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Go check out Rocket Singh

2009-12-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

If you've ever been an entrepreneur, there are so many things you'll find endearing in this movie. Being a salesman is the foremost thing an entrepreneur has to learn -- being able to sell, and sell effectively, is probably most critical to a company's success.

But salesmanship isn't the only thing that's needed -- you have to be able to deliver. Make your customers happy, and they will make you successful.

Rocket Singh delivers well. Go check it out.

Random Bollywood quotes..

2009-11-19T21:52:00.000-08:00

There are many Bollywood quotes that come to mind every once in a while -- for all different reasons. Can you guess the movies?

1. "Loha garam hai, maar do hathoda"

2. "Aisa to aadmi life mein doich time bhagta hai -- olympic ka race ho, ya police ka case ho. Tum kai ko bhagta hai?"

3. "Galti se mishtake ho gaya sir."

4. "Thoda khao, thoda phenko!"

5. "Tu apni jawani jee chuka hai to ja, ab meri jawani jee ke aa!"

6. "Aaj waqt ne mujhe maara, tu bhi mujhe maar le..."

7. "Jab jab jo jo hota hai, tab tab vo vo hota hai"

8. "Ek to mujhe aajtak yeh samajh nahin aaya ki tumhare maa baap ne tumhara naam Calendar kyon rakha"

9. "Hum jahan khade hote hain, line wahin se shuroo hoti hai"

10. "Tareekh par tareekh par tareekh!"

Ladakh - Zanskar Trek: Day 9 and the Trip home

2009-09-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

Day 9: Pishu to Padum, via Karsha

From Zanskar Trek

We started the last day of the trek hoping to find a taxi along the way. It had rained a bit through the night, and the morning was colder and cloudier than usual. It helped make the hike easier, but the clouds also hid the tall mountains around us.

The hike to Karsha from Pishu was along an unpaved path that clearly had car tracks. Cars clearly did make it to Pishu, but we didn’t see one until Karsha.

The hike was along the flat bed of the valley, along the Zanskar river. As we walked, the valley opened up more, and we started seeing taller, whiter mountains around us. We saw the Stongde monastery on a hill across the river -- something we would have thought about making a detour to if we weren’t that dead tired. Past Stongde, we could see Padum in the distance as well.

From Zanskar Trek

We didn’t meet any hiker this day -- in either direction. We suspected that most people must either drive to Pishu, or even Zang La to start the hike in the opposite direction. We were the only idiots who hiked the entire distance.

It took us a good part of 5 hours to get to Karsha. We expected horses to catch up to us by the time we got there. We had hoped that if we couldn’t get a taxi, we can ride the horses to Padum -- we definitely did not want to hike the last two hours to Padum. As we neared Karsha, we realized the horses weren’t going to catch up with us. They had taken a different path and were taking a shorter route directly to Padum. We could see them in distance closer to the bridge on the river, while we stood on the hill in Karsha.

From Zanskar Trek

Luckily we found a taxi as soon as we entered Karsha. It was a different matter that the guy expected us to pay him Rs 800 for a 10 minute ride. Under normal circumstances, I would have refused to pay anything more than 50, but this time we settled for 700.

Ten minutes later we were in Padum -- which clearly looked like a town with facilities.

Immediately we set about finding a proper hotel to stay in. We looked at three and finally took the third one -- none of them was as clean as we would have liked. Once we had found the hotel, we ventured out looking for food. Our notion of “food” was clearly different than what was available in Padum. Apparently they don’t have any vegetables, so we could only get mutton, or chowmein and mo-mos. We, on the other hand, had been day dreaming about all kinds of meals we would feast on once we ended the hike. Alas!

However, we had a hotel room, beds, shower, warm water and a taxi for the next day to take us to Kargil and Srinagar.

The Drive to Srinagar via Kargil

From Zanskar Trek

The drive to Kargil goes through the Zanskar valley and it was probably the most breathtakingly beautiful drive I have ever been on. We passed through valleys and passes, always surrounded by tall snow covered mountains. As we neared Kargil, at some point the region became more lush and villages became more frequent, roads became better. We also noticed that the population changed from being mostly Ladakhi to mostly Muslim.

It took us 12 hours to get to Kargil. Kargil itself is a pretty big town, especially when compared to everything we had been subjected to so far. It seemed bigger than Leh.

We stayed at a hotel that our guide had said is the best hotel in Kargil. Pooja took it to mean that this was going to be a 5 star hotel, complete with spa and shops and all elements of luxury. I asked her to not expect too much, and indeed she felt quite disappointed when we arrived at the hotel. The hotel was quite alright though -- a bit baroque, but had warm water, and everything we needed. It was probably the first day in many that we enjoyed a really good meal.

We left early morning the next day for Srinagar -- we were on the road by 4am! I realized why we needed to hit the road that early a litle bit later. The highway to Srinagar is closed in the night and the barrier at Drass opens up at 6am. The road is lined with cars and trucks waiting to cross at 6am.

I had thought the drive to Kargil was pretty, but as we got closer to Srinagar I realized why this place is the one people rave so much more about. Ladakh and Zanskar are extreme places -- and very brutal -- but Kashmir is just as beautiful and a lot more habitable and soothing. It is very saddening to know that this place suffers from chronic militancy and disputes -- because you fall in love with Kashmir very quickly.

From Zanskar Trek

We stayed at a houseboat on the Dal Lake -- the houseboat called “Teharan,” owned and run by an elderly gentleman whose hosptality made our stay very memorable. Based on what everyone called him, we addressed him as Haji sahib too. His cook made for us lamb curry, biryani, seekh kebab -- and we downed them all. If you are ever in Srinagar -- look up Teharan houseboat!

For a change, Pooja’s expectations were also met -- we thoroughly enjoyed our stay, however short it was. And it did feel short. Both of us promised ourselves to return to Srinagar for a longer visit.

But after a long trek, we were looking forward to the comfort of home. Sweet home.

Ladakh - Zanskar Trek: Day 8

2009-09-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Day 8: Hanumil to Pishu, via Pidmo

By the eighth day, mountainous trek had given way to relatively flat walk along the river. It was a lot easier to walk. However, the sun was beating down harder than it had earlier, and the trek didn’t feel any easier. It of course didn’t help that we were getting quite tired -- mentally more than physically -- and were really eager to finish the trek.

This day we were going to get to Pishu. An option we were thinking of was to go to Zang La, another village across the river and take a bus from there to Padum (our destination) the next morning. While the bus sounded very tempting, the additional hour of trek to Zang La from Pishu didn’t.

From Zanskar Trek

The guest house owner in Hanumil had said that we will start to get cell phone reception in Pishu. We decided we would call up from there to our agent in Leh, and try to have him send the car all the way to Pishu or at least to Karsha. We also thought maybe Pishu is a more populous place, and we might find even more facilities there -- such as a guest house!

The hike was actually quite nice -- we hiked through the pretty village of Pidmo, and hiked along the river. After a 5-6 hour hike, we eventually reached Pishu. The first thing we did when we reached there was to get our cell phone out and start looking for signal. No such luck. We tried hard: we walked around, we held it up, we checked at different times of the day, but our cell phone refused to find a signal. “You should be able to get a signal here,” said a local. “But sometimes they turn off the generator so the tower may be switched off!”

From Zanskar Trek

The campsite in Pishu was, for a change, very green. And huge. It was soothing to the eyes, being jaded from all the dust and rock the past several days. We thought the horses must be going nuts -- having arrived at a buffet after days of fasting. The horses indeed were -- and so was the land owner. He didn’t want horses grazing there for the night and insisted they be taken into the mountains as usual.

This was something else we felt somewhat amazed at on our trek. After each day’s hike, the guy who tended to the horses will hike up further into the mountains and take the horses to greener pastures. Often he would sleep there in the open as well and return the next morning, and then hike with us for the rest of the day!

From Zanskar Trek

Ladakh - Zanskar Trek: Day 7

2009-09-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

Day 7: Parfi La to Hanumil: Entering Zanskar valley

We were very excited about the seventh day: we were going to cross the Parfi La -- the last pass on the trek -- and we were going to enter the Zanskar valley.

As was usual now, we started early, ahead of our entourage. The climb started almost immediately to the Parfi La. Though not as a steep or long as the climb for Hanamu La the previous day, Parfi La felt more tiring. For one, Pooja’s diarrhea was back. We concluded that any time she eats something made of flour that is not fried or boiled, her stomach can’t handle it. Earlier it was the mo-mos and this time the pizza.

From Zanskar Trek

This day we met quite a few other hikers -- all headed in the direction opposite to us. One of the guys we met was doing the trek entirely by himself, and had done the trek a few times before too. He expressed surprise to see Indians on the trek -- he said he didn’t see enough Indians walking in the mountains. He of course wasn’t counting the staff that accompanies every hiker. And he was right -- invariably the people we met on the trek were not from India.

Crossing the Parfi La we entered the Zanskar valley. We were surprised to see a large river -- Zanskar is actually a much bigger river than we had thought. It was hard to imagine that this river freezes up in the winter and people trek on it.

Initially, the Zanskar valley was underwhelming -- probably because we had been walking through some amazing scenery the past 6 days, or because the long trek had tired our senses. We were expecting lush green valleys, but all we saw was more barren land. One difference, though, was that the valley was much wider and much more open. And we didn’t have any more passes to climb!

It took several hours of walking on a rocky path along the river to get to Hanumil: a relatively green village with 2 houses, 5 people and 3 “hotels.” One of the houses carried a big “Guest House” sign -- and that raised our hopes quite a bit. I could sense Pooja’s excitement as we walked towards the guest house.

From Zanskar Trek

“Look, it says ‘Guest House’ doesn’t it? Yes it does!”

“Hmm.. yeah, but is it open? It looks closed... Look there’s a drum blocking the entrance.” said I.

“Why won’t it be open? It says Guest House!”

“Look, it’s locked.”

“Let’s ask that guy. At least we can find out about a shower.”

As it turns out, the guy in question owned the guest house. He showed us the room, which looked pretty inviting. There was a slight problem though. When we asked him about the bathroom, he pointed to the river.

“I want to build a bathroom, and toilet and more things. But you can’t get plumbers and skilled people to come here.”

We spent yet another night in the tent.

Ladakh - Zanskar Trek: Day 6

2009-09-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

Day 6: Hanamu La to Parfi La base camp close to Jing Chan

The next day started off pleasantly. Pooja was in great spirit -- she had slept well for the first time on the trek, and she felt a lot better. We left the camp with lesser load on us than normal -- giving away even our backpacks to be carried by the horses. Pooja intended to climb the pass herself and we left even earlier than normal to put some distance between us and the horses.

It turned out to be probably the most pleasant day of the trek. The climb, though steep, was pleasant. We made it to the top in about 2.5 hours. We had now given explicit instructions to our entourage where we were going to stop each day -- a hike of no more than 6-7 hours for the entire day for any of the days remaining.

From Zanskar Trek

The hike down from the pass was straightforward -- along a narrow gully that kept showing signs of opening up but never really did. We stopped at Nyestre -- all it had was a tea stall (aka “hotel”) -- where we ran into a couple of hard core French backpackers. Unlike us, they were carrying their entire stuff on them (tents, food, everything) and -- yet more unlike us -- they had started that morning from Lingshed, were going to cross another pass the same day. I bowed in respect.

From Zanskar Trek

We reached our camp in an hour’s hike from Nystre. The camp was in a mountain gorge, next to a beautiful mountain river. It was the first day of the trek that we reached the camp site early in the day and were feeling well. Things were finally beginning to look up! :)

We took full advantage of the flowing river and washed and rinsed -- we were finally going to get some clean clothes to wear the next day.

That day, for dinner, our cook made pizza with olives as toppings.

Ladakh - Zanskar trek: Day 5

2009-09-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

Day 5: Gajo to Hanamu La base camp, via Lingshed (aka another Really Long Day)

We started the fifth day somewhat lazily. We had made a resolution that we were not going to hike more than 5-6 hours that day. Our plan was to stop at Lingshed. The guide book indicated that there was a guest house there -- and that sounded like a welcome change.

The hike to Lingshed was much easier than the hike of the previous two days. We crossed a small pass on the way but it didn’t involve much of a climb.

Lingshed is a beautiful village, situated in a green valley, surrounded by tall rocky mountains on all sides. No roads come here -- though there is a helipad that mostly recently had brought the Dalai Lama here for a visit a week back. Lingshed Gompa makes a pretty sight as you come over a tiny pass and start to descend into the valley.

From Zanskar Trek

However, Lingshed does NOT have a guest house. Upon enquiring, someone told us that there was a “homestay” just a short walk down the mountain. As it turned out, the “homestay” was an empty house that you could take your sleeping bags to and live in -- a far cry from what we had in mind.

Our guides made some excuses why it wasnt a good idea to camp there (too much sand blowing around, no water, blah) and we, grudgingly, decided to hike forward to the base camp for Hanamu La. Having wasted several hours in Lingshed, it was near dark by the time we reached the base camp. We could see the trail leading to the next day’s climb in front of us -- in fact we could see it in the distance from Lingshed itself. We knew the next day was going to be a long climb.

From Zanskar Trek

Ladakh - Zanskar Trek: Day 4

2009-09-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

Day 4: Photoksar to Shinge La base camp close to Gajo (aka the Longest Day)

From Zanskar Trek

The next morning started early. Pooja woke up with a headache around 4 or 5 in the morning. We had taken medicine for altitude sickness the night before, and had been downing the garlic-ginger soup we had been recommended so heavily. Pooja bit off a power bar and took an Ibuprofen. The decision seemed obvious: we’ll head back to Leh, take a taxi to get to Srinagar and catch our flight back as we had originally planned. Both of us felt a bit disappointed but also a bit more assured.

Around 6:30, our guides came to check on us and confirm what we wanted to do: go forward or return. We told him we were going to head back. Once he left, we got talking. Pooja, miraculously, was feeling better: no headache, no nausea. I felt alright too. We decided to carry on forward. We weren’t too comfortable with the decision, but we both did want to do the trek. We also knew that moving forward meant we had to finish the trek: we were going to cross Shinge La -- the highest pass on the trek -- and it will be harder to come back than go forward.

It was also decided that one of the horses will be freed up for Pooja to ride.

We informed our entourage of our decision, packed, had a quick bite to eat and took off on ahead. The initial hike to a smaller pass even before Shinge La was hard -- Pooja got tired quickly. The horses were yet to catch up with us. In the meanwhile, Pooja started needing to go take a dump every hour or so. Now that she felt cured of the altitude sickness, she had diarrhea.

Eventually we had Pooja on a horse and we kept going towards Shinge La. That day’s hike was probably the prettiest hike of all the nine days The pass was nestled between two huge impressive peaks. It was a day that reminded me of Tintin in Tibet a lot. Except that it was supremely tiring.

I still didn’t have much of an appetite and couldn’t eat the lunch we had packed. After about 6 hours of hiking we realized that we were going forward beyond where other groups were stopping. While other groups stopped at the base camp and planned to cross Shinge La the following day, we were pressing forward. As our final climb neared, I too found myself breathing a little too hard too frequently.

Pooja and I switched for a little bit -- and I rode the horse for some part of the way while Pooja hiked. Eventually we made it to the top -- out of breath and exhausted. However the day was not yet over. It took another 3 hours of hiking to get to our camp site eventually. By the end of the ten hour hike, were were tired, pissed and hungry all at the same time. The first thing we told our guides when we reached the camp was that no way in hell were we hiking more than 5-6 hours the next day.

From Zanskar Trek

That night we had a stroke of luck. There were a couple of Polish hikers who we had met earlier in the day, who happened to show up at our camp that night. They were looking for some cooked food and our cook obliged. As we sat talking we learnt they had a guidebook. That night we borrowed their book and pored through it in detail. It turned out to be a great book: it had maps and had estimates for how long it will take us to hike between different points on the route. By the next morning we had a plan.

Ladakh - Zanskar trek Day 3

2009-09-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

From Zanskar Trek

Day 3: Hanupeta to Photoksar, via Shise La

We woke up to a beautiful morning -- as our photos will confirm. It was also the first day we went to the loo in the open: no toilets on this trip!

After a quick breakfast in the morning, Pooja and I started off first while our entourage took care of packing up. We were going to cross the second pass of the trek, and it was going to be a long steady climb. As we started hiking, Pooja started complaining about headache. We thought it was just the sun and continued up. As we climbed up and trudged on, it got worse. She threw up once, and her headache worsened.

Close to the top of the pass, we met a guide from another group heading the same way as us. We exchanged notes and, to my dismay, he was of a very strong opinion that the trek will take us 11-12 days and not the 9 days we were planning for. In contrast, the cook-guide with us felt we “have to finish the trek in 9 days irrespective of whatever” even though he had no clue what lay ahead. As we discussed -- and both of the guides were quite animated about expressing themselves -- at the “hotel” on the pass, I noticed Pooja was looking quite bad.

From Zanskar Trek

She had tied her scarf tightly around her head and was sitting with her head firmly in her hands. My first thought was to turn back. We stayed there for a little bit while the horses and the cook went on ahead. We ate some Maggi, drank some tea and eventually started up again. Within minutes Pooja had vomited everything she had eaten. Bravely enough, though, she made it to the top and we were eventually at our camp a couple of hours later.

At the camp, while Pooja took some garlic-ginger soup to nurse what looked like altitude sickness, I argued with our guides. Dhuntup, who was responsible for the horses and had done the trek earlier, was very hard to follow -- he would pretty much agree to whatever we proposed. It didn’t help that we now learnt that the written plan we had been given from Leh to follow was incorrect: it even listed the places we would reach in the wrong order. We realized we had to somewhat take leap of faith if we were to go forward, and it will surely mean a more arduous trek than we had thought it would be.

And it didn’t help that Pooja wasn’t able to eat anything.

We finally postponed the decision to the next morning: if Pooja felt better and we could move forward, we will. To make matters worse, I had a headache and nausea by the time dinner came around.

We had mo-mo’s for dinner -- steamed dumplings, something Pooja normally craves for -- though neither of us really had much of an appetite.

Ladakh - Zanskar trek: Day 2

2009-09-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

Day 2: Tarchit/Wan La to Hanupeta

The second day’s hike was fairly ordinary -- or as ordinary as a hike in Ladakh can be. The scenery was always amazing. We walked through a canyon and the walk was almost always easy. The entire walk was along a road -- either paved or unpaved -- and on arriving in Hanupeta we realized we could have saved two days of hiking by getting dropped directly in Hanupeta. Or, at least a day and a half’s hike by getting dropped in Fanjila -- a small village 4 km from Tarchit.

From Zanskar Trek

Hanupeta itself is a pretty little village. The camp sites are beyond the village, by a small stream. Hanupeta boasts of a phone line and even carries a sign that claims so. We would have had to inquire in the village to find out, and our camp was a good 20 minute hike away. Neither that evening or the next morning did we feel that a 20 minute hike was worth the trouble. We were also skeptical of finding the phone despite the posted sign.

This was our first real day of camping in the wilderness. One of the first things we found out was that our gear did not include a toilet tent. This meant, we were to go “exploring” in the wilderness to find the toilet we liked most.

*Recommendation: If you can get dropped into Hanupeta, you will save 2 days of hiking on the road. There is a large camping area with facilities just beyond Hanupeta. If you can, camp there. There is another campsitea little beyond this one which is quieter and closer to the stream (this is where we stayed), but you’ll either need your own toilet tent or go in the open.

The Ladakh-Zanskar Trek: Day 1

2009-09-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

Both Pooja and I had wanted to do a long trek in the Himalayas for a while. Pooja was more partial to the Uttarakhand area -- Valley of Flowers, Nanda Devi -- and I was more partial to Ladakh. It’s pretty rare that I can sway her but something about the Zanskar trek clicked and we picked that as our chosen path.

Having made all arrangements with someone we trusted (I had used his services in the past), we were pretty relaxed about the trip when we flew in to Delhi from San Francisco, and to Leh the next day.

Arrival in Leh

The first day was relaxing and yet a bit tiring. Neither of us suffered from any symptoms of altitude sickness, though both of us got tired from a short walk into the city from our hotel. We met Wanghuk Shali -- the agent who was arranging our entire trip -- and decided on the high level arrangements for the trip. We had done almost no research on the trek, so we trusted him completely. It was only on the fourth day that we realized our folly.

Since we were both feeling fine, we were to leave on the trek the next day itself. This way we could have another day on the trek -- so it was to be 9 days of hiking instead of 8. We were going to finish the trek in Padum, and a taxi was going to meet us there and take us to Kargil on the tenth day. After an overnight stay in Kargil, the taxi will take us to a houseboat in Srinagar. It all sounded perfect. We decided the menu -- vegetarian, eggs for breakfast, tea, normal stuff -- and we returned back to the hotel to sleep off the first day.

* Hotel: Noble House, close to the market in Leh. Recommended (good staff, safe, decent food, nice clean rooms).

From Zanskar Trek

Day 1: Leh, Lamayuru, Wan La, Tarchit

The first day started early -- as did every day from now onwards. We were to leave Leh in a taxi to Lamayuru by 8:30 and start trekking that day. We were packed and ready to leave by 8:15. Not surprisingly, our taxi and guides arrived at 9:30. Wangchuk Shali introduced us to the two people accompanying us on the trek -- Jitender and Utsal. We didn’t ask but based on my past experiences, I assumed that one was a cook and the other a guide who knew the route. Wangchuk Shali didn’t bother to go into this tiny little detail either. As it turned out, this was something we regretted not verifying.

The drive to Lamayuru was uneventful. I didn’t have a route map, and I had asked the people accompanying us to look for one. Somehow they didn’t look for it in Leh, claiming they will find it in Khaltse on the way. We didn’t. This became a common trend on the trip -- people will affirm the existence of facilities in villages that we could never find: guest houses, homestays, phone lines, bathrooms.

We stopped at Alchi gompa and made a short visit to the Lamayuru Gompa before heading out. The first day’s hike was pretty straightforward -- climb up to the pass (Wan La) and hike down to the village and camp. The only hitch was that we had started pretty late -- 3 P.M. -- and by the time we reached our campsite, it was pitch dark. Nevertheless, it was our first day on the hike, and both of us were pretty chill about it. We were (especially Pooja) also glad that the campsite had a functioning flush toilet and a bathroom.

A feeling of dread was beginning to dawn upon me though. As it turned out, neither of the two guys “guiding” us had ever been on this trek before. They did not know the way. The guy tended to the ponies knew the way -- but that didn’t seem reassuring

*Campsite: Tarchit. Recommended: nice location, next to a guest house, has bathroom, toilet that are kept clean by the owners. Carry your own toilet paper.

*Recommendation: You can skip the first day’s trek (which, IMHO, isn’t particularly interesting) and start directly from Fanjila. You save a day and a half’s hike, most of which is on a paved road. We met several people the next day who either were starting from Fanjila, or finishing in Fanjila.

*No cell reception (we carried a BSNL/Dolphin phone) once we left Lamayuru.

Teaching my dad to start blogging

2009-06-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

Pretty late, but still.. Let's see how it goes.

Finally a true Indian Kung Fu movie

2009-01-21T00:24:00.000-08:00

I've long been a fan of Chinese martial arts movies. They pack the usual Bollywood masala, sans the songs, and add dollops of great action. Cheesy, but fun. I had hoped there would a GOOD desi version on a Kung Fu movie, and it's finally been made.

Chandni Chowk to China is a typical Kung Fu movie -- very Chinese in its presentation, and not Bollywood-ish. It's a great mix of Indian masala with some pretty decent Kung Fu. And keeping with the times, it borrows its humor from Kung Fu Hustle.

And not to forget, Akshay Kumar rocks. Only he could make this film happen. Hats off to you, sir.

Indie cinema in India continues to rock!

2008-12-07T23:20:00.000-08:00

Oye Lucky! is the latest indie movie in India that continues the very welcome trend of good independent cinema.

I personally thought that the director's earlier movie -- Khosla ka Ghosla -- packed more punch, primarily because it had a better ensemble cast, and there were more dimensions to it. Here, the story is loosely based on "Catch me if you can' plot line.

The only thing that made me think more about the movie and why I am posting it is the following. The movie had Paresh Rawal put in 3 independent characters, all completely unrelated to each other. When reading the reviews etc., I assumed it was a gimmick, kind of a creative license to let a great actor excel. But watching the movie, it didn't seem that way. I was wondering if there was a purpose to it.

My conclusion, to end the suspense, was that each of these characters was someone the lead protagonist perceived as a father figure, and hence saw the reflection of his father in them. So, of course, one of the characters is actually his father. All three characters, it seems, are the ones this character looks up to in some way, but is always eventually let down.

So may be there was a moral to the story that the director was leading to?

Even apart from this little puzzle in the movie, I thought the movie was relatively funny, though started to drag somewhere in the middle, and all the main actors did well. Especially impressive was the great snapshot of Delhi, its lingo, its absurdness.

Is it the wrong time to buy a house right now?

2008-10-15T12:05:00.001-07:00

We've been looking to buy a house for some time. Already, being in Bay area, we were expecting to pay a huge premium for what we get. With the financial meltdowns, it now seems probably the worst time than ever to buy.

I was trying to assess where housing prices will go in the next year. Will the next year be a better time to buy than now? There are a few things to think about that cautioned against it:

1. US Dollar might weaken as confidence of foreign investors plunges. If lending and credit freezes up, as it has, and doesn't start flowing again, it is going to take a while for the economy to rebound. If the dollar weakens, if the houses are really worth what their price tag indicates, then the prices should rise.

2. If the funds in the bank are going to be either not covered by insurance, or are going to go less distance, maybe it's worth it to invest them in something more tangible, as in land or gold.

On the other hand, if the dollar does weaken, then affordability would suffer in general. Any large loans that people would have taken out would become increasingly difficult to pay.

I tried looking for some historical data for how house prices changed over the years in comparison to how the economy was doing. I couldn't find much yet, but there was one interesting data point -- how housing prices varied as a ratio to median household income. Here is a spreadsheet detailing the trend from 1980 to 2007. Historically, in the bay area, the ratio has been stable around 4 to 5. In the last few years, it has risen to a 9.8!

Based on the experience from the downturn in 2001, incomes won't go up in the next year or two. This is true now as well -- investors are sending out warnings and asking companies to tighten belts. In our company too, we have reduced our head count and decided to take pay cuts.

If I look at the years following 1980, the housing prices ratio to incomes should have probably gone up if the income was lower and there was any inflation. It was indeed so in 1981, but then the ratio dropped every year until 1985 when it reached 4.2.

In any case high housing prices outpaced the economy, and with the downturn in full swing now, the income levels aren't going to climb up any time soon. This means, the housing prices should be up for continued correction for the next few years, until incomes actually start to go up.

In conclusion, if the economy and dollar will be weak, affordability will suffer. Incomes aren't going up. House prices as compared to income levels are still inflated in the Bay area, and therefore will come down. If not, then poor affordability in this economy will anyway make it harder to afford these high prices. Therefore, it is probably not a good time to buy a house for us right now.

The first presidential debate

2008-09-27T00:21:00.000-07:00

I watched the first presidential debate this year between Obama and Mccain.

You can read the reactions and spin on these in several places, and here are my observations. These aren't criticisms, but observations of the training these guys went through, and what I noticed as they were clearly trying to do, or were clearly unable to do. It is unclear until plenty of people have analyzed it and have done polls, how much these will matter in the final outcome.

1. I noticed that Obama consciously, very consciously, looked away from the host and faced the camera directly when making a point about his readiness or his abilities. In contrast, Mccain did not do that even once in the entire session. While at times it felt as though it was unnatural, it was effective for Obama. Each of those times, it connected him to the people watching.

2. Obama, whenever addressing Mccain, would look at him straight and talk to him. Mccain on the other hand, seem to not want to look at Obama. That seemed a bit rude and robotic -- don't you always look at the people around you, especially when you are speaking to them, or referring to them?

3. Obama, not once in the entire debate, gave one sound bite that others would want to repeat. It was very plain, very labored speech. In contrast, Mccain, whether or not he was saying anything meaningful, had it down much better. Calling Obama naive, repeating specific numbers (930M, 18B, etc), claiming "Obama doesn't understand" -- all these he repeated and ensured would be picked up and repeated by a lot of people the next day. Obama needs to loosen up, get less embroiled in the correctness of details, and give his people sound bites to repeat after him.

4. The debates need some fact checkers. Mccain could stand there and lie through his teeth, and it would be on Obama to point them out as lies -- but how many would he be able to? Maybe candidates need better strategies to point out the lies, and tell their own lies with more conviction.

5. Mccain's lies put Obama on the defensive. Obama wasn't taking the war to Mccain. Even strong points were put really mildly. Take an example: Mccain took his time to drive home his point that "Incredibly, INCREDIBLY, Obama has not gone to Afghanistan" -- and he repeated it twice. Now, when Mccain said he wouldn't publicly state making offensive strikes against Pakistan and just do them, Obama should have really taken Mccain to task. Here is a presidential candidate openly saying he has double standards. On top of that, this is the same president who sang a song to "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran." These double standards, these reckless speeches, these reckless mindsets are the cause of the economic mess this country is in. This is the same recklessness earlier president had, this is the same recklessness Mccain champions. BUT, no, all Obama could muster was that given Mccain's bomb iran video, this comment from Mccain was not very credible. C'mon now -- you've at least got to walk through doors that open!

The debates coming up later should be more interesting. So far the candidates were sparring, and hopefully there would be fire from Obama we would see in the future.

Please vote

2008-09-10T00:34:00.000-07:00

After the pathetic eight years of lack of leadership and asinine handling of foreign affairs, no patriotic American should sit on the sidelines and feel their vote doesn't count.

Please vote. And vote Obama. It would be appalling if the Republicans are allowed to lie their way to a victory.

Microfinance

2008-09-02T00:37:00.000-07:00

As you might know, Jambool partners with Kiva to make loans to needy entrepreneurs around the world -- especially in third world countries. Since we launched the partnership in mid August, we've made loans to over 50 businesses (that's roughly 3 loans a day). You can see more at: http://tinyurl.com/karma2kiva.

Kiva has been great to work with -- simple and effective. In case you don't know about Kiva, it enables peer to peer lending for businesses in developing countries that need small loans. The lenders themselves do not charge or expect an interest on the loan, and more often than not (I think), they don't even expect a repayment. But repayments make it far more sustainable of course.

I also found out about Microplace today -- an EBay owned company -- that also provides a similar peer lending model for needy businesses.

As I found out from elsewhere -- there is a subtle difference between the two. The loans on Microplace are returned with an interest to the lender, and the loans here are securitized -- which implies these loans can be sold to another investor.

The Kiva model seems simpler. Having heard the story of the beginning of microfinance from Mohammed Yunus, it would seem one wouldn't want to tack on interest in order for these loans to work. That said, apparently even the Kiva loans are often given out at an interest to the businesses and it helps support the field operators. I personally find it better that there are fewer people earning interest from the loan given to a needy entrepreneur, and any interest that is indeed paid stays very close to the source.

Thoughts?

Roadside Indian Dhabas

2008-08-31T23:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend we drove up to Sea Ranch on Highway One. On the way here, we came upon Sizzling Tnadoor -- an Indian restaurant with a picture perfect setting right on the Russian River. It came across as a bit of a shocker -- the last thing we expected on the drive up in Sonoma is a desi restaurant serving out tandoori chicken.

What to say, Singh is Kinng!

On a slightly different note, Akshay Kumar rocks the house in Singh is Kinng. On the non-mainstream cinema, Aamir was good. Blue Umbrella was great, especially because it gives stage to one of the finest actors India has -- Pankaj Kapur.

The "joys" of running a company

2008-06-18T17:50:00.001-07:00

One of the many "joys" is dealing with "service providers."

Currently we are in the process of choosing a vendor to outsource our HR to. Having talked to multiple vendors, I realize that this is one of the industry that thrives on obfuscating the obvious. Everyone in this industry loves to wrap words in yarn out of management handbooks. Here's an example I pulled from one such site: "Our PEO services allow you to systematically and strategically enhance the total quality of your organization, which results in greater efficiency and productivity." WTF?

Sometimes it's the years and not the mileage

2008-06-08T00:21:00.001-07:00

I've been a huge fan of the Indiana Jones movies, and I had been waiting for the latest movie to come out for more than a year now. One word: FAIL.

What a dumb, stupid mess. Everything seemed so unnatural. It seemed as though they had run out of all ideas. Low on entertainment. Low on fun. Low on creativity. Sometimes, the years do start to count more than the mileage.

That said, it seemed to borrow a few things from Tintin. There were at least a couple of references that I noticed. The notion of aliens was referenced in Flight 714. Though, I wouldn't say that's necessarily where they borrowed it from. The second reference was the scene where Harrison Ford is crawling in the cave... it seemed to have been framed right out of the Prisoners of the Sun.

I hear Spielberg is working on a Tintin movie...

FriendFeed picking up at Twitter's expense?

2008-06-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

I've seen several messages flow today on Twitter that people don't tweet that often because they are on Friendfeed instead...

I recently installed Twhirl and it's great that the most recent version supports both Twitter and FriendFeed. I tried Alert Thingy, and it was terrible on the Mac. Twhirl on the other hand worked a lot better.

Talking of Friendfeed, it is a much more open version of the Facebook news feed. Facebook has clamped down quite a bit on what shows up in the news feed. In fact I hardly see any updates from apps in the news feed any more. All I see are updates from Facebook and its own applications (Photos, Wall, Video, Posted Items).

If feeds are here to stay, Friendfeed and its api can become powerful developer tools for growing web applications.

Tuscan Wines

2008-05-18T23:32:00.000-07:00

Pooja and I were traveling through Europe this April and spent a good part of our trip in Tuscany. We stayed close to Firenze/Florence at a B&B in the countryside. The stay itself remains one of the best vacations we have taken and I highly recommend it.

A good part of our stay was spent driving to different parts of Tuscany and picking up on the foods and wines of the region. Just as many books might tell you, Brunellos from Montelcino are fantastic. I happened to try the Banghi at a restaurant in Fiesole, with their pasta in wild boar sauce, and the wine and meal rank among the best I've ever had.

The interesting things about wines in Italy is that the governing bodies -- DOC/DOCG -- tightly control the vintages of wines. E.g., Brunellos that you can buy are already aged 5 years, and they age well for another 10. You can't even buy a Brunello in the market that hasn't been aged 5 years. Similarly, the Chiantis are aged at least 2 years.

The wine tour at Vignamaggio was great. Someone claimed that the estate was the birthplace of the da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". The wines were great too. We lucked out here -- we had reached Greve pretty late in the evening and the tourism office there was able to get us a wine tour reservation at a pretty short notice.

Patent awarded..

2008-05-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

I recently heard the patent for the Amazon Flexible Payments got awarded. That's super!

Back from GSP

2008-03-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

I came back a bit early from GSP. We got selected to present at the Appnite, and I hear that it went quite well even if we did not win the Mackbook air.

I posted a couple of notes from the conference on data portability and Bring your own platform panels.

San Diego was great. We stayed at the Omni hotel in downtown, and managed to sneak out to the Oldtown for dinner and the La Jolla area for the afternoon.

Jambool is hiring

2008-02-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

See here for more details.

If you know great software engineers who might get excited about working for a startup that's among the frontrunners in the social applications space -- do let us know.

Case against Macs

2008-02-28T17:50:00.000-08:00

I recently had to get a new power cable for my powerbook. It cost me $80. Eighty dollars for a power cable?! So in some ways, four power cables = 1 phone??

My DVD superdrive stopped working -- DVDs just won't go in at all. I looked online for possible things, and nothing worked. So I went to an Apple store. Without even bothering to look at it, their solution was to replace it and get a new one. $330. Ouch.

It isn't under warranty so I have every intention of prying it open to see why it won't work. If nothing else, I might be a little bit better off knowing something I didn't earlier.

Replacing batteries in an ipod isn't a simple matter of turning it over, popping the sucker open and putting in a couple of AAs. Apple wants you to send in the ipod.

Agreed, you are trying to get the world back from Windows, but for crying out loud, do you have to make it this hard?

We should know fascism when we see it

2008-02-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

We watched the movie Parzania. While we knew a bit about the riots, but the hard hitting movie made me go and read about this a lot more. Watching the movie and reading about the atrocities in Gujarat, it makes you detest the nationalist parties involved.

You can read more on wikipedia. The article by Arundhati Roy hit a nerve. Somewhere down the line, India will have to admit that the Gujarat violence was a pogrom, a genocide committed by the Hindu fundamentalists.

The likes of Mussolini and Hitler have come and gone, and yet fascism never stops to rear its ugly head. Yet, we as a society find it convenient to look the other way until it is too late. We are all too involved in our own daily lives to feel concerned about things that happened thousands of miles away -- until one day it blows up in our face.

Now Plants can talk

2008-02-27T13:43:00.000-08:00

If there wasn't enough content being put online by humans, now plants can join the fray.

This is a pretty interesting setup by Botanicalls: the plant can now twitter you about the moisture content in the soil.

One wonders though... I need this twittering so that someone else besides my wife can actually tell me to water the plants. Or maybe once you start getting the twitter messages, you'll feel more compassionate to the plants -- as though they were indeed talking to you... "I'm thirsty!" I guess that would make you rush to the tap.

Couple of lectures

2008-02-07T12:54:00.001-08:00

Over the last few weeks I had the good fortune of listening to two excellent speakers.

The first was Mohammed Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank and was awarded the Nobel prize in 2006. Mohammed Yunus is a terrific speaker and a lot more down to earth than most other public speakers I've listened to. His story on the "poor people's bank", as he calls it, is a phenomenal story and he tells it, seemingly, without any spice. For someone to have achieved a likely unassaiblable goal of countering poverty in Bangladesh and inspiring many others around the world, his humility is inspiring.

There were a couple of points he made that I wanted to jot down and remind myself repeatedly. While companies can strive for maximizing profit for themselves, they must pay heed to the planet around them and help maximize the overall benefit to the planet. He did not advocate it as an alternative to capitalism. This is a sentiment I've heard several times recently, and it is something worth listening to.

The other lecture I happened to go to was by Larry Lessig. This was Lessig's last Free Culture talk before he moves on to something different. Lessig's well known for founding Creative Commons and pushing for reduced restrictions on copyrights -- especially as they apply to the digital medium.

Lessig's talk was impressive and it is also impressive that the next challenge he is taking on is to end lobbyism and corruption in Congress. Interestingly, among the presidential candidates there were only two who push for lobbyists not funding congressmen's election -- Barrack Obama and John Edwards.

Lessig later also posted an online video on why Obama and not Hillary, that I am posting below.

Kids these days!

2008-01-29T02:49:00.001-08:00

I've often gotten into discussions with people about the difference between how a teenager would view the world versus how an adult would -- the difference caused by the fact that the kid probably never saw a world without the Internet.

There was a time when you had to take driving directions from someone over the phone.

You couldn't just get your answers by typing a few words on a computer.

Dial up used to cost money -- and it used to make strange noises.

Today I saw its funny outcome on reddit: See for yourself!

Where does our food come from?

2008-01-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

Have you not always wondered about the origins of food that lands on our plate? I know I have -- especially in the US, more than India.

In India, figuring out the food chain was relatively easy. First off, our family was entirely vegetarian. My father hails from a village not too far from where we lived, and his brothers and father were wholesale traders in fruits and vegetables. My father has always been passionate about finding the best (and cheapest -- but that's just with every Indian ;) and freshest vegetables, and I have always attributed it to his formative years, spent helping out with the family business. So, the food chain to trace for us was relatively easy. The pieces that were missing were -- what seeds, fertilizers and manure the farmers were using at the farms our vegetables came from. The land of Punjab -- the area where I grew up -- is known for its fertility, and as far as I knew and read, farmers were using the traditional methods of farming. As a result, what food we ate depended on what season it was, and how the rains have been that year and so on. Man had not taken over Nature in determining what food we ate. I believe this is still the case there, though it is changing.

In comparison, there is a feeling of mystery behind food we get in the US. First off, the farmers' markets are relatively rare. So the food is mostly obtained at the supermarket. At the supermarkets, irrespective of the time of the year, you get the same food. Potatoes and onions, apples, oranges, bell peppers, you name it -- what season it was, or how the weather had been that year never mattered when it came to determining what to eat. At first glance, it seemed all positive. This is what a developed country is about -- industrialize the agriculture, empower the farmers to grow and feed what people want. A little naive, don't you think?

A recent book I am reading -- Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan -- attempts to trace the food chain that gets hidden behind the meals we eat. It is an enlightening read, and I very strongly suggest that you should read this book. You will never look at your food the same way again.

There are several observations that the book arrives at that are worth remembering. I note them here for lack of a better place to remind myself of these later.

1. Everything is connected. The author makes this zen-like observation about farms -- and he doesn't extrapolate it to anything else. But it is hard to not think about everything the same way.

2. We are what we eat. I recall Hemant telling me this once upon a time. This is true of the meat you eat as well -- the cow that's fed on chemicals and corn will lead to beef that has those compounds, and they will end up in you. It is surprising how apathetic we have become as a civilation about what we eat.

3. Food is a primary reason behind how large our brains are. Koala bears evolved to have a very small brain because they only eat eucalyptus leaves -- and as a result their brains shrank over time because they didn't need to work hard at trying to figure out how to get the food. Humans evolved with a much larger brain because of the complex nature of our meals. This does make you wonder if apathy towards food is going to end up making you dumber.

4. Not everything is suited to be done at large scale. This is especially true about farming. The scalability comes in dumbing down the process, and being able to repeat the same thing again and again.

A good sign for America

2008-01-04T08:56:00.001-08:00

Here's to hoping the man makes it all the way to the White house!

Taare Zameen Par -- A (slightly) different perspective

2007-12-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

The recent Hindi movie, Taare Zameen Par, was a refreshing change as far as movies from Bollywood go. It lacks all the loudness of the commercial cinema, and tells its story with a lot of love. Yet, it has the polish of a well made, well produced film -- something that the offbeat, non-commercial movies lack.

The reviews of the movies have mentioned it as a story of the kid who goes through a low and comes out tops thanks to the helping hand provided by his teacher. People find that they could relate to the kid in many ways. I actually had a slightly different experience -- I related just as much, if not more, to the teacher. In many ways, I felt this was a story of the teacher as much of the kid.

A review complained that the teacher having admitted to having dyslexia was a fault of the movie -- where I felt that was the whole facet of the movie that took it to higher level. Just as much it was the story of the child finding his way, it was the story of the teacher in some ways resting his demons. The story of the teacher wasn't developed as well -- but you could see him looking for himself in all the kids he spent time with, and trying to save them the pain he might have had to go through. Finding a child who he felt was a reflection of himself, the teacher finds a path too.

It may well be a viewpoint far removed from the majority of the movie goers. Anyone care to share what they thought?

Random tidbits from Bollywood movies

2007-12-22T23:47:00.000-08:00

Some random tidbits you might not know or might not have noticed...

1- Movies "Andaz Apna Apna" and "Mr. India" are related through their principal villains -- or rather their principal villains are related. Crimemast Gogo claims Mogambo to be his uncle ("Mogambo ka bhatija, Crimemaster Gogo!")

2- There is a sequence in the recent movie "Taare Zameen Par" where the kid is daydreaming class, imagining himself to be a space traveler -- a clear rip off of Calvin's alter ego Spaceman Spiff.

3- In "Om Shanti Om", one of the stars who comes in at the premiere is clearly channeling Mithun Chakravorty -- and Mithun himself shows up in a later song in the movie to do the same dance moves.

If you haven't seen "Taare Zameen Par," you should.

Only a couple of weeks ago...

2007-11-27T00:36:00.000-08:00

I didn't realize I had posted only about a couple of weeks back. It seems a lot has happened in these two weeks.

Thanks to the success of some of our apps on Facebook, we ran into scaling issues the last few days. We went from one box setup to two and then to three very quickly. This was the one of those times when years of dealing with large scale problems at Amazon comes in handy. Above all, we were particularly pleased with the fact that our component based distributed system design allowed us to scale out with little headaches, and it gave us considerable flexibility in optimizing our systems.

Quite a few friends are now in the midst of their own startups, and when I share my lessons learned, I actually don't harp much on building scalable systems anymore. Product and monetization comes first, and I still believe if you need to build things to scale you'll be able to handle it. Just make sure you have the engineering talent for it. That said, if you are building applications on platforms like Facebook where, just maybe, your applications can ramp up to 100,000+ daily active users in a few days, you'd better plan for scaling upfront. I think, it would have been much more costly for us to scale had we not built our systems well the first time around. But even then, every such problem is unique, and you will have to handle new problems when you do run into scaling issues.

In the midst of this I managed to sneak away to Hawaii for a short trip. If you haven't been to the big island of Hawaii, I suggest you pack a bag and go. Snorkeling on the west side -- particularly the Cook monument -- was probably the best we've experienced in the state of Hawaii.

Facebook ads: More hype?

2007-11-06T14:01:00.000-08:00

It's no secret we've been developing apps on Facebook for Jambool. And where the more involved apps have had a hard time taking off, the brain dead ones are rocketing up. In the last one week we added more than 50,000 users without spending a penny on advertising. Now there's got to be some value in that.

Facebook announced today that they are coming out with "Facebook Ads." Techrunch covered the announcement in New York. This stuff has been speculated for a long time. Facebook already has their ad network -- it's called Facebook Flyers. And going by the ads I see on them ocnsistently, my guess is that they are not doing that well. We even tried using them sometime ago, and ad clickthrough as well as conversion from these ads was abysmal. So are things set to change with the new release?

I don't think so.

I'm trying to understand what they are offering, and here's my understanding. Facebook does provide advertisers the ability to target ads for specific demographics and user attributes (age, location etc). But this is what they do with Facebook flyers -- and afaik it is not a successful program. I think the important factor in ads that helps convert users is not as much just the targeting but the context that the ad is displayed in as well. This is where Facebook seems to be missing out. They talk about beacons and insights -- that people can be walking billboards for brands they love, and spread the virus into their network. So you can publish your purchases etc to your friends, advertising the web site you bought it from. While useful, I would wait to get some numbers on this data to see if this is really worth anything. Because my friends bought "something" at Ebay doesn't make me jump on and go to ebay. It reeks of advertising, not a recommendation. Besides being a privacy concern, I am not convinced that users will want to have their purchases get published to their friends.

The talk about "Insights" seems to be wishful thinking. They "will be able" to track how much people are talking about the brands in forums, which forums and brand pages the user goes to, and target the ads better. I suspect that there is no data that they have to back up their claims -- What is the actual impact they can make for a brand? It isn't even anything new. Companies like doubleclick and Google have cookiess in just about every browse out there. They know which sites you go to, which brands you visit, etc etc. Or at least they are in the position to. They may not know the specific age and sex and favorite color and pet peeves of every user, but when you have enough data about the user through the kind of sites he/she visits, this data starts to become irrelevant -- especially if the end goal is to just target the ads for that user. Age and sex be damned, just show the ads to the user that he or she is most likely to click on. That's the best service you can do to your advertisers and publishers.

It also seems that Facebook is not really providing application developers a new avenue to make money. They seem to be intent on being the publisher for all ads, and attracting the advertisers to put ads -- including application developers. At least I did not read anywhere that they are providing a means for developers to monetize through Facebook ads. This, I think, is where they are missing out. There is more money to be made by sharing the pie with developers than with getting the developers to pay for getting traffic. This would mean, that developers will continue to stick with the existing ad networks to get ads for their pages, and as a result, advertisers will also continue to advertise on these networks.

So my reading of the Facebook ads is that it is more hype than substance. Life's going to go on just as it was.

Facebook ad to app install conversion

2007-10-02T19:07:00.000-07:00

Just posted another update on optimizing ads to app installs on Facebook.

Give it a read if you are interested.

We also launched an update on Balloonz: users can not create their own fillings to put in the balloons. Today, just five days after launch, we are crossing 3K users!

Have you thrown a balloon yet?

Throw a balloon at friends

2007-09-26T04:01:00.000-07:00

The latest rage on Facebook is Balloonz!.

It's a fun little app that lets you stuff things in balloons and throw at friends. Friends can dodge them by sending them on to someone else. The fun continues until the balloon explodes...

Come, throw some! :)

Recalling an interview on TV with Lata Mangeshkar

2007-09-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

I was reading some coverage of the felicitations of the Indian cricket team for having won the world cup. Of course no one expected them to win. Every victory seemed like their last. But that didn't stop the ministers and the who's who to bask in refelcted glory.

The incident I was reminded of was what Lata Mangeshkar -- who if you don't know about happens to be the female voice of just about any Indian film song you heard from 1950 to 1980 -- recounted in a TV interview.

Lata had sung a "patriotic" song during the Indo-China war days in 1962 for India's prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. As it happened, Nehru was deeply touched by the song, and shed a tear. Lata was hurriedly called back to meet Nehru after the performance, and Nehru told her that she had made him cry. This incident became a huge rage. And it spun off a weird fad. Whenever Lata was performing live at a show, ministers and babus would sit in the front row, and have her perform the same song she did for Nehru. And... they would cry.

This one's for the gallery

2007-09-21T10:52:00.001-07:00

Six sixes off six balls. This one thing alone makes up for a lot of could-have-beens-that-werent from the Indian team. Yuvraj's the man!

Tracking Facebook ad to install conversion

2007-09-16T01:04:00.000-07:00

This is a problem we were looking into for some time, and we released an application to track these better for us.

Read more about it here.

It might be insightful anyway to read it if you want to advertise your apps on facebook.

Gripe of the day

2007-09-07T10:55:00.001-07:00

Why do sites require me to provide my birthday, my zip code, my email, my dog's name, my school's name, my roommate's name, my favorite color... Why? When will websites learn? Why is this information relevant to them?

I just today tried to sign up for Mashable. I don't even remember why. Here's what their sign up page looks like:

I tried ot leave a few of them blank and sign up. It didn't work. No I did not sign up thank you. My stupid old internet life is fine enough without sharing all my personal data with every tom, dick and harry.

Have you shared a memory yet?

2007-09-07T02:00:00.001-07:00

Where have you been? Here's a link to the Facebook app. Shared Memories.

Vote for it on best of facebook here.

Also -- if you are building applications for Facebook, you might be interested in the blog post here.

Looking forward to Shoot em up

2007-09-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

I've seen the trailer online a few times and I am all for it. Shoot 'em up, Clive!

Ever since I saw him in Greenfingers, I've been a fan of Clive Owen. That was years ago, and this guy seems to go from strenght to stength. Shoot em up seems to have everything going for it -- they even roped in Monica Bellucci! Paul Giamatti is an odd guy -- Sideways seemed ot suit him just right -- but he looks irritating enough in the promos that him getting his ass kicked is probably going to be double the fun.

Trailer...

Testing a poll from Polldaddy...

2007-08-21T01:55:00.001-07:00

Jambool's alexa graphs now online...

2007-08-17T12:40:00.001-07:00

Posted on Jambool blog... here.

Aside from that, we happened to get the Shyam Benegal movie Suraj ka Satwan ghoda from Netflix this week. I had seen this a long time ago -- and it came out much before the multi-threaded stories were all the rage. This is pre-Tarantino, pre-Amorres Perros. It makes a great watch, and definitely one of the smarter movies to come out from India. It's a pity it is not as well known.

I've been collecting Anthony Lane movie reviews on Jambool here -- they make an absolutely fabulous read every time. What's your favorite Anthony Lane review?

Update..

2007-08-14T00:38:00.000-07:00

It has been a gruelling time, trying to get Jambool to the next stage. The best advice I ever got for my startup was to find a co-founder. And Reza's the best. Those who knew us at Amazon probably remember our April fool emails and announcements.

The best part of working with someone you enjoy working with is that however hard your job is, in the end it's heck of a lot of fun.

Jambool's Alexa rank is on the rise. It's moved to within the top 150K for the last two weeks' averages. 3 months is still low, but we'll get there!

I saw Bourne Ultimatum -- and I think the second one was better, though people claim this one tops that. What the movie did interestingly was to quietly spoof the deeds of the current administration -- from wiretapping and refusing to answer to reason and so on -- but did so without making it too farcical.

I saw another movie called "Once" -- an Irish movie with good soul and music (pun unintended). Recommended when you can find it. It's playing in a few art house theaters in San Francisco these days.

P.S. I just happened to press "Ctrl-E" when editing this blog. And it worked. Blogger editor support Emacs keys? Or maybe it is Safari? Something feels better in this world already. The geek in me awakens. :-)

Amazon 'Flexible' Payments launches...

2007-08-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com launched Flexible Payments web service this week.

It's already on Reddit -- with plenty of people welcoming it. Like people say over there, Amazon's track record of extremely easy to use web services API should definitely give Google and Paypal worries with this launch.

Why am I blogging about it? And is it really that cool?

Well -- the primary reason I am blogging about it is that this was some of the best things I was involved with at Amazon. Over a period of about a year and a half that I was involved with Amazon FPS, we conceived the product and built a truly solid team in India to develop this product.

And yes, it is really that cool. The Payment Instructions component of the API give you, the developer, unparalleled control over the transactions that follow. Using these instructions you can describe a whole negotiation between multiple parties. Each participant in the transaction can have their own set of instructions -- these are rules that have to match against each other in order for the transaction to go through. Can you imagine the possibilities? You can choose who not to do business with, what payment methods to accept (only accept direct debit, get the fees down), set minimum amounts, etc., etc.

Among all the services Amazon's rolled out, this one is probably the most complex in its interface to the developers. The world's been raving about and using S3 (and so does Jambool). Amazon FPS is the other service that I am sure is going to get lots of positive buzz. And deservedly so, even if it is a somewhat biased view.

Kudos to a lot of people and dear friends at Amazon who've brought FPS to light.

In India in July

2007-06-29T23:41:00.001-07:00

I will be in India in July. While mostly a family and friends visit, Jambool will of course still be high on my priorities.

People whom I haven't already touched base with: I will be in Delhi for a week till about the 11th, and I will be in Bangalore for a day on the 7th and the morning of the 8th. Most of the rest of the time I will be in the beautiful city of Chandigarh.

More updates on Jambool...

2007-06-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't read them yet, we released an update to the Firefox browser extension, and also rolled out some changes to the clipping dialogs. More here.

What does Google know about me?

2007-06-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

Awfully lot, I imagine.

Let's see -- I started on Google search. I jumped on Gmail -- the first time I created an account. I used Google news -- though I hated their personalized news stuff. And since I was always logged on in Gmail, I couldn't really turn off this personalization. Then Google bought Blogger -- the site that hosts this blog -- and went on to buy yet more stuff (You tube for one) where I may have logged in. Everywhere I turned soon, Google login was following me. And then they bought doubleclick. Now, add the two together, that covers probably an incredible amount of information about me being tracked by them over time.

In general, I've loved Google products -- just like most of the people I know. Even then, it is a little unsettling to know that people with the smartest data mining algorithms are going to have a lot of data about me to play around with.

So, what's the solution? For one, I've blocked Google.com cookies. I use Apple's iChat if I need to use Google talk (so I don't have to have Gmail in the browser). I use a POP client to get my Gmail. This also, unfortunately means I can't login to Blogger and Adsense on the same machine -- or at least that browser. So I sometimes fire up Safari if I do have the urge to write a blog, and shut it down once I am done.

On a different, unrelated note, Jambool's releasing updates to its site. If you have an account, do come back and check it out!

Ocean's thirteen -- a joke I felt 'in' with...

2007-06-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

All successful movies tend to become franchises of sort these days. Those involved milk it repeatedly for what it's worth. Whether it's the Pirates, the Shrek or the Ocean's teens. Back in India, movie makers are picking up on it as well -- Dhoom, Don, Koi Mil Gaya, Hera Pheri have all had or are going to have sequels.

Ocean's eleven was entertaining. Ocean's twelve kept true to its entertainment value. With Ocean's thirteen, the movie makers seem to have got rid of any pretense they may have had about making a movie. It just seems like a bunch of friends having a good time, and expecting you'll just follow along. Every other line is some sort of an inside joke that you feel left out of.

Except there was this one time, where someone walks up to Pacino in the party, and congratulates him on "the enormity of his success!" Aha! (See previous post) I think I was the only one who laughed at this one. Oh well.

Anyway -- I haven't posted for a while, and this was a good excuse to break the hiatus. Jambool is keeping me busy... but now that our beta is live, I hope to get time to do some other things once in a while too. :)

The enormousness of some mistakes

2007-04-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

The Economist style guide is making the rounds on the Internet. It's a decent read, and I am posting it here to point more people to it.

Also, I wanted to rant about the very frequent misuse of the word "enormity" that I see everywhere. I've seen this on otherwise excellent literary stuff, and it seems to be very widespread. First off, "enormity" is not the same as "large" or "enormous" -- in fact it means something of an enormous mistake, an extreme absurdness. When news sites report about the "physical enormity" of players, and "enormity" of devastation, it reads as an enormity in itself.

"Enormousness" is the word you might be after if you've used enormity wrongly. It is, unfortunately, a larger word, not so easy on the tongue or the ears, and therefore suffers from lack of love.

On this and that..

2007-04-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

There's a lot going on right now -- Jambool is getting ready for the next major release. So there's little time for anything else for me right now.

That said, I couldn't stay away from "Grindhouse" and the "The Host." Grindhouse is by Tarantino and Rodriguez, and it's everything you'd want from them. Rodriguez delivers it much better than Tarantino though, I think. If zombies and gore and yuck is your thing, this movie delivers. It's a send up on umpteen B-movies from the 70s, and Rodriguez executes on the idea simply brilliantly. For me, it was a laugh riot.

"The Host" is new movie by the director of "Barking dogs never bite." The dogs movie has been one of the best movies from South Korea, and "The Host" is an excellent follow up. It's a film that doesn't try to fit into any genre, and embraces humor and irony where you'd least expect.

Jumping topics... I upgraded to Firefox 2.0 recently on my Mac, and it is ridiculously slower than 1.5. So much so that I've often switched to using Safari or the older install of Firefox.

Indians (not) at the world cup...

2007-03-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

Just when we were thinking this Indian side has the best shot at the cup, they go out and prove a point or two -- other teams are just better than them.

Closures in Javascript

2007-03-21T00:21:00.000-07:00

I've grown up on C, and then a bit more on C++. I used to write a lot of networking and systems code, and then application level code to build backend distributed systems for an online retailer. Having dabbled a little bit in Java, and even less in Lisp, I've adopted Ruby as the language I mostly code in these days. But all these languages were a charm to get used to and develop in when I compare them with Javascript.

Why? Several reasons, but primarily because so much of the Javascript is about the browser, and while how you do something depends entirely on which broiwser your code is going to run on, there is hardly any good development and testing environment. To top that, I've not had the pleasure of reading a really good reference-like book for Javascript. If you know one, do tell me about it.

With the lack of books, one tends to rely on Google search to throw up some useful results. But some things are what you have to go through to pick up anyway. That brings me to closures. Though people have written about closures, they tend to only cover one aspect of lexical binding, and I wanted to add to this pool of collective online intelligence.

Closures let you define functions on the fly that are bound to the local lexical scope. Using these closures you can execute code that will use and affect variable references as available in the lexical scope of where the function is defined. Here's an example:


function f1() {

var  letter = "A";
return function() { alert(letter); }

}

function f2() {
var letter = "B";
var f = f1();
f();
}

f2();

Run it here
.

The function f1 above returns a closure. The function returned is bound to the lexical scope of function f1. Once f1 is done, one would think that the all local variables etc are removed, and calling the function that is returned back by f1 should really use "B" as the value of the letter. Or maybe you would expect it to raise an error, because the scope of function f2 doesn't exist anymore. But if you run it, you'll still find that the function f returned by f1() call alerts with "A."

Once you see this, it is somewhat obvious what is happening. Except one thing, and we'll come to that shortly. What seems to be happening is that when the function in f2 is created (or rather the closure), it keeps track of its lexical scope. So all the references available in its scope are available to it. The reference that is returned is a reference to a set of code and its scope as was available then. That scope is what is used to execute the code in the closure.

What seems to be slightly less obvious is that the closure captures the references and not the values of these references in its scope. I.e., the closure does not copy all the values of the variables in its scope and keep them around for later. It keeps track of the references in its scope. If their values change by the time the closure is called, then the result would be different. Here is an update to the above example.


var  letter = "A";
function f1() {
return function(callfrom) { alert( callfrom + " "  + letter); }
}

function f2() {
var letter = "B";
var f = f1( );
f("call from f2");
}

function f3() {
letter = "C";
var f = f1( );
f( "call from f3" );
}

f2();
f3();

If you run the code above (here), you'll find that the call from f2 uses the value "A" for letter and the call from f3 uses the value "C."

The reason is again obvious once you see it, but it is easy to trip over this when using closures bound to variables in a loop. In the code above, f2 creates a new variable letter in its scope. This variable is not available in the lexical scope of the closure returned by f1. f1 uses the earlier defined letter. However, f3 does not define a new variable -- it updates the variable in global scope, the same variable that is also used by f1. The call from f3 to the closure evaluates the variable (the reference) 'letter' and it evaluates to "C" and not "A."

An important ramification of this is that when you are creating closures as callbacks inside a loop, and binding them to the variables that change with every iteration of the loop, you have to be extra careful. Unless you want to use these variables' values as they exist after the loop is done (or whenever the callback is called -- which might make it unpredictable), you have to create unique lexical references for each of these variables. A simple way to do this is to write a method that returns back the actual closure bound to its local variables. Every time this function is called, it generates a new scope for the closure. An example:



function myFunctor( x) {
return function() {  alert( x); }
}

function testGoodFunctor() {

var functors = new Array;
for( var i = 0; i < 3; ++i ) {
functors.push( myFunctor(i) );
}
for( var j = 0; j < functors.length; ++j ) {
functors[j]();
}
}

function testBadFunctor() {

var functors = new Array;
for( var i = 0; i > 3; ++i ) {
functors.push( function() { alert(i); }  );
}
for( var j = 0; j < functors.length; ++j ) {
functors[j]();
}
}

testGoodFunctor();
testBadFunctor();

If you run the code above (here), you will see three alerts with values 0, 1 and 2, followed by three alerts with value 3.

The reason, as you would have gathered by now, is that in the testGoodFunctor, each closure gets a unique reference for the alert call. However, the testBadFunctor provides the same reference "i" to the closure. When the closure is actually called, the value of i is the value it is supposed to have at the end of the loop.

There now, that's closures for you. And yes, there is one more thing to remember. Be careful not to use "this" to point to the object inside the closure (unless you know exactly what you are doing). "this" is not a locally defined reference, and when you closure is invoked, "this" may point to something completely different. If you want to invoke your methods on a specific object, it is better to create methods that are bound to the specific object. For example, like this:



function getObjectBoundMethod( obj, f ) {
return function() {  return f.apply(obj,arguments); };
}

function f() {
this.g = function(x) { alert( "x = " + x ); };
var closure = getObjectBoundMethod( this, this.g );
return closure;
}

var to_call = f();
to_call(5);

Here, run it.

Update: Fixed the links to the running javascript samples.

WC07 - Best Indian World Cup side ever?

2007-03-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

1983 world cup happened when I was still too young to build a lot of memories. But I recall the years immediately after that, and the build up to the 1987 world cup. We all expected an India-Pakistan final. It was a team that had notched up some away one-day series wins, and looked good in general.

From then to now, India's fortunes have been mixed. India's never lacked some great cricketers in its team, who have bolstered India's chances and kept interest alive. But as a team they tend to falter more than they succeed. When we win a tournament, it is always somewhat of a surprise -- pleasant one, though. Until the recent spate of 17 wins in a row, Indian batting always felt brittle -- it would collapse under the mildest of pressures. The 2003 World Cup final was the ultimate let down.

However, there are reasons to hope for more from the current Indian team. The biggest reason I see for this is that there are a few players who fought hard to come back into the team and the team largely is made up of people with solid recent form -- except Sehwag, who seems to be the captain's gamble. Zaheer Khan and Ganguly would know the value of form and performing -- both having spent time outside the team and worked it back in. Tendulkar and Dravid remain the pole around which the Indian tent is pitched. And then there are Dhoni and Yuvraj. Indians have a decent bowling line up -- and I hope Irfan Pathan fires up.

Looking at the lineup, this may be the best side India have sent to the world cup. That said, wouldn't you agree that India is probably also the likeliest of the big teams to be upset by one of the minnows?

Cricket World Cup

2007-03-13T01:47:00.000-07:00

Cricket world cup used to be an all-encompassing month some years back. Even now, I am pretty excited about some high quality cricket -- though I'll have to rely on youtube and the likes to catch the highlights.

As many have said, this is probably one of the most open world cups. Several teams have been gearing up for the contest well -- building up form and momentum for the event. I expect Australia, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka in the semi finals -- though New Zealand, West Indies and Pakistan can easily replace any of them. England, despite their recent wins, seems to lack the ability to make it to the last four. But then, who knows.

This is probably the last world cup for many greats of the game -- Tendulkar, Lara, Dravid, Ganguly, Gilchrist, Ponting, McGrath, Jayasuria, Shaun Pollock. It's a joy to have most of them in good form all at the same time for the world cup.

Afternoons in Napa

2007-03-08T23:55:00.000-08:00

San Francisco is a by any standards probably one of the best places to live. The restaurant scene alone in the city can spoil you to the extent you won't want to live anywhere else. And then there's Napa.

We've been to Napa a few times recently, not entirely by plan. We tried a few wineries -- not all of them by plan. The one winery we did plan for worked out very well -- the Caymus vineyards. If you are ever in Napa, plan for a visit to their tastings -- it's by appointment only, and their Cabernets are wonderful.

The other winery I've come to like a lot is the St. Clement. It is perched up on a small hill south of Calistoga, and the experience of sampling their excellent Cabernets and cheeses in their small garden overlooking the valley rejuvenates you more than a week in a spa.

World's Fastest Indian

2007-03-08T23:45:00.000-08:00

A couple of quotes kind of stood out from this Anthony Hopkins movie. Inspiring, motivational quotes, if someone cares for them.

If you don't follow your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable.

Another one, on the similar lines.

If you don't go when you want to go, when you go, you'll find you've gone.

Lastly, something from Theodore Roosevelt. I am copying the entire original quote:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Needless to say, everyone needs a motivational speech every once in a while. Something to keep the energy level high when chips pile up on the other side of the table. That said, I have always been on the cynical side of these motivational words -- I used to flaunt a poster from Despair, Inc in my office for a while. Maybe there's a middle ground somewhere. :)

The Lives of Others

2007-03-06T22:32:00.000-08:00

I happened to see this wonderful film a few days back. It is a gem of a movie, fully deserving of an Oscar ahead of Volver, Pan's Labyrinth and Water.

People make a loot of hoopla over Water in India, and I found the movie quite ordinary. Deepa Mehta deserves accolades for her courage and conviction, but I've never felt her movies are great cinema.

Back to the German movie I started about -- it's worth seeing for many reasons. There was one thought that struck me that I kept thinking about afterwards. While the movie was about the 1984-ish East Germany, in some ways it was about a simple scientific principle as well. In any experiment one cannot expect to be a spectator alone and not impact the actual experiment -- by observing we become a part of the experiment, and that changes the outcome.

I highly recommend the movie. On another, though somewhat similar, note, I finally managed to watch the Hindi adaptation of "12 angry men." The Hindi movie is called "Ek Ruka Hua Faisla" and it's now available in Indian movie stores here in the US. The movie attempts to make a point -- expressly menioned at one stage -- that as a jury we need to keep aside our emotions and prejudices and judge objectively. That, my friends, is hard.

Configuring Postfix to forward emails for multiple domains to local mailbox

2007-02-17T10:34:00.000-08:00

A friend was recently looking to configure postfix, so that he could send emails from his laptop to several domains and have all of them show up in his local mailbox. I'm posting the simple configuration for postfix that helps make this happen.

Check your postfix configuration. If you don't already have postfix, you can get it here. The instructions below all assume you have a Unix OS and shell. I did the below on a Mac OS X as well as a Sun OS host. I am sure it almost identical on most Unix environments.

Check that you have the postfix executable installed. (Usually in /usr/sbin/postfix)
Check that the configuration directory and files exist. (/etc/postfix/main.cf)
Ensure you have the access to edit the configuration files and create files in the postfix configuration directory. You will also need to restart postfix.

2. Edit the /etc/postfix/main.cf file. Add these lines at the end: (double check to make sure your spellings are correct. :)

# Testing virtual host domains
virtual_alias_domains = testdomain1.com testdomain2.com
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual

3. Edit /etc/postfix/virtual, and and these lines: (Replace recipient by any Unix user account you want to receive emails on your machine).

@testdomain1.com recipient
@testdomain2.com recipient

4. In the directory /etc/postfix, run the following command. This creates the hash database file needed by postfix for virtual alias table.

$> postmap hash:virtual

5. This above command would have created the file virtual.db in this directory. Verify.

6. Restart postfix. In case postfix is not running, you use "postfix start" to get it going.

$> sudo postfix reload
postfix/postfix-script: refreshing the Postfix mail system
$>

7. Test: (the user running the second command is the user whose account emails are being forwarded to, as per the settings in step 2 above).

$> mail -s "test mail" anyuser@testdomain1.com < /dev/null
Null message body; hope that's ok
$> mail
Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/vikasgupta": 1 message 1 unread
>U 1 vikasgupta@localhost Thu Feb 15 11:33 16/505 "test mail"
$>

Postfix comes with plenty of documentation on how to configure and use it. For more details on the above configuration, look at the VIRTUAL_README in the postfix distribution. The utility postconf is useful to review the configuration once you've reloaded it into postfix.

Whither India?

2007-02-10T02:30:00.000-08:00

Debate's raging, it seems, on India's contention for the "next superpower." There's a CNN article that naysays it pretty loudly. Of course, if you are in India you can hardly escape the constant bombardment of the opposite.

India's contending for a permanent seat in the Security Council. India's sustained a growth rate of 8% year over year for four straight years. If you believe the economists in India, the country can sustain this growth forever more. Last Economist issue stressed the need for investment in infrastructure for India to be able to sustain this growth.

I spent a significant part of the last two years in India. I was based in Bangalore. I travelled through Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Pune. Being in Bangalore, it is impossible to get away from the constant buzz. Salaries jump at a phenomenal rate every year -- for the software/IT industry at least. We were desperately seeking engineers, and so was everyone else. In the end, it was hard to find talented engineers with significant experience, and still harder to hire them and nearly impossible to keep them happy.

Of course, it is tough to stay happy in a place like Bangalore. There are parts of Bangalore you may visit that remind you why this ruckus started in the first place -- the campus of IISc comes to mind. I recall one funny incident that highlighted what a mess this place has become.

I had landed at the Bangalore airport, and was taking the office taxi home. In order to get to my house, the taxi had to go through the central business district. No to say, the airport road itself -- that probably packs more vehicles per square inch than anywhere else in the world.

When I told the driver where I needed to go, he simply said, "No sir. We won't go there." Huh? I told him, gently, that I need to go there and he has to take me there. "No sir. We'll go somewhere else. Too much traffic, sir. Where do you want to go sir?"

Well, he finally came around, and we inched along.

The moral of the story is -- infrastructure in Bangalore, and many other places in India -- needs serious investment. It is improving, but not it's not keeping pace with the growth. In places like Bangalore, it is crumbling.

Superpower? Whatever. The term itself seems to be a leftover from the 80s.

Rails

2007-02-10T02:23:00.000-08:00

I posted a couple of handy techniques for Rails here.

Anthony Lane is raving about the German movie "Lives of Others." It's yet to make it out to SFO, though. Economist recently carried an article about the resurgence of German cinema, and it makes references to Lives of Others as well.

It's not the years...

2007-01-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

During our trip to New Zealand, we had rented a car to tour the South Island. Everything was great, except that the car was quite below expectations. For starters, it had 160K miles on it. So, naturally when returning the car, we had some complaints. The guy argued that it's just two years old.

"It's not the years, it's the mileage!" said I. Of course, it didn't matter much to him, but I had the smug satisfaction of mouthing a neat quote from Indiana Jones.

New Zealand trip was great. We did the luge in Rotorua, bungee in Queenstown and sea kayaking in Milford Sound. It was rainier than expected, but didn't really make much of a difference in the end. Queenstown must be one of the prettiest towns in the world. Now I have to make it back there for snowboarding in their winters.

Bungee jump video...

2007-01-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

I edited away the first non-jump :). This was really scary for me. I am sure it is easier the second time around -- though why I would want to do it the second time around is something I don't have an answer for.

This is off of the Kawarau river bridge near Queenstown in New Zealand. Apparently this is the first place in the world where bungee happened.

Enjoy!

We the people...

2006-12-23T01:20:00.000-08:00

These are words that many Indians will be familiar with. For those who are now, this are the first three words of the Indian Constitution (as it is of the US Constitution). This also happens to be the tagline of one of the decent movies with Shahrukh Khan -- "Swades."

But really that's hardly what I wanted to bore you with. If you ever doubt you are an Indian, there are some things that will give you a clue.

* Almost all Indians despise broccoli -- the (abominable) vegetable.
* Every other Indian knows who P.G. Wodehouse is, and if you know who Psmith is, you are almost definitely from India.
* All Indians have read Tintin, and many of them have even read Asterix. If you think you would have a good chance at "Who wants to be a millionaire" if the questions were all about Tintin -- I assure you, you must check your ancestory because you will find Indian blood there somewhere.
* If you have heard about Malgudi and you remember the fabulous Shankar Nag television serial on the book, you are decidedly an Indian, how much ever you may be ignoring it.

New Yorker recently had an article on R.K. Narayanan. I loved the article, because it was a pleasure to see an American magazine write about him. In India, I remember reading about him every once in a while in the Times of India.

My first experience with Malgudi was through the ever reliable Doordarshan in India -- the only television channel in the 80s. The other times were through occasional stories we had to read ("The Astrologer's Day" comes to mind) as a part of our school work. However as my interest in reading grew out of Alistair Macleans and Clive Cusslers, at some point I discovered R. K. Narayanan. His "Swami and Friends" remains one of my personal favorites ot this day. RKN had the singular ability to present several constrasting perspectives at the same time -- so much so that every thing he wrote felt real. Swami's experiences, somehow, never felt like fiction. His fears, his thoughts were incredibly genuine. Swamy to me in many ways was a more familiar answer to the other loveable character from literatur -- Tom Sawyer.

If you are ever looking for a literature from India written in English, I highly recommend you find yourself Swami and Friends by R.K. Narayanan. I also highly recommend the TV series Malgudi Days, but the DVD has only a small number of episodes. The episodes on Swamy's adventures are a lot more enjoyable, though.

End of the year...

2006-12-20T17:23:00.000-08:00

The year's ending with a blast! This Saturday I am off to New Zealand for two weeks, wife in tow. It's summer there -- which means no snowboarding, unfortunately. Nevertheless there are plans for surfing, scuba diving, rafting, "zorbing", kayaking, hiking and lots more! Needless to say I am hyper excited. :)

In case you are looking for a refresher course for Scuba diving in the bay area, I recommend the Wallins in San Carlos.

Rounding up some movies I saw recently... Volver is great, but it isn't the level of Almodovar's earlier movies. After so many people recommended The Departed, I finally saw it. Despite my low expectations, I didn't enjoy it that much. The cast does a splendid job though. Mark Wahlberg was a surprise. Dicaprio was good. Vera Farmiga reminded me too much of Sophie Marceau. The only thing that's different in the movie from the Hong Kong original is the ending, and I preferred the way the original ended. Casino Royale makes a good Bond movie. I like the humor, the mood and the lack of gizmos -- Bond becomes more Bond.

Among a little older movies, Syriana was very good. Eddie Izzard's Unrepeatable was good but it's from a time before he's mastered his art. I've found some of his early stuff online that's pretty good too. I'll post some of it here sometime.

Jambool continues to be my primary pre-occupation. The current version of the site -- however limited the interface -- continues to be stable and up. A new version's in the pipeline, but a couple months out.

Meanwhile, best wishes for Christmas and New Years to everyone.

Cricket: Sreesanth Swinging His Bat..... Dhoom Machale?!

2006-12-19T18:08:00.000-08:00


I was in splits watching this video. And they say cricket is a gentleman's game. It's about to change -- Sreesanth is here to make sure of that!

Count your bullets

2006-12-12T01:22:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of guns in movies. The first kind have a finite number of bullets. Usually six. Sometimes more, but still finite. The second kind of guns have infinite bullets. They go on forever. Superguns, let's call them.

In India, everyone born after 1975 knows that revolvers have 6 bullets. This fact comes up in one of the most famous Hindi film dialogues ever. But then the 80s came. This was a time when directors had to choose one of the two: hero carries infinite guns, or hero's gun carries infinite bullets. Most chose the second. Some chose the first. Some chose both. So, every once in a while you will find yourself watching a Mithun Chakravorty or Jeetendra go about spewing bullets into the scenery faster than you munch on the popcorn. So much so that the Indian cinema ran out of bullets and there were practically no bullets in movies in all of the 90s. All the mushy lovers who had gone into hiding came out in this time of peace.

Occasionally, though, some movie would come out where they remind you that bullets and guns obey the simple laws of physics: specifically, a bullet takes volume and a gun has finite amounts of it. Russian roulette is usually a good way to bring this fact up. Like they did in Dhoom 2, the recent mindless junk -- the scene Ranjit refered to in the comments to the previous post.

Usually, the fact that there are limited bullets makes for some interesting climaxes. Do you remember Neo battling it out with Mr. Smith at the Subway station? They go flying at each other, bullets zooming past, till they are on the ground guns at each other's heads. "You're empty." "So are you." Finite space even when their minds, supposedly, control the world around them.

Die Hard is another case in point. This movie remains to day the best action movie ever. Nothing beats it. The hero runs out of just about everything and still comes out tops. The climax involves a gun with just one bullet for the bad guy, one bad guy and some tape.

Talking about guns that need refills, when I think of Pierce Brosnan in Bond movies, somehow I only remember him refilling guns, hardly ever shooting. The other Bonds seem to do the shooting, and he was left to refill the magazines.

One has to admit, working with the laws of Physics makes more interesting movies. What's the fun in watching a hero with superguns just mow everyone in their wake. Unless. Unless the hero you're watching happens to the whacky Steve Zissou, played by the always wonderful Bill Murray, in a movie that almost seems to match the whackiness of Michael Gondry's.

Do you know more scenes with superguns that are worth watching? Or the other way round -- guns that run out of bullets? Do tell.

Dhoom 2: A Review

2006-12-02T01:56:00.000-08:00

I love motorcycles. That's why I went and watched this movie. That is the real reason and please do not ask me this question again.

Instead of a dull analysis of the movie, how about I walk you through the movie? Really -- scene by important scene, every dialogue (I remember all 5 of them). Ok, here goes.

Desert. Train. Queen. Wait. go back -- queen?? She looks like Hrithik Roshan's mother. Ah. Yes of course. Ok. Cut to long shot from sky. Sky diver. In funky clothes. Parachute. Robbery. Ridiculous stunts on moving train. Clap, clap. Song number 1, Hrithik's biceps dancing about. Women, close your mouths, please.

Lake. A run-down steamer. Looks like India. Loudmouth cop. Lands in trouble. Super cop shows up from under water. On a water scooter. Really. I-saw-it-with-my-own-eyes-so-believe-it-will-you? Scooter-diving-cop saves loudmouth cop. Audience regrets. They blow up some people. Audience shuts up.

Hot chick. Tight clothes. View: Neck down, waist up. From left. From right. Fires guns. Likes to makes holes in things. The best thing for a guy who ends up dying from her gun? Very precisely spaced holes on his torso. She walks. Hips swinging. Men drool -- on screen. "Inspector Bipasha, reporting, sir," she says. The older guy wipes off drool, stutters "Uh yeah, go sit in the room, put some handcuffs on, I need to visit the bathroom." She complies.

Everyone gets it on. Senior cop has pregnant wife. Seem to have junior cop for house clown. Senior cop gets it on with lady cop. Junior cop tries to. They use some mysterious robber for an excuse to get in a room and talk suggestively. Robbery happens. Another robbery happens. Lady cop resigns. "What no,Bipasha..?? what wil we look at" -- cry the audience. Enter Ms Rai. First scene, she's covered from head to toe. Don't worry -- not her eyes though. So she can walk, jump -- and most importantly, bat those pretty eyelids. Next scene, she takes the clothes off. Drool. Everywhere. Intermission. Theater needs to be cleaned.

Thank you for coming back. Theater's clean now. The movie? Eveyrone's partying in Rio. Carnival? Don't htey have the months wrong? Tsk, tsk. Can we just watch Bipasha in that bikini again? Hrithik's showing off. What's that? Someone's abs. Someone speaks. Oh, look, there's a face above the abs.

Eveyrone's partying. Looks like Abhishek's not invited. Sulks. Frowns. He's the only one clothed. He gets more facial hair. No saloons in Rio, I imagine. Only bikini wax shops.

Oh, the story. There's a robbery. A chase. You see a motorcyle. A helicopter that turns into two-bollywood-heroes-on-motorcycles. Cool invention, that. More sillyness ensues. Your head hurts from working so hard to make sense. Your eyes hurt -- from all the bulging muscles on the screen. You wish for some comic relief. How about Javed Jaffery bursting on to the screen with "Iggzaktly!" That would have been perfect.

Sigh.

Some random stuff I've been watching...

2006-11-12T00:49:00.000-08:00

Arish recently recommended House M.D. TV series. Netflix makes it easy to live a few years behind the world and catchup in a week -- so I am catching up to many seasons of this series. I am still on the fist season, and I've come to like it quite a bit. I think the reason Arish recommended it was that it has Hugh Laurie -- who made Wodehouse' Wooster come to life on screen. I like it -- to the extent that watching it sometimes made me want to become a doctor. It makes medicine seem more like puzzle solving than anything else.

I, of course, went to see Borat. When I saw the preview of the movie, it looked hilarious, but I was skeptical -- these things work well in half an hour sketches at more, but rarely have the lasting power to make a movie. Borat tries, but it's riding on marketing and hype. You have to hand it to Sacha Cohen though -- it's a performance worth applauding. The movie itself is ok -- he picks on the people worth picking on, and in many ways picks on the audience itself. But I still found it a tad boring -- thought it does have some very funny parts.

I've been meaning to watch The Departed. It's always a lot of fun to watch Jack Nicholson chew everyone else in bad boy roles like this one. But I haven't. Infernal Affairs was a damn good movie, and remakes, however well made, don't pack the same punch. Maybe, one of these days, I'll get around to it. Meanwhile, I do recommend Infernal Affairs -- the Hong Kong original that inspired it.

If you haven't seen the Gods must be crazy, you must. Both parts, I and II. Hilarious stuff.

Journey of Man is an interesting documentary. It traces genetic mutations to track human history all the way to 50,000 years ago when Man started to branch out of Africa and human race spread all over the world. Just for the science and the story alone, it's worth watching. But it does seem overstretched and seems to have missing pieces. It is also a promo vehicle for the presenter/scientist. Despite the flaws, it is a good story.

Tony Jaa might grow up to be the next Jackie Chan?

I've had a hard time finding something from Eddie Izzard as good as Dressed to Kill. But he was working solid magic in Definite Article -- something I saw recently. I am waiting for "Unrepeatable" to show up in the Netflix envelope one of these days...

In case you do not know, Almodovar's latest -- Volver -- should be out soon.

And so will be the new Bond flick, and the new Spiderman flick.

Murder by Death

2006-11-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

The movie I am writing about this week is Murder By Death.

There are many reasons to watch this movie -- David Niven, Alec Guiness, Maggie Smith, Truman Capote, and the king of them all Peter Sellers. They all come together in this amazing comedy. Peter Sellers turns in a brilliant spoof of Charlie Chan -- his character in the movie is Wang -- and packs in a whole new, and even funnier, one liners that the Charlie Chan was synonymous with. And of course he delivers it without any prepositions. Take this: "Conversation like television on honeymoon -- unnecessary."

The movie itself is a spoof on several well known detective characters -- Poirot is Perriet, Columbo is Sam Diamond, Miss Marple is Miss Marbles, Charlie Chan is Sidney Wang, and so on. They all come together in a mansion, as guests of Lionel Twain, played by Truman Capote. The movie unfolds as a murder mystery -- or spoofs one. All these supposedly brilliant detective minds are supposed to solve the murder mystery to get a prize. Don't expect any brilliant detective work here -- just laughs.

Another cute one from the movie, this time by Sam Diamond -- "This all could mean just one thing.... and I don't know what that is!"

Jambool is in (private) alpha.

2006-11-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

is in (private) alpha.

A tale of two movies

2006-11-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

The first movie is about a warrior who travels from the desert of Rajasthan to the snow of the Himachal, in a joueney to discover himself. The second, is a story of a woman who travels from Himachal's mountains to the sand dunes of Rajasthan to find someone else. So, in some ways, you can call this a Tale of two States.

The first movie is a patient, indulgent, raw-looking story of a "warrior" who gives up weapons, loses his son and finds some form of salvation. It's Asif Kapadia's The Warrior. Irfan Khan gives a splendid performance. The rest of the cast are non-actors, but the movie adds up quite well. It has a much more art-house feel to it -- it has subtle imagery that was lost on me initially.

The second movie is a little more popular cinema stuff -- though very different in its treatment than Bollywood stuff. It is Nagesh Kukunoor's Dor. The movie carries itself on some brilliant performances by its lead actors. The movie is shot very well -- it frames the sand dunes, the temples, the Himachal backdrop very well. It also has some really well etched characters -- at least the central characters. One can't say that Nagesh Kukunoor is a master of his craft, but he's getting better. His Hyderabad Blues seemed like a school project, his other movies in the middle didn't seem to break much ground either. But there were occasional flashes in the pan -- specifically Teen Deewarein and Iqbal.

Undoubtedly, he tries. Though he couldn't stop himself from giving Dor a crowd-pleaser of an ending. Nevertheless, it's good to see such cinema come out of India -- instead of the regular mush and dramas, or the remakes of Bachchan flicks of old.

Is it just me...?

2006-10-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

Or does the hero of the new Don look like heroine of the old Don?

Christopher Walken

2006-10-12T03:01:00.000-07:00

I pretty much like whatever this guy does. He was Zorin years ago in A View to a kill, and he was the headless horseman in the Sleepy Hollow, not so many years ago. I remember him in a zillion small cameo-like appearances in movies from Annie Hall to Wedding Crashers. Here is a link to a video on You Tube (gTube now?) -- it's a music video for "Weapon of Choice." Yeah, Walken and music video? And it's a solo performance too... Check it out.

It's not a new one, but something I remember every time I see him on screen.

Sorting things out

2006-10-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a simple problem. One that I am sure many of us would have encountered when programming. You are given a set of objects -- say customer orders -- such that each object is a fairly complex collection of attributes. Customer Order definitely qualifies. Now that you have this collection, I want you to give it to me sorted by order date.

Simple enough, right? All you need to do is sort them. But wait, you don't want to _write_ a sorting algorithm, do you? Really, how many of us have actually written a sorting algorithm since we left school? And rightly so -- others have done it well, have put it in a library for you to use, have tested it, and have written books about how good their library is, so really there's no point in writing one yourself. So, coming back to customer orders, how do you go about sorting them?

If you do it in C++, you'll probably rely on STL or something similar to manage your collection. In order to make your collection sortable, you will have to make sure your objects are 'Comparable' and the comparison works on the order date field. Simple but probably not simple enough. If you are a Java programmer, you probably did something similar.

C actually did it a little better. In the sort function you could pass in a pointer to the comparison function that would be called for comparing two objects in the array being sorted. All you had to do was to write a function that returned the comparison result based on date.

The reason C is even better is that when you need to have several different ways to sort this array of objects, it starts to get onerous with the 'Comparable' approach. You probably would have to wrap each class into specific Comparable versions for each field. In C you would just write a small function for the new field, and use that.

In Ruby, however, if you want to sort an array of objects, all you need to do is write code that looks something like this:


    orders.sort! { |a,b| (a.order_date <=> b.order_date) }

This just feels beautiful. Sort it on customer name, no problem. Just sort it with a different code block. One line of code. That's it. There are no complex design patterns to worry about, no layers of Objects. It is definitely similar to C, but far more elegant, and far simpler. I recall it took me a few tries to figure out the function pointer declaration.

This kind of stuff makes it much simpler to design lean API -- because despite being lean, it doesn't require a bunch of glue code to make it work for a particular application.

Minimality of code has many, many virtues. Not the least of which is that less code implies less bugs. And that has to just spell happiness for developers, project managers and consumers alike.

Official Jambool blog

2006-09-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

The first post to the official Jambool blog is out. More to come.

The reference there is to a movie called Abre los Ojos. It was subsequently made into "Vanilla Sky" starring Tom Cruise.

The post also made references to sleep, and while on that I should mention the recently out "Science of Sleep." Parts of the movie stuck chords. Though the movie seems to lose its path towards the end, the first 4/5th of the movie is quite brilliant.

Waisa bhi hota hai, part II

2006-09-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

It seems the Arshad Warsi has arrived. The first draft of Munnabhai was, it seems, just a means to get to Lage raho Munabhai. I've been a fan of Arshad Warsi for a while. It's unfortunate that it took out audiences a Munnabhai to warm up to him. Where other actors are known for their comic timing (Govinda in his heyday, and Bachchan in his prime are a few), no one can light a candle to Arshad.

But wait, what I really wanted to say was that you should go see this movie called Waisa bhi hota hai, part II. No, it's not a sequel. This movie starts with a prologue -- that lasts about 5 minutes -- and the rest of the movie is "part II." It is an extremely rare Indian movie. Why? If you've watched Japanese cinema, you'd have marveled at its ability to find engineer ridiculous coincidences and make it seem natural. And the ability for characters to constantly surprise you. Why, I often wondered, is this quirkiness that is so omnipresent in life, and so evident to the Japanese, Korean and Thai filmmakers (and of course on Mr Tarantino), is it lost on the Indians? But then, as the Maruti ad goes, the times -- they sure are a changing.

Check out this gem of a movie. It also features an absolutely delightful song -- "Allah ke bande" by Kailash Kher. And wait for the movie credits to roll in the end. In one take, the film makers thank Beat Kitano, Tarantino and several others of my favorite directors for inspiration! That's another rarity in India cinema. For one, it is a fairly orignal movie, not a rip-off (afaik). Second, it actually lists people who inspired them.

Movies of the week: Andaz Apna Apna and Main Hoon Na

2006-09-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most people who read this blog would have seen Andaz Apna Apna. Probably more than once. So if I say I recommend this movie -- well, fat lot of use that is. But wait, it gets a little better.

You see, Andaz Apna Apna has apparently become a "cult" hit. I was trying to figure out what makes a movie a cult hit, and what I came up with was something that has limited appeal to the masses but over time builds credibility and popularity with a select following. AAA wasn't that big a hit when it first came out, but ever since then it has gained tremendously in popularity. So I guess it does qualify to be a cult hit.

I obviously do recommend this movie. It has its flaws, some slow parts that dragged a little bit -- they could have easily done away with a couple of songs -- but the movie is a laugh riot all through. But I recommend the movie for another reason. This movie is one of the rare Bollywood movies (the other one is the second movie in this post) that never takes itself too seriously. And it piles in quite a few homages and references to other movies.

For example, did you know that this movie's characters were loosely based on the characters from Archie comics? Aamir Khan is Reggie, Salman Khan is Archie, Raveena is Veronica and Karisma is Betty. Then, there are references to Aamir Khan's and Salman's movies. The twin brothers played by Paresh Rawal are Ram and Shyam -- a popular reference to the movie of yesteryears about twin brothers switching roles. Mehmood runs a studio called "Wah Wah Productions" -- something he was doing in a 60s movie Pyar Kiye Ja as well. Jagdeep plays "Soorma Bhopali" -- right out of Sholay. Shakti Kapoor is Gogo, the nephew of Mogambo -- Mogambo from Mr. India. There's a scene where the movie Sholay comes up in the dialogue, and Salman says yeah, he's seen it many times. Aamir retorts, yeah Salman's dad wrote it. Which, in fact, is true. Salim Khan (along with Javed Akhtar) did write Sholay.

The climax of the movie is one of the best half hour of Bollywood cinema. It is almost cartoonish in parts, and has a weird pelvis thrust "fight" sequence between Shakti Kapoor and Salman Khan. I haven't been able to figure out if it has any more subtle reference or meaning except maybe just a mojo war. In any case, if you ever need a dose of laughter, go get this movie.

I rarely ever recommend a Shahrukh Khan movie, but I thought the movie Main Hoon Na was a rare bird. I enjoyed this movie again primarily because it didn't take itself too seriously. In fact, it revelled in its pranks and subtle references and more. The movie has Naseeruddin Shah in a small role with a 20 year old past that haunts him -- and it is something right out of his 20 year old movie, Masoom. The movie takes off on Matrix, except that bullets are replaced by spit from Satish Shah's mouth as Shahrukh's character tries to dodge them. There's another sequence where Shahrukh drives a cycle rickshaw, chasing an SUV. The chase starts at a movie theater showing Sholay, and the cycle rickshaw, very cheekily, has "Basanti" (or was it Dhanno on the rickshaw, I can't remember) pasted on its back. The movie otherwise too unabshedly broke rules -- the sets would transform suddenly as a song kicks off -- and that makes it fun if you are ready to play along.

Movie Review

2006-08-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

This is a movie review, and I've decided not to care about lack of credentials for movie journalism -- if there are really, anyway. You see, sometimes Bollywood comes out with movies that I truly despise (that I still watch a whole gamut is a sign of hope -- and there have been reasons). And I feel this uncontrollable urge to get it out of my system. A need for catharsis.

On to the movie. Bollywood put out another candy floss movie based in an American metropolitan, wrapped in designer clothes and soft-focus marketing stills. This movie is a dud. You see, when you watch a movie you are gradually led to a denouement, a climax. At this point, all questions get answered, and mysteries are solved, and it ties everything together. Good movies work because they handle this buildup and the eventual denouement well. This movie bumbles along, for most part builds up a confused mess, and when the time comes for final denouement, it falls with its face on a slab of cement -- there is blood splattered everywhere, and you wish you weren't there to witness it.

Starting with the first frame where Shahrukh Khan shows his arrogant, smirking face I wanted some character to slap him hard and wipe that stupid grin off his face. I wished Amitabh would do that for daring to think he could do a Don. When Shahrukh meets Rani Mukherjee, I think she came pretty close to doing the honour. When Shahrukh blurts out his affair with Abhishek's wife, I thought this is it! Bachchan Jr. is going to land him a sock. Nopes. Then Shahrukh's mom comes face to face with him, having caught him red handed. I think the slap got edited away, because it was hanging there in the air. And then, finally!, when Shahrukh tells his wife madam Zinta about the affair, she, amongst all the fine cast of this movie, has the pluck to deliver what it takes. She delivers a slap that I clapped hard at. I even shouted for an encore! This, for me, was the denouement of the movie. The climax. This is what the entire movie seemed to be building up to.

But alas, someone thought differently. According to the writers and directors of this movie, you get punished for adultery by spending 3 years alone. So the movie blunders on, till there are enough weddings and funerals, and till they've captured the fall, the winter , the summer through 20 different camera angles, and finally ends with the dumb and dumber couple walking off the Grand Central. It makes one wonder -- what a shallow, sheltered, deprived lives the writers and makers of this film would lead. You wouldn't notice if most of the cast was replaced by plastic cards.

The first half hour or so of the movie works -- primarily because of the chemistry between the Bachchan father and son duo. The rest of the movie is an exercise in sadism. The Chinese may have invented many different torture schemes, but we have them beat with Shahrukh Khan.

If someone is interested in more details of the movie, there are none -- or at least not any more than what you already don't know. Shahrukh Khan chews gum, limps, yells, smirks, frowns and thinks he is the super stud. And so thinks Rani Mukherjee, who happens to be married to Bachchan jr. Why is Rani Mukherjee smitten by the wimpy Khan? Because he is a loser with a limp and a smirk, who tells her what an idiot she is. So they do a Silsila thing, have a fling. The loser yells some more. The dumb girl cries and falls along. And yes, she makes it a point to clean the gardens and apartments of New York when you are not looking. They get caught, they admit their folly. Shahrukh Khan tells his wife over coffee -- I was hoping there would be hot coffee splashed on his face and then a slap, but madam Zinta (as she herself said) was too much of a man to do that. Rani Mukherjee probably tells her hubby in bed. Big noises ensue, furniture is broken -- the designer stuff in Rani's house, and Shahrukh's ugly face in Preity's. The guilty are thrown out. And then the director tries to make it a redemption saga. The real redepmtion was that Shahrukh's character walks off the screen to 15 days in jail(are there chains in New York trains?). 15 days won't cut it, but they'll do for a start.

Castro coincidence

2006-08-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

I had picked up the latest issue of New Yorker as I left home yesterday to catch a flight. I usually start with the Fiction piece, but this time around I got off the block with the article on Cuba and Castro. And as I was leaving the plane I saw the news plastered on newspapers -- Castro steps down. Lucky for me, I had had a real good primer for the state of affairs in Cuba, and I knew who Raul Castro was, and so on.

The article is online here.

Talking about topical stuff, this Middle East buddy list from Slate was useful in trying to figure out who's on whose side. When the recent war started and Egypt and Saudi Arabia criticised Hezbollah, I was a bit confused. It's complicated.

Dave the funny guy with a funnier hat posted a yet funnier joke on Jibjab. Check it out!

movie of the week.. Jakarta

2006-08-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

This week another Korean movie gets the pick. I had picked up Jakarta because of its premise -- it seemed like an interesting thriller/heist movie. It turned out to be a lot more than that.

In the first 10-15 minutes of the movie, I was thinking that I had picked up an amaterurish production -- horribly acted, poor cinematography. The plot looked silly and simplistic. It didn't seem promising. To my pleasant surprise, however, the movie seemed to evolve. In 90 minutes, everything in the movie got increasingly better. The plot of the movie turned out to be quite a twisted one, where loyalties changed as we learnt more about both the present and the past of the bank robbery that the movie starts out with.

In most movies, as an audience, you figure out your loyalties with some characters, and wait as the directors predictably leads you to a tragic or satisfying end. This movie, however, doesn't make it that easy for you. And yet, its denouement is quite satisfying.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen this movie get mentioned in many places, and it may be hard to find its DVD in the States. I know Scarecrow in Seattle carries one, and Netflix doesn't. But if you can find it, enjoy!

Jambooling...

2006-07-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

Last week was pretty significant. For me, i.e.

Last week I incorporated my company -- Jambool, Inc.

It's one of the many small steps before I can start taking any step I can call big. What is Jambool about? It's about users, and trying to figure out how to help me, the user, make sense of the spread of content online. Vague enough, eh?

Movie of the week: Time and Tide

2006-07-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

For a very long time when I thought of an action movie, the only movie that came to mind was Die Hard. It still remains one of the best action movies ever. However, ever since I saw this masterpiece from Tsui Hark, Die Hard moved to number two spot.

Time and Tide is a Hong Kong action movie, and packs some of the most incredible stunts and action sequences. The movie has two distict parts: the build up and the deliverance. And luckily, it is the latter that fills most of the movie. There isn't a lot to the plot of the build up, except that it sets up a tame looking character against a gang of dangerous looking (and sounding) assasins/killers/mafia/what-have-you, and lands all the characters in one of the tall congested apartment buildings in Hong Kong for a good part of an hour. The action is nicely scripted, and some of it just -- literally -- takes the breath away.

Movies of a generation

2006-07-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

Every generation has a movie that sort of defines it. So it seems to me. When I look at those around me, I see people clinging to some movie or the other that they feel was "theirs." My view has a strong Indian bias, of course, and one has to admit that cinema is more entwined with people's lives in India than elsewhere. Where else would one find temples erected to celebrate film stars?

Coming back to generations, I thought I'll try and come up movies that probably some generation identifies as "theirs." These are more ruminations on my part, so if you have comments, please do share.

The first generation and the first movie that comes to mind, my mind, i.e., is the bell-bottom angst-ridden 70s and the era of teeny-bopper romance Bobby (the bell bottoms) and Zanjeer (the angst). Both these movies came out the same year (1973), and both started two parallel mainstream trends that sometimes met. With Bobby, Rishi Kapoor began a long career trying to romance women of varying age with a routine that more or less stayed the same over 20 years. Early on he tried to romance older women Simi Grewal (Karz) and Rakhee(Doosra Aadmi), and later on girls less than half his age.

Rishi Kapoor's antics notwithstanding, anyone with even the remotest of Indian connection will probably know the significance of the other movie of that year. Zanjeer brought to Indian cinema the persona of angry-young-man, with rage that was simmering just beneath the skin of the otherwise tall, charming police officer. The cause was much helped by the fact that this persona was played with endearing sincerity by Amitabh Bachchan. The rest, as they say, is stuff history is made of. From 1973 to today, no generation has grown up without being fed on his legend. And he still remains a tour de force.

It is small wonder then that a generation would identify themselves with Zanjeer. 1970s were pretty tumultous for India. We saw the corruption and Congress-led dirty politics at the worst, culminating in an emergency and total breakdown of the democratic system. The decade started with a war with Pakistan and ended with the Indian political system having gone through a complete upheaval and returning to its original state. And still, through all this, it was a time of bell-bottoms and rebellious love -- thanks to Bobby.

Le Bikini

2006-07-09T01:50:00.000-07:00

The Bikini turns 60!

Bikini's impact on this world is phenomenal. They've helped sell everything from automobiles to zips. On our trip to Mexico, we noticed that every billboard, irrespective of what it was trying to sell, featured a bikini-clad model. I was wondering if there is anything we men wouldn't do if a hot babe in bikini asks us...

Inspiration comes from all kinds of sources

2006-07-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

Someone recently invented a submarine explorer that looks like a shark -- something right out of Tintin's Red Rackham Treasure. As it happens, that comic was indeed the inspiration for the contraption!

Srini just referred to an article about Tintin. Incidentally, just yesterday I was browsing the interesting store called Karikter, off of Union Square here in SF, and picked up a couple of small toy figures, including those of Tintin and Thompson & Thomson. Though Americans hardly know of Tintin but everyone else in the world does. And, yes, did you know Tintin's the only comic characters to be honoured by Dalai Lama for spreading awareness in the world about Tibet? Tintin in Tibet remains one of the reasons I find traveling, mountain climbing, Tibet, remote monasteries so alluring.

Tinin also makes a good way to connect with people from different parts of the world. I remember I was having dinner in a very international crowd -- German, French, Indian(myself), Dutch, Arab -- and I brought up Tintin. Everyone looked at me with blank stares. They hadn't heard of him. Strange. Snowy? No. Thompson and Thomson? No. It couldn't be happening, I thought. In a final attempt, at the risk of looking and feeling totally ridiculous, I started describing the two crazy detectives. The moustaches, the crazy antics, "with a 'p'"... "Dupond et Dupont!" cried the French guy. "Shultze and Shulze", goes the German. "Jansen and Janssen", went the Dutch!

International currency -- that's what Tintin is.

My geekiness of movies.. or maybe not..

2006-07-03T00:33:00.000-07:00

When I sat down in the theater to watch Superman, and credits started appearing, I was surprised to see a name called 'Eva Marie Saint.' The image I had of her is from the Hitchcock movie, North by Northwest. So when the movie started in earnest, I was on the lookout for her. An old lady appeared first, and I wondered... Yes it is her, and lord, oh lord, she is wearing the same lipstick from North by Northwest!

I felt a little sheepish telling my wife as we walked out that I recognized the actress from the shade of her lipstick, especially since I'll be damned if I can recall my wife's shade of lipstick from any day.. But you have to grant that Eva is a woman in a different class, and that shade of lipstick is rather rare. Or maybe it was just that I was sitting in the fron row of an Imax theater. You can't miss much from there, can you?

When I read Lane's review I felt I was in good company -- there were others who felt more excited about Eva Marie Saint, and Kevin Spacey, in the movie than the Supe himself.

HR

2006-06-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

I was reading Ranjit's post on how ridiculous HR was in one of his companies.

I thought I'll share an anecdote that was almost funny.

This happened in a small company of about 100 people in India, mostly engineers and about a handful of HR like people. There was an event being organized that kept getting postponed, and it wasn't clear why. So one day I popped around to the HR cube -- about 5 cubes away from mine -- and seeked to gain some higher knowledge. The conversation, honestly, went something like this.

HR-czar: "Oh. that.. uh.. yeah.. it needs budget planning and PR, and then approval from business, and then finance approval and budget sanctioning, and then only we can do this. It's a long process. It takes time."

I thought at this time that the governing overseas company must be really clamping down now on costs. But something else was bothering me.

Me: "What's PR?"

HR: "Purchase Request."

Me: "Who does that?"

HR: "X does."

I turn to X, "how long does it take?" expecting that this probably needs a lot of evaluation and planning, so maybe a few days.

X: "about 2 minutes. Shall I get it?" "Yeah, let's."

2 minutes later, with a PR in my hand. "Who gives the business approval?" I was getting the hang of it.

HR: (and she's begun to laugh by now.) "Y can."

I walk over to Y, in the next cube. Signed, no problem. I jump over to the HR cube again. "How does finance approve?"

HR: "Well... it's just Z." Z's sitting next to her. Finance signs.

There are some sheepish grins and blushes, but there is joy all around. We had a party to plan. You had to see the sudden rush of excitement in the HR cube.

Why is independent thought rare?

2006-06-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

What is independent thought? Something that does not conform to eveyrthing else around. Something that sticks out.

Why is it rare? Is it? I think it is because there's very little I run into that I feel isn't exploring known territory. Every once in a while there will be someone who breaks the norm and a legion of followers wake up as though they were all really thinking the same thing and just did not say it. At times it is just admitting that the emperor has no clothes.

But as I wondered more I thought maybe there is a more inherent reason for someone to not have independent thought. Survival. From a pack of 100 zebras, the one that's most likely to get picked by the lion is the one that stands away from the crowd. The head that's going to roll is the one that sticks out.

I read an interesting book called Sync sometime back. It talked about how order emerged spontaneously in the world around us. It explores why a audience full of people end up clapping in rhythm without any external cue and why fireflies flash in sync with each other. The subject itself was fascinating for me. It even had insights that I was considering applying to a distributed system design I was working on then. But I don't recall the book actually explored survival as a possible reason for this tendency to be in sync get programmed into us -- it may have, I just don't recall it.

If everyone in a hall was clapping in sync, and you decided to clap out of sync, imagine the whole hall turning around and looking at the sore thumb in their midst.

If a bug-eater is on the lookout for bugs and sees a bunch of fireflies flashing in unison, it'll probably think they are the latest invention from mankind, or a UFO or something and flee for its life. But if there's a firefly in its midst flashing away at its own merry pace different than the others.. aha! Supper time!

We all have an innate urge to conform because we don't want to be a prey. And thus independent thought becomes rare.

Anthony Lane's review of Superman

2006-06-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

Anthony Lane is hilarious. Check out his review of Superman Returns.

Here's a brief excerpt...

What these [crystals] are I never really gathered, but their potency is plain: just add water, and bang goes the power supply of the Eastern United States. Add more crystals to more water, and up from the seabed rises a fresh landmass, on which—if you are Luthor—you plan to build a whole new continent of your own devising. Picture my disappointment as I realized that, for all the pizzazz of “Superman Returns,” its global weapon of choice would not be terrorism, or nuclear piracy, or dirty bombs. It would be real estate. What does Warner Bros. have in mind for the next installment? Superman overhauls corporate pension plans? Luthor screws Medicare?

Fabulous stuff.

While on fabulous, there should have been an emperor fabulous, shouldn't there? "Hi, I'm emperor Fabulous!" "Oh yes, so you are!" (If you didn't _get_ it, it's time you met Senor Izzard.)

Superman's back and more

2006-06-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

I am no movie critic, and this isn't a movie review. When I heard Superman's coming back, I knew that if I waited too long it wasn't going to be fun. It is probably going to get trashed and then I'm not gonna watch it all that much. I hadn't expected it to really be great so I wanted to watch it before the deluge of reviews came out. And today the reviews of the movie are just like the hero himself -- wherever you look, there they are.

So what did I think of the movie? I think it was great. Lot of fun. I think Kevin Spacey is my hero. The guy should go do Shakespeare or something. The movie is good entertainment. 3-D stuff is decent but you won't miss much if these weren't in 3-D. The movie has some tongue-in-cheek stuff, and some occasionaly subtlty that I enjoyed. Even without these, the movie is good entertainment.

There is this other superhero film I saw that was good, cheesy, mindless fun as well. Krrish. For people unaware of movies from India, this is a Bollywood attempt at a superhero born with powers from out of this world -- thanks to the alien who blessed his dad with powers in an earlier movie.

I recall a friend once telling me that you can judge the mental age of a country by the movies being made for them. We must all be gradually progressing towards infancy. Fifty years ago, the movies though we were mature adults, somewhere in our 30s or 40s -- what with silly themes about life, self-respect, politics, freedom, struggle and all that. Two decades ago we were all in our twenties -- action films, heroes that made us dream big and conquer the world. Ten years ago were were teenagers -- cheesy romances and juvenile jokes seemed to be the way. And now we enjoy our dose of Spiderman, X-men, Superman, Krrish, Batman -- and all with the glee of an eight-year old. What? There are bigger things to worry about than ogling at the pretty girl, and jumping up and about in my super-costume? Pfththth...

Movie of the week: Bubba Ho-Tep

2006-06-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

My officemate at Amazon was once playing the third of the Evil Dead series (Army of Darkness) on his computer. I had only seen about the first 10-15 minutes, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch the rest of it. Then, sometime later, I saw Evil Dead 2 in a theater. And I became a fan of Bruce Campbell and this whole genre. I got me a copy of Army of Darkness DVD at some point. And I loved it this time.

Then I heard about Bubba Ho-Tep. This time I wasn't getting left out. I got me, and convinced some friends to join me as well, tickets to an early show. And I don't recall laughing that hard in a movie theater ever in my life. The movie has an ingenious premise, an out of this world (pun intended) plot and incredibly funny dialogues.

The premise: JFK and Elvis are actually alive and spending their lives in a senior residents home, somewhere in the south. And, JFK is black. The plot? There's an egyptian mummy on the loose sucking out souls of residents in this community. So it's up to the wheelchair-bound JFK and crutches-bound Elvis to save the world. The plot evolves gently, weaving through bug problems, egyptian graffiti in the toilet, cowboy boots and some ridiculous mummy-dialogue (with subtitles).

Let there more of Bruce Campbell!

Add penalty shoot out to Cricket test matches

2006-06-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

While there is the exciting world cup matches being played out in Germany, Indians are busy dragging match after match with the West Indies to tame draws. This version of Cricket is unbelievably indulgent -- top players (and extremely well paid too) of two nations, half the globe from each other, meet in a stadium where thousands buy tickets to watch them play, and after five days of play it is announced that the match is a draw. No result. No winners to celebrate, and no losers who feel beat. How can this form of any game draw such popularity, money and fame?

I think they should add a penalty shoot-out version of cricket at the end of these five days. If there is no result at the end of five days, the players play a 5-over-a-piece game to decide a winner. And the buggers keep doing it till they get a result. If someone paid to watch you play, I think you should be spending a good part of the time entertaining them and not sipping tea in the pavilion.

On the internet, no one knows you are a dog

2006-06-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

Everyone's seen this popular New Yorker cartoon. Very often I get reminded of this, especially these days of the blog.

Speaking of New Yorker, it's a magazine that keeps serving excellent stories. And cartoons too. I remember that the Star Wars review in the New Yorker was better than the movie itself. How would you compile an online version of such a magazine? The attention span online, apparently, is much shorter. Instead of turning pages, you scroll down (or click a link). It just isn't the same.

But what of the generation that's growing up with the Internet. Will they have completely different set of skills? It's an old thought, though, already.

In the meanwhile, World Cup goes on -- no major surprises yet. Unless Ghana manages to do one up on Brazil. Beckham finally bent one like only he can to get England into the final eight. Italians and French made it to the last sixteen, and I am sure they must be glad they managed to get this far, given their performances. Among the quarterfinals, Gemrnay - Argentina will probably the most entertaining encounter.

Random musings

2006-06-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

I was getting tired of working off of the laptop all the time -- however much I love my powerbook. Of late I've been churning out some serious amount of code, and I finally succumbed to the urge to buy a desktop.

I had seen a Mac mini in the Apple store, and it is quite an eye-catcher. It looked so, so... tidy. But I wasn't sold on buying the mini. When I decided I needed a desktop, I thought I'll check out the reviews on it. As I was browsing the reviews, I thought I noticed a pattern -- and that triggered a thought.

How do I know what someone's posted as a review on the Internet is an actual review by someone trying it out? Maybe the review I am reading is really a marketing ploy to make me go one way or the other. The pattern I had noticed was the negative reviews were all referring to very similar things, and had some similar ways of saying it (e.g., many reviewers said "I wanted to like it, I really tried"). I may be reading too much into the reviews I read. But I am positive that companies are using online reviews as marketing ploys.

Anyway, I ended up still buying the mini. I want a development platform, and something I can use for things other than just writing code as well. In other words, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. etc. -- all those cool things I can't live without any more.

Ghana is the new Cameroon?

2006-06-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

Ghana went and beat the Czechs 2-0. And it was no fluke. Czechs just didn't know what hit them. Just when I was missing Cameroon, this team put life into the Cup. Go Ghana!