Fruit

Random fruit that made my (sun)day. Anyone knows what its called? I know its edible, as I ate it and survived 24 hours, without any problems :) and its sweet, yellow on the inside, with small little seeds.


UPDATE(09/01/2005): Yes! Found the plant! Knowing people, who know stuff, makes life so much easier :)

The plant is Arbutus unedo and here is how it looks.


Commonly known as the strawberry tree. Originally from the Mediterranean region. Used to make wines and liqueurs (hmm!) in France, Italy, Portugal etc. Can be seen in Southern California, as an ornamental tree.

Time for Some Poetry

This is why I love poetry. So innocently, it can make fun of you and make you feel totally stupid. And seemingly, so effortlessly.

Dilemma

I want to be
famous
so I can be
humble
about being
famous.

What good is my
humility
when I am
stuck
in this
obscurity?

-- David Budbill

And another one.

The Leader

I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I'm the leader I'm the leader

OK what shall we do?

--Roger McGough

Don't you all wish you read more poems. :)

Of Joy (and how America makes it happen)

Was talking with friends while at lunch. And this being summer in California, the week before school starts for kids. The topics were obvious. Disneyland. flying small airplanes - basically having fun.

Interesting thing, I am sure many of you have been to Anaheim too. Ever wonder how Disneyland remains so clean? You throw your trash, and millions of others do the same. No one collects the trash, but the place is always clean. Not one trash-can overflowing with garbage. Wonder why? Well, I know now. There is a world underneath the fantasyland you walk on. There is an underground cleaning force. Any garbage you throw, gets sucked in and cleaned immediately.

And that is nothing. If you are an engineer, here is more. They have audio over ethernet... no you heard that right. Not boring old VoIP. but over ethernet. And amazingly, they have virtual networks for each type of audio broadcast (ok, multicast for the nit-pickers). One for the music, one for announcements and one for emergency messages etc. Amazing isn't it. How complicated it is to make - Joy.

This is just crazy. But this got me thinking. Is it just Disneyland? Isn't all our 'privileged lives' the same, with some underground force, that is working to keep us comfortable? Am I not just another kid in Disneyland. I just don't appreciate all the effort that goes into the comforts I enjoy. Until the forces get angry and shake my life up?

Advertising space on - Trash

What better way to vouch for a product, than the fact that you have actually used it. If enough of your trash is used cartons of a product X, then that must be something you like and have paid good money for.

When I see people willing to rent out space on their belly, forehead and what not, why not rent trash-space for advertising? Since most of us have semitransparent trash bags, and the content is there for all to see. Also as many of us live in apartments, may be we can leave the trash bags in the hallway for an hour before we actually head to the trash bin.

Even in the trash bin there are dumpster-divers...

Changing - Others

"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them." - Anais Nin

"The boy knew a lot of people in the city. That was what made traveling appeal to him – he always made new friends, and he didn't need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. "
-The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Exposing Oneself

Your blogs end up reflecting your own thoughts.

You write blogs, out of no obligation. Atleast that is how it starts. And later it might get popular, who knows, you might be the next Ms. Klein. And the Times might decide to do a piece on you. And voila, now you have a million readers.

But at the very beginning, there is just the keyboard, monitor and you. You feel free expressing your opinions about things no one ever asked you about. This allows you to 'talk' about things the way you would really like to. But isn't that what people pay shrinks for? To just listen to them? Well, blogs could be a form of theraphy I guess.

Then again, laying out all your feelings for everyone to read. And probably saved for posterity, on the internet, somewhere. How anonymous are blogs anyway? and, how secret is your secret identity?

Progress, suprises me

"Do you have a USB floppy drive?"

hmm. Do others wonder about things like this too? I wonder.

choices

'There are a lot of apparent choices in the world and not many are real ones...."
- Linda Ronstadt

And this was not on 'The Onion' ... I swear

"Nike makes Barefoot Breakthrough." on wired.com.

Nike Innovation Kitchen makes a pathbreaking discovery - run barefoot, its good for you.

Check out, Nike Free

ha ha. The times we live in. Unfortunately they cannot make money out of telling people to run barefoot. So they have created Nike Free - makes you feel like you have no shoes on.

Anyone reminded of the Emporer's new clothes here?

"Of course, Nike is still a shoe company, so it isn't suggesting literally running barefoot. Instead, it's marketing a line of running shoes and trainers called Nike Free. The footwear is designed to emulate the motion of running au naturel." - Mark McClusky, wired.com

Complete article from Wired, here

Angenehme Überraschung

Über cool surprise today! 8)

It has been only a couple of months since I started blogging. I am fascinated by how new readers get to my blog. Mostly it is a search on either google or msn that has leads them to my blog.

For instance, one of the most recent readers got here from www.google.de while looking for :
rilke malte verses "they are experiences"

I hope the person looking for the quote from Rilke, was happy to find this. (I had googled for this exact quote, sometime back, to support my theory in an argument, with a friend who claims to be a "closet poet".) Anyway, it was fun to read my blog entry in deutsch.

Another interesting search lead a reader to my blog. This time it was a www.msn.com search for: amitabh bachan favourite poetry

In this case, the search result was way off the target.

That is life, sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss.

Note: Angenehme Überraschung - babelfish translation for "pleasant surprise". Apologies if something is "lost in translation".

Berners-Lee on Blogging

Slashdot had a link today pointing to the Berners-Lee interview on blogging. For the uninitiated, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the internet. So it is interesting to see his thoughts on blogging.

"When you write a blog, you don't write complicated hypertext, you just write text, so I'm very, very happy to see that now it's gone in the direction of becoming more of a creative medium..." - from the BBC transcripts

And the entire transcript is here.

Nietzsche on Sleep

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day. -- Nietzsche

Gonna be a big man some day

Evian's Waterboy commercial. It is best of both n worlds for me. Water + Animation + Awesome Music + total Fun. Interestingly, this video used to play very frequently on MTV in India. My mom and I used to wait for this video to show up and have had a lot of fun watching it over and over again. The sheer energy and the life of the waterboy, I think does justice to the already awesomely energetic vocals.

I always tried so hard to share the joy of watching this, with others, but what can I say, the "moving picture" is worth a million words! Enjoy.

You can check it out here.

Disclaimer : I am in no way associated either with Evian and do not endorse what they sell and claim in anyway. This is just a really neat advertisement, and I view it as art. =)















We Will Rock You

Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise
Playin’ in the street gonna be a big man some day
You got mud on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Kickin’ your can all over the place

We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you

Buddy you’re a young man hard man
Shoutin’ in the street gonna take on the world some day
You got blood on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Wavin’ your banner all over the place

We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you

Buddy you’re an old man poor man
Pleadin’ with your eyes gonna make you some peace some day

You got mud on your face
You big disgrace
Somebody better put you back in your place

We will we will rock you
We will we will rock you

- Queen

Tolerance <= Equality

Equality is a topic that pops up all the time. Women's lib, gay rights, racism, etc.. But each time, I end up thinking, are we really heading towards - Equality?

Or is it just tolerance? There is a big difference between the equality and tolerance. And, that makes me very uncomfortable.

Recently while talking to a colleague about someone else who works with us, I kept referring to a openly gay person, as this - well dressed, sweet person....(to his credit, I have to admit, I admire the fact that he chooses to be so openly gay at work). And it got to a point, where my colleague had no idea who I was talking about and finally asked me, "oh, that gay guy?"

I mean, why can't I just call a guy, so openly gay, just that. Well, because that would be inappropriate at work. So is this the equality we are all trying to achieve? Where you just go for all kinds of twisted ways to talk about the same thing, but are not allowed to just call someone what they are happy to be?

I am sure most women, feel the same way about gender equality. How many times has it all seemed like farce to you? Just a kind of simulated equality, that can just be totally shaken, by the smallest probe...

Can equality ever be achieved by fighting for it - or atleast a semblance of it?

Same Difference

Low Bright.

I have always believed that a good story is a good story, it does not matter if it is set in a different planet, a writer's imagination, or something more mundane, like the real world, the same part of the world you live in. This was one of the very few graphic novels I have read - Same Difference.

I came across Same Difference, while randomly browsing on a friday evening. I read the first page and then the next, and then the next... till the end. While I had friends waiting to go for dinner and a movie. But they forgave, as always.

This is the work of graphic novelist Derek Kirk Kim. It is set in Pacifica (near San Francisco). If you are interested in stories that are non-dramatic and closer to life (ie, if your life is something like mine). Then you will enjoy following the lives of two friends, Asian Americans, Nancy and Simon.

I like that quality in Derek's drawings, that give the characters a kind of 'real' feel to them.

I also found an NPR interview of Derek.

Tailoring PCs for Local Markets

Intel plans to tailor PCs to local markets in India, China, Eygpt and Brazil.

It is common knowledge that each market has its own needs. One of the inspirations quoted in the article is VW. Apparently, the same Volkswagen van has 7 seats in the US and is configured to seat 15 people in China.

A very interesting snippet from the article, something most Indians always knew about themselves,

"He says the company can serve its customers better by treating each market as unique and tailoring products for it. In a phone interview from Bangalore, he said he couldn't find a used bicycle very easily. Then he noted how locals seemed to save and repair things over and over, including 25-year-old TV sets. For that kind of market, he said Intel might have to consider selling PCs that are easily repaired. In the United States, consumers don't think twice about tossing out a computer after five years."

That actually made be have an Aa-ha moment, right there. As a friend of mine commented, I only hope, they make the PCs that can be easily repaired by the locals.