At last ..

Many have tried before, and failed .. now at last .. a German dictionary publisher is planning to publish a "German-Woman/Woman-German" dictionary for those of you who would like to understand women better [if you hesitated in thinking, you have already failed ..]. It will help men translate what women say into what they mean. That; will be the day.

Time to move on..

2 years went by real fast. I learned a lot, changed somewhat; made some very good friends; had a lot of fun. I leave Duluth within a week. Looking at familiar places in a new light .. I may never come back here, but again - maybe I will. Leaving places is hard enough, I don't even want to start thinking about leaving friends. Time to move on. Thats life.

Another turning point
a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist
directs you where to go,
So make the best of this test and don't ask why,
It's not a question but a lesson learned in time,

It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time,
Tattoos and memories of dead skin on trial
For what it's worth,
it was worth all the while.

It's something unpredictable,
but in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life

It's something unpredictable,
but in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life

- GreenDay: Time of your Life

Siesta time

As I write this, my head is getting heavy, my limbs are refusing to move as swiftly (yea .. i'm swift), and my eyes refuse to stay open. I had a heavy lunch and these are the sweet aftereffects. The temptation to rest your head somewhere is just too much. Me thinks in any company the work efficiency sharply declines about half an hour after lunch. People start thinking about something else, wishing they were home and could rest a while .. peacefully, without pesky bosses and supervisors lurking around. Thats what I'd wish.

The afternoon nap is a sacred thing that I always wish for, but so rarely get. Like 2 days back .. I wrapped up all my work and after a nice Vietnamese lunch, went home .. blissfully thinking I'll nap for an hour. But stupidly, I sat in front of the great altar of passive entertainment [Calvin's words .. not mine] and succumbed to it's sitcom brigade. Now I've begun to think that a part of the temptaion to sneak a nice lil siesta, lies in the fact that you so rarely get it. Maybe I'll go home right now and steal a few winks .. wot say?

Who is Raveena's husband?

Okay ... this is a howler. I don't know whether to laugh or cry out in anguish and try to rip my hair out of my head. We seriously are in big trouble. Every govt. that comes along purges the school textbooks of what its predecessors put into them and pushes its own propaganda into the same!

Hindi textbooks of class X, in Karnataka, place Sonia Gandhi beside Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi in the chapter Bharatanari. Gandhi has been described as a great woman working for the emotional integration of the nation through Rajiv Gandhi Pratisthan

And if you are shocked by this .. what about 5th std students learning about the Vadras .. a whole chapter dedicated to Lalu Yadav .. a 'match the following' which includes matching Rahul Gandhi's photo with his name?

Still want more? .... In Ranchi University the General Knowledge section of the commerce paper (they have a general knowledge section?) asked the followinf question - Who is actress Raveena Tandon's husband?. [Link]

via A time to reflect.

Clip .. Clop?

One can hear a significant clickety noise as I type these days. No, the keyboard is fine .. its just that .. how can I say this .. my fingernails are long. Not too long, not so long that you will stare at them, but long enough that as I type, their edge hits the keys of the keyboard. Plus me thinks I type with my fingers making more of an angle thus the propensity of the nails to touch the keys.

If I were still in school or college .. my kabbadi teammates would have kicked me out. There were strict restrictions on the length of your nails if you played kabbadi. Many a times have guys been disallowed from practice bcos their nails were not short enough. [cut them right along the edge .. where the flesh meets the nail]. Anyways .. thing is I can't find the damn nail-cutter/clipper. We had about 3-4 of them around the house .. probably each one of us brought one .. but for the past many months we are down to a single one. Dunno where the rest went. Probably some of our friends were short of a few at their own places. Buggers.

So .. I was complaining about the missing nail-cutter, when one of my roommates said that he has one .. and made a clikety-clack noise with his teeth, smacked his lips and looked at me. *shudder*. What? he said .. I need the calcium...

I don't care .. my nails no longer make a noise.

[If he reads this .. good bye world .. his cooking turn is thursday .. so if I die of poisoning then, you know who did it.]

Rejuvenating the daak

Rediff has an article on how the Indian Postal Service is reinventing itself. [Postmen to deliver more].

In an innovative move the Department of Posts has joined hands with Idea Cellular and will soon be marketing Idea SIM cards from post offices in regions where the cell company operates. There are also plans to tie up with Nokia to sell handsets in the future. ... There is also a proposal of post offices doubling as "delivery centres" of Kodak Colour Labs in semi-urban and rural areas. ... Meanwhile, the postal department has also started marketing the non-life policies of Oriental Insurance from the beginning of the year.

This was a very pleasant surprise for me. I had always imagined the Indian Postal Service to be an outdated, slow, dying behemoth; and the postman an overworked, underpaid sorry man. More so after coming to the US, where the USPS [United States Postal Service] (a giant in its own right) runs an amazingly smooth job and is top notch in it's service and facilities offered. The Indian post is subsidised by the govt. not so the USPS. Of course they are greatly helped by the tons of junk mail in the US, but that deserves an entire entry of its own. Our own daak tried to modernize themselves a while back .. by providing email services from post offices. I have no idea whether it was implemented widely and how well. But good news this. If the Indian Post is able to pull it off, they will greatly profit by these value added services provided to the junta.

Flying feline

A Belgian airliner was forced to return and make an emergency landing as a cat was found in the cockpit.
A few glimpses ..

...with the animal running wild in the cockpit and attacking the co-pilot.

The scared animal was "very aggressive and scratched the co-pilot", forcing the crew to return to the airport.

The pet's owner had some questions to answer back on the ground as the other 57 passengers were put on another flight but no action was taken against the cat itself. [Ha]

Goooogle .. and how to sell a startup twice

Google is expanding. Its scary.
Well .. it isnt (scary); but I just wanted to say that.

Google wants you to do everything from their page. Search the web, look up stocks, find out word meanings, perform basic calculations, find items on sale, track FedEx and UPS packages and tons more. They are also expanding into other stuff. Google bought Blogger last year, then came Gmail and now they have bought Picasa.

I think I need to clarify at this point that I like google. Better still - Google is my homepage.

Anyways, trying to read more about how google is expanding .. I came across the blog of Evan Williams .. the co-founder of Blogger. (makes sense for him to maintain a blog .. it is blogger 'powered' .. I checked). The blog itself is decent .. [you somehow expect a top class blog (contentwise) from the co-founder of Blogger], I found 1 post particularly interesting.
How to sell the same startup twice. Check it out.

Who will rule the world next?

The U.S. presidential elections this November are gonna be close. Thats how long I am willing to stretch my neck and make a statement about them. Not much is it? All these months I was thinking Bush will win. Close call .. but he will pull it off. My stand all along was that Kerry isn't that popular .. people will vote for him just because they don't want Bush; not bcos they want Kerry holding the reigns. And .. thats just not enough.
Now suddenly I find myself surprised by Kerry's tenacity and the pull he has had. Edwards (and Cheney too) changed the equations a bit. These elections are getting much like our own Indian General elections. We have been having hung parilaments for so long, we can write the book on them. Though what happened this time? Every single person was predicting a close shave for the BJP or a hung parilament; and the Congress snuck one up before anybody could blink! Hah! that just goes to show how much (or rather how little) people think before they vote. The US is no different. If they elected Bush once, they can do it again.
Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek has a refreshing view of how he predicts election results.

This Land

'This Land'; the hilarious animation starring Dubya and Kerry has circulated all over the web, and also shown on CNN. If you missed it .. you have to check this out. This Land. [The file may take some time to load. Be patient.] The animation plus the song itself is pretty cool .. I laugh each time and notice new funny details each time.

And along the lines of Outkast's Hey Ya! comes Saddams an OutKast: Hey Allah!. It'll be funnier if you have seen the original OutKast video.

Also .. Build a better Bush.