TheLastPage

This was sent on my school egroup by Keyur. (My school friend - obviously) -
The Last Page. I like this type of humour. Witty, subtle, powerful.

Jester of all games..

Somehow, I never stuck to one sport. My school encouraged us to try different sports .. volleyball, kho-kho, kabaddi, football and some others .. and all of us had fun playing them. I also tried my hand at swimming and badminton .. and like both. Cricket is inborn to an extent in every Indian. However I never excelled at any of these. Am not even like the proverbial 'Jack of all trades' .. I'm something less than a jack .. more like a jester really. I amuse others when I play cricket and football (soccer), and try to amuse myself while playing other sports.
Swimming I can do pretty well, but not in the competitive sense. Hell, I even used to coach a bit. But thats in Pune .. where one look at our professors and you know what teachers are like. Carrom - I'm improving with leaps and bounds - but thats just cos there were leaps and bounds to improve by. Chess is pretty decent - but I had my nose rubbed in the ground recently there too.
This never stopped me from playing any sport with friends though .. thats probably bcos I've had such good friends who dont make fun of me and let me play along .. like a limbu-timbu if you get what I mean. So I dream a dream .. where I shall be a Jack. Heres to all my brothers. Enjoy.

Got Milk?

Doodh has always been a big thing with me. As a kid I dont remember loving milk, but I always drank my glass - twice a day. I started really liking milk probably around 9th or 10th standard. Milk plain, flavoured .. or anything made from milk has always been on the top of the list for me. Even today I find a lot of food stuff 'dry' and prefer to soak it up with milk .. cakes, cookies, a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. Biscuits (Marie, GoodDay) soaked with milk has always been the after-dinner snack of choice for me. (except for ice-cream, which incidentally is also made from milk). My love for doodh is so blatant that my roommates have promised (threatened?) to gift me a buffalo in my marriage! (whenever it might be .. and with whoever - I might add. (Ladies - please note))

The thing that caught my attention tho is that here in the US a deliberate and guided attempt (and a successfull one) is being made to popularize milk as a regular beverage. Their Got Milk? campaign has been extremely successful. It consists of catchy print and TV ads featuring models and celebrities with a 'milk moustache' and a message from them encouraging the reader/viewer to drink more milk. This was/is partly supported by the milk processors themselves. They have launched a new campaign called 'Shake Stuff Up' featuring excellent ads for chocolate milk too. Reminds me of our Doodh Doodh Doodh Doodh .. Doodh hai wonderful ad by the NDDB (National Dairy Development Board) back in India. It was amazing. I'l try to get a video of that. You can see some of the Got Milk? print ads here. Needs Flash.

Chicken out, rats in

Chicken out, rats in. Go read it. Did u guess what the article will be about? I did, and strangely enough I also guessed the country.

Peace Prize anyone?

Like Mandar said .. Prez Bush has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I propose .. and I think I read this somewhere too .. another nomination. The duo of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani Prez Pervez Musharaff. Indo-Pak relationships are stable, and progress is being made in every direction, thanks to the peace initiative adopted by both. The idea is not at all frivolous as it sounds. The trio of Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres & Yitzhak Rabin got it in '94 [quote] for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East [unquote]. Maybe next year.

A Prayer

This was my email signature about an year back, so some of you might have read it before. Still its just as lovely reading it again ..
Make the most of the snow .. its gonna be here for just a month and half more. Duluth rulez!

Oh Lovely snowball packed with care,
Smack a head thats unaware!
Then with freezing ice to spare,
Melt and soak through underwear!
Fly straight and true! Hit hard and sqaure!
This, oh snowball, Is my prayer.

- Calvin.

I wish I was like Calvin when I was 6. Don't you?

1 down 3 to go...

The first mid-term of my course is long gone and forgotten. (It was today). I still have 2 more mid-terms and 1 final to go. thankfully, this being my last semester thats the only course I have. The course itself is mind-numbing and the test reflected that. We are all cool though. Last night was spent with roomies and other friends studying together for a while. Then as we got tired of studying (in an hour or two) we settled down to business and played our daily round of carrom.

And now here I am, test done; yet still in my lab - writing a report on the work I did last year as a Research Assistant. It is due tomorrow. Its a battle between my brain and my ... brain. The sane part is slowly cajoling me on .. telling me to get this job done tonight. While the other voice in my head are telling me to .. sleep / go home and enjoy with my friends. Arrgh. double aargh.

F1 2004 Season

The 2004 F1 season starts in less than a month. 2 new races have been added this year. I'm sure this will be an exciting year. Last year is behind McLaren and they are raring to go. (heh heh - this will surely induce a few comments). My last post on F1, at the end of the last season was Schumacher wins (kutra). (It's in the old archive base on the univ server)

A lot has been said about F1 in India. It would surely be great and I'm sure fincancially profitable for all sides concerned. A friend sent me an email with the following pic tho -

[EDIT] : As Anand pointed out - why are both cars of Ferrari?

world's greatest democracy

In India, I always thought that our voting turnouts were abysmally low. They actually vary a lot from place to place .. going from 30% to as high as 65% me thinks. The general average for urban turnouts has been somewhere in the late forties, sometimes around fifty. That means 50% of the people eleigible to vote actually get out there on their asses and do it. The rest don't. as simple as that. Of course in a system such as ours the voting register itself is archaic and horribly un-updated. What concerns me is that increasingly the younger generation (people my age - or our age if you prefer that) are shying away from voting. Anyways, I'm not here to discuss that.

While browsing the lush green meadows of BusinessWeek, I chanced upon the a paragraph about voter turnouts here in the US. The younger generation here is more or less aloof about politics in general. They were brought up in a secure world, which probably they feel; will not be harmed even if the politicians run amok (which is widely felt as true). Only 50% of eligible voters cast ballots in the Presidential election in 2000, down from 63% in 1960. Pathetic -- and even worse when you consider that roughly half the adult population doesn't even register, which means only 25% of voting-age Americans actually vote.

a movie that stands apart

This post was inspired by a post by Aashish. Just so you know whom to shit on later.

We all see movies. I was never a movie fanatic (and still am not) but my movie-watching has increased considerably after coming to the US. Particularly watching Hindi movies. Only once in a while does a movie come that stands apart from the rest. In fact well apart; and the other movies prefer it that way. It was my brilliant roomie Anand who recognized this gem from a thousand titles and bought the cassette so that all of us here could enjoy it.

I am talking about a film called Desi Pardesi- aka - Desi Love, Desi Gangs, Desi Life. Arguably the worst movie I have ever seen. Don't ask me why the 2 titles. They are there. There are a lot of questions which you shouldn't ask abt this movie. The film is about Viraj, a first generation Indian-American. Desi Pardesi is writen, directed and produced by Viraj Patel (CEO of VirajCorp); the hero of the film. Not only this; the music score too is by Mr. Viraj Patel, the fights are sequenced by him and he manages other things too. A multi-talended fellow.

The first thing to be noted about this film is that it is based in the US, and yet you see only 2 or 3 americans. The rest being Gujrathi people. I dont know which city it is based in; but on the roads, in shops, anywhere and everywhere all the people you see are desi and more often than not Gujju. The only notable gora in the film -- hold on -- speaks Hindi. The humour is pathetic, the jokes (and all dialogues) are repeated until you feel like hitting the character concerned. You get the picture.

Anyways, we desis here in Duluth had loads of fun at the film's expense. It is the most talked about movie in the brief history of desis in Duluth. If you are lucky enough to grab hold of a copy, be sure to watch it with a lot of friends, all of whom are in a time-pass mood. Do not, under any circumstances watch it alone or on an empty stomach.

I admire Viraj Patel. Really; no shit. It requires courage to make a movie and release it upon the unsuspecting market. (okay, I may sound sarcastic, but seriously I really admire the guy). If you visit the website pointed out above .. you will see more films to be released soon. His second film Lethal Intentionz was released last month. I admire him because he was not discouraged and knew that he is meant for higher standards. Given Viraj's popularity here, we just had to see it. And the lad has progressed by leaps and bounds. The new movie features computer generated special effects, a clearer soundtrack where clearly the dialogues are not recorded by the handycam's mic and a lot more. Strangely most of the cast is the same. He is learning tho - thats good .. his fourth film has aan entirely different cast - thats what the site tells us.

Baaki kuch bhi ho I am sure all of us here will remember the film. (the first one). Also if you wanna be a part of this exciting world, there is a link for auditions on the said website. Viraj rulez.

GloFish (TM)

A few days back I talked about Genetically Modifed food and how its gonna be the norm soon. Incidentally here I am today, writing about the world's first genetically modified animal specifically engineered for sale as a pet. GloFish (TM) is it's name. The GloFish (TM) is a genetically modifed Zebra fish with a neon fluorescence. An original zebra fish has black and white stripes and is a native of India.

Originally scientists in Singapore had engineered this fish for tracking pollution levels in water [so says the GloFish(TM) website]. The fish would show fluorescence only in polluted water. Though this latter part has yet to be implemented. A taiwanese company saw the commercial potential behind this fish and started marketing them in Taiwan. Now they are available in the US for $5.00 a piece.

The ethical and safety aspects of this will no doubt be discussed for a long time. California has already banned the sale/possession of GloFish(TM). The company vhemently denies that the fish pose any hazard to the environment as such or to humans (As they are not meant for ingestion).

Anyways, as I always say - we just wait and watch - see whether the amriki junta latches on to a new fad. Kids would love them - no doubt, and they are decently priced.

While we are still on fish .. have you seen Finding Nemo? I liked it. In fact watched it twice. In the movie the fish in the aquarium talk about escaping thru a drain / toilet .. After the movie was released there were numerous incidences of kids flushing their fish down the toilet so that they could 'escape'.