Moore v/s Bill O' Reilly People this is viewer heaven .. For those following the elections in US, this was the meetup of the two most hawkish, staunch even at times vitroilic supporters of both camps, Michael Moore of Fahrenhit 9/11 fame and Bill O'Reilly of the O'Reilly Factor.
Moore and O'Reilly Pretty interesting !

Also I have been following the Democratic Convention pretty closely and Bill Clinton and Barak made especially stellar speeches .. Great drama.

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  Crazy internet search.

While checking out my stats for this blog, I hapenned to notice that there was a visitor from down under, Australia. Was naturally intrigued to how he/she hit upon my site and this was the weird coincidence.. the person had typed "chamionships pastry 2004", he/she (notice I show no signs of being a MCP :D ) ..(also notice the missing p in the championship) in MSN search and the only link that he/she got as results was my site.
My rush to blog when I get an idea, without correcting spellings etc had lead to my also misspelling the word on my blog and by coincidence he/she had also done the same. Besides that I also had pastry and 2004 somewhere.
So this was the link that turned up ! Poor soul (enough of this he/she nonsense :) ).. was trying to locate 2004 pastry cham"p"ionships and turned up on my page instead :)Dont believe me, you can try it for yourself too on MSN search !
Interestingly enough Google does not give my blog as a link for the same misspelled query !

This is also interesting as Google aficionados like me have long played a game called googlewhacking where you choose two words and type them in google to obtain the least number of results. If you get only one result then you have whacked google :).. Ofcourse the two words should have correct spellings unlike what hapenned here :)  ¶ permalink 5 comments

  Life Goes On ! Today was the last day at work of a great guy. Although I did not tell him in so many words, I really felt it was cool having him around as I could talk about all the eclectic, weird things I could only think and have an interesting discussion about them with him. (btw these are two others who I can have similarly pointless conversations with g and m). He is going on to law school, so best of luck to him. But ofcourse life will go on.

I was thinking today afternoon, I have been in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Trivandrum, Manipal, Tucson and now Boston for considerable periods of time, have had no less than 15 room mates, met a lot of interesting friends at each stage, always thought that these are the best people in the world and I will miss them terribly and will not be able to adjust to the new place or the old place without them. But life has a strange way of always making itself interesting once again.. You always meet new people, they become acquaintances and then good friends ..The cycle repeats again :)

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  Quixtar ! Firstly I will make this posting small following the request of one commenter :)

They swoop on you like vultures waiting on their prey.. They will find you and engage you in conversation at the most unlikely of places ..I have personally been "accosted" at the mall, in the train, at the train station waiting for the train and most sacrilegious of all (for me atleast) in a bookstore. I am talking about the Quixtar agents, or as they like to call themselves Independent Business Owners (IBO's) !

Quixtar for those who dont know is a multilevel marketing organization (also previously known as Amway in the US, still known like that all over the world, since being closed down here), which works by individual people recruiting others to work "under" them, who in turn recruit more etc. Based on the sales of the people "under" you, you get a commission. So the primary aim for you is to recruit as many people as you can under you.

This post is because I have seen so many of my friends, being sucked into it, make it their religion and then come out of it, several thousand dollars lost, and hours of hours of valuable time wasted. Moreover, because it so much takes over their life, and they want their friends also to be a part of it, unfortunately they have become social pariah's.

Here is a Dateline expose on the whole phenomena. - DateLine expose'  ¶ permalink 4 comments

  How do you tell the difference between a desi and an ABCD ? This post is about a epiphany I had today morning, a most "hair" raising experience if there was one..

Today morning we had a fire drill.No, there was no implement with cutting edges involved, nor there were any pyrotechnics involved, it was more of an exercise in testing the musical instruments in the auditory organs of my body ("ear drums" for those who had no clue of what i was talking about.. no more hints from now on :) ), and although it seemed like an everyday ho-hum occurrence for all the americans in my office,I was shaken to the very "Indian ear core" and was totally "shrilled" out.( Although the eerie oooooo bow of the gali ke kutte (dogs) bhoking, the neighbourhood "basti" woman quarelling and the thak thak of my building's watchman danda as he did his rounds in the night didnt effect my (y)"ears" in desh and I slept like kumbhu (of the karan category), this was something else).

However the sound did something else too, it jumpstarted the thing between the organs being tortured. As I walked out I suspect people must have seen a distinct increase in the circumfrence of my head, it was because of the neurons in my brain now crazily aroused, jumping around in uncontrollable brownian motion pushing the "gray" walls of its "matter", in short I was in fullto chahca chaoudhary ka dimaag computer se be tez chalta hai form ..

And then as I was standing there, looking alien like with the bloated head, I saw two Indian gentlemen(cant be sure they were gentle, so scratch that, no, I will not explain how do I know they were men, aha you ask ? how do I know they were Indian, Good question, I think brown skin ..and ofcourse my medula oblongata was in prime form ..so these things came naturally) ..but i digress, this the problem with you, you keep asking stupid questions and lead me astray, I was sharp today morning, now I am the regular bozo, what if I forget what I had to tell in the first place.. Plis, no interruption ..

Anyways as soon as I saw them I could make out man (not necessarily gentle) A was mera types, came to the US to attend grad shool or direct L1 visa, lives on Top Ramen, shares bedroom with 4 other guys, idea of fun is to watch zee or sun or gemini (as case maybe, we are multilingual society i say)tv movie trailors, blushes at the mention of "ash", can tell you ball by ball account of Tendulkars first gali cricket innings when he was still in pre school, speaks only in three letter techie acronyms (ASP, JSP, .NET, SQL, COM, XML etc.. ) and B was an ABCD ( I dont know much about them so I will not describe them :| )..Buttt (no thats not the part of female anatomy I most prefer, but that is the topic of another post, I wanted to close out this para and jump out of this thought, but I know what you are thinking as alternatives ..chee chee.. what did you think it was, anyways ..to clarify matters it is in fact the tip of the fourth toe of the left foot, why ? .. my wish .. i dont have to explain what i like ..and you stop asking pointless questions, I had already given warning before ) .. since brain was firing on all cylinders, I went one step ahead, I thought ki how did I manage to instantly figure out the difference between the two different species, ki who was desi and kiska baap was a desi, ki uncle kaun? ( lame reference, will be understood by die hard fans of Andaaz Apna Apna) ..

and.. then I had the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree enlightenment moment, the answer was right in front of me, it was all clear shampoo ..(i got carried away, years of bombardment on indian channels, scratch out the shampoo) .. it was the ..it was the ..trumpets blowing in the background ..cylindrical, keratinized, filaments characteristically growing from epidermis ..yes ladies and gentlemen, bhaiyon aur unki behon ..it was the baal, juttu, hair (I know only these languages please feel free to add more) that was the difference.. the Indian A had dull, lifeless, disgruntled spaghetti (yes yes, I personify my food.. as Govinda says, meri marzee) plonked on his head and the ABCD ( not at all confused about his hair ) had fresh, gelled, full of life, pointed hair.. that was it, in my moment of clarity I saw the one thing which distinguished them..

So now you have it, you know the secret too, the desi baap of the ABCD bacha had handed him a shiny new bottle of gel on each of his bday and thus the difference ki ABCD ke baal motiyon jaise chamak rahe the!(another obscure reference to an ad, Dabur lal dunt manjan, damn the time I spent on my "Dyanaora" TV watching Indian ads).But dont take my word for it, go out see for yourself and tell me if it is true and I can publish my findings in the "obvious musings journal of immigrational generational differences".

Did I mention that I was standing in front of CVS ..what do you think I bought next ? A shiny new bottle of American Crew Gel, no no not for me ( you are not reading carefully are you ).. for my future ABCD beta ofcourse (there was a sale na ..isiliye) ;)

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  Microsoft Search So obvious muse for the day is, that Microsoft the 800 pound gorilla from Redmond is not so much of an innovator but a brilliant follower. Many many examples to corroborate that fact ( GUI - first in an Apple, late to the "Internet" phenomena (IE etc), original SQL Server basically Sybase and many many others), the point being that though by far it is the most prominent software company in the world there have been pretty much very few paradigm changing innovations from the company. However it has most remarkably and most dominatedly excelled at recognizing these changes, and applied its muscle and brute force and ulimately come out with a more useful product/service in most cases.
The latest example is ofcourse "search". With multiple means of access to information today, most notably the explosion in its "received" due to the internet, search and related technologies have undoubtetly become the next killer application. Surprise surprise, another company has been a pioneer here too, Google ofcourse. However as past experience shows Microsoft will come back. So ladies and gentlemen here we have MSN Search, the new souped up (more like souped down in clutter) version of its search, very Google like. Check it out here at MSN Search.
Read more about it here.
These should be exciting times.. What could Microsoft possibly do this time to dislodge this nimble, very adept, even smart little pesky little fly buzzing (the Google IPO is generating a lot of "buzz" also :) ) and prancing around infuriating its bulky (please refer to what type of animal above) frame to no end ? Especially since Google is free :) ..MS cant give it away free installed with Windows..they have to compete with Google on pure innovation !


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  US v/s Rest of the World I was thinking in view of the increasingly isolationist place that the US finds itself today in this world, that there are so many other things which are more often than not confusingly unique to the United States. Some of the instances that I recount are probably that I have faced myself too and probably faced by anyone coming in this country for the first time !
Some of them which come to mind are :

The most obvious one is that of the measurement system ..
Read this :

The U.S. Customary System is the system used in the United States. It measures length in inches, feet, yards and miles. It measures weight in ounces, pounds and tons, and volume in pints, quarts and gallons. The U.S. Customary System is very similar to the system the colonists brought from England. Much of the system can be traced back to early Babylonian, Egyptian and Roman cultures.

The International (Metric) System, known as SE, is used in most of the world. It is also used for almost all scientific work. A metric system was first proposed in France in 1670. France adopted the metric standard in 1840 and many countries followed. Today, the only developed nations which do not use the SE metric system are the United States, Liberia and Burma.

Get that ! The US still uses an antiquated measurement system which is ahem! used in only Liberia and Burma :)) ..But ofcourse we are the US, let the rest of the world change we wont, let the rest of the world think Iraq is no threat, but we will find
imaginary "weapons of mass destruction" and promptly overrun it.
(Side note here: Why is there not any kind of mention in the US media about the casualties of the Iraqis ? Close to 30,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed too, because of a lie..So who is the oppressor now ? .. Don't they have families and don't they feel equally sad when they lose their loved ones ? Do only some countries have the privilege of happiness, why should some people feel they are more equal than others ? )

And believe me for a person, who is grown up counting in 10's (a.k.a the metric sytem), suddenly thinking in 16's and 12's and multiplying by 1.60933 is highly confusing.. :)
pints, quarts and gallons! Give me a break.

But ofcourse its not limited to measurements, how do you think a date is represented *only* in the United States .. not with the logical day/month/year.. it is month/day/year.. why ? we just want to be different I guess ..

Moving on to sports, what do you think football is for an average American ? Nope it is not the term which is used to actually refer to a sport in which we do use the feet, which they call soccer. It is the americanized version of rubgy which is called football, in which incidentally there is minimum use of the feet !

The national championships are also called "world chamionships" because the rest of the world doesn't matter does it ? "we are the world" seems to be the very clear message here ! ( With apologies to my Telugu friends, just ask the hajaar and one Telugus, who when born have the same view, USA is the world and my ambition in life is to go the US. Make no mistake, your average Telugu "aunty" in India knows more than you would about GRE, american universities, all the "stages" (grrrr) of H1, all the colors of the cards etc.. I was talking to one of them on my last visit to India.(When I was still in school).So which University do you go to ? Arizona I replied. She told me more than I knew about its US News rankings, average GRE score wanted, gave me the contacts of 3 more people there and concluded that if I am not in Stanford then I am nobody ! To say the least I was shocked. I live in a apartment in Hyderabad, where every family in the building has a direct relative in where ? la la la USA )

Btw undergrad is "college" but grad studies suddenly becomes going to "grad school".

Ofcourse there are many other americanisms which are just different (not necessarily stupid ! ) from how it is in India ..

At a restaurant, after the meal you ask for a check, not the bill :) .. I once asked this person at a food court, for the bill !! :O ..She was totally confused and she said why do want a bill (which is verry confusingly also a reference to a dollar), I have already given you back your change (which is the money to be given back) ..It took both of us some time to understand each other :)

The toilet in India is called the restroom here :) (never understood that one, do you feel rested after doing you know what ? ..I guess so ..)

Ofcourse Z is not pronounced as "zed" but "zeee".

There must be several more instances of americanisms which dont come to mind right now, but do exist .. :)

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