Barbecue at East Coast Park

Seun on the right is Nigerian and a natural dancer and bonded with Vibhat. He's now Vibhat's dance godfather. Zaigham from Pakistan is on the right

China, Japan and Vietnam !

The MPA group's outing to East Coast Park in Singapore for a barbecue. The MPA class has gotten distributed between lots of electives so we don't meet much as a class, so this was very good to connect with people. And Priya and Vibhat joined and got introduced to my classmates which was very nice.
Most photos by Anton Arcilla , from our class

Notes on "3 Idiots"

I saw it today, long after everyone else. (Impusively went to it Everest near our apartment ; was passing by at 9:20 pm and saw that they had a show at 9:30pm! I and Siddhu have been planning to go together sometime and he was genuinely shocked that I ditched him. I'll have to make it up).

Too long and loosely edited. Maybe I've just seen too many good movies but I get impatient easily at the movies.

Definitely didn't live up to the hype and good reviews. But was quite nice.

Stuck too much to stereotypes with Chatur Ramalingam and Suhas. Would have been interesting to make Chatur in particular much more serious and accomplished (that's what successful Indians in the US tend to be like) rather than an easy-to-dislike clown.

Nicely made its points about the education system including using old legends (urban or otherwise) like the NASA pen. We should have had this movie made 20 years ago, and maybe it would have saved me :-(. Delivery scene was far too contrived.

Scene where Farhan convinces his father was genuinely moving.

Gorgeous Ladakh scene at end. We don't need no Switzerland!

Would have made the movie lot more cool if they'd situated it in IIT like in the book. Campus they used looked very nice.

Kareena was weak in places and looked overawed at the star cast she was competing with.

Handling of Raju's parents was pretty good.

Song sequences were mostly a pain.

How do Aamir and Madhavan manage to look reasonably realistic as 20somethings ?!

After all the controversy with Chetan Bhagat ; I felt that while the movie was irrevocably situated in the ideas of the book, there was a huge amount of original stuff overall. Which doesn't say much I guess !

And they had some truly atrocious product placements. Shame on you Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Funny

I saw this at an aquarium (ie. a zoo-type aquarium, where they have displays of different types of fishes). I found the unintentional humor hilarious,

Cross-dressing ..Grandmommy loves to dress him up



Who's got more hair ?



The 'V' sign behind the head is all the rage at a particular age...



And now in Vizag, with grandfather at a beach park.

xkcd

xkcd.com is a truly cool comic. Whimsical, occasionally X-rated (there, see the jump in interest), occasionally I don't get it.

PS: At their website (not in the image above) mouseover of the comic image shows a nice tidbit extra

As forwarded by Vishwanath:

My comment : My intaxication lasts for a long time, the fact that the money was mine in the first place (and went to the gourmint because of my incompetence) doesn't dampen it

 

 

 

 

 

==============


Here is the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding,subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Glibido: All talk and no action.
Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning
and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.


The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
Negligent,adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline...
Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

===

Vote for your favorite. I liked the Dopeler effect, abdicate, negligent, lymph. Tough call for the single favorite, I'll select lymph

Wherethehellismatt.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWUrj22pRD0 

 

India is hilarious at 2:36

 

Best wishes,

Vijay Krishna

Manager, India Water Portal

Ask A Water Question

 

Rajni facts

Rajnikanth makes onions cry

Rajnikanth can delete the Recycle Bin.

Ghosts are actually caused by Rajanikanth killing people faster than
Death can process them.

Rajnikanth can build a snowman..... out of rain.

Rajnikanth can strangle you with a cordless phone.

Rajnikanth can drown a fish.

When Rajnikanth enters a room, he doesn't turn the lights on, he
turns the dark off.

When Rajnikanth looks in a mirror the mirror shatters, because not
even glass is stupid enough to get in between Rajanikanth and
Rajnikanth.

Brett Favre can throw a football over 50 yards.
Rajanikanth can throw Brett Favre even further.

Rajanikanth does not know where you live, but he knows where you will die.

Bullets dodge Rajanikanth.

A Handicap parking sign does not signify that this spot is for
handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot
belongs to Rajanikanth and that you will be handicapped if you park
there.

Rajanikanth' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd, no
one fools Rajanikanth.

Rajanikanth can do a wheelie on a unicycle.

Once a cobra bit Rajanikanth' leg. After five days of excruciating
pain, the cobra died.

Rajanikanth can kill two stones with one bird.

Rajanikanth was once on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune and was the first
to spin. The next 29 minutes of the show consisted of everyone
standing around awkwardly, waiting for the wheel to stop.

Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs.
Rajanikanth can kill 100 percent of whatever he wants.

There is no such thing as global warming. Rajanikanth was cold, so he
turned the sun up.

Rajanikanth has a deep and abiding respect for human life… unless it
gets in his way.

It takes Rajanikanth 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.

Rajanikanth once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by
yelling, "Bang!"

In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Rajanikanth could
use to kill you, including the room itself.

Behind every successful man, there is a woman. Behind every dead man,
there is Rajanikanth.

Rajanikanth got his drivers license at the age of 16 Seconds.

With the rising cost of gasoline, Rajanikanth is beginning to worry
about his drinking habit.

The square root of Rajanikanth is pain. Do not try to square
Rajanikanth, the result is death.

When you say "no one's perfect", Rajanikanth takes this as a personal insult.

Outer space exists because its afraid to be on the same planet with Rajnikanth.

Rajnikanth has counted infinity--twice.

Rajnikanth doesn't wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

The Bermuda Triangle used to be the Bermuda Square, until Rajnikanth
kicked one of the corners off.

Rajnikanth once are an entire bottle of sleeping pills. They made him blink.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Where there is Rajnikanth,
there is no other way!

Rajnikanth can eat just one Lay's potato chip.

Rajnikanth can slam a revolving door.

When Rajnikanth falls in water, Rajnikanth doesn't get wet. Water gets
Rajnikanth.

Rajnikanth can divide by zero.

The grass is always greener on the other side, unless Rajnikanth has
been there. In that case the grass is most likely soaked in blood and
tears.

Rajnikanth is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.

Rajnikanth ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one.

Rajnikanth frequently donates blood to the Red Cross. Just never his own.

Rajnikanth's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.

If paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper,
what beats all 3 at the same time?

Answer: Rajnikanth


If you want a list of Rajnikanth's enemies, just check the extinct species list.

Most people put their pants on one leg at a time, Rajnikanth does both
legs at once.

Rajnikanth does not use spell check. If he happens to misspell a word,
Oxford will simply change the actual spelling of it.

There are two kinds of people in this world:
1) those who are dead
2) those who have yet to meet Rajnikanth

Music listens to Rajnikanth.

Ad for Bharat Matrimony

There is an online banner ad for Bharat Matrimony (website) that advertises their 'chat' feature where you can chat with prospective partners. It shows a sample chat session in progress:

 

====

Me: Cricket is my favourite sport

Menaka: Mine too !

 

Me: I love Bhel Puri and Dahi Puri

====

 

No comments. If you get the point you get it, if you don't, you don't

 

 

 

 

http://www.oktatabyebye.com/gajodhar/index.html?Camp=promo&attrib=emailer/OTB 

 

Absolutely cool, if you know anything about Ghajini . Do see and comment.

When I see things like this I know that we in India have really arrived.

From a mail forward:     Raju Raju     Yes Baba     Cheating us     No Baba     Telling lies     No Baba     Open your balance sheets     Ha! Ha! Ha!

Hee Hee.. from the Economist

A funny snippet:

"Holidays in the BlackBerry era can be divided into two categories: "soft" (where the vacationer stays in radar contact and continues to exercise his thumbs) and "hard" (when he staves off divorce by switching everything off)

Yosemite Falls

Violating intellectual copyright, but here's something from our alumni group at IIT Madras:

==
Just returned from Yosemite . Couple of nights camping there and it was
good as always.

Some updates for those who have been there. In light of visitor demographics, Nevada Falls has been renamed Bezwada Falls . Vernal Falls is now Warangal Falls . El Capitan is simply known as 'Guru'. They have hung a wire across the Vernal Falls bridge on which I think I saw a striped pyjama drying. It was like being back in Jamuna Hostel.

===

It was followed by discussion how Tuolomne Meadows (Telangana Meadows) feels discriminated against and wants its own national park ..

Irresistable spam

What kind of spam would you open even knowing its spam ?

Recently I got a message with subject "Matrimonial response" . Couldn't resist opening it :-). But was disappointed (of course) - it was a link to the site itself not a specific response to a matrimonial.

The Domino's Pizza at the intersection of 5th Main and 100 Ft. Road in Indiranagar does not believe in hiding its incentive schemes. There is a chart on the wall that talks about "Upsell goals"


In response to Arvind's comment on the previous post:

"is the disdainful business school practice" ... or is it the practice of business schools that you disdain ?

Stumbling

Recent stumbling (www.stumbleupon.com) turned up many interesting things, of which I remembered to save only one :


http://www.amk.ca/quotations/quotations.txt
Its a page of quotations. It fit my taste exactly, general human nature and philosophy, along with a dose of mathematics, physics and computer science. Here's one I liked:

K is for KENGHIS KHAN. *He* was a very *nice* person. History has no record of
him. There is a moral in that, somewhere.
 

"I see the nuns are gay..."

Every now and then I bump into some major item of popular culture that 90% of Indians would have experienced 2 years back... sometime back it was Rang de Basanti, today it was Tunak Tunak Tun, a hit song by Daler Mehendi. According to Wikipedia its become an 'internet meme'. Dig out the Wiki article, its quite cool.
It may be contempt for the familiar, but I find this video light years more palatable than the average Telugu/Tamin movie dance sequence. On a separate note, I was wondering how our rich tradition of classical music and dance have not really survived in the 21st century. A counter-example is bhangra pop of the Daler Mehendi sort which is very popular inside and outside the country. Can someone extract some insight from this ?

Talking of bhangra, time to again push
http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/2006/08/02/bikram/index.html
Can someone pleeease hear this song and put in your comment. Its frustrating feeling that you have discovered something pretty cool and nobody else has anything to say about it.

The earlier Buffalax video continues to enthrall me (and several others it seems). Here are the updates:

The original video is here:



It has close to 7 million views and (hold your breath) 20,000 comments. And that doesn't include comments on sites referring to it, like yours truly's blog. The video was uploaded in August 2007 and its still getting comments today from wide eyed folks like me who are seeing it for the first time and getting completely bowled over. According to a newspaper article referenced in Wikipedia, its being called possibly the hottest Internet clip. Whoda thunk it -- a satire of a Tamil movie becoming the most viewed internet video. As one of the commenters says : "Due this video, my theory of Indian people trying to take over the earth has only grown stronger.. "
I checked out more buffalax videos, but nothing comes anywhere close to this one. Its one of those things where things just come together to take something out of the realm of the ordinary. The thing is not perfect -- at several places its pretty clear that the 'translation' is a complete fake. But when it works, it works gloriously. One good bit among many : at 2:55, the background music is given words and it works sooooo well.
Again, according to wikipedia, buffalax and 'benny lava' are now internet memes. Richly deserving.

Endnote:
Today at a KFC, we ordered "a Zing Kong box and a Zinger Chicken meal". The minor indignities ...

Fakesteve needs help !!

and we need to stop the tarnishing of the Indian film industry's reputation.


Will the right person (I dunno.. haven't definitively identified the language myself) step up to clarify and translate:

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/can-someone-in-india-tell-us-what-hell.html

Okay, some more: caution: video subtitles are pretty crude at places. The language is Tamil.
Trying to analyze why I found it so funny:
1.) its basically done very well, and the correspondence between the spoken and the written word work very well
2.) it satirises the song-n-dance of indian cinema which so needs satirising
3.) its in tamil which is icing on the cake -- les tamiliens tend to be a little chauvinistic about their language

There is apparently a cottage industry dedicated to doing this kind of translations and several of the comments and YouTube links give some of these.