Nomological Net

Traction

2011-12-07T16:17:00.003+08:00

I was enjoying a nice bit of reflexology yesterday, and it occurred to me that "tract" is really very versatile as a root word. You can stick all kinds of prefixes and suffixes on it, and the meanings go all over the place. Consider:

tract-or, -ion
con-tract-or, -ion
pro-tract-or, -ion
ex-tract-or, -ion
de-tract-or, -ion
sub-tract-or, -ion
re-tract-ion

Also, technically, shouldn't addition be called supertraction?

Fusion

2011-09-12T09:15:00.002+08:00

Yesterday I revisited this blog, after *ages*.

And so now I felt like posting something. An old lady eating roti with chopsticks. FWIW.

Friend

2010-12-31T13:51:00.000+08:00

Happy new decade.

Roots

2010-09-29T22:54:00.002+08:00

Having finished Bhairavi, as I said in my previous post, by sheer coincidence I picked up The Music Room, by Namita Devidayal. TPB had just finished it, and it was lying around. I had no idea what it was about.

I loved it to pieces. It's a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in Indian classical music.

There is just so much incredible stuff on youtube now. Who knew?

Bhairavi, and Mian ki Malhar

2010-09-20T22:36:00.003+08:00

Just finished an amazing book called Bhairavi: The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, by Peter Lavezzoli. It's a must-read -- learned, eclectic, and thorough. Through it, I have learned about Saskia Rao-de Haas. Here's a clip of her playing Mian ki Malhar on her custom-made "Indian cello".

Part 2 is here.

Now that's what I call music.

the faster we go the rounder we get

2010-09-20T13:20:00.002+08:00

i fired someone today. my first firing ever.

thankfully, the person was expecting it. no waterworks like the time before she was put on probation. and she made it worse for herself by trying to negotiate the lifeline she was being given.

still, what a way to start a week.

Round and round

2010-09-04T22:30:00.002+08:00

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when you're older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

***

We love you, Joni.

Single parents everywhere

2010-09-02T07:33:00.002+08:00

How do they do it?

Last night, I finally succumbed and cracked open the case of Rocky Mountain Holiday: John Denver and the Muppets.

It sucked 45 minutes out of the evening. After the show, the Achiever noted, multiple times, "What is the baby frog doing? Baby frog sleeping, with the blue blanket."

Which is pretty much what my baby frog has been doing for the last ten hours as well. Mercy.

Memory

2010-08-02T13:41:00.002+08:00

A few years ago, every few months, someone or the other would pipe up with an angsty post on the topic of blogging. The question always was: Why do we blog? My standard thought at that time was that I blog because I feel like it. Now I think I have a better answer.

I blog to remember.

A time to every purpose, under heaven

2010-07-30T16:20:00.002+08:00

Turns out this is my 300th post.
The saddest.

Things turn, but they never stay the same.

Basket case?

2010-06-22T12:44:00.001+08:00

Dear TR,

Hello! It is ____ here. I am writing to request for leave from today's regular meeting.

I am sorry that one of my friends has a terrible stomachache, and I have to take her to the hospital now, since she cannot speak Cantonese and she is feeling picnic. Therefore, I cannot come to today's regular meeting. I will send you a MSWord document regarding what I have done this week and want I plan to do next week. If possible, can you reschedule an individual meeting with me at 4:00p.m. this Thursday?

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Thanks,
___

Nai-Ma

2010-05-13T07:26:00.003+08:00

and Rare Earth -- Ma (Part1, Part2). Now playing.

On Passing

2010-04-29T02:23:00.001+08:00

Life. New life. Precious life.
Old life. Farewell.
I am privileged to have known you.
I am sorry that you never met.

Thank you for everything.

Now spinning

2010-04-28T08:01:00.003+08:00

Now spinning dxpx5 on steady rotation. Yesterday and day before were disk 2, this morning it's disk 3. The UJB is *sweet*, and I think it will get a few more rounds.

***

Speaking of rounds, this Sunday I got a free pass to go see Ian Wright at an event promoting his new program "Out of Bounds". Never heard of the guy before, but he's funny, and as far as the travel stuff goes it seemed his heart was in the right place. The show is about "places that most Americans would not dream of going" -- like Syria and Siberia. Amazing how many elderly women were in attendance, going completely crazy about him.

***

And speaking of gaga, I used a clip from the eponymous performer's latest video in a recent class. It's called "Telephone" and it is loaded with product placements. So is her previous vid, "Bad Romance". Not linking. Astonishingly bad music and crass storylines but boy do they cause earworms or what. The sad thing is that the students (who, funnily, hate her) seem to think I am a fan. I had to use a Clapton Michelob commercial to wash some of the sins away.

You've Lost That Lavang Feeling

2010-04-26T20:33:00.002+08:00

aka Not So Spicy Any More.

It's not a real imbroglio yet

2010-04-19T08:32:00.002+08:00

Tharoor may have resigned, but I'm not convinced. Where are the religionistas, I say?

I'm the Dude

2010-04-01T00:51:00.002+08:00

It's near midnight, I'm in the living room with the laptop on my knee, working. Feel a little chilly so I walk into the bedroom where the mishpuha slumbers, and, from the walk-in closet, relying purely on touch in the darkness, I pull out my dressing gown and put it on.

Close to an hour later I finish the review and, shrugging the laptop off, head towards the bathroom. My eyes are groggy and my head is dense. My knee hurts. I plod. Somewhere along the corridor, the gown falls open from the front, exposing my shapeless t-shirt and the shorts beneath.

And I wonder -- where have I seen this before?

:-)

Crescendo

2010-03-19T09:12:00.003+08:00

You think about it for months and years. You plan it to pieces. You carry the dock and the poodle to the hospital with you, carefully wrapped and stashed next to the other necessities. Through the night, through the labor, you play the Duke on an endless cycle. The nurses who walk in all comment on it with surprise and pleasure.

Afterwards, you play everything that you can think of. You film her first Dark Star. You film the first dance, to a verse and chorus of Ripple. As she grows, she learns to dance with you to your favorite music. You watch her twist to Mozart, beam along with Hendrix, bounce madly to any CD you slip into the rig. You even suspect she may have a crush on Art Garfunkel.

But the day it all really comes together is when, four days before her first birthday, she points to the rig and grunts as she always does. And you point along with her and ask, "What? What do you want?" And she says, "Moji".

Sweet and salty

2010-03-16T22:09:00.000+08:00

The branch manager of our local bank was called Candy Butt. That was her name, on her business card.

She passed us on to a Personal Financial Consultant. This was a young lady whom she referred to as Miss Sou. Miss Sou gave us her card as well, which said S. L. Sou.

Today we received a letter from the bank. In it, Miss Sou signs her first name as Sodium.

A nice interview

2010-03-08T10:22:00.002+08:00

In the NYTimes recently, with Tachi Yamada, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health program. Some excerpts:

- I think the most difficult transition for anybody from being a worker bee to a manager is this issue of delegation. ... a principle that I apply today — I don’t micromanage, but I have microinterest. I do know the details. I do care about the details. I feel like I have intimate knowledge of what’s going on, but I don’t tell people what to do.

- you can’t possibly be competitive in the world unless you actually go outside your own geography and learn the way other people live and think.

- when you actually are with somebody, you’ve got to make that person feel like nobody else in the world matters. I think that’s critical. So, for example, I don’t have a mobile phone turned on because I’m talking to you. I don’t want the outside world to impinge on the conversation we’re having.

- I spent a couple of evenings reading the paper and wrote a six-page review of it. I shredded the analysis. And I showed it to him, to show how smart I was. He looked at it and said, “O.K., now I want you to write me a report and give me a reason why it’s a fantastic paper and how we could make it even better.”

- Intelligence is often more displayed in what I would call complex abstract thinking, and there’s nothing more complex and abstract than human relationships.

- if I have something negative to say, I will say it. I will be clear about it. But I won’t try to couch it in a lot of positives, because people have a natural tendency to not want to hear a negative message. ... But I also try to give positive feedback in other moments. To try to mix the two is often very hard, because the positive messages get lost in the one negative message, and the negative message gets garbled.

- I don’t think anyone should do one job for too long a time. I think every five to eight years you should be willing to take on some different challenges. It’s so easy to get stale. Every time I’ve left a job, I was loving the job that I left. But I never regretted the next move that I made.

Kudos to the interviewer, Adam Bryant.

Das Rickshaw

2010-02-16T08:27:00.002+08:00

A Hall of Fame contender for the Annals of Moronicity.

Folks in India, and/or those who have been watching broadcasts on the Neo Cricket channel in recent months, will have seen an ad campaign for Volkswagen in India. I think the first I saw it was about three months ago, during the India-SL series, and I remember how awestruck I was by how bad the commercial was. Actually, it's worse.

For those who don't know (and I will NOT post this video here), the ad features a scruffy middle-classish kid in a car showroom, asking the suited salesman whether it is possible to book a car in advance. The guy says yes, so the kid says he wants to book a car for his eighteenth birthday (which appears to be about ten years in the future). The salesman then puts the kid inside each of the main VW models -- Golf, Jetta, Passat, and Touareg, accompanying each with a statement which is inane than the last. For instance, the Jetta is supposedly the car for the vice-president of the firm, which the kid can drive when he is 24. The Passat, that haven of the soccer mom, is apparently perfect for the kid when he is a CEO. The spot is mind-blowing in its inanity on many levels -- TPB goes ballistic about "what they're teaching the children", I personally am aghast at what they're doing to the brand. This spot is bad, but the follow-up in the campaign, featuring a bunch of morons drinking some black liquid while they laugh about another moron who walks into a bar holding an animal's skull, is a pinnacle of human achievement. Both commercials end with a voice-over mangling the word "Volkswagen".

All that executional shit apart, yesterday I realized what was *truly* unbelievable about this campaign. Both commercials sign off with the VW logo on a black screen, under which a tag line appears, accompanied by aforesaid voice-over. Clearly this is something that is meant to awe and impress. The tag line? "Das Auto".

Entschuldigen Sie, but has anyone stopped to think what this means to an Indian? You are trying to position yourself as a premium car brand (forget the soccer moms for a moment). Let me spell this out very clearly:

- AUTO means RICKSHAW, a common mode of transportation in which someone pulls you around, either on foot or by means of a yoked cycle.

- DAS is a common middle class name. Taken literally, it means servant.

What can I say, oh Car of the CEO? Go to Fail. Go directly to Fail. Do not Passat go. Do not collect $200.

Four down

2010-02-05T07:11:00.002+08:00

Years, that is.

And I find myself with as little of anything to say, but refusing to say it in under 140 characters like much of the rest of the crowd.

Which may be why this latest political ad seems just right for today. The commentspace holds up to scrutiny as well -- give it a look.

So keep at it, folks. Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away.

Cheers to dat.

Unpalatable

2010-02-03T07:08:00.002+08:00

Some Nordic-type exchange student uses the word "shit" in class yesterday -- first class of the year, first thing that he says. He goes, "You can make a shit product and people will still buy it." I'm not sure why he had to put it that way. Was it his way of going for alpha dog? Or did he feel like he needed to impress me, since the class was already digging (so to speak) my informality?

Anyway, I shot back, "Yes, but if your product is as inedible as you say, then people won't buy it a second time." He agreed with my point. More pertinently for me, he didn't seem to get the subtlety of my phrasing.

Oh well, it was a good thirteen months.

Don't view this now

2010-01-27T15:21:00.000+08:00

I'm proud to know this man.

Name in vain

2010-01-18T10:31:00.003+08:00

So I meet this guy last week. He mumbles a bit. I ask him his name. He says (I think), "Jose."

So I all brightly and all, say "Jose? Ola!"

He looks a little confused but smiles and says, "Yes."

A little later I ask him where he's from; he says Iraq.

Now I'm confused.

Later that evening, back in the hotel room, I find him online and realize his name is actually Hossein.

Now I'm thinking, he must be wondering why this random guy suddenly upped and called him Allah.

Profiling

2010-01-06T12:36:00.003+08:00

Filling out a visa application form for Singapore. The first section asks for my name, DOB, gender, and marital status.

The following fields appear in the second section:
- Country of Birth
- Race (e.g., Malay, Indian, Chinese, Caucasian, etc.)
- Nationality

The third section asks for my passport details, including Country of Issue.

The fourth section then wants to know my address in my Country of Origin. There are separate fields for:
- Country of Origin
- Division / State / Province of Origin
- Prefecture of Origin
- County / District of Origin, and
- Address.

A subsequent section wants to know if I have resided in countries other than my Country of Origin during the last five years, and if so, to provide all addresses.

I called the consulate to ask what exactly they meant by Country of Origin -- nationality, country of birth, or country of current residence (i.e., original location of application for Singapore visa). Any guesses?

****

Updates:

1. The nice lady at the counter took a look at the passport details section which said "Country of Issue: INDIA", "Place of Issue: CHICAGO". She crossed out the INDIA and wrote USA.

2. There was a section that asked me to check a box if I had ever entered Singapore using a different passport or name. Since I was applying to transfer my valid visa from an expired passport to a new one, I checked YES. She took exception to this as well, and told me that "different passport" meant "passport issued by a different country".

3. The entire transaction took just a minute or two. I was asked to return at 4 the same afternoon. I asked if I could enter the waiting area before 4, since I expected that I'd have finished my other errands early. They said yes, and indeed let me in at 3:15. I sat there reading a nice book of old Singapore photos, when someone saw me waiting and so processed my visa early.

4. Singapore claims to not do visas as passport stickers any more. They gave me a one-page computer printout that looked like an e-ticket with a bar code, folded in four, and said that this was my "e-visa" and I better not lose it between now and the time the visa expires. I think this is most inconvenient -- another random piece of paper to carry around.

Blockheads

2010-01-05T10:32:00.003+08:00

How utterly miserable to be an infant with a cold. Nose all caked up and clogged, and no idea what to do about it. Unable to breathe, or even suck your own thumb. Unable, therefore, to sleep. Unable to rest. No appetite. Spreading infections. Medicines forced into your mouth and nostrils. The only recourse, endless wailing.

How utterly selfish of adults to shoehorn an infant into their own infantile schedules, forcing attendance simply because "everyone will be there; how will it look?"

I get laughed at often, because I worry about worst case scenarios. Usually, I get my way and sanity prevails. Of course, the one time I get over-ruled is the time that things have to really get out of hand.

Screw me.

RIP Asheem Chakravarty

2009-12-26T02:37:00.000+08:00

Nakedaar aavey, kukdi maange re.

I been busy

2009-12-24T07:38:00.002+08:00

And so have had to put this blog on the back burner. But I'm hoping to be able to pick it up again in the new year. I'm thinking I'll treat it like Twitter.

Happy 2010, everybody. Go see live music (while you can!).

Peace we can believe in?

2009-10-10T14:56:00.002+08:00

It's hilarious how the whole Barack Obama - Nobel peace prize thing has gotten knickers in twists from one end of the political washing-line to the other. The Taliban and Rush Limbaugh join forces with career bleeding-hearts to decry the decision. Strange bedfellows!

I personally think it's not that bad an idea. Sure, there may have been others who may have deserved the award relatively more than Obama. But was Obama above the bar in absolute terms? I think he was. Just the fact that he stemmed the Bush Doctrine, I think is a pretty huge achievement. Rachel Maddow, as usual, gets it exactly right:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Critics are saying he hasn't done anything yet. I believe that pulling the world's most powerful and dangerous nation from the ruinous path it had set itself on is plenty achievement enough. People are pointing to everything he hasn't done yet. He wasn't given the prize for those. They are also conflating the timing of the prize (too early in his tenure) with his deeds (or lack thereof). Watch the Maddow clip for the counter to that one.

The joke circulating about giving him the economics prize in the hope that the economy improves is plenty funny (I personally think he deserves one for his amazing chemistry); it would have been funnier if the idea of a Nobel prize for economics wasn't laughable in itself.

But my favorite one is that Obama shouldn't get the prize because Gandhi never did.

Product life cycle

2009-10-05T07:23:00.003+08:00

I used to be an intensive user of MSN Messenger, some five-odd years ago. This morning I just signed on to see what was happening. Of my 49 contacts, exactly zero were online. A long column of red icons.

Nowadays I too hardly ever log on there -- there's just this one contact who insists on communicating via Messenger only (apart from email, that is). So I talk to her much less too, these days.

Wonder what happened, and why.

A short wishlist

2009-09-29T00:49:00.003+08:00

- A pint or three of Duchesse de Bourgogne, fresh from the tap.
- A Thai massage, with a nice lady walking all over me.
- My grant proposal written up so I can get back to work.
- The cable guys to fix the damn football channel so I can watch the wildcat formation for myself.
- Some Trader Joe's Oatmeal Choc Chip minis.
- A DVD box set of the Muppet Show.

I'm a little insomniac tonight but otherwise life's pretty good, really.

For the Young Consumer

2009-08-20T04:32:00.002+08:00

Every once in a while, this blog turns to dispensing unasked-for wisdom. (Don't blame me, blame the blog.) Its patient and tolerant readership scratches its collective head, pops a witticism or two into the commentspace, and moves on. That readership is now a thing of the past. Which leaves me free to unleash the sum total of what I have learned over the past six months.

If you are about to let a Little Someone into your life, here are some things you might want to arm yourself with. Apologies in advance if something on this list is unavailable in the region of your residence. Envy me.

1. "What's Going On In There?".
The single biggest weapon in the armory of the budding parent. There are a million "what to do" type baby books out there, but as far as I know, just this one that explains why. Every chapter has basically 3 sections. It takes a sense (e.g., smell, vision, locomotion), first explains the neuroscience, then the psychology, then how this can be influenced by the parents and the environment. Essential.

2. Ergo It's the *best*. Just pop your baby in and go wherever. The design is fantastic, it distributes the weight over your whole back so there's no stress on your back and it's so comfortable for the baby. The only problem is that until the baby is 15 pounds, they recommend you use it along with an additional insert, and that adds one extra step. The insert actually makes it feel like a plush couch for the baby :-) We stopped using the insert when she reached 12 pounds, and we carry her everywhere in the Ergo. Plus it's so much fun!

3. Moby wrap. We (all three of us) love this as well. It's a little harder to wear than the Ergo, but once you have it on you can just pop the baby inside in any of 3-4 positions -- find the one that your baby likes best and she will fall asleep almost as soon as you put her in. We use this indoors mostly (and our routine has become that TPB wears this indoors, and I wear the Ergo outdoors).

4. Squish toy. A close friend got us this -- he's a father of two and married to a top infant developmental psychologist! Our baby has loved it since she was about 3-4 weeks old, and shows no sign of getting bored of it. Me neither.

5. Lamaze toys. We have a few of these and our baby loves them too. They have all kinds of interesting colors and textures and noises -- no end to how they can be explored. Very smart.

6. Stokke products. This is a Norwegian company that makes high-end "hardware" products for babies. The design is magnificent. We just started using their crib ("Sleepi"). We bought the high chair ("Tripp-Trapp") but haven't started using it yet. We were *really* tempted by the stroller ("Xplory") but decided not to buy it for a while (which turned out to be a good decision because as we now realize, we almost always use the Ergo and not a stroller).

7. Baby Einstein gym. Our baby has spent almost all her leisure hours (when she is not in her bed, or being carried by us) on this. It kept her completely occupied until just this week, when she's finally realized there's a world beyond the mat, and what's more, she can get to it.

8. Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive diapers. These come in yellow packets (not green). The major innovation here is that the diapers have a thin yellow line running through the business district, and even the slightest flooding causes the line to turn blue, so you can see from outside and change at once. No poking inside, no smell tests -- very helpful! If you choose to go with disposables, this one attribute makes these diapers very helpful indeed.

9. "Breastfeeding Made Simple". If you intend to breastfeed (and I believe you should), here's a book that cuts through the clutter and gets to the essence of how to do it and why. All expecting parents should read it.

10. "The Happiest Baby on the Block". And finally, how to get the baby to sleep. I was skeptical when I read this book, but boy did it work or what!

So that's what I have been up to. I'm tempted to add a #11: Canon SX10IS, but that's just me :-)

Roll, clear water

2009-08-13T10:36:00.002+08:00

This picture was posted three and a half years ago. And I haven't posted anything for over a month.

Hmm.

Pennsive

2009-07-03T20:26:00.002+08:00

Overheard, one end of a telephone conversation:

- Yes, he's at the University of Pennsylvania right now.
- Yes, it's in Philadelphia.
- Yes, it's a real university.

I think I can guess at the first two questions.

Theory Development as the Sport of Football

2009-06-23T19:58:00.002+08:00

Three years ago, I had a thought which I crystallized here. Yesterday during a conversation with a grad student, I came up with a nice new metaphor for much the same idea.

Research is like the game of football. The American kind. Those who know the game will recognize the very different connotations of the two basic strategies that a team on offense can take -- the passing game and the running game. A team that chooses to play the passing game is going for impact and beauty. Scything arcs of soaring balls cutting deep swathes through the defense as the team advances in long damaging steps down the field. Research works similarly at times -- insights that break radical new ground; experiments that shatter preconceived notions with their elegance, simplicity, and parsimony.

It doesn't happen that way always. Much of the time, a team chooses to play the running game. Put their heads down, and push, struggle, and compete for every inch of bloody churning mud. And that's what happens in research as well. You put your head down and push, struggle and fight to make the data confess.

When one sees a presentation or reads a paper, it almost inevitably appears to have been produced in one sharp swell of insight. Indeed, that is how almost all completed research is generally presented. What's important is to remember that it is the touchdown we're witnessing, not the process that led to it.

Happy quarterbacking.

Browsing

2009-06-14T19:35:00.001+08:00

We don't often consciously realize how getting something new entails giving something up. And sometimes, the trade-offs we have made are subtle enough that we don't even notice that which has been lost, let alone miss it.

As a case in point, think about the title of this post. Most likely, the first connotations it brings up involve things to do with mouses and websites, hyperlinks and clicking. It is how we flit from page to page on the internet.

Yet the original connotations of this word had nothing to do with websites. They involved flipping, rather than flitting. We would browse at bookstores, picking up volumes, sometimes at random, and seeing where that led us. The succession from book to book was sequential only in the sense that it was chronological. More centrally, it is stochastic -- the maker of the book in hand owes nothing to that of the one held previously.

Such browsing can be pleasure as well; indeed, it is what we used to recognize as pleasure before the advent of the hypertext. And the convenience of the online store has put paid to the hours spent and wasted at bookstores and music stores, the lure of the impulse purchase is considerably less material online. Which is why yesterday, for a brief period, I had a great time when I rediscovered these pleasures. It was time well wasted, for I got to dip my nose into things I would have clicked past in blissful ignorance online.

And I got my just rewards too -- a reacquaintance with the teen-thrilling works of Mr. Ray Manzarek.

Oh, how I loved those keys :-)

***

My latest hero is Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food (which everyone should read), The Omnivore's Dilemma (which all intelligent people should read), and the Botany of Desire (which I am currently reading). Imagine my pleasure when on p166 of this latter work, in the chapter called "Desire: Intoxication / Plant: Marijuana", I come across this transcendental passage:

You know how it goes, this italicization of experience, this seemingly virginal noticing of the sensate world. You've heard that song a thousand times before, but now you suddenly hear it in all its soul-piercing beauty, the sweet bottomless poignancy of the guitar line like a revelation, and for the first time you can understand, really understand, just what Jerry Garcia meant by every note, his unhurried cheerful-baleful improvisation piping something near the meaning of life directly into your mind.

YES!!

(I think he's talking about Stella Blue.)

Baby's day out

2009-06-10T20:29:00.002+08:00

Sent out to pick up dinner from a good restaurant -- nice. (Funny when I just posted about chopsticks the same morning.)
Placing the order and nipping across to the Irish bar down the block for a Guiness (250th anniversary brew) and wings -- also nice.
Getting the check and seeing the escapade covered by Happy Hour -- also nice.

Oh, and the dinner -- also nice.

Shiver me twiggies

2009-06-09T20:17:00.002+08:00

So...
Are pirated chopsticks called wooden legs?

Almost Like Tom Thumb's Blues

2009-06-06T13:15:00.002+08:00

... when Nina sings it.

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you

Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got

Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon

Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same

Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost

I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to call my bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough

Bonus track: Suzanne

Skin deep

2009-05-15T19:54:00.002+08:00

Got this note from a friend yesterday:

The thing about the midwest is that every moment here is a brand new moment. There is no room for grief or loss. Only instantaneous smiles. People smile and are nice, almost as if their very life depended upon it. It starts getting more and more screwed up when they insist on smiling at you after screwing you over :-)

Made me think how my time in New York - the home of the stereotypically aggro and rude - brought out some of the best hidden positives in me. In comparison, my experience in the midwest seems to have made me more negative and cynical than I have been in years.

Bonglish pun, topical

2009-05-10T09:54:00.001+08:00

Q. Do you have swine flu or not?
A. I'm not dead shuor.

A drive we can believe in

2009-04-21T08:03:00.001+08:00

I received this from a friend in Trinidad :-)

Say Hello, Blog People

2009-04-14T21:23:00.003+08:00

To Lebu, our Little Lebowski Urban Achiever.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

ENOUGH!

2009-03-20T10:27:00.001+08:00

Keith Olbermann smacks down the greed of the financial services industry. Personally. I think it's as good as rants get.

The Messiah

2009-03-13T11:35:00.004+08:00

I just watched Jon Stewart extract a full confession from Jim Cramer. Watch it at http://www.thedailyshow.com . He got the man to agree that financial news reporting has been "disingenuous at best, and criminal at worst". He got the man to agree to change.

He exposed him so bad, he almost made him cry.

I had never thought I'd see something like this on TV.

Is this the first crack in the glass that separates real news reporting and analysis from the dross that passes for it today?

One can only wish.

Living on the edge

2009-03-09T23:25:00.002+08:00

In January, driving down the road near our house, a car coming the other way lost control, skidded across two lanes, and crashed head first onto us. Miraculously, no one was injured -- although it took a month to fix our car, and the other guy was totaled.

In February, introducing my tennis-buddy to squash, he aims a hard forehand at the ball and connects with my left index finger. Four weeks on and it's still swollen.

In March, snow-tubing during a break at a conference in Utah, the guy in charge of shoving the tubes at the top of the hill shoved my group off before I could get into my tube. I descended the slope head first, looking up at the sky, bearing most of my weight on my left shoulder. Nothing broke.

It's been a funny kind of year that way.

The Sick Man of Europe

2009-02-28T13:59:00.000+08:00

- Are you Phlegmish?
- No, just Belchium.

Wall Street is so gay

2009-02-13T23:39:00.001+08:00

Don't take it from me, take it from the Beeb.

And, according to Ken Herron, chief of marketing at gay dating site Manhunt, the site had its biggest membership sign-up on 29 September, the day the Dow Jones Index crashed.

Diverse other gems scattered through the article -- worth a look.

Labor of love

2009-02-03T03:58:00.003+08:00

Sometimes the best thing a commentator can do is let the artist speak in their own words. (I guess this is especially true if the artist is someone that the commentator is very closely invested in, but maybe that doesn't have to be the case.)

Greetings fellow Enfield Bullet fans!
Here's my first youtube video of the 2nd bench test run of my project- a 700cc Enfield V twin using 2 350 top ends. From sketches on paper to designing, numerous changes, 3d CAD modeling, printing drawings, building all the patterns myself, getting them cast, then machining everything myself (that began about a year ago-learnt everything as I went along) till this wonderful day (23rd JAN, about 2:00 in the morning!), it has been about 5 years! A dream from heady college days seems to be coming true, unable to sleep. Next step is installing it in the test bike, frame stretched. If you all know about the Norcroft and Carberry Enfields and are wondering why I did this anyway, well, too much time, effort and dreaming had been done when I heard of them, so inspite of some major discouragement that the enfield V twin had already been done by professionals, I decided to plough ahead anyway. NO REGRETS! Watch out for some more videos from me with info on the motor, test rides etc. coming soon!
TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS, CRANK UP THE BASS!
Thanks for watching!

If all of that prologue bored you, well, here you go.

And for those who aren't so much into motorcycle engines anyway, check out the beta version of the video. Shot at 3 o'clock on a cold January morning, I guarantee you, it's one for the ages.

1.20.09: The big O

2009-01-21T20:44:00.006+08:00

So the date that we saw emblazoned on wishful t-shirts finally came to pass. For what it was worth, we replaced the Bush with the Big O. Now that can only be an improvement, but I have to say I started and ended the day underwhelmed. I know I supported him strongly during the home stretch of the elections (and how I miss Nate Silver), but the fact remains that the man is a politician. He represents profound societal change, yes, but he is a politician. The way people over the last few days have invested him with all sorts of greater saintlike qualities leaves me completely mystified. What has he done, after all, other than win an election on the back of an outstanding organization, speech-writing, and oratory?

And there he was again, the Chicago sharp, using his inaugural speech to dampen down these manic expectations. Did he succeed in that? I'm not quite sure. I watched the inauguration in a large auditorium filled with undergrads, MBA students, and faculty -- many of whom were wearing Obama t-shirts (U-S-A!). He never did give them the grand crescendo they were craving, although many were determined to clap at every possible pause. Indeed, I even caught a few people yawning, and I have to say the moment I felt the happiest was when I saw people's expressions as he was being sworn in.

I wish him well and hope he can do something about the utter mess the world is in. But I think it's delusional to expect that he will do anything except look out for Number 1. After all, he does want to be re-elected, doesn't he?

In the final analysis I think it's easier to go from being politician to president than it is to go from president to statesman. Yes he can?

***

And now for a piece of news that combines the weather section with a commentary on the economy. Indeed, the longer I stay in America, the more engaged I find myself in the sociopolitical processes at the local level. Recently I put up my first yard sign ever.

This sign was made and the picture taken on a day when the temperature with wind chills dropped to -28F. It has since reverted to the balmier regions of single-degree weather. Of course, now that the teaching semester is over, "Will that be on the quiz?" has been supplanted as the Most Irritating Question. The new winner is "How much is that in Celsius?"

Chicago

2009-01-16T11:52:00.004+08:00

Beantown

Under the bean

Mies

Michiganwards

Lookin' for Lou

Downtown

Don't walk

Closed for business

Strings

Points of interest

The Japanese Room

At the Art Institute

365 is my number

2009-01-01T23:28:00.003+08:00

Back when I was a kid, there was this other kid who was a part of the crowd. He was a few years older than me and so he knew things I didn't and was able to teach me stuff and introduce me to stuff. Like for instance when my mother got me a spanking new Swiss army knife he told me that these things are so sharp you can draw blood without going deep enough to cause any pain. He was right -- I nicked the fleshy part of my thumb in a beautiful little red seam and didn't feel a thing.

He also introduced me to Pink Floyd and allowed me to copy his only Floyd cassette -- "A Collection of Great Dance Songs". And on side B he taped for me King Sunny Ade's Juju Music.

For some reason I've had King Sunny Ade on my mind, the last few days.

I dug up a few audio tracks on youtube and discovered that despite it being well over ten years since I last heard them, they were as fresh and musical to my ears as ever. So I found and ordered the CD on Amazon. It's been sitting at a warehouse in Kentucky since December 28, so I'm listening to Sunny Ade on youtube again. I just heard Ja Funmi (which I now realize, despite the easy fluency of the music, means "Fight for me"). Next I'm going to listen to this gem of a track, the title track, as it were, for this post. The utterly charming refrain goes as follows:

Honey!
Dani dat's my numba
Tell me
Anything you wan' from me
But den you have to give yo' love to me
365 is my numba ya!

All of which is a long way of saying HAPPY NEW YEAR, all of y'all. Be good and work hard and go see live music and don't let the evildoing get to you.

memory

2008-12-19T07:55:00.002+08:00

It's DR's birthday, and he's feeling the weight of the years. But I'm the kind of person who can put people at ease.

***

me: happy new year

DR: thanks dude

this whole business just keeps ticking

meaning, i keep getting older i'm realizing

me: day by day

wait till the memory loss starts happening

DR: wow

i have no idea how i'll cope with that

me: like pouring a glass of water to take a tablet (tablets are also a sign of age)

then coming back 2 minutes later and not being able to remember

a) whether you drank the water or not

and b) if you drank the water, whether you took the tablet or not

(excuse me while i go take my medicine)

DR: !

me: add to that c) not being able to remember where you put the glass

DR: hohoho

DR: and finally d) finding the glass next to the kettle, and realizing you went to get water and ended up putting on the kettle

***

I think I'll have a cup of tea now.

Woke up this morning...

2008-12-14T21:58:00.002+08:00

I've realized that there's something about the end of a teaching semester that drives me to the blues. This is the second time that it's happened. Except this semester was worse, and so I guess I'm deeper in.

It started with an evening with Rory Block. I'd never seen her before, and hadn't really paid too much attention to her music as well (except when she appeared on duet tracks). So I had no idea that her trip in life is to recreate the music of Robert Johnson - note for note, if she can. "This is classical music," she said to the appreciative audience. "Amen, sister," someone said back. A solo evening with one amazingly talented musician singing and playing some beautful hard-edged acoustic blues laced with songs of sadness, loss, redemption, and hope. Healing.

That reminded me of Eric Bibb. I had, after all, seen him at the same venue back in April. The guy's touring in New Zealand right now - lucky buggers. (Not only do they get summer and a test series against the West Indies...) So there was nothing left to do but hit the CD store. Turned out they didn't have *any* Bibb disc that featured Needed Time. So then I had to hit Amazon. Pulled in three aces at one go -- Friends, An Evening with Eric Bibb (live in Sydney - he really does love them down there), and Sisters and Brothers (with Maria Muldaur... and Rory Block!) Each of these is an absolute gem -- I cannot recommend them highly enough.

And for good measure I also netted the latest Jeff Beck live album -- smoking!!

And then, for good measure, yesterday afternoon (after a very satisying meal featuring Hungarian pancakes, pierogi, and paprikash, so no blues there), TPB and I went and filled our eyeballs and eardrums up with Cadillac Records. Sure, it's a simplified, airbrushed, feel-goody, Hollywood characterization of the birth of the electric blues. But by golly it's good. Excellent performances all round - from Adrien Brody as Len Chess and Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, the two main characters, as well as blow-out supporting roles by Eamonn Walker as Howlin' Wolf, Mos Def as Chuck Berry, Beyonce Knowles as Etta James, and, probably the most nuanced and compelling, Columbus Short as Little Walter. And the music! Oh the music. Some of the early Muddy Waters stuff was brilliant, the part where Willie Dixon introduces the riff for Hoochie Coochie Man made shovers go down my spine, and Beyonce's rendition of I'd Rather Go Blind was simply transcendental. A downright rocking, mean, bad, dirty, old time, all in all, and the old lady cackling her head off and talking back to the actors from a few rows behind me only made it seem all the more authentic.

I believe I'll dust my broom.

You know you got it...

2008-12-12T00:57:00.002+08:00

Joss Stone and Melissa Etheridge

Paying tribute to the one and only Janis.

...If it makes you feel good!

If Mumbai Nov 26 was India's 9/11...

2008-12-05T12:43:00.001+08:00

... then India should respond exactly as America did -- by attacking a totally unrelated country. (Let's say New Zealand.)

- Stephen Colbert.

Morally Chapter 11

2008-12-03T12:11:00.001+08:00

Barack Obama: "American values are America's greatest export."
Jon Stewart: "Well that explains the recession."

Thanksgiving weekend

2008-12-01T05:38:00.004+08:00

It was meant to be a weekend of rest and relaxation, after what was possibly the heaviest few weeks of work that I'd ever experienced. I was feeling physically battered, and my brain was on empty. The Thanksgiving weekend could not have come at a better time.

Today, Sunday evening, my body is relaxed. The pains are almost all gone. But the mind, it is full. And confused. And the heart is heavy.

Somewhat surprisingly, one of my primary emotions is irritation -- at the knee-jerk reactions in evidence all around. Within a day of the carnage beginning, I had received invitations to two different facebook groups. One was to a group called something like, "Narendra Modi for PM: Let's show the terrorists who's boss", and the other to a group called something like, "We can eradicate terrorism with a grassroots movement". Comment is superfluous. Then there were the bloggers, boldly hanging their preconceptions out, doing no good to anybody. Then there was the media, breathless, hysterical, and almost unrelievedly stupid. Enough has been said about the Indian channels that telegraphed (ha) the movements of the military to the terrorists, and the American channels whose Indian broadcast licenses expired midway through the crisis. My Zen moment occurred while listening to someone called Miloni broadcast on NDTV one evening -- a single uninterrupted meaningless streamofconsciousness rant stunningly reminiscent of Sarah Palin at her finest. In the middle of this idiocy, scant relief was offered by a couple of voices of sanity: Sanjana Kapoor on NDTV (note how she makes Barkha Dutt recant a lifetime's worth of sensationalism) and, as ever, Juan Cole, excerpted below.

India may well become a global superpower during the coming century. The choices it makes now on how it will deal with this threat of terrorism will help determine what kind of country it will be, and what kind of global impact it will have. While it may be hypocritical of an American to hope that New Delhi deals with its crisis better than we did, it bespeaks my confidence in the country that I believe it can.

Where do the reasonable people disappear?

***

It's getting closer to home all the time. I grew up in a Delhi that was familiar enough with terrorism. We traveled all the time on DTC buses that had stickers all over -- I can still remember the catchy captions: "Look under your seat. There will be a bomb. Raise Alarm. Earn Reward." A movie theater was blown up, not far from where I went to school. There were riots and there were curfews. Our car had a special sticker that allowed us to drive on the public road into the locality where we lived. I lived through 9-11 in New York City. I had a friend who ran from the WTC site, fifty blocks to the United Nations, and spent the next year in therapy.

But this, somehow, is different. Numerous people I contacted know people - friends, even siblings - who were at the Taj, or the Oberoi, or Leopold, just before. Or had plans to go there but changed their minds. An old colleague of my mother's was at the Taj during the siege -- he was rescued early on Friday morning. My friend's wife's colleague was not so lucky -- he was shot dead. All weekend, the news kept trickling in. All weekend, and especially now, the question looms unstated: When will it be our turn? And in this context, I want to thank someone I saw on television. A Canadian called Jonathan Herzlich, who was a guest at the Taj. He was in bed when someone knocked at his door, and something made him not respond. He escaped that night, and the next day told CNN that he urged everyone to go visit India, "or the terrorists have won."

***

There's the question of what happens next. Ministers' resignations aren't going to fix anything. Neither is bombing Pakistan -- America has protected its territory from further attacks, but it has bankrupted itself - both morally and financially - in the effort. Of course, the Pakistani military has seized the opportunity to redeploy forces from the Afghan border, where they never wanted them, to the Indian border. This is exactly what Al Qaeda wants, of course, since their hot spots aren't on the east of Pakistan in the Punjab, they're on the west, in the NWFP. Moreover, the Pakistani establishment wins because any Indian "provocation" can now be interpreted as detracting from the American War on Terror. The sophistication evidenced in the level of preparation -- credit cards, hotel blueprints -- suggests an answer to the oft-posed question of why they did it. This wasn't terrorism as grand statement, a la 9-11, and it wasn't terrorism in search of celebrity, as in Virginia Tech. This was strategic terrorism: call it game theory with a grenade.

The critical question now is how the Americans construe the situation. Currently, the American media is asking "How can we / the Obama administration prevent a crisis situation from developing between India and Pakistan?" Their answer to this question is to fall back on India's history of passivity and hope that India will do nothing (or be pressured to do nothing) since they have generally done nothing. This is exactly the wrong answer, since if India does do something, the Americans will (a) have precipitated a crisis through their inaction, and (b) taken several steps backwards in their War on Terror. The reason this is the wrong answer is because the question itself is wrongheaded. What the Americans should be asking is, "Who was responsible for the Bombay attack, and how do we crack down on them?" It is a moot point whether the terrorists who attacked Bombay were actively trained by Pakistani forces or not. There is sufficient evidence now - if the initial reports are to be believed - that the attackers used Karachi as their launching pad if not their home base. If so, it is not hard to trace the links back to the same sources that the American War on Terror concerns itself with.

The course of action, then, depends on the objective. I don't think it's possible to want to keep all civilians safe everywhere at all times. Let's face it -- the world is getting increasingly crowded; we're not going to be able to end terrorism for good. If the Indian government wants to protect its citizens, it needs to revamp the structure of its intelligence agencies, enable a centralized response unit, ensure intelligence sharing, modernize local anti-terror units, and structure itself for rapid response nationwide. None of these is even close to being a straightforward task. If India attacks sites within Pakistan, the retribution will be severe and unpredictable, and the consequences may well be far worse than the loss of 200 lives and a heritage building. It is America's stated objective to fight terror in the Middle East. If America is to stay true to that objective, much as Obama repeatedly asserted during his campaign, then the pressure on the Afghan-Pakistani border cannot be relieved. But there is a cost to this. If America does indeed strike within Pakistani territory, again as Obama has asserted, it may well be India bearing the brunt of the retribution. But then, am I really advocating that the Indian government sit passively by while terrorists strike?

I think not, because I think that if sufficient force is applied on the Afghan-Pakistani border areas, the terrorist groups will have to try and defend themselves locally. How long that force can be applied, and how successfully, I do not know. All I can say with confidence is that in Afghanistan, history is never on the side of the aggressors. But we - "the civilized world" - need to fight them there so we don't have to see them here. And who's to do the fighting? Methinks America -- after all, they started it.

***

What a happy post this is. But then, would you rather have me rant about the Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State game (it was brilliant), or the inanity that is the BCS? Let's just give thanks for those we know who are alive.

MBA Lessons

2008-11-23T22:21:00.005+08:00

Hey Kids!

Now that every other one of you is out of a job or soon to be out of one, your minds are naturally turning to that great socially-approved two year recess. So listen up and listen good to Uncle TR's Timely and Handy Tips for Surviving (And Thriving!) in Business School.

Lesson #1: Everyone around you is always spouting off. B-School does that to people. They're just like you inside, only, they've seen someone else spouting. But you wanna fit in, dontcha? So spout away!

Lesson #2: The correct answer always is "It depends". It's a good correct answer so make sure you use it well. Don't just leave it hanging out there like an exposed quarterback. Be careful to couch it in impressive MBA language such as Value, Option, Assessment, Optimize, Leverage, Put, Call, Chapter Eleven, and Touch Base. (PS. You have to learn to speak American now. 'Tailgate' is another useful word to know.)

Lesson #3 (which they don't tell you because the program lasts only 2 years): The correct response to the correct answer is: "On what?" Don't try this on someone who's been in the program for less than two years, unless you want to hear the entire MBA Lexicon churned up in Rank Order of Stochasticity.

Bonus lesson #4: If you ask Lesson #3 to someone in their first or second year, they will usually reply with some variant of "I haven't read the case". You should learn to say this too. It will make the two years go by much quicker.

That's all for now, folks. That will be 70,000 dollars (in Euros, please.) Yes, we accept Paypal, and as a special offer we're also accepting Citibank securities till Thanksgiving. (Or you may pledge to wash our car and fold our laundry after bringing it up from the basement -- that would be good too.) Happy Turkey Day!

Palling around

2008-11-09T12:39:00.002+08:00

Bill Ayers breaks his silence in a must-read article. Excerpts -- from the first section where he talks about the past few weeks:

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they pounced.

On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)

The good news was that every time McCain or Palin mentioned my name, they lost a point or two in the polls. The cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now poking holes in the rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.

And where he talks about the deeper issues involved:

It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

The ’60s—as myth and symbol—is much abused: the downfall of civilization in one account, a time of defeat and humiliation in a second, and a perfect moment of righteous opposition, peace and love in a third.

The idea that the 2008 election may be the last time in American political life that the ’60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, let’s get over the nostalgia and move on. On the other, the lessons we might have learned from the black freedom movement and from the resistance against the Vietnam War have never been learned. To achieve this would require that we face history fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.

And some profound, if undilutedly idealistic, concluding thoughts:

Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others.
History is always in the making. It’s up to us. It is up to me and to you. Nothing is predetermined. That makes our moment on this earth both hopeful and all the more urgent—we must find ways to become real actors, to become authentic subjects in our own history.
In this time of new beginnings and rising expectations, it is even more urgent that we figure out how to become the people we have been waiting to be.

All in all, how could you not love a piece titled: "What a long strange trip it's been"?!

Whew, he did

2008-11-05T14:09:00.001+08:00

Now what?

***

MVPs of the season: Nate Silver and Tina Fey

The best ad of the season

2008-11-04T01:12:00.001+08:00

I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it's all right, it's all right
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

Original here.

Hope kicks fear's ass

2008-10-30T21:00:00.003+08:00

Back in August I was chastised by one of my favorite people, a 70+ year old man, for referring to myself as a cynic. Okay, then, so maybe I'm not technically a cynic. Call me a pessimist, been around the block, seen it all, show me the money. I've worked with and for the dream merchants, studied the stuff, teach it to eager young hucksters, that's how I pull my weight.

But maybe I'm not a cynic after all. Not enough to be sold a little moonshine, anyway. Because that's what last night's 'infomercial' was -- a brilliant, luminiscent, picture-perfect, tone-perfect piece of mass communication. (Click the link to see it if you haven't; read the comments as well.)

Help me, it was a piece of history. History, right in the making. I have never felt affected in this way by any public figure. (Musicians excepted, possibly, as I hear a familiar voice while I type... I don't know, it must have been the roses...) Things will probably get a lot worse before they get better. But last night, I felt as if they might. Things might get better.

I hope they don't kill him.

Scientific progress goes boink

2008-10-29T23:04:00.003+08:00

"$4/$5 = x/25 -- find x."

It's not surprising that they ask to use a calculator for this.

When you take into account the facts that:
a) all their i-phones have calculators, and
b) they get it wrong anyway.

Religulous

2008-10-23T03:39:00.002+08:00

Bill Maher's new movie -- think of it as a cross between Borat and a Michael Moore film, intelligently done and funny. Pity it's only going to preach to the choir, though (ha ha), and sink without a trace. Still, I'm glad someone did it.

! AGAINST !

2008-10-14T12:26:00.002+08:00

Just stopping by to share a couple of comments from the latest post at 538, my new favorite site.

brooklynjoe said...

It's a sad day indeed when the local chapter of "Ohio Christians !Against! Baby-Murdering Muslims For-President" can only muster one rather despondent looking protester. Unfortunately, the photo has been cropped so you can't see his companion protester with the sign that read, "Ohio-Christians !Against! the Misuse of Hyphens and Exclamation-Points!"
October 13, 2008 10:02 PM

Shap said...

Without the hyphen one would be talking about baby muslims who are murderers.

I AM !AGAINST! THAT TOO
October 13, 2008 10:09 PM

Gramps gets philosophical

2008-10-08T21:26:00.002+08:00

I've come to expect all kinds of brain-twisters from the GOP-ers this presidential season, but I hadn't thought I'd come across one that was actually thought-provoking. Here's something that the angry old man threw out yesterday:

"What I don't know is what the unexpected will be."

I've been thinking about this all night and I still don't get it. Does that mean he does know what the unexpected currently is, but he's a bit lost about what it will be tomorrow?

QOTD

2008-10-03T21:20:00.002+08:00

TPB: "Don't mistreat me. I'm middle class. I'm Sixpack Joe."

(Aw shucks, there I go again. Better start un-rearing my ugly maritime head, or whatever it is that Washington people do.)

Shock and Awe

2008-09-22T23:36:00.002+08:00

The best book I have read in recent times is The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. The point of the book is simple -- it outlines the transfer of money from poor to rich, using the simple tenets of "disaster capitalism". These are:

Step 1) Wait for or engineer a shock (military / weather / financial / whatever)
Step 2) Approach the shocked population with a "recovery" plan that you spin as the only possible option
Step 3) Loot.

Here's a brief extract from the website:

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

And the reason I'm posting about this today? Well of course - the Paulson (ex-Goldman Sachs) "Bailout Plan", which Shockmaster George is trying to ram through. A plan that - regardless of its possible merits - comes with a scarcely believable downside. As Paul Krugman puts it:

But Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a “clean” plan. “Clean,” in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.

Straight out of the Shock Doctrine operators' manual. And so simple, so beautiful in its execution. Juan Cole, as usual, gets it exactly right:

Cable and satellite television "news" tells us nothing of elections in India or constitutional crisis in Thailand, and barely mentions a major workers strike at Boeing. Dozens of car bombs go off in Iraq and we are told it is "calm" now. It is a vast electromagnetic form of bread and circuses, wherein hapless celebrities and philandering politicians are fed to the lions before millions of cheering plebes, by corporate moguls desperately hoping that the marks will not notice the legion of pickpockets in the arena, relieving them of their purses.

...

And in the wake of the greatest and most sustained act of systematic plunder since the Mongol hordes appropriated to themselves the riches of everyplace in Asia from Beijing to Isfahan, the reaction of the supine and slave-like American voting public is to scratch their heads and have a hard time deciding if they would like more of the same.

We deserve what's coming to us. I used to be shocked, but now I'm just awestruck.

RIP Richard Wright

2008-09-16T01:30:00.002+08:00

I was hypnotized by the dance of your fingers on the Live at Pompeii video. Twenty years ago, I thought less of people if they hadn't heard your name. I named my high school quiz team after a song you wrote.

Thank You, Richard Wright. RIP.

- An Ordinary Man

Ripples

2008-09-11T22:19:00.005+08:00

It's the anniversary of that day again. And for some reason, I feel like soap-boxing.

So here's the content of a speech I gave a few years ago.

It's a hand-me-down
The tho-oughts are broken

***

President B, Provost B, Distinguished Faculty, my fellow __ graduates, friends,

Thank you all for being here today. And congratulations to the many of you, those who thought they’d never make it. Hey, it looks like we did, after all. Not a bad achievement, is it? I mean, think -- of all those endless days and nights; the data that took months to come and then didn't work out; the painful paragraphs written and rewritten, then re-rewritten only to be trashed; think of those maniacal moments spent hovering somewhere between suicide and homicide -- seeking solace at the bottom of a beer glass at the West End. Those were the days!

I was immensely honored when I received the invitation to speak today. But, honestly, my first reaction was sheer, numbing panic. Then I thought -- wait on, you're a __ PhD, you can talk your way through this. But then it struck me that most of the others present would also be __ PhDs. So that idea didn't go too far. Then I thought, okay -- let's fall back on Plan B, something that's worked in the past, flippancy. But that didn't sound so good either. That was when I -- finally -- started thinking a little like I've been taught here. Systematically. What is the occasion? Commencement. A beginning. This is where, symbolically, the rest of our lives are starting. So maybe I can fall back on some of the research that I started right here at __, on things people do when there is a new beginning. I’m talking about New Year's resolutions.

So let me first propose a resolution that's based on a haiku written by one of my favorite poets, Robert Hunter. This is the refrain from the lyric, Ripple. It goes:

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

Many meanings may be read into this beautiful lyric. What I'd like to say is -- let us try to make a difference, a small difference, at each and every point of our lives. As Mahatma Gandhi suggested, "Be the change you want to see in the world." We're graduating today. We all dream of being the splash. Making the waves that everyone will notice and remember. But, I submit, we will have done our jobs if we can only be the ripple. Constantly, and in all circumstances. Be the change we want to see.

We will all be entering new walks of life now. Many of us stay in academia, with our roles vastly redefined. Yet, what we can do, every one of us, is propagate the good things that we experienced here at __. We have all had a variety of experiences -- let us take what we need, and leave the rest. Open doors, open minds; friendly, welcoming faces; co-operation, collaboration, tolerance; clear-headed, intellectual ways of thinking and dialogue; late nights of hard, hard work towards a desired goal. These, supposedly small things, have universal applicability, and universal value. Let us remember these, and practice and propagate them.

Conversely, let us try not to propagate some other things we may have experienced. Such as asking a candidate to leave the room after they have presented their dissertation proposal, and then shutting the door behind them and laughing maniacally. A little less of that might be good.

Let us listen, think, do. Criticize -- constructively.

One may ask -- what place is there for ripples, in the turbulent maelstrom that passes for a world today? Almost everyone graduating here today was in New York on September 11, 2001. The apocalyptic memories that we have from that day may never leave us. And we, who were here, may rightly wonder -- in a world that contains a 9/11, and the swirling cesspools of negativity that predated and have sprung from it, what place can a ripple have in such a world? Is it even meaningful to speak of ripples?

Clearly there are no easy answers.

When I was a child, my father, himself an academic, had a poster in his office. The poster read, "Are you here with the solution, or are you part of the problem?" It's a funny sound bite, but it carries a message. Are you here with the solution, or are you part of the problem? Which would you rather be, and why? And when? Personally, I believe right now is a good time for each of us to think in terms of identifying our place -- be it in the solution or in a new problem. For often a solution brings with it a new problem -- think of Kuhnian paradigm shifts, if you will. But really -- would you rather be the voice or in the wilderness? Is there any value to being part of the old problem? Whatever be our field, whatever the domain, we have to try to contribute to the solution; to still the waters, down to a ripple.

My research on self-control and New Years resolutions tells me that success at one's goals is often driven by expectancies of success. That is, people who expect to succeed, for various reasons, tend to be more successful. And expectancies really are nothing but manifestations of optimism, positivity, hope.

So there we have two things that can help us be the ripple. Hope, and help. Hope is what we give others, to see them through to Time 2. Help is what we give them, often so they can hope, and then they give back to us. The concept of help has been so trivialized in the Orwellian world that we live in. The person who stands behind the counter at a restaurant and asks, "May I help you?" isn't really helping you at all. They're just doing their job. The person who is helping is the person who goes out of their way -- does that little extra -- exercises the option when they didn't have to.

That, friends, is what we have to do. We must give hope, and we must help. We must be the ripples. And it is not easy-- indeed, as Hunter himself says in the last stanza of the lyric:

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home

With those wise words, my friends, I bid thee farewell. Let us all go forth and be optimistic. Let us not forget to hope, and to help. To be the ripples in still water, and to be the change we want to see.

And before we leave, a last word to my ex-doctoral student brethren: Folks, they say there's free food outside. And this time, it's not GSAC pizza. Cheers, and thank you!

The Reform Candidate

2008-09-06T20:09:00.003+08:00

Pappy O"Daniel: "We need a shot in the arm. You hear me boys? In the bleepdamn arm! Election held tomorrow, that sumbitch Stokes would win it in a walk!"

Junior O'Daniel: "Well' he's the reform candidate, Daddy."

Pappy O"Daniel: "Yeah."

Junior O'Daniel: "A lot of people like that reform. Maybe we should get us some."

Pappy O"Daniel: "I'll reform you, you soft-headed son of a bitch. How we gonna run reform when we're the damn incumbent? Is that the best idea you boys can come up with? Reform?! Weepin' Jesus on the cross. That's it? You may as well start drafting my concession speech right now."

Junior O'Daniel: We could hire our own midget [woman], even shorter than his.

Pappy O'Daniel: Wouldn't we look like a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies, bragging on our own midget, don't matter how stumpy.

***

From a comment by mujeriego (9/5/08, 1:38 pm), at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/05-0 .

I am so scared.

Detour

2008-09-01T22:26:00.002+08:00

Later we were to realize that it had all started when TPB and Dear Relation (DR) had monkeyed with the GPS. Stuck in a logjam for the second time in an hour on a freeway in interior Pennsylvania, I finally figured out that they'd twiddled the thing into 'Pedestrian' mode, which is why it was doing strange things like telling us to "take a sharp turn right" onto an entry ramp, and that it was "129 miles, 66 hours" to the next intersection.

But all that was to happen later, much of an eventful hour later. Before that, too, we'd been stuck for an hour in the logjam, slowing to a halt near a sign that said "Exit 120, Food, 1 mile". That hour had slowly ticked away, the rainfall, the last remnant of Tropical Storm Fay, had eased to merely heavy, but the advertised exit had not been reached. We were truly stuck.

TPB clambered over into the vacant passenger seat, her nap done and dusted. She said she wanted to go to the restroom. I too needed a break, from all the high speed driving past tractor-trailers sloshing colossal quantities of water every which way. We decided we'd pull off at the alleged Exit 120, if ever this traffic accelerated past 5 mph.

Of course, it happened just as we crawled up to the exit ramp. The jam cleared. A fire truck was reversing across the left lane, blinkers on, and an emergency worker was waving us on past, through to the empty stretch of freeway. Next exit 9 miles, it said.

I asked TPB -- you want to go to this exit, which may well be choked with the plenty of other freeway riders who've had the same idea as us, or should we try for the next one? Our car was speeding up; we had to decide. "Okay, let's go to the next one," she said, just as I pulled right onto the ramp.

There were four cars ahead of us at the light at the end of the ramp. A signboard said, "McDonald's, Arby's, Popeye's, Big Boy Burger, turn left". Another said, "Su's Restaurant, turn right".

We decided to turn right.

The first building we saw was an auto repair shop.

There was no second building.

Within ten seconds of the light we were in forest territory. A narrow two lane road twisted, turned, and swooped through a thick green mountain. All around, everything was lush shades of green. Of Su's restaurant there was no sign, naturally, but apart from the occasional car coming from the other side, there was nothing else either.

We drove for a few minutes not knowing what to think, hoping we'd come upon some sign of civilization. The mountain road was descending; round one bend we came upon a river. This was no ordinary mountain stream. The water lay silent, nearly invisible, cloaked under a cloud of fog that rose from it, a spooky cloud that sat well over a meter thick. TPB drew her breath in. We passed a sign that said "Caution, Water Temperatures May be Significantly Higher Than Expected". I tightened my lips and focused on the narrowing road. What was this place?

Suddenly, up ahead, we saw the most ghostly sight. Three concrete towers, fogged from view, rising up from the steaming water, looming menacingly over us. My first reaction was one of shock, then I relaxed a little. This must be some sort of industrial plant, releasing waste products or simply heat into the environment. The ethereality of the situation dissipated somewhat; now at least we could make a little sense of the situation.

There had to be a way out of there. We couldn't turn our monster SUV around on that narrow mountain road. We needed an opening, or a detour of some sort. We looked at the errant GPS again. Take the next sharp right, it said. A sharp right presented itself almost at once. So we took it.

Again, mistake.

This road was even narrower. At least till then we'd been on a proper mountain road. Now we were straddling a single lane kuccha track, overgrown with vegetation, two deep water-filled ruts running along either side of a central grassy embankment. Thankfully, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. But that was all that could be said in our favor. There was nowhere to go but follow this overgrown lane.

The dirt track plunged into a hairpin bend. With a gasp, we found ourselves right by the river. The track, if possible, was even narrower here -- parts of it had broken off and tumbled into the water. I had no way of telling how firm the ground underfoot might be -- all I knew was that the car I was navigating was a heck of a heavy beast. We were almost at a standstill. Obviously this wasn't the way back to the freeway. Thoughts were chasing each other round our heads. I was worrying about tumbling into the river, with its "Significantly Higher Than Expected" temperature and possible effluent. Should we keep the windows down or up? I was also worrying about rednecks with guns. TPB told me later she was afraid there might be bears around. The place was that desolate.

Of course, we didn't talk very much right then. We were just willing ourselves back to civilization.

An opportunity presented itself to our left -- a small clearing in the trees. Notwithstanding TPB's weak protest, I swung a sharp left into it. Damn they make these SUVs agile. two tweaks and we were back on the dirt track, heading gingerly the opposite way. The hairpin bend had to be negotiated again. It really was quite steep, but with the roar of a wounded lion our Chevrolet scrambled upwards and made it. If we'd slipped then, I remember thinking, we really would have been done for. But we weren't. We found our mountain road again, and set off back the way we'd come. Somehow we managed to make a wrong turn anyway, and found ourselves 2 miles further back in the same logjam that we thought we'd escaped.

That was when we realized that the GPS was on Pedestrian mode.

And that was when I finally had the opportunity to regret not having had my camera at hand.

Get your flash on

2008-08-23T01:47:00.002+08:00

In this age of Usain Bolt, I'm only to happy to pass on a ~~baton~~ message from the desi blogosphere (g)literati. This goes out to anyone (resident of India) who ever read Dickens or Dostoevsky and thought they could do better (or at least, breviter)...

***

Hi all,

We're delighted to be able to tell you about this contest we have just got up and running. We're presenting it in partnership with LiveJournal, one of the oldest, most respected names in the community blogging world.

It's a pretty simple challenge we have here, one that will particularly appeal to all the fiction writers among you, but not too intimidating for those of you who like other forms of writing to give it a bash.

Can you tell a quicker, snappier story than anyone else? Would you care to pit your story-telling abilities against those of your peers?

Quick Tales, the LiveJournal - Caferati Flash Fiction contest, asks you to tell us a story in 500 words or less. On offer: delicious cash prizes, global visibility and the chance to be part of a book.

You probably know what Flash Fiction is all about - we have run Flash Fic contests for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival for the last three years, and FF tags and memes have been floating around the blogosphere for ages - but, just in case you do need a few starting tips, see this page: http://livejournal.caferati.com/contests/what-is-flash-fiction/.

The contest is open to residents of India who are members of LiveJournal's India Writing community. (If you're not an LJ member, joining is free. Click the "Create a LiveJournal Account" link at the top of any LJ page.) The theme is "Journal," and your deadline is 7th September.

Prizes? The top 5 winning entries take home cash prizes of Rs 19,999, Rs 16,000, Rs 12,000, Rs 8,000 and Rs 4,000, respectively. And the rest of the top ten get paid accounts on LJ for one year. Each of the top 100 entries will also be highlighted on LJ's India Writing community - http://community.livejournal.com/india_writing/ - for the world to see. (Short-listed stories may also be included in a book that LiveJournal plans to publish at a later date.)

Go straight through to our Quick Tales microsite - http://livejournal.caferati.com - for all the details, and don't forget to join India Writing, which is the place where all the updates will be happening. Live Journal has more plans for writers in all languages in India, and that community will be HQ.

We'd also be very, very grateful if you chose to tell your friends about it, and, if you have a blog or personal site, or are a member of other writing communities, to link to the site - http://livejournal.caferati.com - as well.

Good luck, and we hope to see your entry soon!

Peter, Manisha and Annie
Editors & moderators, Caferati

Boogie Chillen

2008-08-06T22:31:00.002+08:00

I was layin' down one night,
An' I heard mama 'n papa talkin'
I heard papa tell mama,
Let that boy boogie-woogie,
It in him
An' it got to come out

Bonus track: Live version with the Stones and EC here.

And I felt so goood
I felt soo good

an atypical post

2008-08-05T07:00:00.002+08:00

things should go right like this more often .

life should be like this more often.

ali's world

2008-07-31T18:59:00.003+08:00

The exhibition was great and the book is now available online and should be in major bookstores across India in a few days. Rahul has a review up already. Many thanks to those who helped spread the word (especially zigzackly!)

Check it out, everyone -- it's more than just a bunch of (amazingly) "pretty" pictures; it's a story that needs telling.

Pictures from Scotland

2008-07-15T20:37:00.005+08:00

Mountain spring, Glen Nevis

Passing place

Reflections, Loch Oich

Pillar, Loch Ness

One lane, Drumnadrochtil

Portal

Chain link

Sentry

A dram to share

Feudalism

Domain

Pictures from Norway

2008-07-11T05:33:00.005+08:00

11th century barn with 21st century cars

The Sognefjord at Balestrand

Adrift

Leaving Balestrand

The Sognefjord at an angle

Deadhead hat in 16th century Stav church

Tree House

Troll

Jetty, Flam

Snapshot

Instructions, Myrdal

Barren

Viking boat

Vigelund's vision

Pictures from Hungary

2008-07-08T20:28:00.001+08:00

Revelers

Still life

Weekend lunch by the Danube

Paprika, iconic

Fish soup and soda-water with wine

The Danube from Visegrad castle, near the Slovak border

The Parliament, Pest

American entertainment

Bike stand with sculpture, Erzsebet Ter, Pest

At a diner

Memorial to a 20th century crucifixion, inside the Basilica

Street life

All over the place

2008-07-03T20:11:00.002+08:00

Earlier this week, attending a dissertation proposal defense, I looked around the room. The person on the hot seat was a Brazilian. The two co-chairs were Dutch and Thai. The three other committee members were from India, Benin via Canada, and (yes) American. And the lone spectator, the candidate's junior picking up tips while giving moral support, was Japanese.

And I thought -- another little reason why I love my job.

Cranium

2008-06-30T09:25:00.005+08:00

There's a sequence of little articles in the Sunday NYT today, all about various aspects of the rising gas prices. In one of them, this woman writes about how she's persuaded her two teenaged daughters to cycle to most places, but there's this big problem she faces with helmet hair. That is, the teenaged daughters object to how their hair looks after they wear their helmets -- and they refuse to wear these helmets if they're going to any place that concerns "boys". The author says that the girls' rationale is that the few dollars they save by not driving will be more than offset by the years of therapy they'll have to undergo if the "boys" see them with helmet hair.

***

Last week TPB and I decided that dinner at the Chinese restaurant down the road was a more attractive proposition than the (undeniably tasty, yet multiply recycled) leftovers that inhabited our refrigerator. We popped onto our bikes and the-equivalent-of sauntered down for a relaxed meal in the late evening twilight. Before leaving, I had an aaah-what-the-hell moment as I contemplated my helmet and then decided that we were just going down the street, and we'd stay on the sidewalk anyway. We sauntered back after dinner with the leftovers, and on the way back across the street I saw this family with four kids riding away from us on the sidewalk, all helmeted, all with flashing lights under the backs of their seats.

The next day was sort of rainy so I decided to drive instead of bike to school. One the way home, two blocks from my street, I had one of those surreal moments. The music was on (the Stones). The traffic was flowing along at an even thirty. The lights were changing as I approached them. The penultimate one, the one before my turn, an unusual scene appeared to my left. This was where a side street ran away from me. A few cars had stopped at random angles in the intersection. A woman dressed in white was standing in the middle of the street. She was looking down. Her hands were by her ears. From the way her body moved, she was shrieking at the top of her voice. Despite the fact that I was barely ten meters from her, I could hear nothing. I followed her gaze. A bicycle lay on the road, one wheel spinning. A man lay next to it, face down. Dark brown blood was oozing from his forehead. It hadn't reached the ground yet. One arm lay crumpled under him. Another stuck out at a strange angle. It was twitching spasmodically: one, two, three, four times. All this I saw, as I floated past at 30 mph. Other on that side of the street cars stopped; other people got out. Many had cell phones to their ears. I decided that 911 had already been called -- it was best for me to move on.

I reached home and parked. Entering the house, I spoke for the first time since witnessing the accident; for the first time in a minute. I said to TPB: "Promise me -- neither of us is *ever* going out on our bikes without a helmet. This is a rule." She nodded. I described what I'd just seen.

I went in and got a drink of water.

Ten-odd minutes later, I heard an ambulance arrive.

Twenty-odd minutes later, on my way out to meet my tennis partner, I realized that all traffic had been diverted. Someone said that four cop cars had sealed the area off.

I thought about that poor twitching guy all evening. The local newspaper's website mentioned the accident, but very briefly. The images didn't leave me; worsened by the knowledge that the twitching may well have meant serious brain injury. The next morning I checked again, there was nothing, but by evening they'd updated to say that he had a cracked pelvis and head injuries, but was "alert" in the morning.

And that's the last I have heard of him. The poor fool who was riding helmetlessly.

Believe me, I'd rather have "helmet hair" than end up like him. It's just stupid to not wear a helmet.

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

2008-06-24T23:40:00.003+08:00

One knows how American news is full of local bullcrap, but it takes something special to make the Brits start talking about localized *American* events. Which is why the following story fills me with pleasure.

Chicago residents have been sharing tips about how to avoid coming under attack by dive-bombing blackbirds.

More radical suggestions aimed at fending off the swooping attackers have included mimicking the sound of a barking dog or even imitating a larger bird.

Another correspondent suggested cyclists should install baskets on their bikes with a cat inside. "Or better yet, wear an oversized helmet with a trap-door with a stealth cat inside."

Into the light of the dark black night.

From the Beeb.

Fuel me once...

2008-06-20T19:59:00.002+08:00

From today's NYT: The demand for fuel-efficient cars is so heavy that the production lines aren't being able to keep up. “This seismic shift in the marketplace has definitely taken us and everybody else by surprise,” said George Pipas, Ford’s market analyst. No shit, Sherlock!

No one saw this coming??

Fukkeduk

2008-06-05T18:51:00.003+08:00

I met and stayed with a long-lost friend in Budapest. He's a composer, but I hadn't expected him to turn me on to a fascinating new band. (Well, one I hadn't heard of before.)

There's not too much available online but you can check them out here.

Fukkeduk is yet another fascinating creation from the Belgian school of Avant-Chamber Rock. They consist of a wide array of musicians from violinist Rik Verstrepen (Cro-Magnon) to Producer/guitarist Nick Didkovsky (Doctor Nerve), with the kind compliments from the more than commendable woodwind, string and brass section. Binding many influences, Fukkeduk startle us with their tasteful fusion of Rock, Folk, Jazz and classical; along with anything else they could cram in-between. Fukkeduk keep their compositions short and to the point. The arrangement and structure is astounding; placing an almost anal precision behind every note, but still allowing an amazing characterization within each piece. Fukkeduk is a must for those who love their music energetic, intense, with a dash of humour on the side.

I also got to see two sets of first-rate jazz played in a basement cellar joint in Budapest. The cover charge was 1200 Forints; that's about 6 dollars. The place was done up like two rooms in someone's library, with books all over the walls and chairs arranged facing an improvised stage. You had to skip across the street to the grocery store to get your own wine but they'd give you a set of mismatched glasses to use. :-)

Budapest was great.

Walden Pond

2008-05-15T19:19:00.003+08:00

"...live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Small world

2008-05-09T18:58:00.003+08:00

They breezed in, they breezed out. They fought and bickered and squabbled endearingly. They passed a wide range of politically incorrect comments. Perhaps that was forgivable considering one of them was over seventy and the other nearly so. They'd missed their connecting flight at Newark. The next flight was at 5 pm. They'd landed at 6 am. The 16 hour trudge from Bombay hadn't served them so well. He'd had to keep getting up to go to the restroom; on one such occasion he'd left his windcheater on his seat and the guy next to him ("one useless fellow he was") had lifted the armrest and lain down across the two seats, adding insult to injury by borrowing his windcheater unasked and balling it up into a pillow. On another occasion that he'd gotten up the same gent had placed a half-empty glass of water (no, not half full) on his seat, so when he returned to his seat he unknowingly sat on the glass wetting himself "everywhere 1 2 3 4" as he put it, making gestures in all directions. The flight attendants hadn't been the best, and the ground staff at Newark had been downright bullies. "All of them black and one fatter than the other," said she, comfortable in her own not unsubstantial skin. They hadn't been convenienced by the security check either, "making me take off my shoes socks shirt banian even", and figuring out how to make a pay phone work had been a nightmare. For one, they didn't have coins, and no one would give them any change. Until the Good Samaritan they met after 45 minutes of their hunt, the man who passed them two quarters so that they could call their son to tell him of the delay. The son who let his sister know. The sister who called her friend my sister-in-law at 10 am, four full hours into their nightmare, imploring her to drive the half hour into Newark and bring them home for lunch before they embarked on their cross-country connection. And so they sat in the living room as my sis-in-law rustled up some upma, bombarding a politely sympathetic me with the tales of their recent plight, apologizing for "inconveniencing" me by making me show them the way to the bathroom.

Slowly they settled and caught their breath, she embarked on tales of her grandchildren. And suddenly realized that she couldn't find her pocket diary. The one with all the phone numbers in it. Which she'd taken out to call her son. Which she now realized she had probably forgotten at the airport.

She made as if to go back to Newark to look for it.

We dissuaded her.

It took some doing.

Then she remembered that she had written her son's credit card information right across the front page of that diary.

My sis-in-law called her friend to get the son's number. The friend called back with the number. The son was called; a message was left. The son called back and was informed. He said he'd cancel the card. He hung up, then called back. He berated his mother. Her face fell further. Then she blamed her husband, for "reminding me so often you always make me nervous". H edefended himself by saying that if he didn't remind her she'd forget. Then he asked, "are you sure the passports and boarding passes are safely in your bag?" She rolled her eyes and took them out. "You cold have left them outside last time I asked you to check," he justified. And started telling me all about how he used to make coffee in his 1950s British coffeemaker. A fifteen minute narrative, crowned by the passing phrase,"It has rollers, you see, for rolling. They roll."

Then he explained to me why she shouldn't have taken her phone diary out to make the call. "You should always write numbers in big letters in sets of three. On pieces of paper where you can find them." He fished a couple of loose scraps of paper from out of the bulging breast pocket of his shirt to demonstrate.

Then he unpacked and packed his shoulder bag. It was missing one side strap, and the shoulder strap seemed as if it didn't belong to the bag. "Yes, yes, one strap had broken. But I have many at home. When I go home I will fix it." He'd just come from home for a year's visit. "This shoulder strap was also breaking and I was at my tailor's shop so I asked him for a belt."

She observed his performance and commented to me: "Yiver uncle iss livving in the 19th century."

They had their lunch, drank some tea, and then left to get driven back to the airport. All the while they talked, bickered, squabbled, and passed the occasional politically incorrect remark. On their way out she discovered he'd left his windcheater hanging across the back of a dining chair. Her eyes lit up - she said she wouldn't remind him until he stepped out of the house. They stepped out of the house. She'd forgotten to remind him. I reminded her, saying, "Jacket". Her face fell. So did his. I fetched the jacket. They said their fond goodbyes to the stranger they'd met just a few hours previously.

Somewhere in the relentless conversation we'd learned that they're related to the new wife of my old cubicle-mate and friend.

Indic Numerology

2008-05-03T16:19:00.002+08:00

Among other passing thoughts:

Why is it that when these celebrities fiddle with the spellings of their names for numerological reasons, it's only the English spellings that get diddled? Why, for instance, do we not see creations like "प्रेयीथी झिन्न्ताह"? Is numerology not script-invariant? Or do I not read enough of the vernacular press?

there's no place like

2008-04-30T15:45:00.003+08:00

chicago
detroit
tokyo
hong kong
delhi
gurgaon
hong kong
tokyo
detroit
maybe chicago
boston
new york
upstate new york
boston
amsterdam
budapest
around budapest
brussels
oslo
bergen
balestrand
flam (pronounced flom)
myrdal
oslo
london
maybe scotland
amsterdam
boston
... home

(crazy, i know.)

Indian premier bedfellows

2008-04-21T08:39:00.004+08:00

Cricket in India was always run by politicians.
And politicians always had a nexus with the business world.
And the movie industry always had underworld connections.

But now cricket has also become a business.
And businessmen and movie stars own cricket teams.
Four pillars of Indian society have come together.

All that's left is for organized religion to rear its ugly head.

Triple header for the soul

2008-04-19T03:28:00.005+08:00

Three great musicians in less than three days. Each someone I hadn't ever seen before -- in the third case someone I hadn't even heard of. What a way to detox.

The last in the sequence, going out with a bang, was the great Sonny Landreth. Loud electric blues-rock, slide guitar played with feel, a mild-mannered bespectacled long-haired Classics professor look-alike shook this hoary old college town to its roots, swirling thick wavy lines of sound over and beyond a hard driving back-beat.

Opening for him was Tony Furtado. The unassuming banjo maestro, popping out of the crowd, past my shoulder, onto the stage before the show, adjusting the connections and tunings before disappearing backstage only to reappear after a few minutes, setting the stage alight with furious acoustic picking.

But the best of all, for my money at least, was the great Eric Bibb. Solo acoustic country blues -- the advert said "Every time you hear Eric Bibb, you hear a little truth." Amen to that, Brother. Soft-spoken, intelligent with piercing eyes, standing, swaying, bouncing, engaging in conversation with the audience, a magical finger-picker with the ability to wring the maximum meaning out of every quiet word he sang in his resonating voice - he stole my heart.

He played this track, Needed Time, and got the audience to sing along. The woman next to me was a trained singer of sorts. The sound the room generated was divine. The kind of thing that makes people get religion.

Here's Eric Bibb with a version of Needed Time. Play it loud.

What a great way to detox indeed. Go see live music.

The day I graduated from being a mere fan of Seinfeld

2008-04-16T02:37:00.004+08:00

Rental Agent: I'm sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.
Jerry: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?
Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
Agent: I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take the reservations. What you need to do is to *hold* it.

***

On the way there, my plane was on time. I got into a cab to go to the hotel downtown, and called my friend to say I'd arrived. The driver was a Tanzanian lady. As we passed a gas station I remarked that gas in this place was even more expensive than where I'd just come from. She said, "There's going to be an accident if you talk about gas again." I laughed, and asked her to turn the music up. It was some mellifluous African stuff. She said it was Congolese music -- apparently very popular in eastern Africa. I said I hadn't heard anything like it, although I was familiar with some African music. She said Fela. I said yes, and King Sunny Ade, Youssou N'dour, she said Miriam Makeba, I said Ladysmith Black Mambazo. She said these are all the acts that have made it big in the west. Back home in eastern Africa, people dig this Congolese stuff.

We listened in silence, and then we talked about the American elections.

***

I arrived at the hotel at 1:30 and went to check in. The woman at the front desk took my printout, clicked a few keys, looked at her monitor, clicked again, then handed the printout back to me. With a big smile she said -- yes, sir, we have you down in our system and everything's okay; it's just that check-in is at 3 o'clock and we don't have any rooms available right now. She reconfirmed that they don't have early check in, and then said -- but you can leave your bags with the bell-hop, and come back at any time that's convenient to you, if that's okay.

At least, that's what I think she said.

I gave my carry-on to the bell-hop. My friend had arrived from her office three blocks away. We went off to have lunch, then went to her office and worked till 7. Then we met another friend for dinner, and sat around talking till almost midnight.

The two of them dropped me back to my hotel. For some reason, they both came in with me.

A different woman at the front desk (someone sporting a name tag that said 'Aquanette') told me that they were all booked out and no rooms were available for me. That was my Seinfeld moment.

I went through the motions of arguing with her. She pulled out a form which she filled laboriously in, then an envelope stuffed with singles, from which she pulled ten notes which she counted twice before handing them to me. "We're sending you to our sister hotel two blocks away. Here's return taxi fare. Tomorrow morning you will have first priority for a room here."

"So I'll have to come back here again?"
"Yes."
"What if I want to stay there?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to talk to the manager there in that case."
"And what time did you say I'll be able to get a room here?"
"Well, people start checking out by 8 o'clock."
"So how come I didn't get a room five hours after 8 o'clock today?"
"Because we do not have early check-in."

So of course I went to the other hotel. Which turned out to be a Best Western that was in the process of being reconverted. At 8 in the morning I get a call from the front desk asking me to check whether the previous occupant had left a cellphone in a drawer; at 8:05 I get a call from the near-hysterical previous occupant imploring me in a Kiwi accent to look again ("Did you check behind the television? I'm so mad I could scream. These people refused to give me a safe-box.") That's when I decided I'd better try my luck at the first hotel. So I packed up my bags and trudged back.

The day manager could not believe that the front desk person had said I'd get a room by 8. But here I was, at 9:15, saying I'd given them an hour and a half grace already. We argued some more. I pulled out my old chestnut about being a business school professor who teaches cases about customer service. She said she'd have a room for me in half an hour. ("House cleaning does not being till 9:30"). She did. And in the evening, a steel basket laden with one apple, one pear, one orange, four strawberries, and a bunch of grapes had found its way into the room, accompanied with an apology letter that had my name spelled wrong.

My night there was comfortable. The next morning at 8:45 I made my way down to check out, stepping past the house cleaning cart that was blocking up the corridor.

***

That evening, the cab to the airport was driven by an Iranian man. He'd lived here for 27 years. He hated everything. Blacks! Useless. I lost eight million dollars thanks to blacks. Ten children each -- they're taking over the country. I owned apartment buildings -- they never paid rent. One woman, she was 31. had seven children. Her eldest was 17. And she's a grandmother. That's what they're like. Care for nothing. Sit in cars, play loud music, all the girls will run to them. Don't care if they're a gangbanger. That's all they want. Jews! Control the world. Just 16 million of them, out of 6.3 billion. Running everything. Ruining everything. Iranians! We're so good by ourselves, but we pull each other down. I have a brother - I helped him get started. Now he makes movies even though he has a PhD from Columbia University and he's a millionaire. But he won't give me 20,000 to start my own restaurant -- and he knows I am good at it. I don't want it from him, but he won't give it to me. Always pulling each other down.

I was glad the ride was short. I was dog-tired, and well, even in Seinfeld, the malevolence comes in tolerable doses.

the lines on the map

2008-04-11T17:56:00.003+08:00

it's ugly, fat, and unpleasantly lumpy. dark lines run everywhere, looping around each other in repulsive drunken swivels. each little movement generates pressure on the sensor, causing the bulges to wobble and throb, lurch from side to side, leaving giant magnified slug-like tracks across the expanse of the 20 inch monitor. systematically, in response to the pressure, they march from one end of the screen to the other.

"man, i've never seen myself like *that* before," say i.

the fat woman, tamara by her badge, barely grunts. after the comment about the weather she's been all business. she lifts my thumb and applies some more of the corn-based cleansing spirit. presses it down again. the grotesque whorls reappear. the machine beeps. it says: "Score 72. Pass." a green light flashes.

tamara silently lets go of my thumb and grabs my index finger.

ten iterations later - after my right hand index finger narrowly passes on third attempt (Score 51) - they stamp my form and i'm out of there.

***

in the car i swap the kill to get crimson out of the rotation. it's an hour's drive back and i feel like blasting some europa on the freeway.

the bottom of the barrel

2008-04-04T04:18:00.002+08:00

7:39 AM FeistyBloggerGirl: unkill

me: ha!

FBG: tum itne busy kyun ho

7:40 AM me:fat rahi hai

lekin kal raat ko main drinking ke liye gaya

isliye aaj aur bhi fat rahi hai

7:41 AM FBG: hahahaha

boodha

7:42 AM me: daaru ke wajeh se nahin

laundi

"buffalo wild wings" ke wajeh se

FBG: aah

i like those

me: we went down the sliding scale

ending at mango habanero

and oh i can feel it

FBG: hahahaha

7:43 AM is best

i like

me: i like too

but not in this way

7:44 AM this is too intimate for me

i have morning after issues

FBG: hehehehe

durrty

me: indeed

7:53 AM FBG: aur batao

what has been happening

in my absence

7:54 AM me: online? nothing.

(irl also nothing)

FBG: baaki life bhi

pshaw

so boring

look at me

getting into accidents

just for some blog material

me: heh

Matters of great social and political import

2008-03-21T10:36:00.002+08:00

Things I want to know right now --
- HOW does Barack Obama (and every other politician) get SUCH a perfect dimple in their tie? Do they have a special tie-knotter in their retinue?
- IS Hillary Clinton really a closet-cult satanist?
- and WHY does Preity Zinta look like mashed potatoes?

Things I have learned in the last 2 hours and 48 minutes --
- If you start a hindimowie after 8 pm, don't expect your freedom before 11.
- If you start chatting during said hindipitcher, don't expect to know why Dimple Kapadia died.

Left and Right

2008-03-17T21:33:00.003+08:00

On the one hand you have the so-called left-wingers who have boiled themselves down to a situation where either you're sexist or you're racist. (Actually, if you're truly progressive you're both.)

On the other hand you have a whopper of a bear market (get it, get it, ha ha). Or should that be Bare market. Where a company that was valued at 30 bucks a share one day goes for 2 the next. When will that happen with the Cellar Door sessions, I wonder (or the Silent Way sessions or the Blackhawk shows... or the complete Seinfeld or Fraggle Rock or Bodyline or anything else on my Amazon wishlist)? It is precisely this sort of confusion that lends credence to the low grade I got in my Valuation class all those years ago. I was never the smartest guy in the room.

Even better, someone else gets to step in and buy for some 270 million bucks a gift set that includes a few thousand admittedly and evidently useless suits (no, not the orange hooded kind - those are in high demand didn't you know), but also a midtown Manhattan building worth a billion dollars. Imagine the rent they could squeeze out of that thing. Plus a guarantee of up to 30 billion, just in case those suits have any further larvae up their lining. We're not worthy; we suck!

Or, as my beloved biology teacher Mrs. T. used to say:

"Pheesiotharruppy, bete. Laft and right!"

Analyze this

2008-03-14T05:39:00.005+08:00

We're playing Settlers on the lawn in front of the hostel, right where the big tree used to be before the storm. A, C, TPB, and I. Suddenly, A says he saw a snake slithering through the grass right by where his foot had been. We jump up and start running. A and TPB and I run directly towards the edge of the lawn, but C goes in the other direction, along the long corridor and then round via the narrow concrete path. She rejoins us. We look back towards where we'd been playing. Tikaram has appeared from nowhere, and he's got these two big cows, ribs sticking out, and an enormous pig with him. All the animals appear to be covered or coated with newspaper. We carefully cross the lawn to go pick up our game, watching the grass closely. As we look up, we see he is feeding the pieces to the animals! I yell at him and hit one of the cows on the ribs, ineffectually. It pays me no heed. We ask him what right he has to feed our game to his animals, and how does he suppose we can retrieve it now. He says maybe some pieces are still okay, and then reaches inside the pig's cavernous mouth and draws out a slightly dented, wet, sloppy piece of the board. He shakes the goo off and offers it to me. I look inside the pigs mouth. A big dark tongue lashes from side to side. The pig bellows. I withdraw.

Subah ka sapna sach aata hai.

Black and white

2008-03-03T06:38:00.004+08:00

- Uhmm, hey, you spent some time here in New Orleans a few years back, didn't you?
- Yeah, I was here for a semester.
- So, uh, do you think things have changed a lot?
- What you mean after Katrina?
- Well, yeah?
- Actually, after Katrina for a couple of years things were a lot better.
- [suppressed gasp] Really?
- Oh yes, all the criminals were forced to leave.
- Oh... I see.
- Yeah. The criminal districts were destroyed. They should never rebuild them. I mean, they were built right next to the water. That's where the Ninth Ward is. What were they thinking?
- I see... I hadn't known that.
- Yeah, and so they were all destroyed, and the criminals had to leave. And things were great for two years.
- And then?
- Well, now they're all coming back. The criminals. They're all back. And in our parts of town. Right where my parents-in-law stay. Full of criminals now.
- Ah. I see. Hmm.
- Well, anyway.
- Yeah, I know.

From there to here

2008-02-21T11:51:00.000+08:00

The first stop is at a BP station down the road, just before the ramp to the freeway. I pull up next to the pump and steady myself for a moment. It’s well below freezing outside, single digits Fahrenheit, and inserting the credit card, unscrewing the tank, and holding the pump handle will all be trying tasks.

The gas here is a good twenty cents lower than it was back home. As the tank fills up, I wonder why that might be the case. I have no idea, all I have is the vague but definite suspicion that prices are being gouged. Not that it matters that much – just a couple of dollars.

I settle back into the seat and make a last spot check. There are no other cars at the pump; no one is hurrying me. I take my time, making sure I fit right into the middle of the seat. There is no one else in the car. I check the passenger seat. Case with dark glasses, in the unlikely eventuality that the sun comes out. Box of Trader Joe’s chocolate covered cherries, in case attention starts to flag. Energy bar. Replacement disks – Phil Lesh and Friends at Bethlehem PA, 11/17/01, sets 1 and 2. Printout of directions, 18-point font. Bottle of water in cup-holder. Dick’s Picks vol. 22 loaded. I’m good to go.

I ease away from the pump, loop to the left, meet the main road at the dip in the tarmac, brush against the sidewalk in the tight turn to the narrow lane, and hit the ramp to the freeway. I’m on the road again.

Well, almost.

The first three points on the navigation chart involve switching multiple freeways within city limits. I’ve driven this route a few times now so it’s not as bewildering as it was the first time round – every highway number and exit seemed to involve the digit 7. Two nights ago I’d even driven across town to go to dinner, so the fruits of habit had begun to grow on my branch. I made the transitions relatively comfortably. Soon I am on the annoying stretch – the freeway with the lights.

Fifty minutes of interrupted driving and nothing to do about it. I sit in the right lane for a while, determined to take it easy, but soon my patience begins to flag. I switch to the left – at least it seems to be going faster. But the added pace is largely illusory; there’s no stopping the lights that crop up every time the needle begins to settle at fifty. At one of these stops the sun does come out. I take the opportunity to switch into the shades. A little further down the line a large blue Dodge pick-up barges into my lane from the right. My hand jumps for the honk but holds back. Partly it’s the relaxation from the weekend, partly my friend’s admonishment: I’d honked someone who’d butted into my lane without a signal the previous day, he’d raised his hand in apology, but my friend had warned me about the part of town we were driving through. I take no chances.

The traffic thins out after a bit. Soon there’s a long glorious empty stretch where the road curves to the left in an outstretched concrete swoop. I finally hit seventy, and take it past, to seventy-five. There’s a Merc sitting in the left lane, doing sixty five. I hover behind it for a few seconds. Soon it takes the hint and moves over. I ease past. A quick glance tells me that it’s driven by a young Asian guy, one ear clapped to his cell-phone. No wonder he wasn’t paying attention. The limit in this state is sixty-five, I know, and I have seen cop cars around. But right now, I don’t care. Dick’s Picks v22 is letting rip. It’s a ’68 show, one for which I have great associations moreover. I nudge the cruise control upwards. It’s a sunny day. I wrote a letter, mail it in the. Mail it in the, air indeedy. I wrote a letter, mail it in the air.

And you know by that, I’ve got a friend somewhere.

My mind begins to wander. I pop a TJ’s chocolate. Judge decreed it, clerk he wrote it. That’s almost like the review process. Despite having spent the weekend with friends, I’d been working, mostly. On a revision. Doing what the judge decreed and what the clerk wrote. Soon (I hope) I will write another letter, mail it in the air again.

Viola Lee Blues.

I’m out in open country now. Still doing a steady 74-75. Pushing it up further beyond, at times, when we’re between towns, when the road gets really empty. Touching eighty at times. It’s Sunday, after all, and the cops are likeliest to be close to populated areas. I want to be getting home soon. There’s work to be done.

The sun has gone in but I keep my shades on. Who knows when it might come out again and dazzle me? Little flurries of snowflakes now appear. They zoom at my windscreen in erratic accelerated parabolas, like asteroids in a space simulation; like in the screensaver, bending away like Beckham at the last possible moment. The areas right next to the road are paved with ice. It’s funny how the weather has changed just an hour to the north. The landscape gets progressively bleaker – whiter, starker, the trees barer, more oppressively angular and naked. Or is it just my imagination.

I chance the occasional glance round at the landscape. It is mostly empty and white. Shades of grey. The snowfall intensifies in patches. At one point the road stretches straight out ahead of me. No cars are visible, I overtook the last one an instant ago, and already it is shrinking in my rear view mirror. There are no buildings either, at least, no major ones that I can see. Just land. And road. And sky. In three different shades of grey, meeting, converging, at a point directly ahead of me. The Eleven is playing a riot inside my chariot. I nudge the cruise control up even further. This moment is for me.

I cross the state line in good time. The previous time I’d driven back, someone had been moving a prefabricated house along the highway in front of me. I kid you not. It took up two lanes and had two patrol cars escorting it. Everyone drove at sixty, and cars were backed up all the way. This time, nothing – although traffic does pick up a little. So does the speed: the limit is seventy now. That’s license to go at an easy eighty, which is what the left lane is doing. If not more. A sports car comes up in my rear view, flashes his lights. I let him pass, and ease back into the left lane before I have my style cramped by any farmer who’s stuck at sixty. And I let it out a little more. If that guy can pass me when I’m doing eighty, I can go a little quicker myself. It’s a straight road. The snow has stopped. I hunker down, I frown, I hit eighty five.

I smile when I see the last road sign I’m looking out for. It’s always nice to read the name of your destination. This exit is on the left. I take it, no worries, and I’m on the home stretch. I pop another chocolate and look at my watch. It’s not even five. Not even three hours. Great time.

The last hurdle but one is the exit off the freeway. It has no ramp. The first time I took it I was shocked to see the grassy shoulder hurtling towards me as I departed from the freeway; hitting the brake hard enough to send things flying forwards, easing up in time to remain on the tarmac, severely shaken but not stirred (and marveling at how well the brakes had worked). This time, I was prepared. Ramp or not, I took the curve smoothly, merged into Sunday afternoon traffic headed mallwards.

The pleasure at making the ramp so comfortably evaporated as I drove past what I thought was the entrance to the Whole Foods. Their babaganoush could do with some exploring, was the thought on my mind, and now I had missed it. Once more unto Trader Joe’s? The light turned to red and I stopped, toying with the options. A desi couple in the car behind me – funny how the rearview mirror shows them so clearly but they don’t see me. I decide to head to office directly – make it a late dinner instead of early. The light changes. I drive on. And see the Whole Foods up ahead. What had I been thinking?

I turn into the lot and find a spot. I pull in. The sun is low and fierce. I switch the car off. Once again I have forgotten to note the tachometer readings; once again I miss out on gauging the mileage. I take a long, deep breath and pull on my scarf and hat, step out for a bite to eat.

I am back. I had fun. Now I will get me my baba and kebab, and I will go to my office, and things will be like they have always been. Sleepy Alligator in the noon day sun, lyin' by the river just like he usually done. Call for his whiskey, he can call for his tea. Call all he want to, but he can't call for me. Oh no.

I turn the key and step into my office. The sun doesn’t set at 5:30 any more these days but that doesn’t mean the work gets done any quicker. The drive was fun, it took three hours. Now it won’t be midnight till I get home. Sleepy alligator. Oh no.