Love Letter

Hey you! You man by the window! Would you care to look outside of the world outside that you are looking at? I am waiting...
My view is restricted by you... you see the daylight, the twilight, the moonlight... But all I see is you...

~Poison~Ivy~

Random Events/Musings which don't merit a full blog

1. Read this in Time mag: Michael Jackson supposedly got away unscathed because he is now white! This quote kills multiple birds with one stone!

2. Was walking with full-ishtyle into the lift (on the client side), and my pointed high heel got stuck in the gap in the lift door, and refused to come out for a full 20 seconds. Ooh, can anything else be more embarassing?

3. Bliss is... to wake up familiar song on the radio (alarm), in an alien land. The song in question being..."Sultans of Swing".

4. Also read: an amusing full-page-article on gender-bias....how the law leans towards the fairer sex, and women get away with murder, literally... Two women accused of infanticide got away with a "few years". Their post-natal depression was to blame. Men on the other hand will be charged of a second degree murder in a similar situation. Hmm...

5. Also also read: an article about the questionable questioning methods used in Guantanamo to find out "details" from "supposedly" 20th hijacker... I leave the rest to your fertile imagination...

6....
*edit* Finally remembered what I wanted to say! After successfully braving/avoiding the sars and the avian flu virus, I have received another one now from sin/gin. I cannot but get infected... Wait for the symptoms now!

On Vikram Seth...

Many years ago, it was a poem “Sit” by Vikram Seth that became the first post on this blog. It came by email from a close friend (who I still love talking vacuities with), I was amazed at the simplicity of it. After reading it a few times, sending it to a few friends and I knew I had to put it somewhere for the world to discover it at least once.

Years later, I haven’t still outgrown it, I am not 26 yet! I am still amazed at the simplicity and clarity of it. In any city I visit, I think of the verse for a few seconds, and I imagine whether that is the spot where I am intended to live this scene.

Vikram Seth is the master of simple verse. Its difficult to find someone so effortless. The poems are in the face, no hidden connotations, nothing to give students nightmares before board exams. Simple thought process in which alien words are joined together and they become partners in rhyme! And you smile, surprised at the effortlessness and the genius and the intended humor.

Some men like Jack
and some like Jill;
I'm glad I like
them both; but still

I wonder if
this freewheeling
really is an
enlightened thing --

or is it's greater
scope a sign
of deviance from
some party line?

In the strict ranks
of Gay and Straight
what is my status?
Stray? or Great?


After years, I have been gifted a copy of the Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth, a little too late, but its great, still on page three, need some time free! Damn--Mine sounds like a limerick ?
Well, its a novel in verse, and its something you discover page by page. This is about a stud in Silicon Valley:

He goes home, seeking consolation
Among old Beatles and Pink Floyd -
But 'Girl' elicits mere frustration,
While 'Money' leaves him more annoyed.
Alas, he hungers less for money
Than for a fleeting Taste of Honey.
Murmuring, 'Money - it's a gas! ...
The lunatic is on the grass,'
He pours himself a beer. Desires
And reminiscenes intrude
Upon his unpropitious mood
Until he feels that he requires
A one-way Ticket to Ride - and soon -
Across the Dark Side of the Moon.

Are you Smiling yet?

PS: Senthil, Thanks for the gift!

More than Words....

... is all i ever needed you to show!

Nuno Bettercourt was here day before yesterday, with his band "Population 1". The whole population wasn't present, so it was like a private performance. Moreover, the Band carried their own equipment enough for a big Auditorium, so they literally brought the house down. Hard Rock lived upto its name that day! Apart from doing some stuff off their new *yet to be released* album, they also did some older Extreme songs. No controversy, plain unadulturated (adult-rated?) Hard Rock. And I loved it...

More than words was done with a twist. On an electric, it still sounded divine, he let the crowd sing parts of it, and he did the harmony on it. Standing 10 feet from the stage, I got gooseflesh, I swear....

In this small island all we get is small events. Never something biiiig... No Joe Sat, No Mark Knopfler! Hmm..

And the guy looks like an angel (with a nosering), and he sings like a dream.

This time Dude missed the show!

Textbooks define 'ideal' woman- The Times of India

This is as hopeless as the trashy gossip I wrote earlier!
This is soooo hopeless that I don't even feel like brandishing the feminist sword.

Prana Priya? I mean, gimme a break!

Some hopeless piece of gossip....

.... which has no relevance in the bigger spectrum of things. *BEWARE*... What comes next completely trivial and needs no IQ, absolutely.

Paris Hilton is engaged to Paris Latsis. Do you notice, the possibilities are immense:

If she changes her name after marriage, she becomes Paris Latsis too.
Thankfully she is not indian, cause if she was, she would have to take her husband's first name as middle name, and she would be called Paris Paris Latsis.

Imagine the phone calls they receive:
-Who do you want to speak to?
-Paris!
-Paris who?
-Paris Latsis!

Hopefully they will use their head and be imaginative with their kids names... and the first born son doesn't have to be named after the father (or the mother!).. Don't even think about the daughter: its bad enough that she might inherit her mother's looks (or worse still, the brains!).

Angels and Demons

Image source: danbrown.com

I finished reading it. I wouldn't say it is mindblowing, but it is a good read. And I like the whole thing about Ambigrams (like the one on the right!), I am going to do some research on it, and maybe try creating one for my name.

What I find amusing about Dan Brown's writing is that, apart from being predictable, has also has a wierd way of throwing in trivia between his story. Imagine... you are deeply into the character and the clock is ticking, the bomb is about to explode...you are running out of time, you get the adrenaline rush... you want to run.. panic... act...

If Dan Brown had to narrate it, typically, the story would go like this:

The events of the night were playing in his mind like it was a lifetime. He could have never imagined how close he felt to her. He was on the verge of panic. He was choking on his own adrenaline. Adrenaline, he thought, from Latin ad+ renes... on the kidney.... He wondered how many people knew that. But, right now, he had no time, the clock was ticking!

Okay, bad example! Will fabricate a better one soon.

8 reasons Indians will never get real Chinese

Yes, thats what I have been crying hoarse about.

Go Green

Image from: UN World Environment Day

Today is World Environment Day. Of the many causes that bother me, and I crusade about, this is the one closest to my heart. And I am proud of the few friends (like Kini) who take this cause seriously and despite little success at organising tree plantation drives in and around Bangalore they keep at it!. I am also proud of all others who don't "explicitly" crusade but refuse plastic bags, (and carry their own knapsacks to stuff the shopping), recycle paper, switch off the lights and close the taps when not in use and are vegan by choice. I believe it doesn't take much to contribute a little, every contribution being super-special.

Reuters gives numbers: To me these don't mean anything since nothing ever seems to be done about them. Most developing countries/cities seem to skip the relevance of nature when doing the urban planning. When I moved to Bangalore, the garden city of India, it was clean and green. Then they started the massacre on double road. 3 years later, the face of the city had changed. Unfortunately, it is irreversible, and it is frustrating that as an individual there is little you can do about it.

Singapore is indeed the Garden City. For every tree cut, three others are planted. Tropical weather and round the year rain is conducive to sustaining a green landscape. Garbage is non existent. Having no natural resources of its own, everything must be recycled: water, paper. Utopic? No. Here, the environment faces demons of a different kind. The Chinese have humongous appetites for exotic food (read: endangered species), and wouldn't stop at anything to savour their delicacies like Sharks fin soups. Sharks are caught, fins hacked, and they are left to die. Its strange bigger organisations like Disney don't take a stand on it.

I am not willing to sound like a cliched newspaper article, but I would still wish everyone reading this blog would glance through this , and find one little thing that they would like to adopt to do their part. Its a request :)

Whats your favourite Word?

People laugh at me when I ask them this question, but I believe that along with favourite colours, actors, actresses one should also have a preference for a favourite word.

While under a damn tough course on Natural Language Processing (NLP) under a super-absent-minded-professor during my masters, I learnt this: The frequency of occurence of a word is inversely proportional to the information contained in it. For example, since the words “the” and “by” occur very often in language, they contain very little information . These will not help you discriminate one context from the other (and hence are excluded by search engines). On the other hand, words like "Camera" or “Photography” occur in very specific context giving us a lot of information about the bigger picture. After stating this, my professor then felt proud to reach a partly-poetic-partly-philosophical-partly-insane conclusion of: "The words which don’t occur in language (meaning, frequency of occurence is 0) have the most information (~ infinity)". [Or to quote the mushy Ronan Keating song, You say it best, when you say nothing at all]. At this point of time, he was very amused with himself, and he laughed and laughed and laughed. And then paused for some time, and finally said, “The time when you don’t write anything on your answer sheets, you know everything”.

I was confuzzled. This simple principle had then opened up a variety of thought for me, and I remember spending a few minutes thinking about it.
Now, I can list my favourite words under the simple premise of the fact, that trapped within a few characters is an entire concept. Hence my favourites: Serendipity, Chiaroscuro, melange and kiasu. Needless to say, I find very few occasions to use them.

Then come words which are neologisms, words that do not appear in the dictionary but should. I remember having this book called sniglets (circulated with a Readers’ Digest subscription in those days) which had a big set of these words: priceless gems with illustrations. I read it over and over and laughed everytime, since these words were very accurate observations of life in general, and were a story by themselves [Eg, Yinkel - n. A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one will notice.]

After many years, Merriam Webster has published this list and this. Guys,Wordsmiths and Joke lovers--- feed on it. From the list: I have heard Chillax being used for sometime now. I borrowed “confuzzled”. I particularly like “Polkadodge”.

[For the curious: Prof. Lua Kim Teng retired later that year. I passed the course.]