iLatish

We Indians are a unique breed. Long time ago in our schools they used to teach us that We Indians are a mix of different culture and hence its a case of unity within diversity. But as i grew up and going by some recent incidents I feel the reverse is more true. We are indeed guys who love diversity within unity. First we identify ourselves more as “North Indians” or “South Indians” or any other rare type of Indian but almost never a plain “Indian”. Applying this theory recursively we go on dividing more. A South Indian would then classify himself between different religions such as Hindu, Christians and also into various castes .

It is no surprise that the British ruled us for so many years. They were not any extra brilliant but we provided them the right environment to do so by fighting among ourselves which we are still doing , be it the Hindu Muslim rivalry or the attacks of the locals on the “outsiders” or any such issues. In fact may be the British got tired and didn’t find any challenge in ruling us and left us alone to fight among ourselves.

Even today we have the same low level of thinking which is displayed when states fight it out as if they were a separate country in themselves. It may be the Cauvery issue which Karnataka and Tamilnadu may be fighting or the topic of Outsiders in Maharashtra we fail to realize that most of the times such things benefit only the f*** politicians and nobody else.

The situation may be sad but I sincerely hope for the day I get to see more “Indians” .

I have been a fan of the Matrix series. The most complex of the series according to me was the third part (Matrix Revolutions). I had never fully understood the movie though i had watched it many times. Heres a link where in some explanation is given about the third series. So all fans who would like to know more can visit http://cipher-quaker.blogspot.com/2007/08/matrix-re-explained.html

A long read but a good one.

“Mailaria” is a disease which is found in modern IT enabled offices . This disease is caused by excessive usage of emails by some really process oriented guys.

The symtoms of this disease are when a person will ask to send emails for very basic tasks such as asking him for a cup of tea. Usually the patient is not aware of his condition till bought to notice by some external entity.These guys will not do anything unless u put this information in a email. Even if you plead before them that you rit now are not in a position to send a mail they wont budge. During last stages of this disease, patients are known to shout or hit their bosses for not informing something through mail. After this stage the patient is usually kicked out from the office 🙂

There is no known cure for this disease as of now. The only treatment that is known to work is banging the patients head to their monitors or breaking their machine to pieces in front of them. Another technique that is found to be effective is deleting all mails from their inbox. This leaves them in such a state of shock so that they usually take a leave from office for a month or two, which means there are less obstacles to your work and therefore your job might get done faster.

So next time if you find anybody infected with this dangerous disease run away from them as far as possible probably to the other end of the office as these idiots otherwise will eat up your precious time in getting you to composing emails all day.

Found this funny pic in an email . The picture is funny but it tells a lot which otherwise would need a page of text.

If “Proper Process”is implemented in our office canteen like the way work happens in some big companies…..

1. The canteen door would have the swipe card reader. On days when you forget the card you would be required to send a mail to the canteen admin .
2. The admin may approve your request in the next 5-6 hours. If its a critical situation you request may be approved in 2-3 hours.
3. Once in you would have to submit the LRF (Lunch Request Form) . Without this form no lunch will be served even in critical situations. You would be given an LRID(Lunch Request ID) on successfully filling the form.
4. For any extras such as sweet dishes you would require to fill in the Supplements form and your LRID needs to be filled in else the request would be considered invalid.
5. If you change your mind and would like to cancel you order you would need to fill up a LRCF (Lunch Request Cancellation Form) with your LRID mentioned in correctly. The order will only be cancelled only after the approval from admin.
6. You should not forget to swipe you card upon exit else it will be treated as break hours and the corresponding salary will be cut from your salary.

With such kool “processes” in place every canteen …may be employees would stop eating food 😉

All Hindus celebrate Diwali also known as Deepavali on a grand scale. The word Deepavali is a combination of 2 Sanskrit words Deepa – light and avali – a row in short “lights in a row”. No where in the words can one find a mention of sound. I don’t know when it started but some guys associated the festival with noise and there started the trouble. I am not against crackers but the present version of crackers and the amount of noise they produce does not make any sense to me. Its like more noise means you are celebrating in a better way. I fail to understand what kind of kiddish thinking is this. In fact the time i am writing this in background there goes a series of deafening sound bombs. Surprisingly many educated people have this type of thinking and this makes the situation even worse. I hope people do change their thinking about this and celebrate Diwali only as a festival of lights.

PS. Found one light hearted take on this topic at rediff.com
http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2007/nov/09diwali.htm

Found this cool wallpaper at http://www.crystalxp.net . Hope Religious fanatics understand what this picture is trying to say!

The original picture is available at
http://www.crystalxp.net/galerie/en.id.3470-religion-wallpaper.html

Does, Not smoking and drinking alcohol make anybody immature or a child. ?? Well some of my “mature” friends do think so. Sure they get Cancers and many diseases as a gift along with their so called matureness .

Some research does suggest that moderate drinking may be actually good for health but i have seen people with their own version of “moderate” :)…..so this is matter of debate.

Here’s a health report from BBC’s website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/heart/prevention_smokingalcohol.shtml

Another one from About.com.
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/nicotine/a/bldu040322.htm

Looking at these reports one can say that it is not REALLY necessary to either drink or smoke and you can exist pretty well and also blog about other’s habits of drinking and smoking 😉 .

I found an interesting link while surfing.Its about working overtime at your job.Though it might sound humorous, it really makes a point and is a must read for all those poor souls who find no time in their hands after a day of office work (including me).

The actual article can be found at
http://jarkkolaine.com/2007/07/26/never-work-overtime-again/

Looking at the success of Indian Idol and many other SMS voting pro grammes SMS voting is being considered to be introduced for the next elections. Voters then wont have to go to the voting booth for casting their vote. They will be able to do that inside the comforts of their house . Even Presidential elections will have the SMS voting available. It looks like a win win situation for every one. The voter is happy coz he can now cast his vote even on the move while the politicians are happy coz the 1 vote per voter system would now be replaced by 1 vote per mobile. Many are looking to even purchase some stake in existing cell phone companies.

The SMS voting system would then be introduced while you are applying for a job. A java programmer would then have to keep on applying by SMS . NO matter which version of java he knows or how many years of experience he has, the job would only go to the candidate who had applied for the job the highest number of times. Many HR departments would love this approach as they then would not have to waste resources on Interview panels. All the hard work would be done by the candidate.

Looks like SMS voting is here to stay!!