Devil's Workshop

My new place is Abhivaykati. Comments-[ comment(s)]

Taking a break from blogging for some days, now paying attention to work :) Comments-[ comment(s)]

While coming to the office today I saw a brand new Ambassador, which is quiet rare now-a-days. I am not seeing many of these cars; even taxis are getting replaced by Tata Indica. When I was a child owning a car meant having an Ambassador or a Premiere Padmini (commonly known as Fiat).When Marutis made their entry, I remember people used to say – “How can one buy a Maruti? Even a cycle can dent it. Look at Ambassador, how strong it is”. Slowly Maruti and other new generation cars replaced it, but still Ambassadors brings back good old memories of past:). Comments-[ comment(s)]

Trying to get up early in the morning, but not able to. It looks like my body needs at least 9 hours of sleep as opposed to some who can sleep for 7-8 hours.So I should sleep at around 10 to get up early which seem to be a distant reality. There is a friend of mine who can “transfer” his sleeping hours. That means he can be awake for say 24 hours and sleep for next 18 hours. I don’t know how he can do that, even he doesn’t :).Probably I need to practice this, so I will be able to get up early on weekdays and cover in weekends.
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Came across this interesting blog about current outcry against outsourcing to India (via Blogger).
In its own words-
“Blame India Watch is concerned with the increasing anti-Indian/anti-India sentiment among tech workers, as well as media coverage that focuses disproportionately on Indian workers or propigates anti-India(n) sentiment.What began a few years ago as IT grumbling about Indian-specific H-1B "Temporary Guest worker" and L-1 "Intracompany Transfer" workers and immigrants has now morphed into the outsourcing issue, and is now gaining international attention. We aim to highlight this scapegoating, encourage IT workers to put a stop it, and redirect the anger to where it belongs.”

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A famous theater group in Bangalore conducted auditions recently and I cleared the first round. I was planning to leave Bangalore to celebrate my B’day and Holi with my folks who live in a north Indian town. I got a call from them just a day earlier to my departure. Now I was confused, what to do – should I cancel the whole journey or should I go for it? After all it’s once a year kind of thing and it’s nice to be with family members. Also, what if I am out of second round? Or should I try it, who knows if I get another opportunity or not? A friend suggested that I should ask them if they plan to do the auditions later. I took a chance and called them up, but as I knew they didn’t have any plans.

Ultimately I decided that I should stay and give it a try. So there was I, celebrating my birthday evening in the auditorium. I liked the way auditions were conducted. Initially we were asked to introduce ourselves, background etc. Then some physical exercises and then we were asked to act. Somehow I knew in the end that I need to work more, if I want to take theater seriously. And I could not get through; not a good B’day gift :(. It was a nice experience though and I learnt a lot.

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My friend was talking to his US counterpart in morning (late evening US). He was taking the call from home. The bell rang and he asked his colleague to wait for some time. When he came back, the US guy asked casually why he went. My friend answered that there was a milkman at the door. This guy was surprised as he was unaware of any entity called “milkman”. He asked my friend to explain the whole thing. After listening to the funda of milkman, he exclaimed- “You are living like a King”.
Grass is always greener on the other side :).

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A UK magazine recently held a competition, inviting its readers submit new high fundamental scientific theories on ANY (Any means...ANY) subject. Below are the winners:

4th place (Subject: Bio-Mechanics)
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Why Yawning Is Contagious:
You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums.
This pressure change outside your head unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they then yawn to even it out.

3rd place (Subject: Symbolic Logic)
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The Chinese are technologically underdeveloped because each of their alphabetical characters represents a whole word or phrase, rather than a single letter. Thus they cannot use acronyms to communicate technical ideas at a faster rate.

2nd place (Subject: Newtonian Mechanics)
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Deforestation may cause earthquakes, tidal waves, or even the total destruction of our planet. Just as a figure-skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting down of tall trees may cause the Earth to spin dangerously fast on its axis with disastrous results.

Winner (Subject: Perpetual Motion)
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When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands buttered side down. Therefore, if a slice of toast is strapped to a cat's back, buttered side up, and the animal is then dropped, the two opposing forces will cause it to hover, spinning inches above the ground. If enough toast-laden felines were used, they could form the basis of a high-speed monorail system.

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