm Dm D# F

I              IV V

where I, IV and V denote the tonic, subdominant and dominant of the scale.

1. The piece starts off with the V (Dm) and then resolves to the tonic (Gm) at the very beginning (Madai Thiranthu). I find this interesting because usually, people start off a song with the tonic and usually follow some chord progression, resoving it to the tonic again towards the end.

2. The chord progression in the first lines is I - III - V (nice.. different from the usual I-IV-V.

3. I like the resolution to tonic at the end of the (Ninaiththathu paLiththathu).. as Gm - A# - Dm - Cm - F which follows a I-III-V-IV-VII resolving to I at the next stanza.

4. The stanzas have the same basic I-III-V progression before getting to IV-V at the end (Cm - Dm) .. and letting it hang like that. Creates a certain tension that can ONLY be released by resolving to the I, which is done at the next "Madai Thiranthu" when the Gm is played. I have found that I usually love songs that do this uniformally.. (also songs where there are scale changes... but thats for another day).

5. In the second interlude, Raja subtly adds am F# into the mix. Now this is obviously outside the scale but nobody bothered to tell the Maestro that :) It creates a very nice effect.

That's it for now. :)

Sachin makes his 35th!

2005-12-10T19:41:00.000+08:00

Well, it took something fairly momentous to get me off my lazy bum and re-blog. And that was Sachin getting his 35th. For those of you who don't know who Sachin is or what the number 35 has to do with him, I must state that you are all Philistines, but being in the charitable mood that I am in right now, I shall go on to explain that the Indian batting maestro/genius/wizard (pick your choice here) Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar went on to register his 35th century in tests to become the world record holder, going past my other hero Sunil Manohar Gavaskar.

I must say that I was surprised at how emotional I became about this. I tried to call my dad to share the moment with him but he seems to have switched his cell phone off. You see, Sachin or Tendlya, is someone that my generation grew up with. I remember well my first sight of Sachin. I was in the 12th standard, studying in MCC Higher Sec. School in Madras. I was a hosteler there. Now MCCHS, is the school that has both the MRF Pace Foundation and the Brittania Amritraj Tennis Association in its grounds. (Since I am name dropping.. yes Leander Paes was a junior to me there and in fact won the Wimbledon junior crown while we were both at MCC). Anyway, various bowlers used to come to hone their skills at the MRF Pace foundation. Among them were the likes of Vivek Razdan, Sondhi (Forget his full name) who did go on to represent India. The MRF Pace foundation was on a ground at the back of hour school (near the back gate) where they had laid out some fresh pitches along with a state of the art gym etc.

It was my practice to walk on that road, along the ground to the back gate and back, with a book in hand, preparing for our "mock" exams. Thus it was that one day, I was trying to make sense out of my chemistry book when I noticed some activity near the MRF pitches, and, being the cricket nut that I am, walked over to investigate. I immediately noticed two chaps, one batting at the nets and the other putting on his pads. The first one, I didnt recognise though I remember asking him what his name was and he replied "Jatin Paranjpe" (I think). The second one, the one putting on his pads of course was Sachin. I couldn't have mistaken him for anyone else. This was just after that monstrous partnership he had with VInod Kambli when they mauled some hapless school for over 600 runs in a world record partnership. I had seen his photos in a number of papers and in reality he looked just the same, the same cherubic face, the serious visage, the curly mop of hair, the pads that looked too big for him and the bat that seemed to weigh a ton.

Soon it was his turn to play at the nets and in a breathtaking display where I was the sole spectator, he proceeded to play a dazzling array of stroked against the young India hopefuls belonging to the MRF pace foundation, a mighty David against seemingly liliputian Goliaths.
Once he finished, I was tempted to ask him for his autograph since I was sure he was going to make it big, but my 16 year old ego wouldn't allow me to beg a 14 year old kid for his autograph, something which my 34 year old self recognises as being one of the stupidest mistakes I ever made.

Anyway, it was soon after that that he made his debut for India in hostile Pakistan and stood up to Waqar, Wasim Imran and co. He gladdened our hearts when he went after Qadir in an exhibition one day game hitting him for 26 odd runs in an over (apparently after Qadir, having seen him demolish Mushtaq Ahmed, dared Sachin to go after him). I remember listening to his first test 100 while at Kanpur, listening in the far reaches of the night along with my father as we willed on this 17 year old lad to not only save the match for us but also to get that elusive first century. I delighted in his magnificent 100s in Australia, especially that Perth 100 where he did his by then familiar, Boy-on-the-burning-death routine with an in-your-face attitude, dishing out as good as he got.

You see, Sachin's rise was almost parallel to India's rise economically as a nation and hence he came to symbolise the new India. Not the INdia of before which though graceful and dignified nevertheless lacked the self-confidence to attack, that would defend with all it had, as epitomised by Sunil Gavaskar but would hardly take on bullies. Even Gavaskar seemed to change towards the end of his career where he suddenly came upon a more buccaneering spirit, perhaps a harbringer of things to come. And it was just as India was collectively sighing over the exit of Sunny Gavaskar from the game, that Sachin exploded onto the scene to conquer the minds of an entire generation. This was the new INdian. Not diffident. Not defensive. But a go-getter, steeped in self confidence, even bordering on arrogant over-confidence, who would meet a stare with a stare, a word with a verbal volley of his own, who wouldn't back down from a fight.

I believe that every Indian saw Sachin's successes and failures as his or her own successes or failures. I know that I certainly did. I know that for me, nothing gave greater pleasure than watching Sachin bat or even listening to commentary of him bat. I remember huddling over a small radio, trying to catch all india radio on SW2, for the match which first established Sachin as a one-day opener, the one against New Zealand. The reception was so bad that we could barely make out the score. Only the sudden explosion in volume would suggest an explosion from Sachin's bat and a sometimes heard score, would help us rapidly calculate how much Sachin had scored since the last time we heard the score. That was the joy. I recall that when India went to Australia on that ill-fated 1999 tour, how MCG started filling up as word went out that Sachin was batting and how, as often happened in India, the stadium rapidly started emptying when he got out.

I think most memories of my life, after 1989 are tied up in some way or the other with some SRT innings or the other. The other important thing about him of course is how level-headed he has been despite all the accolades and encommiums he has received over the years. Not a whiff of scandal has attached itself to him and his dignity and grace are examples that can be eminently followed by one and all. I know we probably have another 2-3 years left of this genius and there will be a big void which will probably never be filled once he leaves the playing fields, but till he is there, I intend to make the most of it.

Jean Luc Picard and Moi...

2005-11-09T08:44:00.000+08:00

Vidya made me take this online personality test and apparently I am like jean Luc Picard. Well.. I don't know about character, but at least as far as the pate is concerned, I am still a fair ways off JLP territory. But getting there nevertheless!:-)

The Beer Prayer

2005-07-30T13:06:00.000+08:00

You all might have seen this before but here it is again.. Even as a teetotaller, I really enjoyed this :-)

The Beer Prayer

Our lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hollowed be thy drink.
I will be drunk, At home as in the tavern.
Give us this day our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill against us.
And lead us not into incarceration,
/ But deliver us from hangovers/.
For thine is the beer. the bitter and The lager
Forever and ever,
Barmen

RDB, Medley and "Aa Dil Kya"

2005-07-30T12:51:00.000+08:00

I was remarking to Vidya today (while listening to the Yaadon Ki Baraat, Hum Kisee Se Kam Nahin CD) that RDB had wasted quite a few tunes in the medleys in these movies, since he could have made separate songs from them. Vidya's reply was that maybe the producer didn't like them as solo songs and forced RD to bung them together into a medley...

Well, there might be something to that, since the medley in YKB, is ok but not great. I don't think "Aap ke Kamre mein.." could have made it big as a solo song. But then, if you listen to the medley in HKKN, each of those could have been very good solos.."Chand mera dil", "Aa dil kya" (more about this below), "Tum kya jaano" and "Mil Gaya" would have made it as solo songs. I think my favourite in this is "Aa dil kya"...

It is probably the best "short" song in Hindi movies... lasts barely 2 minutes.. but what a song. I am a little miffed with RDB for this.. This song Deserved a full 5 minutes. What a song. Never fails to perk me up. The first song "Chand Mera Dil" is kinda slow.. and then as it slows to a halt... the guitar starts up with some chords... Its been a while, but if I remember correctly.. it goes like B-A-G B-A, B. Wonderful... and then, the beat starts up with a single bass guitar motif starting out...

And Kishore's voice which first goes down the octave.. and then soars up..In the background is the chorus filling in for the chords almost.. wonderful wonderful piece.. and I wish RDB had made a full length song out of this.

The other piece I really like in that medley is "Mil Gaya".. this is actually "inspired" (in the tru fashion and not as in Annu Malik's inspirations) from the ABBA song "Tell me now"... but again, its the haunting chorus in the background as Asha's and Kishore's voice goes up.. in an almost step by step fashion (I think you have to listen to it to understand what I mean by that.. can't seem to explain it any better).. superb.

Oh well, I was always an RDB fan anyway :-)

Bioswami

Surface Transport King of Singapore..

2005-07-30T12:44:00.000+08:00

Who's that you ask? That's me. Surprised? Fogged? At a loss? Let me explain..

See, its this way. Whenever Aditi sees a car, bus, train, boat or ship, we invariably end up asking who the things belong to. And she has one of two replies: She either says it belongs to me or to her. Seeing that she is a minor and hence can't legally own anything yet, I suppose I, as her father, have to shoulder the responsibility and burden and act as a sort of trustee. Hence, effectively, that makes me the Surface Transport King of Singapore. (STKS ... I had to get an acronym in... This is the Land of acronyms after all).

I wonder though why she never considers the planes to be her own. Or maybe we haven't asked. Anyway, please make sure you treat my various posessions well. Don't spit or eat and drink in them. And while on the station, "Silah amhil prahatiyaan... damik islamaataan anda.. harap padiri di belakang garisan kuning".. which is Malay for "Please stand behind the yellow line"!

Bioswami

Stupid bombers!

2005-07-20T20:30:00.000+08:00

Yeah the London bombings were sad and I feel sorry for all the victims and all that. But the purpose of this post is not to feel sad about the bombings (which I do sheesh) but to reflect on the imbecility of the bombers (if stories emanating from Scotland Yard are to be believed). Apparently, the bombers were fooled..By whom you ask? Why by the mastermind of course! I have this picture of a bearded, be-turbaned, be-patched mastermind (looking rather sinister) and with a James Bond villanesque cackle, laughing his guts out because he set the bombs to go off half an hour earlier than he let on to the chaps who were ferrying the bombs.

I mean come on, how daft do you have to be to trust a bearded, be-turbaned, be-patched, sinister looking, evilly cackling mastermind? And surely these bombs had those little ticking, countdown timers on them what? I have seen enough Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and English movies to know that whenever a mastermind sets some sort of a bomb, there inevitably is a countdown timer on it. If I were a chappie agreeing to lend a helping hand to said mastermind, I would keep a rather close watch on the countdown timer what? It seems the chappie who bombed the bus was frantically rummaging through his bag. You know what I think happened? The chap realized that he was starting to hear some rather high frequency ticking noises (with the frequency increasing with time). He took a look inside and suddenly saw the timer counting down 00:00:05...00:00:04 and before he could get his hand out from between all the wires (I am sure there were wires involved in it), the bomb went KaBOOOM..

Exit bomber chappie. Cackle away mastermind!

Bioswami

Lift woes...

2005-07-20T20:20:00.000+08:00

You know how people are in lifts right? You go in and if there are people there who you know really well then there is no problem... you get into a small conversation.. nothing too long or elaborate since you probably have about 30 seconds together. Just stuff like "hey, how's it going?" Typical topics to discuss are the weather (always a safe bet) or office environment (always worth a safe 15 second moan) or sports (of course not if you are in Singapore. You hardly see people discuss sports here).

So this I don't mind.. getting into lifts with people I know. However, with people you don't know, what usually happens is this.. you give a tight little smile or could be a nod of the head to say " Ok.. I acknowledge you as a live homo sapien..We have somehow got to spend the next 30 seconds together in this lift.. I don't know you and I don't really care whether you exist or not.. but as long as we are together we can coexist". This is what that little nod means. And then people usually stare straight in front of them and periodically check the progress of the lift (or look at their watches as if to say "Wow this IS taking long").

The problem for me is this: The lift (or elevator for the Yanks) we have in our office building has polished steel doors.. which means that if you get into the lift with a stranger and try the staring ahead technique, it is bound to fail. You end up catching the eye of the stranger again and then you have to go through the whole little-nod-of-the-head or tight-smile technique. I just can't handle it.. And looking alternately at the progress of the lift and then down at your shoes just looks daft. Oh well! Another cross I have to bear!

Bioswami

The Little Mermaid... Ballet under the stars..

2005-07-08T22:57:00.000+08:00

What? Really? You went to a Ballet? A B-A-L-L-E-T ballet? Where the guys and girls put on tights and prance around? Really? You? er.. ok..

Hold on there! Hold your horses! Will you stop with the questions? Sheesh... let a chap say this at his own pace..

Ok listen.. Yes I went to a ballet.. under the stars.. See it is this way. The wife has been after me ever since we got married to take her to a ballet. I had categorically stated that I was damned if I was going to spend a significant portion of the meagre money that I make, in order to watch men in tights prance around. To which she responded by saying that I was a cultureless boor and that maybe, just maybe, cheapskate that I was, I would go to the thing called BUTS. Now.. any chappie hearing that would thing it was some show where women (and men) had their posteriors out to do a jig.. but well it seems this thing was actually the acronym for Ballet Under the Stars and I got roped in to watch something called The Little Mermaid.

For those of you who know me, you know how much I hate Disney. Well anyway, the only Little Mermaid I had heard of was the Disney film, all syrupy of the same name where some mermaid falls in love with a prince and lives happily ever after. Now, you see, I take after my grandmother in that I like happy endings. I absolutely hate sad endings. So imagine my chagrin when the wife tells me when we get there, that this Little Mermaid thing was apparently written by a dude called Hans Christian Andersen (no he is not Darth Vader, morons!), who was a chap from Denmark (or Norway or Sweden or Finland or Greenland or Iceland)... In any case he was from one of the places where the sun seldom shines, which leads to a very gloomy disposition among the men. Add to that the fact that this Skywalker is supposed to have had a stepmother and you can well imagine a chap, looking out at world and having nothing much to cheer about. With the result that he tried to spread the gloom and despair that he felt to all and sundry. Hence the story of the Little Mermaid, which as it turned out was really a tragedy. Of course the Disney Folks couldn't make money from tragedies and hence turned it into a full blown happy ending.

So there I was, grumbling to myself that I had to not only sit thru tight-wearing-prancing-men but also through a tragedy. Then the first 15 minutes were spent by a very annoying loud lady announcing some lucky draw prizes (first prize was a t-shirt.. 5 first prizes actually.. and it all went downhill from there with the prizes getting progressively negligible.. the last one I think was something like the used toffee wrapper thrown by the little kid in the corner.) Anyway, when this ended, the light grew all dim.. and you had assorted kids running around dressed as fish. At this point the narrator came on to inform us that this was the bottom of the ocean and that the little mermaid lived there with a tiara of lilies on her head which were half made of pearls. This to me sounded positively MAdeline Basset-ish... To those who don't know who Madeline Basset is, go ahead and read some PGWodehouse you philistines! This sounded like utter poppycock to me and which only a sunless Norwegian or Danish or whatever could come up with on a wet morning with a stepmother harranguing him.

Meanwhile, the assorted dressed-as-fish kids were still prancing around the stage with the narrator periodically drawing attention to, here a crab, there a lobster and so on. By the way, according to the wife, the narrator doesn't truly exist in true blue ballets. Since this was a kid ballet, they were making it easier for all to follow the plot by threading it with a narration. In Swan Lake (if you are a man and have ever been harangued by a woman about ballet.. you would know that they love to throw the words the Swan Lake around), it seems, you don't get any narration, but have to follow the plot through the actions. Now, let me tell you, the only show where I can follow the plot ONLY through actions is Tom and Jerry. Even here, Scott Bradley's music definitely helps to keep the plot on track. You know that a loud bang on the cymbals indicates the onset of physical abuse by Tom on Jerry or Jerry on Tom. To such a person as I, to even imagine having to decipher the prancing of half-naked idiots makes the imagination boggle!

Anyway, to the gist of the story. According to some weird mermaid custom, the father sends his little mermaids up on the 15th birthday to the surface of the sea to see the sun... Why he does this is never explained. This little mermaid, on doing this catches sight of an inebriated prince cavorting on some ship with his equally inebriated shipmates and falls in love with him. Why? ask Darth Vader dash it! She saves the chappie from a watery grave and gets him on to the shore only for the idiot chap to be woken up by some other maid who he thinks saved him. Sounds like some asinine Bollywood plot doesn't it? (I can imagine the chap as Amitabh with a Nirupa Roy lurking in the background). Anyway, she goes back and conveniently runs into a sea witch (who happens to be a smart if gruesome businesswoman). She tells the mermaid that she will get her two feet instead of the fins if she can give up her (mermaid's) voice to her (the witch) (she actually bites the mermaid's tongue off.. ouch!) . Anyway, the silly idiot does that and finds herself on the beach. The prince sees her and she really is a dumb blonde now (witch got her tongue remember) and takes her to her palace where she begs to sleep on a velvet mat on his doorstep or something like that. At which point, I felt that the idiot mermaid deserved all she got. Where was her self respect?

Anyway, prince meanwhile thinks the maid who revived him on the beach actually saved him and the maid also lets him think that for heck.. she gets a prince and a kingdom in return. This is referred to in technical Hindi as "Giving Kela". So the little mermaid gets "kela-ed". Meanwhile the sisters of the mermaid, make a deal with the witch who in return for all their hair (from their heads dashit), gives them a dagger which if used to kill the prince will save the mermaid for if not, she dies a gory death on the morning after the prince's wedding. Well the mermaid, idiot that she is, waffles through one song and eventually throws the knife into the sea (silly ass) and dies to become froth on the waves. And then rises up as some bubbles and will last for 300 years (why 300 years? I couldn't say.. ) till she goes to mermaid heaven.

If you truly ask me I think Skywalker was on opium along with having a nasty stepmother and not having seen the sun months on end, to write such utter poppycock. Only good that came out of it was the pav bhaji that Vidya had prepared and the fact that my daughter was running around looking very cute!

Kids are getting smarter these days..

2005-06-11T12:53:00.000+08:00

Yes they are! and there's nothing we can do about it..

First of all, my daughter Aditi, not yet 2 years old.. started to take out the CD from the CD player and put in her own "Baa Baa Ee Ee" CD .. also known as "Nursery Rhymes CD". And while doing this she would actually hold the CD with her middle finger through the hole in the middle so as not to touch the bottom! smart what?

Then she started to click photos using the digital camera... She figured out that if you click this little thingummajiggy button.. then a nice bright light comes on (the flash). So she took a couple of pictures doing that. Then last night, for some minor misdemeanour I put her in the baby cot as punishment. This had always worked in the past and so I thought it would this time too. Little did I realize what was to follow next...

You see, the cot was set against the foot of our bed; hence, Aditi, just put her feet on the bed, through the railings.. hitched half her body up over the rails, and the toppled over till she could rest her hands on the bed. She then just kicked her legs over the cot and voila! she was free! Can you think what sort of complicated mental processes one has to go through to arrive at the conclusion that the height of the bed from the cot is such that one can cushion oneself with one's hands? How could a not-yet-two year old kid do this sort of a thing? This girl's going to give me lots of problems methinks.. And as such I don't have too much hair left to pull!

BioSwami!

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

2005-06-11T12:47:00.000+08:00

Smooth cheeks, Dimpled chin,
pouty lips.. teeth within..

That's Mrs Smith .. er Angelina Jolie for you.

Yeah, we went out last night to watch the much hyped movie. It was Ok in patches. First of all, all that talk of "chemistry" between scruffy boy Pitt and pouty girl Jolie was so much poppycock! Absolute grade A apple sauce. There was no chemistry or any other branch of the natural sciences to talk about. Although the concept was nice enough, (kinda like True Lies where the wife doesn't know what the husband does (a spy that is) but kinda in double doses since the husband doesn't know what the wife does either), the execution, after they both come to know that they are hired assassins and need to eliminate each other.. left a lot to be desired. Add to that Pitt's "Oh I am trying to look cool" act didn't really take off. Jolie on the other hand, looked very cool and smooth and er.. (I am a married man and can;t go on like this in the interests of domestic harmony!).

Now if only Jhonny Depp had played the Pitt character.. that would have been something.. or as I was remarking to my wife.. maybe Jolie could play the female lead in Pirates of the Carribbean opposite Depp! Whoa boy! what a casting coup THAT would be!

Nursery Rhyme Horrors..

2005-05-27T22:55:00.000+08:00

You know something? I have been giving quite some thought to this whole business of nursery rhymes. What with having to listen to this without fail every morning on the demand of my daughter (and my wife tells me that she has to listen to this quite a few more times during the day), I have been ruminating, chewing the cud, and thinking about it quite a lot. And what strikes me is that the chaps who wrote all these nursery rhymes must have been a rather sorry bunch, pretty ghoulish in fact and who probably, as PGW remarked about Aunt Agatha, conducted bloody sacrifices during the time of the full moon. Why do I say that you ask? Well let me lay the evidence out before you.

You have Little Miss Muffet who gets frightened by a spider. You then have Messrs Humpty Dumpty and Jack who both fall down, one from a wall and the other tumbling down the hill, and broke their heads. Let us not forget that Master Jack´s sister Jill also took quite a nasty fall. Moving on, we the cat frightening a little mouse under the chair. And then we have the granddaddy of them all: Ring a Ring a roses: Supposedly all the ¨Atishoo Atishhoo we all fall down¨ stuff is based on people dying like flies all over England during the Black plague. Why anyone would think the subject is suitable to being taught to kids is beyond me.

If we start to include fairy tales, then it gets quite vivid. We have the wolf who ate Miss Riding Hood´s grandmother while Hansel and Gretl barely get out of a fairly nasty situation, the end result of which would have resulted in their resembling two well done steaks. Of course they have to cook the witch in a pot full of stew to get out of that! But the song to me which takes the cake is the one called ¨Rock a Bye baby¨.. It is supposed to be crooned to the baby, to lull it to sleep. And what does it say? It starts off promisingly enough: The baby is assured that one is going to rock it. Then comes the first hint of trouble. The place you are going to rock the baby, is on the tree top. Now imagine a sleepy baby listening to that!! The baby is going to wake up pretty rapidly at about this time. The rhyme then starts the Friday the 13th or Exorcist treatment by mentioning that while the baby is on the treetop, the wind is going to be pretty strong of course and in case the bough on which the cradle has been placed, breaks (although why any well meaning person should place the baby´s cradle on the treetop, is not explained in the song), the baby and cradle are going to follow Newton´s apple to the ground.

Now, how is any semi-intelligent baby, listening to all this, going to get any sleep? You tell me, discerning reader! No wonder the babies end up in later lives as paranoid schizophrenics or insomniacs.. or both!

Bio Bol!

Bioswami

Where are the tree climbers??

2005-05-22T23:46:00.000+08:00

I like Singapore. Wow.. I actually said that? Well must mean I have been here for a while what? Actually its a couple of months shy of 5 years this July. And I realize that I have grown to like it for a lot of reasons like its cleanliness, order, discipline and safety. I can truly say that this is probably the safest place I have ever been to, anywhere in this world. But the other day, I started wondering if this was all worth it. And what brought about this pessimistic thought you ask? "The mangoes on the tree" say I and with good reason.

I can see from the look on your face that you are quite fogged and at a loss to understand what I am talking about. "A certifiable loony" you exclaim. Well be patient my good friends and I can explain.

It is like this. I play cricket for a club in Singapore. Right next to this club is a school and between the school and the club, by the fence, sits a fairly tough looking mango tree. At this time of the year that mango tree is laden with full grown mangoes. "Well, what's wrong with that", you ask and I shall tell you what's wrong with that. The thing that is wrong with that is that the mangoes are still ON it!! Get it? Mates, I am from India. I have NEVER seen a mango tree with mangoes THIS big still on it. And before you think that this might be due to the fact that a country like India might not have the best mango trees, the reason is not that. The fact is, for young boys inhabiting and infesting a zone, in the neighborhood of the mango tree, acts like a beehive does to a fairly energetic bear or a magnet to some iron filings. It attracts them. It fills them with a longing to go out and either knock the mangoes down with a few well directed stones or to climb the tree (which is the more manly and correct thing to do). As a result, there are very few mangoes, (unless these happen to be in large commercial groves) that make it past the adolescent stage.

And here was an entire tree of enticing fruit, from low-hanging branches just waiting for someone to come and pluck them and no one did! What is wrong with the boys here in Singapore? Or are they so glued to their computer games and homework that they can't seem past the end of their noses? Come on guys! Show some spunk!.

A body of opinion at the cricket ground said that we ought to quickly form a committee and go and demango the tree or else what was the point of having grown up in India. However, thankfully, wiser counsels prevailed. We were in Singapore after all and er,, we all had a pathological dislike for getting caned. So we let it be. And there the tree still stands. With its mango-laden branches, waiting for some enterprising schoolboy to do the right thing. Pluck a mango!

BioSwami!

Five point something..

2005-05-22T17:15:00.000+08:00

I just finished reading a book called Five Point Someone: What not to do at IIT, by Chetan Bhagat. It was a nice read (not great by any stretch of the imagination but nice enough). If one were an Engineering (or perhaps even a medical) student, it might possibly remind one of similar escapades. Well personally, apart from the girl, the cigarettes and the grass and booze, some of the other things were similar. (You might even get to wonder what time of a time I had if there were no girls, booze, grass or fags. Surprisingly, I had a fairly good time :-)).

I think the most interesting experience was while I was reading this book. I was standing at the busstop waiting for the bus to take me home when this young lad walked up to me and asked me if this was the book written by the IIT chap. I said "yes". To which this chap went into a long narrative about how he was very impressed with IIT until he read this book and how he had stopped preparing for IIT once he finished reading it and had come to Singapore to study in the Junior College here. I tried to point it out to him that all engineering colleges were like that but somehow I think he had this rather idealised view of IIT that was corrupted by the book. Oh well.

Still a good, easy and light read!

BioSwami!

I feel complete

2005-05-19T22:04:00.000+08:00

That is what I remarked to my other half last night. Now lest all you chaps start sniggering about me reciting cheesy lines from old Tom Cruise flicks and all you ladies start getting all mushy, let me hasten to add that I said this after we had just finished watching "The Revenge of the Sith". As a Star Wars fan, this question had always bugged me: Why on earth did cute little Annakin Skywalker and father of Luke (who?) and Leia (yeah!) turn into Darth Vader? Well it was answered last night and for that, I am complete! I wish I could tell Lucas: "George, you make me complete".

I now know how Alec Guiness .. er I mean Obiwan Kanobi (and don't you dare say that Ewan McGregor is Obiwan!! There can be only one Obiwan and that is Sir Alec, smart alec!) got hold of Luke's father's light sabre.

Now obviously I don't want to spoil the fun for you all so I shall just limit myself to saying that it was a nice movie, without being great. The dialogues between Annakin and Amidala were rather staid, boring and plain cheesy. Also the fact that Ewen's Obiwan, instead of remembering that he has to act dignified, since his older version was played by Sir Alec, acts like a wanna be Roger Moore in James Bond. Some rather corny one liners.. ugh!

Anyhoo, the Yoda fight is awesome of course. Incidentally, my daughter thinks that Yoda is an elephant; maybe the ears sticking out like that remind her of one!

Bio Bol!

Bioswami

The Second Coming

2005-05-19T22:00:00.000+08:00

On September 11th 2001, a group of 15 middle easterners, 11 of

On September 11^th 2001, a group of 15 middle easterners, 11 of them from Saudi Arabia commandeered a few planes and flew them into certain visible manifestations of US power and financial clout. That event changed a lot of lives. It changed the lives of non-white, bearded middle-eastern-looking men. It certainly changed the lives of actual middle-easterners, bearded or otherwise. It definitely changed the lives of Americans forever. After all this was the first time that they had been attacked on their own soil since the Alamo. And they still hadn’t forgotten the Alamo. It changed the lives of the citizens of the sleepy little town of Littleton deep in the Southern heartland of the US of A. It sure did change the lives of Mr. David George Lockwood and his wife Mary-Beth Lockwood who lived in that little town. This is their story.

The Lockwoods were a typical aged couple that one comes across in the heart of the Bible-belt. He must have been tall and strapping as a young man; he had now grown into a potbelly, heavy jowls and a stoop. She must have been rather chubbily pretty when young; she had morphed into a thick-waisted, ruddy-faced woman. The Lockwoods had had children by the truckloads but now, in their old age, all they had left was their land, their home and their faith. Yes, their faith that they wore like a protective layer on their skin, like most folks did in Littleton. In fact, Littleton’s claim to fame lay in the fact that every one of the 750 residents of that town, went to church every Sunday. Yes sir, Littleton sure was a pious little town. As the town’s motto claimed “The holiest town in the South”.

The Sunday after the events of September 11^th, or 9/11 as it came to be called by the smart-alecs of the media, the Rev. Graham Beasley stood looking solemnly at his congregation as they sauntered in for the morning service. The Rev. Beasley had spent a lot of time going over his sermon and he was looking forward to delivering it. He started off by reminding his congregation about the ghastly horrors perpetrated by a bunch of uncivilized brutes who had planned to destroy all that was good and holy in the world. He asked the congregation to pray for the souls of those who had died in the tragic event. He then paused, took a quick look at his notes, and got into the really juicy stuff. He fulminated against the barbarians who had committed the atrocity. He called upon God to grant them their own private plots in hell. He reminded the assembled members that God was definitely going to send his son a second time and that when that day dawned, the day of judgment, the Armageddon, then God would call all his folk (to which, he assured his congregation, they most certainly belonged), to heaven while sending everyone else, including the evil men who flew planes into buildings to hell. The congregation perked up. This definitely was what they wanted to hear.

The Rev. Beasley paused again. It was a rather hot day, this far south, despite it being September, and he wiped his brow with his handkerchief. He noticed a certain restiveness in the crowd and decided go straight to the fiery finale. He started off by reminding the good folks at Littleton that the President of the US of A had declared that America was at war. He conjured up visions of millions of marauding middle-easterners running amok amongst the streets of America; in New York and Washington and yes, even in Littleton. The crowd shifted uneasily. The Rev. reminded them that it was the duty of every American to protect his country and that he didn’t have to remind his fellow Littletonners about carrying a gun (Littleton of course was an enthusiastic supporter of Charlton Heston and his gang of gun-carrying gargoyles). The crowd perked up. “Yeah!”, thought the people, “we got guns and we will use it on those bearded-turbaned chaps”. That definitely made them feel a whole lot better.

With a final denunciation of the evil stalking the world and an exhortation to God to save them from it, the assembled gathering disbanded and wended their weary way home. David and Mary-Beth were among the last to leave. David, a leading member of the town, stayed behind with the Rev., shaking hands with folks and reminding them to go home and oil their guns and to stock up on ammunition.

*************************************************

That evening, the same quiet domestic scene played out in homes across Littleton. The women all prepared dinner and darned socks for the coming winter; the men all took out their cache of weapons and started oiling them. The Lockwood’s home was not an exception to this blissful scene. As Mary-Beth went about clearing the dinner table after a happy repast of steak, corn and mashed potatoes, David took out his assortment of rifles and small arms and started oiling them lovingly. This was a chore that David did assiduously every Sunday but today, with the Rev. Beasley’s sermon ringing in his head, he paid particular attention to it. Mary-Beth finished clearing the dinner table and took up her darning needle. The hours rushed by.

It was about 10:00 pm at night that the Lockwoods heard a knock at the door. Now, folks in Littleton didn’t usually visit each other at this late an hour. After all, a community of farmers usually goes to bed early in order to catch the worm early the next morning. David looked and Mary – Beth and grunted, a communication that asked to go check who it was, but to be careful. Mary-Beth rose and walked over to the front door. She peeked out through the window, from behind the curtain, and gasped with horror. She covered her mouth, lest she gave herself away and ran back to the inner room where David sat with his weapons.

Mr. Lockhood took one look at his ashen-faced wife and realized there was something very wrong out here. His practiced hands found the ammunition for his shotgun and thumbed them in as he queried his wife.

“What’s it Mary-Beth?” drawled David.

“David, it’s, it’s….”

“Come on Mary-Beth. You look like you saw the devil hisself. Who is it?”

“David you remember what the Rev. Beasley said about the enemies attacking our great land?”

“I sure do. What of it?”

“Well they are here! There is a bearded fella with a turban standing outside wanting to come in.”

Just as she said that, the person without knocked again, more insistently. David motioned his wife to stand still and tiptoed up to the door. As he did so, he realized to his horror that the door wasn’t bolted. Just as he reached the door, it swung open, under the persistent knocking of a bearded olive skinned gentleman wearing a turban and a white flowing dress with bright, intelligent eyes. David stared in disbelief, and then jolted to action, raised his shotgun and shot the intruder through the chest.

The police agreed with the Lockwoods that David had shot in self defense and congratulated him on saving Littleton from a horrible fate.

“Back so soon my son?” asked God looking at his angelic son dressed in white with red botches all over his flowing white robe.

“Well Father, they didn’t exactly give me a chance to explain myself”, said Jesus, scraping the shotgun pellets off his dress.

The Great Football Debacle

2005-05-19T21:53:00.001+08:00

The Match

The other day, as I looked out of the window and down at the stadium in front of our apartment, I spied a bunch of enthusiastic, eager young sportsmen, warming up before a football match. It inevitably drew a chuckle from my lips and the missus, wondered aloud as to what on earth I was chuckling about. This, I said, is the beginning of a long story. “It had better be good”, said she.

This happened in the old days, when India was still in its pre-IT somnolence, I was still in college and also had a heck of a lot more hair than I do now. We had a rather ragtag bunch of players who had cobbled together a college football team. We used to practice fairly religiously, under the eyes of a genial Dr. Prem Kumar, our coach, every day on a ground that was more stone and less ground. Any spill on it was worth a good Rs. 100 to the local doctor who one would suspect, laughed all his way to the bank, treating our assorted collection of injuries, and who I am quite sure had a hand in the maintenance of that piece of Rock.

Anyway, one day, the captain of the squad (such as it was), happened to come across an advertisement for a local football tournament and insisted that we take part in it. The ever enthusiastic coach was all for it and thus laid the foundations for the Great Football Debacle. But I am getting ahead of the story. We started practicing in earnest for the tournament. It was at this point that a brainy sort of chap in our bunch, pointed out to coach and captain that it was alright entering the tournament, but what were we going to do when assorted members of the opposition stomped on our feet with their spiked boots. For you see, we had no football shoes at all at that time. Most of the players played with their ordinary shoes while the more foolhardy among us played bare footed on that piece of rock (I often speculate idly as to whether they got the inspiration for the movie The Rock from our ground). The chap said that he didn’t mind being stomped on as long as he could stomp back in return and that he was darned if he was going to go into this thing disadvantaged in terms of weapons of mass destruction.

Another equally brainy sort also pointed out that we could hardly be expected to play in a tournament of this stature without shorts and a jersey and hence we began to pool our meager resources together to procure the necessary equipment before we went off to war. At the same time, we managed to play a couple of practice games against some of the young lads from a local school, who beat us rather handily. The coach started devising new techniques for us. We had to run in patterns, while another bloke from far up the field was supposed to kick the ball to a spot that we were to reach at precisely the same moment as the ball and then propel it towards the goal. It was another matter that the spot to which the ball traveled was always about five yards too far from us. However, we had seen enough international football on TV to know that this was what the top boys did and it gave us something to feel happy about.

Two days to go before the big day and the jerseys hadn’t arrived and neither had the football boots. A committee was formed to go into town and waylay the businessman who had said, nay guaranteed, that he would have the stuff to us a week in advance. After much yelling, screaming, threatening, cajoling and begging, we finally managed to extract a promise from him that he would give us the equipment the next day. We eventually got the stuff in the evening and since none of us had ever played in football boots before, this was a big thing for us. We trooped out in the semi darkness, walking gingerly like a young lady trying out her stilettos for the first time. We knocked the ball around a couple of times, made sure that things looked A-OK and then went back.

The skipper meanwhile had perhaps watched a tad too much football or basketball on TV. As soon as we had finished our dinner, he called us over, ticked us off for being lazy slobs who didn’t care about the game and then with the help of a paper, a pencil and various coins, proceeded to outline his strategy for us. We were supposed to be playing something that he referred to as “total football”. All I could understand from it was that you were supposed to run wherever you saw an empty space and if the other chap took your empty space, you went right out and got into his. So there!

The Day dawned bright and sunny. Heck, where we studied, it was always bright and very sunny. And hot too. Frying-eggs-on-the-back-of-a-slab-of-stone hot. The skipper informed us that the match was at 2:30 pm in the afternoon and that were playing a team from a sports college in Chennai. A few uneasy glances passed among the members of the proletariat but we hid it from our coach and captain who looked as determined as a pair of dogcatchers trying to get the net over a recalcitrant dog’s head.

When we landed at the ground at about 2:00 pm, we saw before us Herculean specimens of superbly muscled mass, 15 of them, loitering around. A few of us cursed quietly under our breaths while the others started offering prayers to the local deity (He that removed the thorns from the rocky path of undergraduate-hood). At about a quarter past two, the opposition started going through what I believe is technically known as warm-up exercises. Imagine our surprise when the skipper turned to us and asked us to do the same. “Why?” asked the Stubborn one. “Because I say so dammit and because I don’t want us to look bad, so better jump to it and start warming up or you are going to be ragged extra hard tonight” said the skipper who also happened to be a Senior and hence, equivalent in status to the local deity. So we jumped to it. We ran. We skipped. We bent this way and that in 39 deg C heat and at the end of 15 minutes, when the whistle was about to blow for the start of the match, we were spent.

For you see, apart from the fact that we were in rather poor shape physically, what we had also done was gone out and bought jerseys made of some synthetic material which seemed to have most of the properties needed to make a good, serviceable flask. And some more too. It not only kept us hot, it made us feel hotter than the 39 deg C ambient temperature. As we huffed and puffed our way to the pitch, the referee tossed the coin and indicated that we had won the toss. I was playing right out and according to the strategy that we had devised, I was supposed to hare down the right flank as soon as we kicked off, the center would smack the ball to point A. I was supposed to meet the ball there and then plonk it into the goal. Looked simple enough when we had had it explained to us with coins and pencil and paper. So when I heard the whistle blow, I took off, hared down the right flank and reached spot A, only to find that the ball wasn’t there and that the referee’s whistle had sounded. I turned around and saw our goalkeeper walk dejectedly into the goal, pick up the ball and throw it out sheepishly. To this day, I swear I don’t know how that first goal went in, and none of the other players talk about it.

Then began what has been to date, the most hellish game (in any sport that I have ever played). The opponents, big, beefy and strong, literally toyed with us. They danced, pirouetted, feinted, ran circles around us and regularly deposited the ball into the net. The heat meanwhile was taking its toll on the bravest of our lads and one of them, a sardar, looked quite done in. “Skipper I got to go out man, I can’t take it anymore”, cried he. “Don’t be stupid yaar! We don’t have extra jerseys for a substitute! You stay there till half time!” was his ungallant reply and off we went again, into the valley of death. I did get a chance when for once, the goalkeeper kicked the ball long enough for me to make my move towards it, only to have a beefy, muscular leg thrust rudely in my path. “I fell to earth I knew not where” and the referee, bless his soul, gave a free kick. I took the shot and actually managed to kick it over the crossbar. That was the only time the ball ever went over to that side.

Half time came and went and we hardly even realized it. I realized then what Dante must have been talking about when he spoke so glowingly of Hell and Purgatory and the like. This, I felt, must be what hell must be like. Hotter than an oven and tall beefy chaps bashing you up. The opponents too had started to take some pity on us. Not that they stopped running rings around us on the field. But having run the rings, they would bring the ball right up the goalkeeper, kick it gently to him as if to say “Here boy, don’t worry, we won’t shame you any more” (for inevitably, it is the goalkeeper who bears the shame of having conceded all those goals) and trot back up to the half way mark. About half way through the second half, I suddenly felt my leg muscles raise a protest and start cramping up. As I fell down, I heard the referee blow the whistle for time. Apparently, he had had enough too. We then wended our weary way home. Final score: US: 0, THEM: 9

The Match

Women and their unfathomable fashion trends

2005-05-19T21:53:00.000+08:00

This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago.

Call me geek. Well actually plenty of people, especially women of all ages, from a little girl of about 4 who insists on calling me a “rude rabbit”, which in her parlance implies “geek”, to a couple of my wife's friends, have called me that. The occasion on which the latter two called me that is what I would like to talk about and hence I ask the readers to bear with me as I meander my way through this narration.

We had all gone out one day, the merry party consisting of yours truly, the missus and the two pals of the missus who were paying us a visit, and as usually happens when the male of the species is outnumbered by the female, I got roped in for a session of “window shopping”. The three ladies looked at this and remarked on that and were essentially having a wonderful time. I on the other hand was musing on cause and effect and why I was where I was at that given moment, when I realized that we had all wandered into a women's footwear store. I was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible (a fact that only another male who has ever been out with three women on a shopping spree will appreciate) when I spied a pair of footwear and made towards it. I picked it up and called my wife over. She, dear thing, thought that perhaps, this was the day when her husband actually surprised her with a gift, came over all smiles as I picked up one of a pair of stilettos (isn't a stiletto a knife?) and held it up for her. And then, as a surprised missus and her pals looked on, I began a lecture that led to the “you are such a geek” remark.

You see, what had caught my attention about this piece of footwear was the fact that the blasted thing looked as if someone had put a piece of leather each on a pair of stilts and sold it to the unsuspecting populace as the in thing in fashion. The heels were horrendously thin and tall and if a woman actually put them on, she would have had to stand on tiptoes. Now, for those of you who are wondering what the devil I am rambling on about, I challenge you to go about all day, walking on your toes as if you had stepped on a patch of cow dung with your heels, and you will realize what some hapless woman would have gone through had she worn those shoes. So I then expounded on the fact that pressure is equal to force divided by area and that since the heels were less than one square centimeter in area and assuming that an average woman weighed 50 odd Kg, the pressure on her heel would be enormous. This eventually led to all the three women looking at me as if I had said something totally daft and labeling me with the “geek” epithet.

See, this has always puzzled me. Why DO women go to all this trouble to wear such patently uncomfortable footwear? Yeah, I have read somewhere that it helps in their posture and makes their hips sway rather seductively. If that is the case, I am sure my answer to that is, sway away. However, from a woman's point of view why would the female of the species want to tiptoe around the place walking on stilts and having to put on a brave face? Have you ever seen the face of women who wear these things? It is SO obvious that they would love to go around in Hawaii-chappals like the rest of us fashionably challenged males. So why DO they do it? What is it that makes them endure such unremitting discomfort, such excruciating pain?

That brings me to the second major quibble I have with women and fashion. Have you ever noticed how, a fashion boutique has to just have an English/Italian/French sounding name for otherwise absolutely sane, intelligent women to get that berserk, don't-mess-with-me look in their eyes, as they pay obscene amounts of money for stuff that is essentially made by child labour in poor third world countries? Would they buy the same things say, if instead of “Elizabeth Arden” the name had been “Muniamma” or “Abithakushalambal Sivaramakrishnan” or “Rabri Devi”? I don't think so, and all discerning readers (those who agree here are discerning; those who don't are not) will agree that there is something to what I say.

So ladies, what makes you do it? I for one am totally flabbergasted, fogged and at a loss. The missus dismisses my queries with a superior smile of knowing and a “there-there darling, go look at the nice Play Station thingies at the other shop” response. What she doesn't understand however is that Play Stations are a complete necessity and an absolutely logical buy for any sensible chap. And that my wanting them is in no way comparable to her and her sex's inordinate lust for fashionable goods.

However, these are but minor irritants compared to the big daddy of them all: women’s fascination for jewels. I must confess to being totally at a loss when I spy the mate gaze longingly at pieces of brightly colored, glassy-looking, shiny stuff that goes by the name of diamonds. (To tell you the truth, when I walk past the Swarovski place, I can hardly tell the difference between those bits of glassy-looking, shiny things and diamonds). I keep trying to tell the missus that diamond, in its elemental form, stripped down to bare essentials, is basically crushed carbon. I had hoped that this piece of geeky logic would have put her off diamonds forever. It only managed to bring a bemused, how-on-earth-did-I-consent-to-marry-this-weirdo look on her face. I for once, showing a flash of non-geeky perspicacity, realized, that if I wanted to keep being married to this charming person, had better keep my sacrilegious thoughts to myself, shut my trap. I haven’t opened it since!

Bioswami's blessings to you all!!

2005-05-16T16:27:00.000+08:00

Well well well! Life can at times take some rather strange twists and turns. Just last night, at a party at our place, a few of us were discussing that rare and dying breed, also known as the computational biologists, where I come from. One thing led to another and we figured that since we were ALSO part of that rare and dying breed, we needed to look for other areas of work.

A few suggestions were tossed around, when some bright soul suggested going into religion (for business reasons only, I assure you. I have no ulterior religious motives for doing so). It was then that the idea of the bioswami was born. I mean to say, a swami has to have a USP and since we doubted that there was another swami around who could tell an N-terminal end of a protein from its C-terminal one, it was decided that the idea, on the whole was rather topping. It was thus that the BioSwami was born.

At least these aren't an endangered species... and I must say that I have a gut feeling that i am going to come out of it quite well financially. After all, it is a lucrative, steady income, what with the number of absolute mugs infesting the world!

So see you here from time to time and "Bio Bol" to you all!

Bol Bio! Bio Bol!

BioSwami!