Spoken words

Its probably not often that India gets to host large international sporting events of this magnitude. And it does not even involve cricket. So I guess the Commonwealth games is a huge occasion for India. Probably a great opportunity to announce its arrival on to the major sporting stage. To show the world that we are more than a nation of businessmen and IT geeks.Ah well... at least that was the dream. I bet the Chinese are just waiting for us to fail and embarrass ourselves here, and they didn't even have to move a finger. We got this great opportunity to show that we can do it "bigger" and "better", and we are very close to flushing it straight down the toilet. To begin with the screw-ups, I don't really know if all the facilities would be ready on time. That given a time of nearly 7 years to prepare, is a rather pitiful accomplishment. Of course at every stage, regular assurances were given that things were right on track. I guess the officials took it ...

My team and I, recently had the opportunity to interact with clients who happen to be French. It was to be an informal (with stress on informal)   meeting, over teleconference. The objective of the meeting was to " get to know each other ". So people, both on-site and offshore, were supposed to talk about themselves, their hobbies, talents etc etc.  Powerpoint slides were prepared by the offhsore team, amidst the tight schedule of work and stuff. Anyway, no one here cared to even write anything beyond 4-5 lines. If at all anyone wrote a lot, it was just about their academic excellence and the amount of work experience that person had - studied here, studied there, worked 5 years here, 4 years there and so on. I thought this presentation was supposed to be this way, and filled in two lines about what I studied and how much(or little) my work experience was. Ahh well... there were other more interesting thing on my mind than this stupid video conference. When the meeti...

So is there anyone untouched by the Indian Premier League. Well I suppose it would touch most Indians, even if they don't like cricket, or to say the least,, hate it. One cant really get a day away without hearing a word about it - either on the news, or listening to the colleagues opinions on how last night's match could  have been won, or a discussion on a public forum, or your friend's status message on facebook. There is just no escaping it. With the advent of T20 format, and the popularity of IPL, its certainly a money tree. A radical fast paced adaptation of a game, that normally used to last for days. A game that used to involve artistically guiding the ball along the ground, with the flick of a wrist, instead of making it fly to the farthest corners of the park. A game which used to be about facing a 100 balls to score 2 runs, has changed to scoring 100 runs of 37 balls. To add to this,  bringing in players who used to swear to be mortal enemies, into the same tea...

My last post was in May 11,2009. That makes it exactly 272 days , or which is exactly 38 weeks and 6 days. Oh and just FYI ( for all those not into corporate acronym, FYI = For Your Information ) I didn't calculate the difference, instead found a site that has a script that does that for you. Anyway that is sure a long a time, which flew past without me even knowing it. And where was I all this time? Away from home most certainly, working, but not away from technology or the internet. Was I having far too much fun to have completely detached myself from cyberspace? Not really. Did I forget my Google password, and could not remember the answer to the secret question? Not that either. The answer lies somewhere else. I could have blogged, photoshop-ed, made flash movies, web pages, PHP, AJAX etc all of this time, but somehow the intent to do something new, original or creative had most certainly dried up. Maybe because of my work, which for most of the time ( nearly 98%) involves...

As a keen observer of the politics over the years, one can easily sniff out a messy brawl months ahead of the elections. Get ready for a "all-is-fair" battle of the General elections. One of the greatest spectacular event that an Indian voter witnesses every 5 ( if not less ) years. Its the first General election that I would have been voting in, that is, if I was in Chennai. That, unfortunately not being possible, I would have to leave the fate in the hands of my fellow country men, who if not lured by freebies and lame unrealistic promises would make a "decent" choice. That is easier said than done. Well... as a matter of fact, its very difficult to make a choice. The problem is of plenty, or rather the lack of it. The general belief is that "every" or "most" politician are crooks. So ultimately the choice that people have to make is to chose someone who is the least crooked or someone who has at least a slight intention of doing good for the c...

The Mumbai ordeal is over for now. And peace has returned, momentarily of course. Its a rude shock to all of us, and the pain is being felt even more, because the rich and the powerful of India have been hit, unlike the common man who was hit in such past incidents. This was a whole different group of people who had to bear the brunt of terrorism in its worst form. A elite group, that can afford to eat at Five Star luxury, dont use local trains and send only their servants to buy vegetables at the market. And when this segment of elite Indians are angry, a lot of change and reforms can be expected in the system. Well, not that my opinion will have much of a bearing on the wise policy makers of the country, i would like to request them to pull up their socks and start working seriously. Here are a few of my recommendations from a common man's perspective. DON'T POLITICIZE terrorist activities : When so many people die helplessly, seeing politicians argue about who is respon...