Monday, February 27, 2006

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

The cover of the book says "Soon to be a major motion picture" but I have no idea how. Ninety percent of MSF (I will use the abbreviation of "Monk Sold Ferrari" as the abbreviation of the full title is pretty long) is the conversation between 2 persons on a single night. I can't imagine how a motion picture could be made of a conversation.

The gist of the story (not much of it anyways) is that a highly successful lawyer gets tired of his life and goes to India to understand his purpose of life. After many years, he returns to the west to pass-on his learning to his former colleague and friend. This is what the first 10 pages of the book have, and the rest is pure preachy stuff.

MSF is a book full of advice on how to lead a balanced life. Instead of giving direct advices as in spiritual books, Robin Sharma has adopted the story approach wherein the advice seems to go from one character to another. Somehow all the things in the book seem way too familiar. May be because I've listened to innumerous tales of wisdom since childhood. Or may be because my mind is blocked with the view that I know more about India than some foreign_firstname_Indian_lastname guy who wants to make money by using the fame of his ethnicity (baseless accusation; it’s just my feeling and might not be the fact).


MSF is not a book that I enjoyed, but it is neither something that I detest. I liked the book in parts and especially some of the phrases that sounded good. The one liked the most is
"The purpose of life is a life of purpose"
There are more like
"The best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago
The next best time is now"

If you are a person like me who likes quotes, then go ahead with the book. If you are a person who is not able differentiate between the words "life" and "work", then go ahead with it. But if you are not in any of these 2 categories, and have some other interesting book to do, then MSF could be safely bypassed. I read it only to satisfy my curiosity over hearing its name in many places. Well, curiosity could only kill my time

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Thursday, February 23, 2006

Are you Educated?

They keep their cubicle clean and
Dirty the streets

They walk with grace in their work place and
Barge through people in the trains

They tip the waiter in hundreds in front of friends and
Feel happy bargaining for a single Rupee with the grocery vendors

They remark "How unclean this country is" and
Just contribute to the dirtiness of their environment

They give lectures on how to improve India and
Evade from paying their taxes

These are the uneducated literates.

Checkout Swas explaining the difference between literacy and education .

Also, if you can read Tamil, checkout Pradeep’s view on people being dishonest and producing false rent receipts to evade taxes.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Bollywood - Believing the Legal System?

I wrote sometime back that there is no news on the Salman Khan case and he seems to have evaded justice using his contacts. As the justice department has proved, I was wrong. The Bollywood star has been sentenced for a year of imprisonment. Justice prevails? May be; May be not. Industry experts opine "Salman will go in appeal against the judgement and the matter will drag for years together" (Source: Hindustan Times)

Couple of things that bother me -
1) The "confidence" shown by the industry experts on our judicial system
2) The fact that new movies were started with Salman when the case was still in court

I hope no one would object when I say that films are nothing but another form of business. Like any business, the motive behind films is to make profits. Like any business, the people behind films will play their cards with market sentiments in mind. Then why, unlike other business minded people, did these people put their money over disputed property? I'm no big Bollywood buff, but I can see around that Salman is not the brightest star around. The why bet on him given that he has a court case that might prevent him from acting in the movie?
Confidence in our legal system? Or confidence in the power of money?

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Killer Serials and Pleasureful Ads

It's a fate that most Chennai youngsters might be facing. It irritates me but I can't avoid it. The devil called mega-serial haunts me every evening. I can't help it because the elders of the home prefer to watch it, and because the sound doesn't die when I close the door of my room. There are few things about these mega-killers that puzzle me
1) Why should people face only bad situations in mega serials?
1a) How does the bad period sustain over hundreds of episodes/ many years?
2) Why should the hero of every serial be a lady?
3) Why should these serials be named mostly with some sort of relationship - chitthi, appa, kanavan, manaivi et al?
I guess as the relationships get exhausted Tamil viewers will get to watch onnu-vitta-tambi, naathanaar magan etc.
4) Why are the police always cruel in serials?
5) Most important of all, how do these mega borers sustain interest with the ladies of the family after being so insipid?

Trying to divert my mind of these serials, I've been trying to concentrate more on solving Sudoku puzzles while they run on TV. Has it been of help? Yes and No. Yes because I'm not getting irritated at the serials as I don't see them. No because the audio still gets into my brain though not registering at that moment of time.

While gleefully watching advertisements in-between these serials I noticed something interesting. In-between all the Tamil ads, there is one fully English ad, that too in such a way that people don't actually notice that the ad hasn't been translated. It is the Hero Honda 'Pleasure' ad with the catch phrase "Why should boys have all the fun?"
http://www.magindia.com/adweek/awkdisp.html?2006/03feb/06.jpg

Things that interested me in the ad are
1) The only fully English ad in a Tamil channel
2) Clear targeting - girls
3) Kindling the complex of girls feeling that boys get more enjoyment in life. The ad makes a statement here.
4) Ofcourse, the ad looks good
5) Cool background score

A pleasure to watch something "feel-good" amidst the sad serials.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

On Wings of Eagles

"On Wings of Eagles" (OWOE) is a real life story that feels like a fiction novel. My guess is that the author of the novel, Ken Follett, has introduced some amount of exaggeration/addition into the events to dramatize the whole sequence. Anyways, even if that is the case, it has only added to the attractiveness of the book.


The background of the story goes like this. EDS, one of the world's oldest IT outsourcing companies, was doing a project for the government of Iran. The government ran out of money to pay EDS and the company halted its work. Couple of EDS' top executives are arrested by the government in a bid to make EDS continue the project (A good example of game theory?). EDS' head Ross Perot uses his influence and network to try and get his men out of Iran, but the political turmoil in the government make his attempts fail. Ross then decides to take a big gamble by sending a group of men, lead by an ex-army general, to rescue the 2 prisoners by any means. For the rest of the story, I suggest reading the book.

The book has a good fiction-like real life story, a peek into the politics of the 1970s both in Iran and in the USA, and nice narration except for the parts where Follett goes into explaining the personalities of each character. I got a bit bored with the superfluous details in the descriptions. One other thing that I couldn't bear with is the excess adulation of Ross Perot. Something tells me that the novel would have been sponsored by him I can't believe that a capitalist could go to the extent of gambling his company and himself for the sake of two of his employees. The events in the novel were too much dependant on lady luck, but I guess most real life events could be attributed to just being in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time.

The novel is called "On Wings of Eagles" as the employees (or just the high-flyers?) of EDS are called Eagles. It seems the novel came as a story -> IMDB Ofcourse, the novel has all the ingredients of a typical US army-based movie.

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Monday, February 06, 2006

Revenge

J was known to be a calm person. He seldom fought over anything. It's been years since he hurt any of his enemies. But his enemies were always looking for an opportunity to strike. The enemies were intent at striking J while he was asleep, but that was not quite possible as J had his body guard on patrol whenever he went to sleep. However on Saturday the 4th of February J slept without putting his body guard in action. The blood thirsty enemies saw their opportunity and started attacking J. J couldn't get up and the pain caused by his enemies was increasing every minute. After hours of resistance and struggle J raised. He had enough of suffering. He wanted his enemies to suffer; to die. Then started a half-an-hour battle. Well, it wasn't exactly a battle as it was only J who was attacking. The enemies flew to all corners and tried to hide. J was intent on getting them out of their hide-outs and killing them. Yes, he was merciless. There was blood all over his hands and the only trace of his enemies seemed to be their lifeless bodies lying around. Tired of the battle, and with the content of destroying his enemies, J went to sleep. He was about to get into his dreams when the sensation ran to his brain. "Aaaaaaaa", he shouted. "Another mosquito? shucks. How can I get rid of all of them?" He once again activated his body-guard - "All Out".

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

A Small Step

An update on the Choices blog is that I couldn't go to the temple last week, and I didn't find any wrong parking yesterday. Sounds as if I'm just finding a reason? May be the incident below might change that perception.

Yesterday there were too many lights switched on in our office reception area. My estimate is that there were about 20 lights of many sorts - tube lights, focus lights et al. May be I would have marvelled at their beauty and brightness on an evening. But on a typical Chennai noon? The reception was well illuminated with sunlight, and it was so bright that the other lights looked like plain orange balls and white rods (The mere fact of having both orange and white lights in the same place by itself disturbs me). The power that these lights were consuming was enormous. On a rough estimate, assuming that the focus lights are 5 times powerful than a normal 60W bulb itself makes the power wastage substantial enough to cause concern.

When I sat at my desk thinking about this, I received a forward from a friend on saving power. I couldn’t control cribbing to him about the power wastage our office. His enthusiasm made us meet the security person at the reception.

Me: Why are there so many lights on?
Security Person: There is a client visit
Me: So, why do we have so many lights on?
Security: glares
Me: We are wasting too much power
Security: Client visit
Me: The client would think that we are idiots to have this many lights on when it is already so bright here
Security: Sheepish smile
No use talking to him. My colleague and I went for a tea break and discussed on what could be done. We once again went to the security person and got to know that someone from the admin team had asked for the lights to be switched on. We called the admin help-desk.

Colleague : Why are there so many lights on in the reception?
Admin person : What is the problem?
Colleague : We are wasting lot of power
Admin person : Silence
Colleague : We should switch of some of the lights
Admin person : Are the lights causing inconvenience to you?
Me: No, but we are concerned that we are wasting so much of power without any use
Admin person : ok. Please give me your name. I'll follow it up.

The lights were still on when I saw them in the evening. I understand that there was no use of my actions, but at least I'm happy that I took the right step
May be, with someone else at the admin phone, there might have been a change.