The New Copernicus

No more of Hybrids. It now all about Albert Einstein and the not so recent controversies around him. I was in Princeton few months back as a tourist and walked across the place where he lived and died. And my interests in him got renewed.
He has been referred as the New Copernicus by the famous German Physician Max Planck. However its alleged what we know of him is because of the fact that two executors of Einstein's estate meticulously went through all his letters and documents and destroyed any that could posthumously tarnish his image. We now know of him as the Times Man of the Last Century; the master physicist who came out with the theory of general relativity, quantam theory; a leftist Jew and a radical thinker.

It is being pointed out by various interest groups that Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his Quantam theory and not for Relativity as everybody knew that he plagiarised the works of his talented, older and submissive wife Mileva Einstein-Marity and claimed the paper to be his solo effort. Check out the following sites for more details on what I am referring about.
http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/mileva.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/classroom/lesson2.htm

Besides, investigation into Einstein's life has uncovered vibrant details of an active love life and unknown facets of his personality;Einstein divorced twice on unfriendly terms, he allowed his first daughter (probably affected by Down's Syndrome), born before his first marraige to Mileva to die or adopted due to his career pressures; and his sons accused him of not being a good father. He was a man of versatile personality and his popularity among the masses is influenced a lot by his persona and his typical outspokenness on international politics and culture of his time rather than his mathematical genius.
(http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/einstein02.html)
The lousy haircut, the cartoonish look, the enigma, the philosopher, the scientist; He Is All; and yet we should not forget that he was a human being with his own shortcomings.

Killer Apps

Sabeer Bhatia is on the roll again. There is this new cool product that bears the name of this Indian technopreneur. Check out this on http://www.instacoll.com
Its a collaboration tool that allows you to share and work with your existing documents seamlessly over the internet (it claims even over low bandwidth). With outsourcing and off-shoring kicking off faster than ever, this product could turn to be the next killer application in this domain; it facilitates sharing presentations and documents, real time.
One another killer app and a great competitor to Mapquest will be the Google maps.
http://maps.google.com/

Check them out!!!

Hybrid cars and Horses

It seems hybrid cars are the new rage. People are maintaining blogs on them. Newspapers are always reporting about them. And there are more of them on the road today than a week before.
I read up some interesting news, where used hybrids are fetching more prices than the new ones, due to the abnormal waiting period (http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-04-11-prius-usat_x.htm). I was lucky to have my Prius 2005 within 12 hours. Some one preordered it and then got undecided on the color. And I ended up with that one. I have driven already abt 2500 miles on this one and this is really a cool mean machine.

Once that I have updated you abt hybrid, I will post here a picture of my horse ride.

Name of the Horse: Flash
Type: 3 year old gelding; Quarter Horse
Owner: Kendra Gilmore of Beverly
Ranch:4 Winds Ranch, Alma, AR

Kendra taught us (me and one of my colleague) the basics of horse riding in 10 minutes, and it wasn't difficult at all to try this as Flash is very obedient and smart. He knew that Iam a novice, so he didnt nudge a bit at start till I got him moving kicking with my heels. It was an interesting spring noon, where I learned how not to be afraid of horses and how not to get them afraid of me; how to get up on one and how to get down; how to extend your heels and test your balance; how to bend a little bit to give signals to the horse etc....

Updates!!

My work is taking up toomuch of my 'alive' time. Besides there is the usual rigmarole of cooking,cleaning, laundry, ironing, reading and the list goes on. Life is getting more and more routineed and hence boring except for a couple of happenings. One is the job itself. Something new or the other is happening everyday to keep me at the edge. Another is the comments to my blog scripts. Some Anonymous person is writing venomous comments to my articles without letting me know his/her identity. This is interesting, as the person knows me definitely but wants to hide him/her self behind a virtual veil. It would be great if he/she let me know the name atleast.

Ms Salsa Juicy

The Nomad In Me

I am updating my blog after a long time. I was busy grabbing and digesting my new responsibilities at my new workplace for the last one month. So a lot of updates are here all of your way.
I bought a new Toyota Prius 2005 just before changing over to the new office. I will write sometime about how I got hold of THE Car in just 12 hours when there is actually a wait of 3 to 6 months for this mind boggling 4 wheeler. Amazed!!
I drove it all the way from Chicago to down south Fort Smith in Arkansas. More amazing that I left Chicago for the new job I talked about in my last update and drove down to Fort Smith with my friend. It was long and tiring 9 hour drive and we took it; canceling all previous airline and hotel bookings as I wanted to 'run' the car a bit.
I will attach some pictures of Fort Smith's azure blue sky and my Prius. I named her and the navigation system inside as Ms Salsa Juicy. Well not much creativity here; the color of the car is called Red Salsa by Toyota and the car is juicy enough; it holds on to gas for long time say 45 miles per gallon.

The Interview

This is the story of an interview I had few days back. Now why is this The Interview?? Because this paved the route for a 100K job hop? Or because I attended the interview while travelling in a train, while negotiating with passengers to keep their voice low so that I can understand the questions, while pulling my luggage to a corner of the Chicago Union station, while taking another phone call from my friend, while providing help to a passenger about directions to another train!! Sounds interesting... read on.

It all started on a Tuesday when a consultant scheduled a telephonic interview for me with some one called SG (initials will do..) next day at 3 pm. Well Wednesday the interview happened at 8.30 pm and continued till 9.20 pm with a promise of another in-depth probing of me the following day (Thursday) at 3 pm. Thursday I was supposed to take the 5.05 Amtrak train to return from Springfield to Chicago. So 3 pm seemed good. At 3pm I got an email that the interview has been rescheduled.
The interview started at Thursday 8.05 pm when I was travelling in the double decker train; I was reading "Adventure Capitalist" by Jim Rogers till 8 pm when I discovered that the train was crowded and everyone was speaking with someone on their phone. So I took the stairs down and found myself a low, bright yellow colored stool (with few dark patches) that is used for passengers to get down at stations. I dialed into the conference number to find my interviewers;SG, the Client Project Manager and a Microsoft Project Architect. Intial questions from them lasted for about 25 minutes when the train entered the Chicago Union Station and the Tmobil bars in my cell got to zero; the phone got disconnected from the network.

Once I alighted the station, I found my self a small corner to dial in again. They were there. We started where we got halted. Before that I plugged in my phonecharger as the battery was going down. For next 55 minutes I was grilled by the Architect on anything and everything that is .Net. He was paused thrice; once when my ear was all hot and sweaty with holding the phone so long, second time my friend called up and third I had to provide directions to a guy looking for a particular train. During this time, I also had pull myself and my luggage to a new corner as someone also wanted to share the plugpoint for his laptop.

Once the interview was over we all marvelled at the uniqueness of our experience; we got disturbed by so many things but we achieved what we wanted to do. They questioned me relentlessly and mercilessly and I answered them obligingly, the environment and the circumstances just added a new paradigm to the concept of telephonic interview. SG knew of my blog and told me to write up the experience. I was amazed that they were doing background research about me, however I didnt write the story till now as I was still working with IBM. But now that I have resigned I couldnt hide the greed to share this with the world.

Springfield ain't Fun

Me and the Toyota Echo on a snowy Springfield road
My latest project is in Springfield, IL with the State Education Board. And believe me its no fun to be there after staying in Chicago for so long. There are few things about this place which have left indelible marks which includes:
Lincoln: Mr Abraham Lincoln is everywhere in Springfield. Starting from the Old Capitol to the bars, libraries and museums, cobbled road and Amtrak station:even on the walls of the restrooms of bars and coffee shops, its Lincoln and excerpts of his famous speeches all the way. Even the Amtrak train from Chicago to Kansas City via Springfield is called Ann Rutledge, the name of Lincoln's first girlfriend. People eat, drink and sleep Lincoln. Amazing guy he must had been to exercise such a tremendous influence even today.
No Fast Food after Sundown: All the food outlets in the downtown Springfield are shut down by 7pm and there is no food anywhere. My project mates are helpful; they drove me around to different places for dinner. You have to travel westward and eastward to get food or visit the restaurants of 3 star hotels to fill up your belly every night if you are in downtown.
One way Every way: This is fun. 90% of the streets in Springfield are oneways. I rented a Toyota Echo for a snowy weekend from enterprise. Small and powerful, this new model from the Toyota stable is pretty with not-so-good brakes (may be I was making it more hard on the melting snows).Besides the car had a bad blind corner on left turns. So the fact that every street is one way was actually helpful. It was fun to discover that you never can get lost with this one way strategy.
Small secrets: The pool table in Hilton Springfield does not have the Ball number 8. According to the bar tender, it always gets stolen. This is a very old hotel with broken closet doors, small bathrooms and slow showers. Hi speed internet is not available in all the rooms. They have parking charges.However they have a big complimentary breakfast.
The hotel Renaissance charges $10 extra for Hi speed internet. They too have parking charges.
Try out Hampton Inn. Very modern and up start. No parking. Free internet. And good gifts.
Interesting places for lunch and dinner: Here are a few of the places that I had my lunches and dinner and they were pretty good
*Capisce--at the top of Hilton
*Saputos--just behind Hilton
*Thai Kitchen---on 9th Street
*Gateway to India--for delicious sumptuous Indian lunch buffet
*Steak and Shake
*Alexander's Steak House ---Free style self grilling of food
*Sebastian's---Contemporary American cuisine

Monica Belluci with an Indian

The time has come to leave Chicago. Life of an IT consultant is nomadic; set up your tent (and hook up your laptop) at one place only to move to the next. My next destination is not Chicago. Definitely I will miss Chicago; the vibrancy, the jazz, the glitterati, the pubs and bars, the parties and drinks and the people. And certainly I will miss Monica Belluci (name purposely concocted to avoid publicity. Monica Belluci wouldn't be a friend of a confused H1b holder. I just used her name as the person in concern has Italian origins; people who know Belluci: don’t be jealous, my friend is nowhere like her and people who don’t know Belluci: its time to Google her).
I was so much feeling marooned in Chicago once the last project ended and my colleagues got dispersed to different parts of this continent. Gym, books, Borders, acquaintances, jogging, working, social gatherings- everything was so incomplete without good friend(s). I met Ms Monica Belluci at a concert of the Chicago Orchestra playing Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. And she changed everything I knew about Chicago or for that matter US. She not only plays Andrew Lloyd Webber on her piano, she is good with her trumpet. We became friends in no time. She was as new to the city as me with not much friends. And she has a good heart. She cooked for me fine Italian dinners, got me Thanksgiving food from her home, drove me around to far off suburban shopping centers for discount sales and allowed me to drive her car a few times. Suddenly my lonesome existence was finding a meaning of having friends, having good company who can be fierce fully competitive during a game of bowling or dart or pool and equally sensitive and sharing over a dinner watching a movie.
Life may take me to many corners where I find it’s difficult to turn around and come back but I know she will be one I can count upon any time.
Thank you Ms Belluci for being there for me.

Ghai Vs Ramu: the debate starts afresh

My blog is getting visited, I know that, however Iam disappointed at the irrationally poor number of comments. May be my subjects are not shared well by the readers. Well, I think now its time to write to the audience. I chose a subject that I will think will fetch some comments. Iam hungry for some comments. And the topic is who is best, Subhash Ghai or Ram Gopal Varma. First I will discuss them both as glossed as possible and then do a little comparison, leaving the rest to the desi readers to comment on. My nondesi friends who visit my blog, Iam sorry if you feel left out this time.
When I say who of the above 2 mentioned directors are greatest, I don’t obviously mean to insult people like Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy or for that matter even Raj Kapoor.They are beyond compare. It just a popular choice as both of them have now two new movies in the bollywood...Aitraaz by Ghai and Nach by Verma.
I can remember right now at least quite a lot of films by the Ghai which I have enjoyed, starting from Kalicharan (his first movie) to Joggers' Park (which he co produced). This son of a dental surgeon has a repertoire of movies, which have mesmerized audiences for over decades and that includes Vishwanath, Vidatha, Karz, Karma, Ram Lakhan, Saudagar, Taal and Pardes and undoubtedly he has been awarded titles like "The Dream Merchant", "The Showman of the Industry" for his acumen to churn out such blockbuster box office hits over and over again. He has captured the mind of audiences both in India and abroad as is evident from big earnings Mukta Arts (his production house) has made from Pardes and Taal from offshore markets. He is business savvy and made Mukta Arts the first production house in India to go public (http://www.valuenotes.com/SChhabria/sc_MAL_22may04.asp?Writer=&ArtCd=33794). And he artfully directed successful actors like Dilip Kumar Raj Kumar and Sanjeev Kumar. He is equally adept in handling fresh heroines like Mahima to more established ones like Madhuri and Ash; his latest movie will have a British actress called Antonia Bernath. And he is establishing a film school near Mumbai too. So it seems like he has done it all and keeping up to his comment "I need to give back whatever I got from cinema,to the younger generations, whether its knowledge, experience or capital" (http://www.muktaarts.com).
Now ladies and gentlemen, get ready for Ramu or Ram Gopal Varma. He is a civil engineer famous for making bollywood masala films with a panache. Like Ghai, his first movie Shiva shot him into fame instantaneously. He had his share of unsuccessful movies like Ratri and Money before he started out belching hits like Raat, Rangeela, Satya, Shool, Jungle, Company, Bhoot and Mein Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon. If you have seen his movies you would know that there is a definite pattern in the madness of his films, they are not run-of-the-mill boy meets gal movies. Jara hatke. Check out his entire repertoire at the following link (http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0890060/). Now I don’t want to eulogize either of the directors and neither do I want to write their obituaries. To me and my senses, Ramu's movies are definitely much more attractive to watch for rather than Ghai's. Ramu is urbane and classy and sophisticated, Ghai is more earthy and much more for the normal. Ghai's heroines are so mundane and so traditional sati types while you will be dazzled and shocked at the characters Ramu's heroines enact...they are fanatics, they can be killers, they can be possessed, they dress wild, they can do anything. To me Indians in USA (h1b crowd is hopefully young, urbane and sassy type) ought to identify more with Ramu's heroes and heroines than those of Ghai's as the former types are more assertive,aggressive and arrogantly normal; unless you are on the wrong side of 45, when you start thinking that everything traditional, everything romantic are good you would hopefully appreciate the thinking behind Ramu's movies.
That was my take on them. Iam definitely waiting for some juicy comments this time.