Noises of a different kind.

Awwwww Oooo Ooooo Helloooooo, kuchi koooo, cutie pie, achi pui, oooo sweeetieeee sweetuuuu sweeetuuuuu sweetieee pie, shee's sooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute naaaa..... Ooooooo Oooooo Ooooo Oooooo


Allelllellelele lellelellelellleee... ala kukuku .. allalelelele. cluck cluck cluck ..

You might be wondering what these noises represent. Is this a form of greeting in alien-speak, a martian air-craft landing or the sound effects from a new Bollywood movie ?

It doesn't stop there - it goes on and on ...

kidhal dekh raha hai...... mela sonu bacchu.... hasla hai mela baccha ... Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Allelllellelele lellelellelellleee... ala kukuku .. allalelelele. cluck cluck cluck ..

Ok so to put the reader out of their misery, this is the reaction that greets the sight of any new baby in the family, the friends circle, the friendly harmless baby on the street / in public transport usually travelling with it's parents in tow. These come at different pitches, decibels depending on the situation in which the baby is spotted. If the baby is spotted in a public area, they are usually whispers or very carefully out of anyone else's earshot. Whatever is lost in decibels or pitch is gained by the facial expressions of pleasure or happiness in seeing a cute baby. Nowhere else was Newton more right, there is amazing conservation of energy - the only time this is violated is in the case below.

If it is a picture (of the latest addition to the friends circle or in the family) being examined in the comfort of your living room, then all bets are off. Decibels increase, the shrillness increases and along with it comes the warning of threats from the neighbours and folks wondering if this is a new form of a train horn. At the same time the happiness index in the face also rises and the facial expressions reach a new zenith.

Well then who emits these noises ? These are emitted usually by the female members of the species universally, most recently by the wife on seeing photos of a new addition in the friends circle. A recent survey showed that husbands and boyfriends not exhibiting an enthusiastic (not necessarily acoustically) response to these noises would result in one of the following consequences :  any allowance would be cut,  a massive loss in the brownie points index and servitude by peeling onions for the next n years ( 20 < n < 50) .

Not that I have much against babies or the particular one under question (definitely ranks high in the cuteness quotient) - I usually find them pleasant company, fighting (usually a losing battle) to keep my glasses on or preventing my pockets being picked. There are the occasional moments when I have to find some apparatus for drying my wet shirt.  Nevertheless I find them enjoyable company and having watched at close quarters a nephew and 2 nieces grow up was quite good fun.

But but but I can never be brought to make such noises at their sight either in the form of an attached photo, a video or indeed in person.

Why oh why ... oh why .. oh dear god why ?

P.S.  Before anyone asks if there is any "good" news ... There is not :)
P.P.S.. When the wife reads this: there is a prediction for a sharp fall in the brownie points index ;)

Vinyl records and the joy of old Hindi songs.

Listening to your favourite song in the time before the iPod, the boom boxes on music channels, in my generation was restricted to whatever came on Chitrahaar on a single monopoly (Remember DD?), in some cases the radio (Vividh Bharathi) and in other cases tape players if you had enough cassettes and they survived the tropical weather.

For today's instant generation of getting everything on youtube or the variety of stores that proliferate the smart phone market depending on which vendor you want to pay, this is a reminder that there existed something known as the LP record or the gramophone record where you had a needle run on top of a vinyl record (yeah something like that round thin circular disc that you saw Dr. Lode hand to King George VI in the King's speech) . Yes, one can listen to Mukesh, Rafi, Kishore, Manna Dey on a CD that's been digitally reproduced with whatever bit of computing power can be thrown at removing extraneous noises and enhancing certain chords. However there is a certain joy in listening to that needle scratch through an old record and when it manages to get it right as it does right now , the nostalgia evoked with the days of listening to the songs is quite a nice feeling. It getting stuck on a particular track as it does once in a while is another bit of nostalgia. It wasn't just the Hindi film songs that one enjoyed, it was also classical music - having one of the few LP's where the 3 violinist brothers (L Shankar, L Subrahmanyan and L Vaidyanathan) play together, or listening to the MS performance at Carnegie Hall or listening to music from the slightly forgotten figures today ( ChittiBabu on the veena, Lalgudi on the violin). It wasn't just that - waking up on a Saturday morning at 6 a.m. to listen to the Venkatesa Suprabhatam or even the Vishnu Sahasranamam and Bhaja Govindam was a nice thing to listen to even before one got a cup of the truly Tamilian beverage ( filter kaapi).

One of the ways in which one caught some decent music (before the age of the tape recorder) was essentially Vinyl. This was the mode in which yours truly listened to old songs till the time the gramophone at home conked off at which point there was a hiatus of nearly 8 years till a new one was procured in one of the trips abroad. Of-course by then Dad had moved on to listening to tapes and then on to CDs, having supplemented his collection into tapes and later CDs with the result that one inherited the LP collection.

There are a few folks one has to give thanks to here, one is an aunt who instilled the joy of listening to old songs rather than watch TV and of-course the other is Dad for having carefully and meticulously collected, catalogued and maintained a large number of old LPs and 45 rpm records which I've inherited now (some of which are older than yours truly). It would not be right not to thank the cousin S who held on to a large number of these records when there was that long hiatus .

So if anyone is looking to get rid of some old Vinyl Hindi LP records, STOP !! Think twice about it  - we are happy to find a way of accepting such records and giving them a home . Give me a shout !!

The Autorickshaw effect !

Alert readers would remember that a while back I had commented about how to get even with the infamous Madras Autorickshaws . Needing to get to a place where there was unfortunately no MRTS connection I decided that it was time to haggle. Now themadrasi of 3 years since that post is a little more mellow, portly stout chap who beats the heat typically in a cotton shirt and 3/4th of a pant left specifically in the old homestead for precisely the purpose of use in such hot weather. The auction for the contract was unspectacular . Going to Adyar signal - sir, 60 rupees - illai 50 rupees . ok let's go. Having conducted the business I needed to , I needed to find my mobile and then discovered that it was missing. Now losing a mobile phone is a bit of a pain especially as you don't know how many numbers you end up losing. There is ofcourse the spectacular crash in the brownie points index with the wife and the sheer pain of having to try and retrieve the phone number of every person you knew using other means of communication. No this ain't a smart phone that can sync contacts etc. !

Muttering curses to self for being so careless I decided to hunt this down in a systematic and organized manner. First established the fact that the missing mobile phone hadn't accidentally been left at home. Past performance has suggested such a behavior and it was time to nip this rumour in the bud. So, it wasn't at home and the mother based on descriptions of the autorickshaw driver named a name and it was time to go back and try and see if I could find Muthu at the auto stand near home. Thanks to Kutty the other auto-rickshaw driver at the stand, I managed to track down the elusive Muthu and I gratefully received the phone from him. This has been an eventful trip so far and not short of fun, but Muthu and Kutty today managed to restore some faith in the old creed of Autorickshaw drivers. We still agree to disagree on "meter"ing issues .

Themadrasi - 0 Autorickshaws - 10000

Travel o travel o travel - Covering the miles all 1835 of them !

The next day started with a flight out at 730 a.m. from Bombay to Calcutta to be followed by a 3:30 hour train journey from Calcutta to Jamshedpur. Since I had to get to Jamshedpur from Bombay a distance of  1835 km according to google maps, the best way was to actually take the flight to Calcutta ( 2:45 hours) followed by a 3:30 hour journey by train. There were a couple of variables here, one the journey between Dum-Dum and Howrah and the infamous traffic jams on Howrah Bridge and the second was the company that one would get in a sleeper class compartment on the train journey to this place. The first variable was pretty well handled by a competent local cabbie and the journey ended up taking only 1:10 minutes of the alloted 3 hours.

Howrah is one of those huge stations that you love to travel from - well planned with 23 full sized platforms and 4 more planned with each set of 4 platforms has 2 service roads , so folks after the payment of a fee can *actually* alight next to their compartment (no there are no 'a' and 'b' type platforms as in the UK). It is the largest station that I have travelled from and I suspect one of the largest stations in India but no one seems to be able to confirm this suspicion.

Taking the train in a 2nd class sleeper compartment (for those who don't know what these are see the linked photograph though look at the compartment behind the kingfisher.) was an experience after nearly 8 long years . I had forgotten the experience of being seated in a heated tin-can with the sights and the smells of the country-side or urban area that you were going through. Ofcourse the fun bit was in the various cries of caffee cafee or chai jhai and looking out of the window seated in a forward facing seat ! The cheap thrills of looking out of the window on a curve in the tracks to spot the locomotive or the tail of the 24-25 compartment long train are unmatcheable. The company on this trip was a cute little kid who was hell-bent on teaching me ABCD and counting numbers from 1-100. This was interspersed by a few attempts to throw out the latest Frederick Forsyth novel that I was reading .

In the middle of this , the kid also managed to read the book by flicking through the pages, cheated on a spelling game and checked if I could spell G-A-P . Just when you thought that the temperature was reaching it's heights and you would continue to swelter it was time for a refreshing summer shower.

It's remarkable how many times nature manages to cool things down especially one when is going through a really hot summer afternoon, if it were the UK I would have cursed the rain given that we only seem to get a lot of it and it would surely interfere with my cricket game ! , but here it was fresh, pleasant and the smell of fresh rain on what had been a hot muggy and sweltering afternoon was extremely refreshing. The biggest advantage of travelling in a second class compartment is the ability to actually take in the weather, the sights and the smells of the places you go through. It can be tepid, boring and quite ghastly in some of the urban areas but that's all made up by the smell of the first rains hitting a parched ground but if you really want to travel through India there are no places better than a seat in a super-fast second class compartment with the odd forays to the door of the compartment to sit down and soak up the scenery. Soon enough it was time to alight the train at Jamshedpur to be welcomed by the gang of 5 who made sure that everyone at the station knew that I had arrived with garlands, placards, a homemade director of events and quite a few noisy statements .This sometimes begs the question - with friends like this .... I leave it as homework for the astute reader to finish ......

The new AC100.

I got a new AC100 today running a Tegra2 and Android 2.1 on it. The first thing I did was to try and make it into a dual boot machine with a usb hard drive connected to it and boy is it spiffy and fast while running something like Ubuntu 10.10 . Thanks to ogra for pointing me towards the necessary bits and the #ac100 channel on freenode.

It's reasonably spiffy and based on recommendations from someone else I decided to get going with chromium and that resulted promptly in a crash because of an illegal instruction which might or might not be a compiler bug ! Talk about eating your own dog food eh !

Firefox does seem a bit heavy on this but reasonable. Flash doesn't seem to work out of the box so you have to rely on gnash and other bits and pieces. The biggest showstopper for my wife adopting it is the lack of sound on this but it might be solved by upgrading the emmc to Android 2.2 . Overall not a bad experience so far.

Vacation vacation vacation.

Ah the vacation draws to a close. Everyone sighs - oh you've got 3 weeks off but it's amazing how the days and the hours fly. Some fun activities have included driving around in India by self with the family. The last post dealt with the joys involved in this activity. It wasn't great fun falling ill 5 days into the trip especially with a 20 hour train journey to be managed. The train journeys were fun, ofcourse one of the high points of the trip.

Oh, attending a wedding, meeting old friends and making new ones, singing ghazals and old Hindi songs in the evening in public causing jaws of members of the family to drop beyond measure , pleasantly surprising the wife with such an act of lunacy ! However members in the audience were too polite to point out the resemblance my singing would have had to a donkey braying .

A rest day later it was time to begin the remainder of the travelling down south to Coimbatore and Guruvayur where I saw one of the best sights there is to see at the Guruvayur temple. It was 9:15 p.m. and time for what they call the Srivali seva. Like most temples in India, there's a strict ban on photography inside the temples for fear of the art thieves and in addition the belief that there shouldn't be photos of idols stored elsewhere, however this was one time I really wished for my camera. All Indian temples have a sanctum sanctorum, in Guruvayur this sanctum sanctorum has space for 1000s of oil lamps on all 4 of its walls. Once the temple was to be closed for the night, the closing ceremony on certain days (either requested for/ paid for my devotees or on special occasions) all the lamps would be lit on all 4 walls. This means that once it's night you've got all walls lit up by small oil lamps which are in perfect symmetry and is one of the most amazing sights one can watch. This is then followed with a procession by 3 of the temple elephants all decked up in gold and with men alternately seated and standing atop the elephant and transitioning between these states without *any* support from the sides. These men were athletic, nimble and showed some of the finest traditions that exist still deep in the South of India. Sadly I couldn't find any photos to show the same for a reference.

After this it was time to move to the city with just 3 seasons, hot hotter and hottest . I'd say we are in the "hotter"season where it's usually tepid, miserable and usually a pain to stay. A day trip from Madras was to Kanchipuram and to the ancestral village which had to be visited for some personal reasons. One of the things I came across in these villages was the use of solar power to light street lamps in every nook and cranny. This by itself has reduced the dependence these villages have on electricity boards for electricity and providing the village with safe renewable energy.  The village in question had a school that's now in the process of starting Classes 11 and 12, there is hope and there is education and there is a choice in such villages for growth.

In the last 19 days we've been to 8 places some of which have included day trip in sweltering 35 degrees C. The measure to which I've been spoilt now shows with the fact that if I am to survive in Chennai or Madras as it was known earlier , I need the AC on to bring down the temperature to a bearable 28 degrees C . But boy has this been worth it and have I needed the break ! Certain improvements are visible, the tendency to check email has dropped - I've checked email 5 times in 3 weeks which is a significant improvement compared to previous pyrrhic vacations.


And on that note - sigh, mutter, next Monday is just 4 days away and 2 plane journeys away :( ...

Freeview ... yahoo !

On a lazy Saturday morning, one woke up grumbling about toolchains and life in general and then came the thought about  the IPL starting. Going through the normal routine about reading more about cricket than watching it thoughts slowly started filtering through the fog. A vague curse rose to the lips regarding planning regulations. Consoling one self about the new youtube channel on cricket and IPL, one went back to thinking and the the penny dropped. You see, this year the IPL would be available on terrestial television in the UK and as resignation turned towards expectation and increasing degrees of smugness, one tuned the t.v. to ITV4 to see Tendulkar walk out to bat. The reason for this gradual increase in smugness is that for 1 year one has felt like a prize goof everytime a good game of cricket has gone on in the world and the television has apparently mocked back at me.

Last year one wrestled up a 42 inch HD t.v. in a hurry hoping to get a particular brand of satellite television and get to watch all the sports in the world. The application for the satellite television had gone out before the television was procured and the engineer turned up 3 days later, took one look at the south wall and went on about planning regulations and having dishes poking out of walls. A red mist descended, though it has receded slowly over the year the feeling of being a prize goof hasn't gone away that quickly.

Gloating was never good for anyone but once in a while one can afford the luxury of saying .. Ha jolly ha !

Yeah yeah I was there when Mr. Tendulkar hit 200

Yeah yeah, me my uncle , my mother and everyone else's chacha were there when Sir Tendlya, the boss of cricket scored a 200. We were all there when the following events also happened.

100 - Headingley 1990 England - Test drawn

114 - Perth - 1991 Australia - India lost.

155 - Chennai - 1998 Australia - India won.

136 - Chennai - 1999 Pakistan - India lost.

98 - Centurion - 2003 Pakistan - India won.

241 - Sydney - 2003 Australia - India won.

Last over - Calcutta - 1994 South Africa - India Won. (The Hero cup semi-final)

5-36 - Kochi - 1998 Australia - India won.

143 - Sharjah - 1998 Australia - India won.

117 - Sydney ? - 2008 Australia - India won. (Finals of the CB Series)

175 - Hyderabad - 2009 Australia - India lost.

163 - Chennai - 2008 - England - India won.

And like most Indians we cheered loud and clear. Reading about it on websites left one slightly disgruntled at planning regulations. The BCCI's speed at removing highlights videos from youtube for copyright claims left one wondering about efficiencies. Finally finding an opportunity to watch it now leaves one contented after a long week's work and getting the chance to visualize certain comments.

The beautiful flick of the wrists that got a boundary from outside off stump to the midwicket boundary. The non-chalant flick from outside off stump to the midwicket boundary to move from 162 to 168. The double to go past a certain Mr. Anwar who got 194 with a runner in Madras on a humid day in 1997.

But on this day - all ijj well, the cold disappears ever so slightly , the sun appears to stay out longer (only till 5:45 p.m.) - the best batsman in the world has 200 off 147 balls. However the wife, who's typically agnostic to cricket forwarded me an analysis possibly also seen by millions others.

Agree you have done GREAT......

BUT BUT BUT BUT

• 25 x 4s = 100
• 3 x 6s = 18
• It implies that you have scored 118 Runs in 28 Balls.
• And 12 x 2s = 24
• 58 x 1s = 58
• It means you have scored 200 Runs in only 98 balls
• Hence wasted 147-98 = 49 balls
• Considering only 1 run scored on each of these balls you could have earned
• 49 valuable RUNS **for the team*

And hence scored 250 and India 450 - Given this performance the manager has no choice but to award you an appraisal rating of someone who's only achieved expectations and not exceeded it !

If only we were so demanding of the road contractors after the monsoons in Pune...

It certainly does look like this man is on a mission - a mission to win the 2011 world cup. All ye cricket fans plan your vacations in advance, there is only one place to be in 2011.

P.S. It sounds as though cricinfo has ordered some Tendulkar servers ...

Serendipity

Sunday - Valentine's day - what does one do to earn brownie points ? The easiest thing to do was to take the fast train to London, cruise about the Temz and explore parts of London by foot with the wife. Rumours had reached our ears about the existence of an area in London called East Ham and the presence of Saravana Bhavan, Vasanta Bhavan in the general area. This was supposed to be where a Tamilian would find the worth of his salt in the existence of Tayir Saadham (a.k.a Curd Rice, with a seasoning of Curry Leaves, Mustard seeds, salt , green chillies ) ! and the presence of a large number of Cash and Carry stores. Entering one of the cash and carry stores for grocery shopping resulted in a substantial transformation of a swipe into weight for the hands !

Saravana Bhavan is one chain of hotels that prides itself on the taste of its' food being the same across *all* it's kitchens. It was time to verify if this was the case even with the East Ham branch and needless to say that after sampling the necessary items including a full South Indian meal (Full meals Saar!) , an Onion Uthappa , 2 Ghee Pongals the conclusion was reached in the affirmative even if the kitchens are the proverbial 7 seas apart ! There was a consideration to order a Bisibela Bhat or a Ghee Roast but then we've left this for the next time. Advice for others attempting this stunt - please go only after fasting for a day or two !

However as a part of this process, one was asked to sacrifice the Semiya Paayaasam ( a.k.a Kheer, a sweet made with milk and Vermicelli) and after due consideration (which was half a pico second) promptly refused ! Bad Move !

Still searching for the brownie points :(

Books list.

The BBC in a survey in 2003 said that folks only read 6 out of this list of 100 . I've read 36 - the wife's read 36. Is it just the amount of reading that has reduced. What will be the result 5 years hence when the ipad and the Bookstore are all pervasive ? The mind boggles.

P.S. The old adage goes on something about marriages being made in heaven and all that...

An ode to the German Bakery.

Reading about the cowardly attack on the German Bakery today was quite a scary proposition. The German Bakery holds special value for a lot of folks - foreigners and locals alike. The lethargic ambience, the cup of tea and the wonderful pastries was one of the reasons for it to be a popular hang out joint in Koregaon Park. Having spent many a moon near that area and passing it on the way to work on a daily basis it was quite sad to note the blasts in the area. Immediate thoughts went to friends and family who would usually hang out in that area for a quiet meal or whatever. If one had remained in Pune, it wouldn't have been uncommon to have been having a meal at one of the many great restaurants on North Main Road or transit that road en-route to other restaurants. Saturday evening = Dinner around North Main Road, movie at Ad-Labs.

I hope folks injured by this blast recover quickly and may the souls of those who died rest in peace.

3 idiots - All ijj well.

A bird told me that Cambridge was hosting the 3 idiots. It meant that we would wander over the few 100 meters to the theatre on a lazy Sunday afternoon. There was no room for us in the theatre. What ? A hindi movie and house full in Cambridge, you must be kidding right ?

It was time to put the record straight - resolutions were made - improving the compiler could wait for a day, dinner out , movie at 645 p.m., leave nothing to chance - book tickets online , buy dinner at the Friendly neighbourhood Subway and let's try and catch it. At the end of 3 hours All ijj well , nothing like a cannily crafted movie with enough subtleties to leave an audience tittering and holding their stomachs as though gongura (or the Faal for the more of my British readers) had gone through it ! Painful ecstacy !

There were some traditional jokes which were very well conveyed including a metaphor passing as a Sanskrit verse ! It was situational comedy at it's very best , a genre being perfected by Rajkumar Hirani - as the NDTV review says (read in hindsight) , this truly is Munna Bhai Part 3. Despite all the controversy about 3 idiots and 5 point someone, one must say that the genesis might come from the book , but the screenplay and plot in this is totally different from the book and probably is far better in its conceptualization. Also the true hero for me isn't Aamir Khan or Madhavan or Boman Irani but Sharman Joshi as Raju Rastogi. True there are exaggerations with inventions out of no-where but who says it's not possible.

If you haven't seen it already , go watch it - enjoy it and probably relive some of your college days - for anyone who's seen any form of hostel life this will ring some wonderful bells and remind you of times long past and incidents that will bring a smile to your face. Everyone will remember a Chatur Ramalingam , a Rancho of the class, a Raju Rastogi , initial ragging for the class and a Viru Sahastrabuddhe !

At the end of the day - All ijj well .......

Economy Drives and Cattle Class.

Reading about the Economy Drive in India reminds me of a certain Economy drive in one of the greatest political satires of all time - Yes Minister. All the classic ingredients are present in the mix , a recession, (the 2008) inflation, (this year's) deflation and a perilous state of public finances the world over. Think of the political classes to come up with an Economy Drive !. A request is made by the finance ministry that all ministers travel by Economy class amid a few protests that they are too tall, too fat or too thin !

The press have their controversy courtesy a tweet , a couple of ministers travel economy class in airplanes , the leader of the party in government travels by Economy class but spends more on security and an MP travels in first class on the same flight ! A train in which a youth leader travels is damaged, the cost of which should be surely higher than a first class ticket in a commercial plane. Nice - all similar to the Economy Drive. Now will 69 diplomats from a Western neighbour be expelled or will the courtesy be extended to some of the diplomats from across the Himalayas for the economy drive to pause.

The mind boggles .....

Elections, Sensex and Mayhem.

Waking up on a Saturday morning 4-1/2 hours behind the good old des one was immediately struck with the thought - Election results => streaming NDTV, shiny new ADSL2+ broadband. Thanks to the time difference there was no surprise left in the results by the time I got around to looking at the results and seeing Prannoy Roy for what must be the infinitieth time run us through the election results. It was indeed interesting to note that this is the first time a government that has completed 5 years has been almost reelected. Streaming NDTV 24X7 live on a webcast worked like a charm though one did get the feeling that the ad-breaks were a bit too long. Watching the spoilers like the 3rd, 4th and even the 999th front get a pasting from the voters was quite a nice feeling.

Our Prime Minister must be wondering about there being no sense with the traders. In 2004 the markets fell the maximum in a day because the Congress had been voted in, in 2009 the markets had to be closed again because the Congress was voted in. What will happen in 2014 ? The mind boggles.

The market's reaction today is the burden of expectations on this government. The cry has gone out, Perform or Perish. The Indian voter will no longer tolerate political slogans ! As for me - I'll go back to watching the Beeb muse about the expenses row here in the U.K. I wonder what will happen if MPs in India were asked to disclose their expenses.

The Laptop Crisis of 2009

There is something about laptops and the family this year. First my cousin's laptop blew up , then I followed suit by stress testing my pride and joy by upsetting a glass of water in a eureka moment on discovering how a particular bit of the compiler worked. Now, its the turn of the sister in the family to go and blow her laptop up. Other than my act of putting the proverbial leg on the axe ( Kulhadi pey pair maarna !), the other 2 were acts of nature , wear and tear and resulting in an explosion of cataclysmic proportions.

Currently the sister's laptop is down and she's busy with writing odes from a netcafe. The first I heard about this was a frantic call at 2:30 in the afternoon - "drop everything find me HP's number in Bombay so that I may contact them". Such tasks were duly completed and then 3-4 hours later one gets a call about how ham-handed one feels with the laptop down etc. It appears as though storm clouds are on you, the world is torn apart and you are crippled without your main course of "facebooking", "tweeting", "blogging" and "orkutting". The entertainment channel of watching dvd's or getting on youtube is out . If you are a techie, the side business of following your community's IRC chat is out. What is it about this dependence on technology and such inane devices that make them a part of you. When things stop working the way you are used to , you feel totally hamstrung as though a part of you has been cut off. One now owns an iphone, a laptop and an ipod and not having any of these would leave one like Lord Emsworth from Blandings worrying about the Empress's eating habits .

These are the occasions for the proverbial cuppa coffee, a snug blanket (definitely a thin one for an Indian Summer) and a good book.

Clapham ho.

'The first thing to do,' said Psmith, 'is to ascertain that such a place as Clapham Common really exists. One has heard of it, of course, but has its existence ever been proved? I think not. Having accomplished that, we must then try to find out how to get to it. I should say at a venture that it would necessitate a sea-voyage. On the other hand, Comrade Waller, who is a native of the spot, seems to find no difficulty in rolling to the office every morning. Therefore--you follow me, Jackson?--it must be in England. In that case, we will take a taximeter cab, and go out into the unknown, hand in hand, trusting to luck.' [1]


So it's been one of those things with moving to the UK and wanting to find places like Ickenham, Clapham, Market Snodsbury, (an equivalent of) The Drones Club etc. being a huge PG Wodehouse afficionado. Given that one was to travel across the country to the lovely city of Sutton for a day trip, one didn't expect to spot Wodehousian names or be reminded of Wodehousian prose with events that transpired on the way.

The only difference between this expedition and the one referred to above, was that one had a bird for company who after a long winded preamble (which included choice epithets on how yours truly's sincere and honest efforts at figuring out the right platform for the tube) pushed you into a train that pushed us back nearly 1/3rd of the way back to Cambridge. Blame it on the birds being out of place underground or the weather brilliant today. All the angst against the delays were excused once, ( after the minor process of getting on to the correct t was completed,) one passed through Clapham Junction and realized that this would probably lead to Clapham Common in the scene where Mike does the Jijutsu on Bill and proves to be the saviour of Comrade Waller.


[1] : Psmith from Psmith and the City by P.G. Wodehouse.

The great British Bathroom.

So, its house hunting time again having moved to Cambridge to take up employment at a place that is famous for thumbs, arms and mobile phones.

The key thing to look for in any house or apartment here is the bathroom and especially the shower. Remember that in the UK it's possibly a law that no 2 showers should look or work alike. Some places have an instant electric shower which has a very intuitive and effective interface to the user. Some others make it obscure with 3 moving dials , one for controlling water flow, a 2nd dial that can make things warmer or colder and then a third to set the temperature. The result is that dials 2 and 3 can get out of sync and you can actually get cold water when you want hot water and so on and so forth. So the first thing you do as soon as you get into the house is to make sure you look at the bathroom. The other funny thing about bathrooms is that somehow in the 80s folks got the idea that a bathroom was really cool with having a carpet inside it. So now that you have a carpet inside you have to be really careful about how to take bath etc. and make sure none of the water from the shower actually falls on the carpet. Contrast this with the Indian genes of associating foot marks on the floor to leave evidence of your bathing every day to concerned parents you actually have a big problem .

In the end I chose an apartment with a magnificent bathroom with a shower that I know how to operate and laminate flooring ! Yay !

Delay that damned flight !

Sitting at Kamaraj Domestic Terminal in Madras waiting to catch a flight back to Pune, I was sitting and twiddling my thumbs watching updates by folks on a Facebook channel and hoping that the flight be delayed because the buses designated to take the passengers to the aircraft ran out of diesel or some such. The t.v. at the airport was tuned to a popular English news channel and there were dozens mouthing platitudes but one wanted to see the actual action. I counted 4 and that included Resul Pookutty winning the Oscar for best sound mixing . That was good and if any indication meant that Rehman should now win. One was rooting for AR Rehman to win and didn't particularly care if the movie won any other awards.

But with the conservative TamBrahm gene throbbing and growing up with the Indian cricket team lose out on many occassions in the past, it was too early to be saying Jai Ho. At this point of time when there was a needless presentation about how films get made in the ceremony, one's flight got called. I had to board it murmuring vague curses on the efficiency of Paramount, the ATC, the state of the economy. Colonel Murphy does rule after all.

However one was saved by technology - the humble mobile phone hummed and one got the news that led (an imaginary clone of yours truly) to do 24 cartwheels, 5 somersaults and an exhibition of the shirshasan inside the plane. However in the general interest of humanity and not willing to stress test the Embraer Aircraft or take pangas with Sky Marshals, one took it with a smile and promptly downed a bottle of water.

P.S.

Ella pughalum iraivanuke (All glory and fame is to God) - Rehman in his acceptance speech.

Jai Ho

Tradeoffs...

Well blogging this as I am on a train from Leicester to Cambridge using my 3 mobile broadband data card, I can't help but marvel at the amazing contradictions in infrastructure. Whilst the train from Leicester to Bristol passed through regions without network coverage, atleast it did have power points for the laptop to be plugged in . However, the train from Leicester to Cambridge appears to go through areas served well by 3's network the train doesn't have any power points to plug in the laptop. A trade off everywhere. ...

Stop Snowing ...

Watching the snow come down over the past 2 days in the UK has left me with conflicting emotions. It's been the maximum amount of snow in the last 18 years in London and the parts of the UK that I am now in . I thought originally that walking in the snow would be more fun than walking in the rain but have quickly concluded that atleast in the UK walking in the snow isn't that much fun.

The temperatures aren't too much below zero, hence snow keeps melting and refreezing as ice . The other thing is the high humidity and the threat of rain that makes things even worse by converting roads into cesspools of slush , grime covered by thin layers of ice.

Other than the climatic consideration above, the pain also seems to be inhaling snow flakes, having them fall into your eyes while walking. One does read about concepts of reflection of light and so on, but you can actually see how the place really gets lit up with the streetlights and the snow - The whole city seems alight and the light effects are quite awesome.