Amen! Sitting at my desk, this guy goes well with the book I’m reading these days - O’ Jerusalem by Lapierre and Collins. A tale of how people have killed each other for centuries over that unfortunate patch of land. All under the pretext of religion and some invisible creature called God…

The day is not too far when Bombay (yes, Bombay) will have it own colossal landmark - the statute of Shivaji. The days of liberty aunty are over. Here comes our very own… It worries me.

• Shivaji on a horseback. In the middle of the ocean!

• I always thought French women were supposed to be hot. How come he gets to be 4 feet taller?

• If they don’t find a suitable island or if they don’t have an environmental clearance for one… they might build the statue on the Haji Ali island!

• Marine drive would no longer be a romantic place for lovers. Sitting by the promenade, would we dare hold hands.. The beaming statute would remind us of a namesake terrorist organization!

• Why do we have to compete with them like this? Manhattan has 13 metro lines, Bombay has 3 water clogged ones. NY boasts of a world class airport. We, of a slum ridden one. My flight was once delayed by an hour, as dogs were running loose on the runway at the Bombay airport. No kidding. This happened again two days ago - as my mum tells me.
• Can we not use those 100 crores to build something else? What about the century-old ailing drainage system of this city. Can’t we fix that? Or buy 300 new BEST busses; Get thousands of private cars off our streets. Ah no, thats too boring a way to blow off tax-payers money.

• Remember Michael Jackson and liberty aunty? As a kid I was in awe of that video. Esp for the CG effects where they morph people’s faces towards the end of the song. Is Rajnikant going to do a song-n-dance atop Raje Shivaji?

• Why an icon from the past to inspire us? Why can’t we build something futuristic instead. Like a replica of our PSLV? It saddens me to see how little coverage such items get on our news. We put 10 satallites in space and Khali steals the show!

A few recent books [1] [2] left me with the impression that India and Hinduism has always been more tolerant, argumentative and imaginative. If the recent incidences of intolerance [3] [4] are any indication, we are going backwards…

Finally, this picture adorns my desktop these days. Cute eh!

This is obviously a copy-paste. Well, learnt some important lessons.

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.

I don’t much care where, said Alice.

Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.

Just received a phishing email from someone claiming to be HDFC bank. This is a text-book example of phishing attacks. Here is the verbatim text of the mail:

—

Dear Value customer,

For online banking customers,we want to update new operating system that will cover and protect your personal data from unauthorized access and from all illegal transaction and to reduce the rate of instance fraudulent website, you can join the services by updating your online account with the link below.

Update Your Account For 2008 Year Ended Summary

Be warned if you do not participate in this exercise, you have no right or whatsoever to hold HDFC Bank responsible, if you encounter any error in your online banking system.

Thanks.

—

Clues?

1. The mail is addressed as “Dear valued customer”. Genuine e-mails from banks usually use your real name.

2. The mail potrays a sense of unnecessary urgency:

>> Be warned if you do not participate in this exercise…

3. The link provided in the email points to a stupid URL:

http://studio621.com/logs/Upload/netbanking.html

Its a mockup of the bank’s website. Sigh! Its such a cheap mockup that too. See the original one:

http://www.hdfcbank.com/personal/default.htm

Wikipedia tells me that the worlds largest Phishing crime was orchestrated by some Valdir Paulo de Almeida by netting about USD 37 million! Well, he was arrested later…

HSBC now has this secure-id like device which is used, in addition to the username, password. The device they give is not from the original RSA corp though. This one seems more like a cheaper china-made version. (Yeah well, not politically correct to say perhaps, but still).

There are some rules I would recommend:

1. Do not keep all your eggs in one basket. Distribute your total savings in at least 4-5 different holdings - mixture of public sector and private sector banks.

2. Use Internet banking, but make sure you have paper records for each (say monthly or so). One person I know had a obscenely large amount of equity credited to his online demat account once with a leading bank. It went away in a couple of days though… Anyways, the point is, mistakes can happen. You need to have a risk-management plan.

Trying to suck some marrow out of life,
Sometimes choking myself,
Sometimes wondering if your marrow tastes better than mine,
Sometimes wondering if any marrow is even worth it…

An effective way of job hunting here is to carry your resume and hit the streets… A tech company lurks around every corner. Here are some sights and ramblings from the silicon valley…

Netgear and Citrix Semiconductors on the Great America Parkway

BEA Headquarters - Downtown San Jose. If Larry Ellison has his way, this would soon be Oracle.

AMD…

Foundry networks…

The Tech museum of innovation..

Yahoo!

The VTA light rail…

… and it’s laptop trotting commuters.

The Bombay local railway is far more efficient But the ride on the light rail is quite comfortable… There are not many takers of this service as most people here drive to work.

Some things you cannot miss about this country:

* Their city planning and organization

* The humongous portions of their food

* The courtesy of most people (holding doors, yielding to pedestrians, profusely apologizing if they invade your space, no staring etc..)

* The civic sense of most people (no littering, no jumping signals, no jaywalking) .

* The higher need for personal space amongst people.

* The size of their stores and movie theatres (20 screens!), size of their parking lots.

* “How you doing?”, they don’t really care to know your answer though…

* Weird movies on television (mostly about aliens, zombies, chopped human bodies etc.)

* War propaganda and nationalism on news channels…

Tremendous planning, investment and nation-building has gone into what we see today. No wonder they are so protective of their borders… A dream we should aspire as Indians is to evolve our nation into a organized and mature society like this…

Here is a really good blog I stumbled upon recently - http://www.dumblittleman.com/ - Offers advice on productivity, practical tips and methods to organize your life better…

This is a good article to start with: http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/09/lose-and-control-your-clutter.html

I like the idea of giving away clothes which you haven’t worn for a year or more. There is a good chance that they have either been out of fashion, or they don’t fit you anymore, or perhaps you didn’t really like them in the first place - and hence didn’t wear them for a year. Life feels so good when you have a clutter free wardrobe…

Was browsing over People Watching by Desmond Morris at crossword yesterday and came across a strange fact -

There is a correlation between the average length of womens’ skirts and the state of the stock markets! The book offered a graphical illustration from the 1920s through mid 1970s.

The relation is inversely proportional. The greater the economic prosperity of an era, the shorter were the skirts. During times of recession the skirt lengths went longer…

While that is a very good motivation for economic progress, I’ve been wondering why this is so?

Economic progress could mean more jobs and greater independence for women. A greater willingness to take risks and to assert oneself.

Longer skirts are the norm during times of gloom and sombre - say a funeral… One tends to be protective during times of insecurity and this psychology subconsciously drives our purchasing decisions…

While this guy seems to have debunked the theory, I didn’t read enough to understand how Desmond Morris arrived at his conclusions. Anyways, for now I have enough motivation to get more productivity to my work…

Ruby Tuesday at Nirmal Lifestyle was a disappointment. The decor is nice - wodden finish with just the right amount of illumination for a casual diner - guitars, knapsacks, frames hanging all over the walls. It reminded me of TGIF in many ways. The music was pleasant and the service was quite good.

The salad bar seemed rather sad. When you say salad bar, I imagine opulence - fresh greens, yellows, reds. Makes you feel healthier just to look at it. Here the veggies seemed rather stale. Cost cutting?

We ordered a Pasta Primavera, which was quite passable. Since we are at pasta - My touchstone has always been the Pasta Arabiata at Pizzeria. It’s the best pasta i’ve ever had. By that standards Ruby Tuesday was far off… The Spinach and Mushroom Alfredo Pizza was crappy. The base was definitely not a freshly cooked one and seemed half cooked too…

For all its worth, Ruby Tuesday is overpriced. Dinner for two (with a drink each) can cost about 1600 bucks.

They put a service charge of 200 bucks on my bill. (No, this was not VAT or service tax; that was additional). When asked, the only answer I got was - ‘it is part of our billing system’. What!!

Anyways, I told them that the service charge ought to be optional and customers can choose not to pay for it. Finally they conceded and struck it off the bill. (200 bucks discounted!). Now, I still don’t know what this service charge thingy is and why there is none in most other restaurants I’ve been to.

Overall, I was not too happy with the place. But I think it should be on the visit once list. And if you’re not to happy, don’t forget to get the service charge discounted!

Half of it over, its been an eventful weekend already. Uh, well… sorta. Managed to catch two movies . Eventful could be an arguable attribute here, but right now anything other than Word documents and Conf calls, seems eventful.

Russel’s words come to me here -

“… most modern forms of entertainment have been reduced to the passive observation of the skilled activities of others…”.

The movies this weekend were - Baran and Loins of Punjab - I’ll have a bit to say about them both…

I hit myself on the head when, only after the film started, I realized that the title is ‘Loins’ and not ‘Lions’! How could I miss that.

Well, Loins of Punjab (LoP, if you will), is a movie about a ‘Desi idol’ contest being held in New Jersey. A successful Indian businessman (of pig meat) left a legacy behind… He was called the ‘loin king’ and a part of his legacy was an attempt at philanthropy by organizing this contest.

The movie is about a bunch of quirky Indian-American contestants and a perverted and disorganized event manager… There is a fair amount of wit in the script and some hilarious puns. The potrayal of a overzealous gujarathi family (of one of the contestants) is quite typical. Shabana Azmi plays the role of a a cunning and influential contestant who wants to rig the contest to her favor; All so, that she can show-off to her high society friends. Another interesting character in the film is a caucasian with deep interest and knowledge of India. And there is Ajay Naidu (remember Office Space?) and his bhangra moves… I think he did a small dance piece even in Office Space.

Overall, the film is passable for its hour and a half length. What I like about it is that nothing has been overdone… its sorta plain. I think this film fits in the east-meets-west genre, where they portray immigrants having lost most of their Indian-ness yet having a few quirky Indian traits… I’d say, 7/10.

Baran is a Iranian film (my first one) by Majid Majidi. I got hold of a dubbed version of it. It is the story of a Iranian teenager (Rehmat) and his resentment towards Afghan refugees, who are taking jobs away from the Iranians. The film portrays the difficult life of Afghan refugees - many of whom work on construction sites in Iran. Rahmat is angered to loose his comfortable job, of making tea on the construction site, to a Afghan refugee. He now has the harder task of working on the construction… This sours his temper and creates a bitter relationship between Rehmat and the refugee..

<Spoiler>
Only later does Rehmat realize that the refugee is a young girl (dressed as a boy until now). Love flourishes in his heart and that transforms his resentment to compassion. He goes out of the way to protect her family and finally helps them get back to Afghanistan.

</Spoiler>

Although it is a story of love, the entire experience is very subtle. The two characters barely speak… mere glances are exchanged. The movie takes it own time to unwind, almost to the pace of a documentary. But it never felt empty.. There seemed to be a lot to see and absorb in each scene. The dialogs are spaced out and strong emotions are not quiet raised… Laid back is what it seemed like.

I liked the scene at the end - when the refugee truck drives away and Rehmat is standing by the road watching their footprints in the mud, and just then it starts to rain (Baran)…

… rather dusty. This blog. Blowing the dust away…

Lot of mental clutter. Seems like it’s time to start writing again.