Gmail mania

Gmail is hot! Everywhere I turn I see people talking about it. Plus as they have'nt yet made access public, having a gmail account is somewhat of a status symbol like thing. People are not ready to wait and it seems .. are even ready to pay for accounts .. as Yazad tells us here. Ravikiran tells us he managed to pilfer an account. God knows how. Gaurav, in a recent post, told us how he showered gifts upon his dear ones. Now when 3 of my favourite bloggers are talking about gmail, all in the same week, I thought 'why should I be left behind?'

All in all, I wonder how all of us here in duluth have managed to get the gmail usernames we wanted. Now my yahoo account has always been adequate for me and my inbox is almost always sqeaky clean. I wasn't really interested in one but did want to 'reserve' one there .. so I got one .. to the end that (I suspect) my friends here began secretly thinking of me as a hypocrite.

What would I do with a whole GigaByte of space? If it could have been used as proper webspace, well then.. (insert devil-smilie here). This sums up my stance until recently. Now, after having tried gmail .. I am starting to like it. They have a clean, refreshing interface .. much like google itself. I have not started using it yet .. as I dont want to leave my yahoo acc .. which is my primary email account. It has served me well over the years.

Anyways, seems like many ppl are concerned with the 'targeted advertising' that gmail is supposed to carry. Big deal ... privacy shrivacy .. as it is all emails are being scanned my many bots, govt agencies .. the whole lot. Plus if it is targetted .. it will be better than the current flashing, irritating ads. (think google). As the owner's manual for google shareholders states .. the ads we provide are relevant and useful rather than intrusive and annoying.

Google has not just changed the way we search, but much more than that. Maybe soon, change the way we use email.

Porsche in India

Porsche has finally arrived in India. This year many luxury car manufacturers have discovered India and are foraying the metros in search of buyers. There should be no dearth of people who want to (and are able to) own one of these, though I doubt how many actually will. do number ka paise aise kharch nahi kiya ja sakta. On the other hand a certain breed of Indians .. the politicians .. can definitely afford to and will flaunt the same with impunity.
Back to what I originally started .. Porsche is offering it's SUV: the Cayenne and 2 of its sports cars .. the Boxter and the 911. The Cayenne; it is learnt, is leading Porsche sales in India.

If it were up to me buying such SUVs .. give me the Touareg any day. *sigh*

Nok Nok ..

I switched my cell phone from a Motorola v120c to a Nokia 3589i . This was a week back, and I have noticed a general cheerfulness about me that after carefully analyzing can be attributed to the above act.

Nokia is a company I like. Okay, here perhaps I should make it clear that there is a short list of companies I like. There are a multitude of reasons, but nothing specific really .. and the 'list' has been there for a long time. Entries include:
Honda, Toshiba, Nokia , GE, Sharp [edit: sacrilege! I had forgotten Sharp].
Nokia has always been the market leader in mobile phones with lots of reason. Their phones are awesome. Simple. So, while news reports continued for weeks in the past month declaring the beating Nokia had taken in the Q1 losses, I was not too worried. The company has always pioneered the cellphone market with around a third of all units sold being Nokia cells. The downturn was mainly due to laudable advancement of Samsung and LG mobile phones. (Note that both companies do not belong to the elite 'list').
Nokia though has vowed to come back with an agressive approach and even deciding to launch more flip-phones, a category they are generally shy of. I am hoping they will introduce a camera phone for the CDMA market. (hopefully around the time I get a job)

Meanwhile heres a pathetic little Nok Nok joke I made up ..
Nok Nok
Who's there?
Nokia
Nokia who?
Nokia teeth off if ya continue these jokes.

well well well

Hmmm ... thats all I can say. The political turmoil happening back at home has left me confused and surprised to say the least. I wish I was at home .. it would have been fun. Or maybe even in Duluth .. (I am not .. and limited net access takes its toll).

Meanwhile, I am in Chicago, trying to have fun with fellow desi Duluthians before eberyone leaves for where their lives lead them.

Sonia as PM .. accept it.

Sonia will be pm. the more i think of it .. the surer I am. It may not be as bad as I was thinking it would be. chalaychaach. yahi to politics hai. as long as this govt does'nt interfere with the economic reforms I am fine with it.

The thing I find more disturbing is Mulayam as deputy pm .. or maybe Laloo. Mulayam has no political ethics (is that an oxymoron?) or standards. He is too scheming to be comfortable with. Laloo is notorious, but is not as bad as Mulayam. Still I would prefer some other deputy pm.

If anything good comes out of this govt .. I would say Jairam Ramesh as Finance Minister. That guy would definitely get to work.

Somehow, I find it more palatabale than others that Sonia will be pm.

We are a democracy, and we ourselves are responsible for our actions. India has got the goverment, (and prime minister) that she chose. (and maybe even deserved). Even though I did'nt want sonia for pm .. it looks like many many more people chose her, over Vajpayee .. which I find extremely hard to digest. The result was highly surprising, but as I have learnt over the past year .. life dishes up a lot of things which are hard to digest. We, personally and now as a nation should be ready to face this instead of bickering and thinking up alternate forms of government or thinking up ways and new rules of trying to prevent Sonia from becoming prime minister.

Sleep, anyone?

Sleep .. is a demanding mistress. When she rules the roost, it is really difficult to think of anything else. Like the Continuum Transfunctioner it's mystery is only exceeded by it's power.
While most of us have long pondered upon sleep, it's use, necessity, etecetra, have you ever given a thought to a life without sleep? As in .. a life where sleep is not necessary. Now don't dismiss it off lagech. Give it a thought. Productivity would increase the world over, but so would costs. One would never have the sick feeling of being 'sleep deprived', but nor would one enjoy the true bliss that sleep gives us. Things would be a lot different .. thats for sure.
So on to the next step. Would you rather have a life where ..

A Panda walks into a bar.. (mind your commas)

My thesis advisor told me this one today.

A Panda walks into a bar and asks for a beer and some grub. Everyone is astonished, but they don't show it. The bartender is surprised, but calmly serves the panda. He later enquires whether it likes the food and recieves an affirmative reply. After the panda finishes it's burger, fries and beer it asks for the check and pays the necessary amount. However just as it is leaving, it takes out a gun, shoots the bartender and leaves.
Now the owner of the bar, who is still getting over this whole panda-walking-into-a-bar thing runs up to it and demands an explanation. He says you even liked the food goddamit .. why shoot my bartender?
The panda calmly takes out a dictionary and shows him the entry for 'panda'

Panda: A black and white bear-like animal which eats, shoots and leaves.

The Grand Salaam

Time magazine in it's current issue, has a small piece on the increasing desi cultural influence on Amrika. A Cultural Grand Salaam covers Bollywood in general and Bombay Dreams in particular. It's almost like an ad for the later, coinciding with it's opening on Broadway this week.
Anyhoo, the article itself is okay .. could have been better. Time has consistently been covering India and related issues. I can't say the same about NewsWeek, but then I subscribe to Time and only glance at the other when I get the chance.