March 23, 2009

The Nano - Part 2

It's finally here. And I actually feel sad. A Walmart-style car, low cost, probably average to poor quality (based solely on the Indica) and supposedly the travel answer to the masses. I've already written about this here so I won't go on.

Take away from the equation that it is an Indian company that has come up with this. Would we still be proud of this accomplishment? As much as I want to, I'm unable to compare this to Ford's Model T that made car ownership possible for the masses in America. Everybody wants their own set of wheels but at what cost?

1 lakh times 'X' is too much of a price to pay in the long run.

March 21, 2009

Languageu lessonsu

I've learnt a fair amount of Telugu in the last three years, no credit to the book that I bought soon after I moved to Hyderabad in 2006. Not only was the vocabulary useless (the first word in the list was 'causeless') but also the presentation was just terrible. Anyway, it turned out that the better source for Telugu lessons were my house help teaching me more slang and dialects that would turn out to be more useful on a day-to-day basis.


But my 'unending quest' to continue to learn made me go back to the vocab page in this book. Among the many other useless words written up, I came across two that made me 'rofl'. The words for telephone and principal. In TelugU and just like the title of this post!

Any guesses?

March 17, 2009

Profile pic

It's been about a year and a half since I created an account on Facebook. I've probably changed my profile picture at least ten times. To keep up with the changes in my life, no doubt. Similarly all my friends' pics have changed too. I don't think even one has the same picture that they started out with (except for those with the old question mark).


Is it possible to find one picture that can be a constant? Not necessarily of the person itself but of 'something' even. Something that when a known person looks at makes them go "Oh, that has to be X". Is it humanly possible to identify with a few things or even just one thing for all of ones' life?

Or is life too random to prevent that?

March 9, 2009

Second wind

Boring, tiring, same old beat going on in my head, huffing and puffing and not enjoying any of it. That's me on a treadmill. Hate it...always hated it. Then this on my shuffle! Catchy beat and imagining thalaivaa dancing (his version of dancing anyway) made me smile and get going with great gusto! Too bad that it lasted only until the song did but an extra 5 minutes is not too shabby...a much-needed 5 minutes too.

March 4, 2009

Soup split

1 by 2, 2 by 3, 4 by 5 and anything else by anything else. It's all possible. When you order soup in India, that is. A very common practice that experts say results in more soup per serving per person than if one were to ask for an extra bowl and split it themselves! In fact, I even know people that do this for takeout!

Can you imagine the restaurant doing this though? Will they actually fill out two bowlfulls, then take a 3rd one and evenly split from the other 2? Or are they so used to this strange request that the guy is a pro at it and knows exactly how many ladles go into each? Whatever it is, the request has never fazed anyone in any place that I've been to. The only requirement is that the person doling out the soup has to be a math whiz...how else would they understand 23/30 should such a request come by??

On a related note, I wonder if this tactic would work with alcohol. Margheritas please...3 by 4 but all for 1!