Mumbai terror blasts. The news channels have been raving abt this and blaming everyone from Pak to Politicians to People. In all this we forgot to say thank you to those who came forward and saved hundreds of lives. Be it those commandos who faced the enemy or the doctors who worked 3 days without sleep. All that we like to do is point fingers and blame. Can we get any less thankless? The media was all hyper when pak media blames them but why are they not showing images of doctors saving lives or the wounded commandos taken care of? And just say one word, "THANK YOU" for saving so many lives, for being brave and facing the enemy and bringing it to an end.

Recently I saw Amir khan in an ad where he is washing utensils for his wife. I am not very sure but I vaguely recollect he had split up. Anyway, the actual annoying thing was that he had the tap running as he was just scrubbing the plate and talking into the camera, and the water was flowing in full force!! Why waste so much water!!! :(

I am utterly bored and thought I'll catch up on some blogs or something...looks like all my writer friends have taken a break! :(

I am pleasently surprised at the fact that the media houses are airing movies focused on LGBT and for a change movies not relating to the only thing that everyone seems to want to link LGBT with - AIDS.

The first one I can recollect is Birdcage aired on star movies recently. It's about how this couple wants to lead a normal life involving getting the son married to a conservative politician and the like. This is a-typical US movie. More here.

Today morning WM channel aired The Iron ladies. A thai movie shot in 2000 about this group of G and T group who play volley ball against straight men and win, that too at national level. It was quite nice to see LGBT being portrayed as sportsmen and better still that the team consisted of all kind of queer people, the quite and masculine to the loud and queeny types. More here.

Hope that the 377 case is fought fair and won. It's not just the health issues that is of concern here (I am sure AIDS does not discriminate homos and heteros) but more importantly the suppression of a minority's right to lead a normal life.

Setting: Riding to office on the bike. Stranger "uncle" on the road looking for a hike.

Thoughts:
a) Humanity and the crap, lets give him a ride. It's just another person looking for help
b) He has a helmet, bike might have broken down. He sure can afford a bus ticket as he looks quite well off. Bus stand 2 steps from where he is. Don't stop, might be a risky proposition.

Act:
Too many loose ends. Better to keep going.

Justified further by:
I live in Bangalore. Quite a few bomb blasts of late. Festival day. Better off without the risk.

Just when I thought of posting about an ad I saw recently on tv, I read this post. It verbalizes my thoughts most aptly.
http://mike-higher.livejournal.com/136796.html

I am just tired of waiting. I want to ride the namma metro. It seems to be caught up in issues. I wanna be able to hop on on a train and reach my lover across the city with ease. Lucky for us, the metro stations are very near to our homes...except there is no damn metro! The buses are too slow and quite a pain to go in...

I was watching TV the other day when the host was teasing the guest that according to latest news, about 10kg of grain goes into obtaining 1Kg of flesh. The guest kidded if he should go vegetarian.

Why not! As humans we really have acheived tremendrous acheivements. In all this advancements, we have lost some basic human nature, "we are social beings." There are hundreds of people without food but those lucky ones who can food on time done even seem to be bothered. I see the following places where we can make an effort and improve situation for our own species.

1) The world at large is non-veg mostly. There are hundreds of veg dishes. Why not switch to it at least once a week?

2) At homes and hotels, cook food that is sufficient enough to feed the amount of people who ordered it. Most places serve more than enough quantity, this is specially true of rice and noodles. Sometimes we pack the left overs but most of the times we just throw it. It's more profitable to give less isn't it?

3) Lots of food gets wasted at many office because they are just not edible. It's cooked that bad. Perhaps its time hoteliers take up this issue of massive wastage and cook edible food? This is particularly true where food is catered.

The world is getting better and these are a few things I follow to make it a little better.

It got me thinking, as I was reading the various posts about preserving Bangalore's heritage landmarks and how we are losing a lot of the old buildings to the new mall and plaza culture. I can't help but notice that people start harping about things only when the axe is to be brought down on it, be it trees or movie theaters of the bygone era or the various charming buildings from old Bangalore. Is just cribbing about the loss enough? Is it not more important that we do something before the crisis occurs and the buildings are forced to be torn down?

Let me take a particular example, Mayo Hall and Galaxy theater. While the former has got a new coat of paint and some renovation and is still earing huge revenues the latter is almost erased from people's memory as well as from the face of Earth. In today's economic scenario, these landmark buildings NEED to be renovated and made into an economically viable option if they have to survive. This city produces hundreds of top notch management and engineering graduates every year. Could they as citizens along with the owners of these landmark buildings not come up with ways to preserve these buildings and help them generate enough money to keep it standing for the years to come? Does the Government always have to do things? Do the citizens of this city not have any role to play except complain of the heritage lost or to succumb to greed?

Every day I pass by the Opera at Residency's and Brigade's junction. I can't help but conjure images in my mind of elegant shows and charming people at this lavish building and the spectators gazing in awe. I guess we will never see such a scene...

As usual I was scourging through the Citizen matters webpage when I came across an article about IIWC. This place has been my childhoood haunt and I have quite literally grown up reading and studying in this library. With my mum being the librarian there, this is quite expected I guess. Herez the link to the article: IIWC.

Trees or No trees?

While we all love to claim of the advantages of having a tree at home, it is often a pain to have random people pelting stones at the Mangoes/Gauvas et al. It becomes even more difficult when one intends to extend the house and axing the trees is such a difficult decision, one goes through a huge emotional trauma to see their favorite tree and child hood companion chopped down.

Looking for people who can design houses incorporating existing trees instead of axing them, any help welcome...

Are we justified in allocating a big piece of spectrum to the police force? Today as I was riding to office I passed through 3 signals with cops manning all junctions and fully equipped with wireless handsets and the works. An ambulance gets stuck in the first junction and with some difficulty it manages to get through. I would have expected the police man to call ahead and keep the traffic moving. No sir, I was mistaken, the guy just stood there least bit bothered. The same repeated at the next 2 junctions and the ambulance was stuck at the signal multiple times! It's appalling to know that our taxes are going into buying such expensive equipment and precious spectrum wasted, for this? To make matters worse, key roads in the city center are in a terrible state for years! Agreed they can't keep up all the roads but the city center needs to be maintained! Roads here cant be left unusable! More than half the road is full of potholes! Repairing these would make traffic so much more smoother and reduce the need for one ways! When are we going to wake up and realise the world is going by and we are going to be left behind if continue to be lazy and carefree! Can people imagine how painful it would be for a injured person to be taken on these horrible roads! Disgusting!

It's that time of the year when Bangalore plays Holi and turns colorful, the greenery gives way for a riot of colorful flowers as a number of trees start blooming. Karthik has put up a list of the commonly seen flowering trees around http://www.wildwanderer.com/journal/flowering-trees/

So next time you take a stroll don't forget to look up at the trees! :-)

Everytime I read the paper, I come across this "wish to be unidentified" sources. I can imagine only 2 things then, gossipy people who just can't keep confidential stuff to themselves or selfish people who are ready to sell some small tidbit to a newpaper for some money. Unfortunately I dont like either breed of people. Anyone has other different opinions?

p.s: If the papers pay money for such stuff...isn't it illegal and stuff? :-)

and I can see the murkiness better...
Finally after months of procrastination I went and got myself a pair of spectacles. It is simply startling, the difference in clarity with the glasses on. Everything is crip and sharp and ohhh I am lost for words :-)
Every once a while I am so tempted to look out of the range of glasses, see the hazy picture in front of me and then look at the clear pic through these and smile at the change in perspective of the vision before me! :-)
Not to forget I am more in love with my intellectual looking self.

I finally managed to set up the adsl modem at home to give me a nice secure wireless connection to surf the net. It's so cool, no more attached to the wires and table business. I can happily sit in my garden and blog, surf and have a good time. :-)

Thanks to wiki pages, it made a lot of things so so convenient! No calls to the BSNL office and the endless wait and all that! I am glad we have stepped into the information sharing era. It is easy to find and retrieve it aswell! Way to go people!

Today I was reading this article by Anush about buses and dustbins and I remembered I wanted to write about this for some time now. The bus stand opposite Garuda Mall. The DIVIDER LINE at the road is used as a BUS STAND! Imagine that! It simply shows how the authorities dont look at the bigger picture. It goes on also to show how flexible we all are, hoards of bus passengers who stand in the middle of the road risking being hit by any vehicle from either side and also the commuters who manage to squeeze some space in the jam packed half engulfed and quartered road! Even better is the fact that COPS are right there! They really have not bothered to do something about the traffic situation except to just let people handle it.

To recollect the sequence of events:
1) Bus stop shifted from Mayo Hall to opposite Garuda mall. The road was one-way and hence it could accomodate the bus stop. However the buses would stop way before the bus shelter at the intersection itself and cause one hellava traffic jam
2) The road became 2 way. The bus shelter was neglected. The traffic "designers" didnt even notice the bus stand issue. Now the people stand in the middle of the road and the bus guys happily stop also in the middle of the road and, voila, you guessed it right! a mother of a jam again!
3) The traffic cops are just so brilliant they dont even bother giving feed back to their own system
4) we the people also are not too bothered about it!

While I am ranting, I would like to crib about the horrible state of the road next to Home Stop leading to Hosmat. It is REALLY BAD. It is always dug up and no one seems to be bothered about the dust and the traffic issues it causes. This is the state of the road for the past 2 years. Talk of civil engineers and infrastructure development! Make the road wide and clean. It eases the traffic so so much!

It just makes me laugh when I see movies like chak de and ads that talk about growth in India. It is just evident, we are not bothered about the cost at which we want to grow. We have tonnes of country men to spare so health is just not some thing we care about any more.

The worst state to be in is be bored and having to come to office. I don't find work interesting and rewarding any more. What is it that makes things interesting to a person. We all would ideally like to work on something that we are passionate about. But why are we passionate about one thing and not the other? Is it because we are good at it and can understand what is going on? Is it because it pays us well? Is it because it rewards us for our efforts in it? Ya I know I know its a combination of it all...

Oh well. I am just plain tired of this. 2+ years, great deal of learning and achievement. The sad part is that although everyone says I have done a good job no one seems to be very keen on giving me some awards!! Dear God, please ensure that I get my well deserved and long awaited awards. I am tired of doing all this work and not getting anything in hand for it.

p.s: I so want a tiny hole to disappear in and curl up and read my novels and books in peace.

Im really looking forward to this year. I want to define myself in this year. A lot of things are on the plate. Hope to achieve most of the significant ones atleast. A peep at the desires of the year:

Develop fluency in French
Improve my harping skills on the violin
Define my space at home and see it blossom into a reflection of my mind
ORGANISE - because that is what I am most happy and content being, organised
Get more fit and learn cooking

All the best in making your dreams come true for '08. :-)

2007 - I love this year. It has seen me achieve a lot, seen me realise a few of my dreams from childhood. Here is a snap shot of the year that was.

1) I turned 25! A milestone of sorts in the Human life cycle. I have tried to explore various facets and passions and now I feel I am ready to settle down and make my choice of what I want to be. Atleast a rough feeling till I am 30. :-)
2) Career, since my Engineering days it had been big talk of protocol stack development. I had always wanted to work on a stack and I got a huge opportunity and 07 saw me analyse, design, code and test an entire stack. Today the entire stack is my babe, my brain child. I am extremely proud of this, for me a break this early to do so much and complete it with more than the assured quality is indeed a matter of pride.
3) Travel, I managed to see a bit of the outside world finally! My wish to see 5 countries by 25 came true. I love the exposure and I feel the growth it has given me is quite significant.
4) I finally saw a Pride march. In the country that was the first to be liberal and broad minded enough to make drugs, prostitution and same sex marriage all legal. It's a wonderful experience to see people being so open minded to accept differences and minorities and to take part in celebrating the diversity.
5) I did get a taste of love. For the first time I grew to love someone, in the way I define love. It is ambrosia. It was made sweeter since the other person responded to my feelings too. I don't know if '08 will see it through but I am glad for the experience. Makes my life fuller and merrier just to know that I have been there and done it. I hope we make it.
6) I managed to step into THE market. I have always found myself gaping at trying to understand finances, Income Tax and the stock market. I am still dazed but I have made a small start and I hope to learn over the months and years ahead.
7) I made 3 paintings that to me have a significant value. Each took me about a month or two of good dedicated effort and skill. They adorn the walls at home.
8) I saw a couple of really good movies, some good plays and read a couple of great books. Not as much as I would have loved to but it a number that I am fine with, to accept in a year's time.

There are a lot of small things also that have made my experience of '07 a "good year" in my books.

Some Favs in no particular order:
Movie: TareZaminPar, Apocalypto, A kannada movie the name I cannot recollect!
Book: To kill a mocking bird
Holiday: Amsterdam
Infrastructure: Munich
Song:
Food: Vadapav, sarso-ka-sang
Memories: Big Banyan Tree ride with M, First take off in a (BIG) Jet Plane, Days when I was woken up by M's pranks, Amsti Pride with R, Framing my first painting helped by Mom and C, Evening ride in lonavala, Driving in Mumbai late night
Wacky Moment: Forgetting my stuff outside and going through immigration at Munich, running back to fetch it 15 minutes before takeoff and almost missing the flight!