T...

Hmmm... Do you want it? You don't know. Nobody around seem to have it. You don't care. But hey, he has it. He also has it. You were wrong. Everyone seems to be trying, they just didn't tell you. But none of your friends have it. So, its ok. But you decide to try anyways. You try, you fail. But hey, you tried. Life changed, people changed, you didn't. You are a little old. No, not old - just matured. It happens again. You didn't try, it just happened. Is it for real? Of course, not. It screws up, miserably. Life gives you lemons, big ones... Its frustrating. Why can't it just go as per plan. Its just your plan, you don't control life. Its more frustrating. Your friends still don't seem to have it. Your friends are useless. You give up. But you secretly wish you didn't. Calm down, if its meant to be, it will be. Where is all that maturity? Its all going to be worth the wait, your friends tell you. Its all going to be worth the wait, you tell yourself.  You blame it on fate.You blame it on quarter life crisis. You blame it on the unsuspecting beggar you met in that obscure temple you visited 3 years ago. Still, that doesn't change the status quo. Somehow you find yourself almost there. But wait, this is not where you wanted to be. Back to square one. This time you truly give up. And finally, it happens. This time for real. From what it looks like, this could very well be worth the wait. Here is to welcoming 'T' into this blog...

Cheers !

My dear Madras.

Change is good, but not so good. Our lives are merely an unending sequence of uncontrollable changes silently unfolding before our eyes when we were busy continually trying to control the change or change the control. At times, the most comforting thing in the world is to see something and think, "Ha! Things have not changed and I don't have to do anything about it". That forlorn feeling, that forgotten connection, that unbreakable thread, that unmistakable connection between your life that was and the life that is, is sufficient to take you mentally back all those years and force a grin on your face even if you are skipping lunch and working late on an eventually inconsequential task.

One of my friends used to say long time back, "You don't like Madras. You either love it or not". True that. Beyond the madness and the rush, the city does exude a very subtle romance that is felt only by someone who is in love with it. This city still has so many things intact that can make me harp on and on about it.

Dear Madras, you have grown bigger than I had known, you may have become sufficiently cosmopolitan, auto drivers may have started to talk Hindi, mini skirts may no longer be applicable to the '5-12 ages' group, multinational companies may call you their home, those multinationals may also install Italian coffee machines in their pantries, but, they can't change you! Only in Chennai will you see this. 

Let the Cappuccinos and the Lattes enjoy the pleasurable company of a quintessential South Indian Coffee-Strong. Let them go back to the world and narrate how awesome the South Indian Coffee-Strong feels, especially to someone who calls Madras a home and is struggling to find foot in his life! Love you, my dear Madras.

Cheers!

Kuzhappam (Confusion)

I am in Chennai! I AM IN CHENNAI! I am in Chennai! It is has been a few weeks since I landed in Chennai but have been busy. Seriously. Life is good and I don't know what else to say. On this blog, what better way to celebrate my recent relocation to Sambhar land other than restarting the forgotten series on Tamil serials? Here we go, this post is on the most important aspect on which the Tamil serial rides, confusion. You might not have noticed the kind of confusion I am talking about. It needs some guts made of steel and some Himalayan patience to sit through several consecutive episodes, take notes, and then make sense of them! Please remember that I have been through some life threatening circumstances when I was observing that monster from close quarters with a notepad and pen in hand. Appreciate it...

There is A. There is B. A is married to B. A has three siblings - C, D and E. B has two siblings - F and G. C, D, E, F and G are assigned random genders but it helps to be have a majority of females. Since A is married to B, it is a high probability that F is married to D! C is married to H, an outsider to the original family. G is most probably a male and is currently unmarried. A and B have a couple of kids, I and J. D and F also have a couple of kids, K, L and M. G is in love with J and she knows that. Their families have agreed to that. But K is elder to J and she wants to marry G.

I is the most undereducated in the family and he married someone, N, commensurate to his status and they have a kid O. Then there is this guy, P, who is sincerely in love with J and she knows that. P also has absolutely no chance of landing J, and she knows that as well but doesn't seem to do anything about that! 99% of the time P has a really sick and slowly dying mother, Q.

L and R are sincerely in love with each other. As if one more twist is required in this story, S wants to desperately marry L and her brother T wants his sister M. Needless to mention, R is excruciatingly poor and S is outrageously rich. L has a group of friends - U and V. V also loves R, in spite of knowing that she loves his friend L.U know it, but deems it absolutely unnecessary to discuss this trivial issue with L. R has a step mother W, who is always plotting her downfall, and a step sister X, who empathizes with R and goes against W. I don't know where, but somewhere in the middle of things there are two antisocial elements, Y and Z, trying to kill someone or the other. Somehow, just somehow, they always fail to do their job and are promptly excused every SINGLE time.

Now you would want to know why R has a step mother and what happened to her father. But as you may have noticed, I have run out of the English alphabet! Probably next time I will try to rewrite this post with Tamil alphabet. I can create 247 characters that way. Now you tell me, which part of the story did you not understand?

Here is where the confusion simply explodes, the same A to Z appear in different roles every 30 minutes. Somebody's wife in this serial becomes his sister in the some other. Two guys fighting over a same girl from 6:30 to 7:00 become business partners from 7:30 to 8:00. For all the doubts I have ever asked my Mom regarding the Tamil serial, she has had a standard reply, "Adhu vera serial da". I guess all is well until she throws tea at my face. Oh yeah, enjoy the insanity until it lasts...

...thodarum

(to be contined)

P. S - All you CAT crackers, solve this family tree if you can...

An all encompassing equation of love

I started this blog because I wanted a space to express my ideas and make fun of my life. Eventually I fell in love with writing and this blog has been alive for almost 3 years now. But, as it is well documented in this blog itself, the love has been anything but constant. Even after repeated vows to blog regularly, I disappear into periods of emptiness. There would be 3 posts in draft mode, but I won't find a single word more to write! It is technically called a Writers block, but it is basically a lack of love. Now, will the same phenomenon happen when I am in love with a person as well? I don't know. There will be days, a lot many of them, when you feel like your better half means the world to you. But, will there be days when you realize that the world is majorly made of mud, dust, pollution and non-potable water? Being the engineer that I am, I cannot resist the temptation to ask this question.

Can love also be reduced to an equation, Love (t) = fn (t, 1/t, Sin t, Cos t), with 't' being the time variable?

Don't think my idea is outrageous. If numbers are allowed to be irrational, then why not this? Just imagine the possibilities. For a start, you can differentiate the equation and figure out the slope of your love curve! You will know when your love will maximise or minimise and you can act accordingly. You can integrate the equation between two time frames and find out exactly how much you will love a given person, correct to two decimal places. How simple would setting priorities become now? Excel will help you choose between marriage and career.

It does not come without a catch though. Mathematicians have a concept called 'indeterminable'. You can have an equation describing a quantity, but you cannot determine it. Mathematicians are cool, like that. What if we figure out the equation for love and then realize love, and therefore God, is indeterminable. I would rather prefer my God to be indeterminable. How about you?

An economist would agree that reality is not always morality. Even today, scientists around the world are talking about mapping a human being's past in terms of spatial and time coordinates (x, y, z & t). Their idea is, once you can zero down on a person's past through an equation, you can extrapolate that equation to determine his future. The only major problem they are facing is that the equation determining a person's past will change with every passing second and this will affect his future in a significant way. If they can find a way around it, astrology will simply be reduced to another excel sheet circulated in forward mails. Will humans ever get there? My guess is that God will let humans reach there and immediately press the 'self destruct' button for planet Earth. There is no plausible and logical counter to this argument. Will we get there in 2012? Give me a break...

Cheers!

An e mail to God

To:              God@universe.gov
Cc:              Heaven@universe.gov, Hell@universe.gov
Subject:      A humble request

Dear God

Hope this mail finds you in the best of your health and spirits!

I am told that everything happens for a reason and I could learn something worthwhile out of every painful situation. Currently, I have no idea about any of those stuff concerning my life. I request you to kindly let me know if there is something I need to know but failed to pick up.

I very well know you are not going to reply back through a comment on my blog. But now that I have told you, this becomes your problem, not mine.

Anticipating a favourable response from you.

Thanks and regards
Vasanth Kumar K
You know the crap that usually goes here after my name.

'Creative' thinking

Somebody once asked me why I am generally happier than the typical happy person around. I told her (or him, I just guessed guys won't ask me such questions) that is because I am greatly amused and amazed by the ways of the world and the world never ceases to interest me. One of the main reasons I am constantly amused is because, I think, in an acceptedly slightly crazy manner. These are not thoughts that will guide the course of next generation economy or solve global warming, these are simply useless thoughts.They don't serve any tangible purpose, nevertheless they are true! When I get a surging bout of creativity (aka craziness), I try to put it down on my blog. Reason 1, it gets documented for future generations to look up. Reason 2, it causes minimum damage, as only a statistically negligible percentage of humanity will ever stumble upon my blog. Now for the craziness, I mean, creativity...

When I was useless browsing the internet (I also usefully browse the internet), I stumbled upon a profession called 'creative writer'. Instantly there was a short circuit in my gray matter. Whenever some one writes, they create something, isn't it? It could be opinions, views, critique, novels, love letters or even shopping lists. They are creating something. So by definition of the process, anyone who ever wrote anything was a creative writer, isn't it? If someone is not creating something through their writing, they must be called copywriters. But doesn't copywriter mean something else? Here I am not debating upon the usefulness of the writing. On that basis, may be we can classify them as useful and useless writers. But that is a post for another day. Now, creating content and copying from others' content are all inclusive and mutually exclusive groups. In other words, if someone isn't creating content, they are copying it and vice versa. So creative writers and copywriters can very well be used to categorize all those people who write. Then for what do we use the word 'writer'? Is it a superset? Anyone?

Quite recently, I migrated my mobile number from a prepaid account to a postpaid account. Two hours after I had submitted the application, my coworker suddenly turned towards me. With a shocked expression on his face he said, "There is a buzzing sound coming from inside your head!". Yes, the damn thing inside was thinking. Again, prepaid and postpaid are two all inclusive, mutually exclusive categories. By conventional definition or by common perception, prepaid is when you pay before you use the service and postpaid is the other way around. Consider this, when the time reads 'post meridiem', it means after meridiem right? When your coworker says we will meet 'post lunch', you meet after lunch right? You also know what post mortem and post production mean right? By means of derived conclusion, 'post paid' means after the payment has been made right? No wait, that is prepaid!

Between the world and me, one of us is definitely crazy. I am just wondering which one!

I think thoda hatke, therefore I am thoda aur happy!

Cheers!

No comments...

No comments, this is what you say when you don't want to say whatever it is that you intend to say but want the listener to know what you are saying is not what you wanted to say. Alternatively, it is also what you say when you have absolutely no clue as to what you are supposed to say! Sometimes, it can be both. Sadly, this was not accepted as a valid answer to any of the questions in any of the (in)competitive exams in any phase of my life. Understandably so. Imagine a professor setting up a case study for a question paper - He googles and googles, scroughes through tons of pages in the internet, picks an esoteric case, translates it from Spanish (or Greek, or Latin, or Tamil) to English, spices it up with some numbers, (in an attempt to make it more difficult for geniuses like me to pass) draws up his own conclusions and just says, comment. In the answer sheet I write,

7. b)  No comments!  (fyi, this is a 15 mark question!)

I would have been long dead by now. Hey, do they have blogging in Hell? Not that I will end up in hell, I am just assuming they would have everything in Heaven (including Silk Smitha). Ah, crap! I do it again. Ever since I started this blog, I have made it a point to digress everytime I start to write. And you have been reading all these! I guess it has been a scientific art to keep this blog running and I am compelled to write a blog about it. Crap, digression again. Enough of it. Now I will get to my point. Everything you read from this point below has the breathtaking potential to miraculously waste 15 minutes of your life. Promise.

The primary purpose of this blog entry is to answer the quintessential question right at the center of the need for this blog's survival - Why don't people comment on my blog? It has become a serious concern. Let us talk numbers, take a look at the number of comments registered on my 3 latest blog posts - 8, 4, 1. Power series of 2 written backwards. Statistics would suggest the number of comments on this post would be 0.5. Seriously, God, why me?

Is it because nobody reads my blog? Couldn't be so... See, you are reading it. Gotcha! "If somebody is jobless enough to write crap, there is some-(more)-body else to enjoy reading that crap", once said Albert Einstein. Apparently that is how the Universe is designed. Promise. There are plenty of people who regularly tell me personally on gtalk that my last post was awesome. Are they cheating? Could be, they are my friends after all! I don't beleive in showing off by putting up visitor counters on my blog. I also don't believe the spelling of 'believe' is correct in the previous sentence. Obviously, it is the quality of readers that matters, not the quantity, no?

After careful, painstakingly detailled and horrendously boring analysis, I conclude Google might be the reason for the reduced comment traffic on my blog. They invented the Google reader. (No, I think they bought it from someone else, but that doesn't matter to this discussion). Everybody reads the unmatchable delivery of my hitherto unheard of intellect in their google readers and goes home. They don't come to my blog to comment. For the technically unequipped, it is similar to staying 1000 miles away from someone, calling them on phone and saying, 'I am still your boy friend!' You know, technology. Actually, I think this reason can be true. But I am not alone in this. Even the Hindu and the Times are battling to somehow get people to buy their newspapers. I just want you to leave lame comments on my blog.

From now on, if there are not enough comments on my blog, I will stop writing. Promise.

Alright... Regardless of whether you comment or not, I will write crap and you will read it. If you comment, I will write better crap. Comment and be a part of this legend of a blog. Offer valid only till stocks last. Conditions apply...

Cheers!

P.S - I know what comes to your mind after reading this blog entry. This has been conveniently titled to remind you that!

Universal wisdom from a Foreign return!

I should have written this long back. But because of some I.T. issues (my laptop screwed up), this got delayed for more than a week. So here it goes, universal wisdom from a foreign return!

I am now officially a foreigh return. Malaysia-check, Singapore-check. I could also see parts of Indonesia and Thailand from the aircraft. But I guess I am not allowed to check those! All those of you who are singing, "Sorgame endralum...", in the back of your heads, blog high 5! Long long ago, so long ago, I don't remember how long ago, somebody told me life is all about learning. You have to learn from anything and everything you do. Continual learning is the key to life. So here goes my 'learning' out of this 2 week long trip. Of course, I see the world with my own little sunglasses (and contact lenses). Therefore the forthcoming might cause some digestion related troubles if not taken with adequate amounts of salt... and pepper... and chat masala!

1. If you desperately want to be flying 35000 feet above the sea level in real inclement weather, you better be flying over the blue oceans rather than the brown sands. That way you can be sure you won't trasform into a spectular ball of fire when you get closest to the ground!
2. The range of business attire for women can fill a pocket dictionary. The range of business attire for men can fill two sentences... with difficulty!
3. The number of pages in the above mentioned dictionary is growing. If you have a problem with it and you are a guy, you will be booked under sexual harrasement and thrown out of the company. If you have a problem with it and you are a girl, go have some girl talk. Leave me alone!
4. If you are a vegetarian, India is your country. Hold it, praise it, fall in love with it, don't you bloody leave it. According to some 'reliable' sources I have, even cows abroad are planning to abandon eating grass!
5. Rest of the world sees us an 'Indians' and we are expected to behave as 'Indians'. Insert your favourite sentence about unity in diversity here.
6. It might be a good idea to determine what is the 'Indian archetype' in all the walks of everyday life. For instance, if somebody asks you to write their name in Indian language, don't ask 'Which one?' Or if someone asks, 'Do you do this in India?', in all probabilities, refrain from answering, 'We do, they don't'. Ain't cool bro!
7. It is not such a great idea to come back and tell your friends back home that in KL, you discovered you were most suited to be a driver! Confused? Never mind!
8. What happens outside India, stays outside India. For instance, don't come back and tell dad that you want 3 wives because some part of the world still believes we Indians are allowed that luxury! And seriously, who told them that it is a luxury to have 3 wives?
9. Finaly, Sorgame endralum... adhu namma oora pola varuma... Yes, I had to say it!

If you have something to add, please do it in the comments section.
Cheers!

Thirai Kadhai (Screenplay)

Disclaimer: Non Tams, this blog post might be similar to watching a Tam movie with English subtitles! Kindly adjust!

Metti Oli... No, don't run. It is definitely off air now, even the rerun. Metti Oli, literally transliterates to 'toe ring sound' in English. Wow, right? How the hell in this world does one listen to that, you ask? Me too, same sentiment! I would like to describe this serial like this. My mom started watching this, got enough of it, stopped watching it, started missing it, started watching it again, got enough of it again, stopped watching it again, started missing it again, started watching it AGAIN and, trust me, Devayani (Abi) was still trying to figure out whom to marry! I was like, 'Andava...! Thanni adichitu flat ayitiya...!'. Even if this were telecast in heaven, I guess our lady gods would have been glued to it. Mudiyala da sami!

On a separate note, I saw a serial in which this Vadivukkarasi aunty was speaking a in male voice! I was... well... umm... errr... Speechless!

Well yeah, the screenplay. I wonder why they even write it. Not this blog, I am talking about the screenplay. This blog occupies a truly indispensable position in today's society. When I was trying to draw a parallel to our serials' screenplay, the best I could find was running on a treadmill. You start running, you warm up, you keep running, you sweat, you get tired, you keep running, you are exhausted, ippave kanna kattudhe, you fall down, the machine throws you out and what the hell, you are still exactly where you started! So much of time, energy and effort wasted and only slight, minute, frustratingly small movement forward. These days they are taking small serial breaks in between commercial advertisements. My Mom usually says, "rendadhu break la tea potu tharen!" (I will make tea during the second break!). Just imagine, you can make tea for a family of four during a commercial break! Then there is this idhu varai, recap! A bloody brilliant contrivance to eliminate the need to write screenplay. Here is how it works, you show nothing today, then you show the same nothing again tomorrow! Dude, how much am I going to forget in one day? You know how much my boss expects me to remember? Your honor, as seen by the arguments stated above, screenplay for a Tamil serial is unnecessary and practically tough to find! Hence proved!

Having already established that screenplay is practically non-existent in our serials, we proceed to explore some integral characters that form the cogs on which the screenplay moves. Note to self - The last sentence was so awesomely confusing. Don't write again while watching Tamil serials. Despite all these distractions, our Thai kulam (noun, literal meaning - Mother clan, the versatility of this noun being that you can even use it on girls who are yet to be mothers, even your neighborhood one year old huggies sporting female toddler) somehow manages to grasp what is happening in the little screen! Lady gods' gift, probably!

The center of the universe for any serial is the protaganist also known as problem magnet. Somehow all the problems in the world seem to find their way to the problem magnet and the problem stream never dries up. It helps enormously if this character is a lady. Next important character in our serial is the eternal villain. He is the source of all the troubles that our problem magnet faces. He is entirely responsible for getting the protaganist the sympathtic votes from the audience. Even Osama Bin Laden may one day start talking about peace but this character is not going to stop creating troubles for the problem magnet, even after the serial ends, they just stop showing it on TV. It helps enormously if the eternal villain is a relative of the problem magnet. That way it is easier to create troubles and sympathy! This is where I am tempted to define the law of conservation of problems as a limiting case to Tamil serials - Problems can neither be created nor be destroyed. They can only be transferred from the villain to the protaganist. The number of problems in a Tamil serial always remains a constant. There is a considerable loss that happens when the problems are getting transferred and this loss is recreated as sympathy on the part of the audience. Eppudi?

Other than these main characters, you have this aiyo pavam (noun, meaning poor, character wise, not monetary wise) character. More often that not, this hapens to be the problem attracting protaganist. But if need be, it can also be designed as an orphaned child, drunkard brother, studious sister from a poor family etc. These characters are made to face pain for no fault of theirs, true to their category. Finally you have the all-in-all-alaguraja (noun, meaning I-know-it-all) character. These characters generally poke their nose into unnecessary issues, usually get things wrong and end up giving not at all useful advice at completely uncalled for situations! Then if you really want to complicate things and if you have enough budget, you can add any number of items from your grand Indian family tree. A typical Tamil serial would have a family tree problem so huge that you won't be able to solve it in CAT even if given the entire 2.5 hours! This way you can inadverdently prolong the serial from ice age 4 to ice age 6, without any screenplay, that is the important point.

For those of you who still have some place left for me in your hearts, the Malaria virus is off me and I am back to business in Bombay. Although I am still recuperating. But even the fact that I am in no way vulnerable to Tamil serials now is not going to stop me from continuing this series. Naan oru tharava mudivu panniten... sari venam vudu... After spending the last two weeks at home, I am convinced that I will have to do a piece of the audience as well. What an involvement they exhibit! Oh yeah, enjoy the insanity as long as it lasts!

...thodarum
(to be continued)

Kadhai (Story)

Chithiiiiii (with 6 'i's).... For those acquainted enough with the Tamil silver screen, this word is a legend (for few others its a terror!). It was one of THE Tamil serials that was aired during, well, most of my schooling. Quarterly ended, half yearly ended, annually ended, even school ended but Chithiiiiii did not! Half of TN did not believe it could end. Most housewives truly believed the world would end the day Chithiiiiii ended. Such was the legend. Alas, even Dumbledore had to die, you know. You ask me about life after Chithiiiiii? Pretty much the same. Chithi illana oru chithappa, namma pozhappu adhe dhan pa! Dear non-Tam audience reading my blog, kindly condone the overwhelming Tam influence in this particular series of posts. After all, we are dealing with Tamil serials here.

Now that I am home and I am grounded, I get to watch a lot of Tamil serials. Yeah, one for each flavor! No, it has not been easy at all. So I decided to take notes and do some analysis. Note to self: Six years of school and six years of college without so much as a page of notes and now you are taking notes on Tamil serials, gosh! Anyways, getting back to my analysis, I decided to carefully deconstruct each and every aspect and demystify the esoteric obscurity called Tamil serial. In a series of ensuing posts, I am going to handle one facet of Tamil serial that is true to itself. Therefore, ladies, skip the next sentence. Gents, buckle up, we are dealing with truck loads of crap here!

The first facet we are considering here is the most indispensable part of any serial - Kadhai aka story. If stories are what movies are based on, then, logically, I am bound to think that a serial must be based on a novel, volumes of it actually! But this is where we are distancing ourselves as far away from truth as possible. A Tamil serial is generally based on stories that are one sentence long. Or should I be saying one sentence short? There exists an unwritten relationship between the longevity of a serial and the story it is based on - the longer you want the darn thing to run, the shorter the story you must be attempting! You remember in school you used to do this - once a chewing gum had lost its chew-ability, you used your hand to pull it as long as possible and then chew it back and then pull it again? Chee... Ovak... Disgusting, right? That is exactly what they do with our Tamil serial stories!

These guys are smart in one respect though. If you restrict yourself so much as to a story, you are reducing the scope of creativity! You heard it right, creativity. So our people base the serials on broader themes which are easier to twist, turn, manipulate and even start all over again. These themes are generally poignantly peaceful and completely family oriented. One would want their kids to imbibe all the portrayal and emulate them in real life. That would way the kids would have really meaningful lives. Typical Tamil serial themes include rendu pondati karan (bigamous husband), odukali pondati (run away bride, no no, run away wife), mamiyar-marumagal prechanai (saas-bahu episodes), sakkalathi sandai (bahu-bahu episodes), varumai kottuku irandu mile keezhe vazhkai (abject wretched destitution), theerpu sollum nattamai (your friendly next door chief justice of India for the village) and other such jolly good items. Things get really really hazy when these themes mix, match, metamorph, mangle and finally mutate. Are you still worried about your audience? Never mind, they never seem to care!

So much to the story and we have just seen the tip of the iceberg. We will slowly uncover and thereby discover various breathtaking facts and mannerisms of the quintessential Tamil serial as we gather more and more courage. I will also reintroduce to you one legend of a Tamil serial that ought to be remembered in the beginning of every post. More insightful and not-at-all tongue-in-cheek articles about screenplay, star cast, music and other such truly exciting facets of Tamil serials in the making. Enjoy the insanity as long as it lasts...

...thodarum
(to be continued)

The Welcome!

"Welcome to Standard Chartered Bank." No, not you, me! Its for me. In case you did not know, I have joined SCB and this has been one statement I have been hearing a lot over the last two weeks. I have heard that sentence so much that now I have started reciting it in sleep and my room mate is scared of me. He doesn't want to talk to me after dinner! Although it does feel nice to be warmly welcomed into a new place, there is a fine line between adequate and overdose. Well that fine line differs from person to person, so lets not read too much into it.

Life has been so far so good, well mostly. I met a lot of new people who joined with me. Almost all of them were very interesting and great people to get along. (This sentence is only for those of the new joiners that will read this blog :P) I did all the fun stuff during induction (you know what I am talking about ;)). One thing that definitely needs mention is the pillows from the hotel we were put up. To call them heavenly is an understatement. Pity that I couldn't smuggle any out of the hotel. Pillow - too big, suitcase - too small, me - too disappointed!

Official life has otherwise been BAU. Oh yeah, we use a hell lot of abbr. ;) You know I have been filling forms, updating details, finishing learning modules, meeting people, getting confused, feeling lost and other such regular stuff. But there is one thing that definitely stood out from the e-learning modules. There was this module on HIV and one particular attribute of HIV actually inspired me. Apparently HIV does not discriminate across country, race, colour, caste, region, not even sexual orientation! It treats everyone equally. How nice! Won't it be great if everyone behaved like that. No, not like HIV, I just mean the non-discriminatory part.

One should NEVER forget that there are ALWAYS two sides to EVERY coin. The second side more often that not turns out to be a pain in the posterior. Do you know the most dangerous thing mankind ever invented after H-bomb and A-bomb? It happens to be the bloody SNOOZE button. My trysts and the resulting troubles with the snooze button can go on and on forever. Then there is this travel part. If you work in Bombay and if your office is in SoBo, then travel to work becomes a separate distinguishable part of your life. Having already dealt in detail about travel in Bomabay here and not wanting to relive the terror through my words, I am moving on to the most notorious culprit - the rains. Actually rains deserve a separate paragraph for themselves.

It has been pouring like hell outside for the last 90 minutes now and only God knows when it will stop. That was pretty much the situation over the last month and that will pretty much be the situation over the next month. Bombay's monsoons are like a lady. Please don't mistake them to be beautiful, elegant and graceful. They are actually highly unpredictable! And when rains team up with winds, they have immense fun at our expense. Umbrellas flip before you can bat an eyelid. Umbrellas don't flip back even after everyone around you have batted their eyelids ten, fifteen times! If you lose grip on your umbrella, you will be made to look like a crazy toddler running after a confused cockraoch. Of course, you can ROFLMAO in case you are not the crazy toddler chasing the confused cockroach. But, Caution: Wet floor, ok? There is more. Even army trained mine field navigatiors can't figure out the placement of pot holes on these submerged roads. Not to mention you have to polish/wash your shoes every time to venture out. You are still wondering how you completely got wet below the belt (!!), even though you had an umbrella. You cannot figure out why that random guy designed the auto such that the driver never gets wet but you always do. Lunch table debates typically revolve around whether you drive through or swim across subways... Jolly good stuff, heh?

Well, thanks to Standard Chartered for making me an International graduate. Ping me on gtalk for further details. Here is to all the international graduates who joined with me (this time no sarcasm, ok?), you are one great bunch of people. Life has been made much easier becaue of all those faceless interactions we everyday have. Thanks folks! Thats all for now. I will keep ranting here as and when I get enough content and motivation. Till then...

Cheers... hic... ;)

P.S - For those of you who have still not discovered Google, BAU means Business As Usual and SoBo means South Bombay!

The Last Quarter

I am back to blogging after a yawning gap. Truly a lot of time has elapsed between my last post and this one. Actually I might have easily forgotten that I had a blog but for those kind hearts that inquired what happened to my blog! I thought nobody read my blog (of course, except myself :P). What with the number of followers increasing but the number of comments decreasing. I guess people just want to show off that they read my blog by clicking the 'follow' button. #awesome But I was wrong. Apparently, people do read this page and more so, someone looks forward to it and someone enjoys these ideas. For all those kind hearts that never forget to remember this blog, a big Thanks! This blog also remembers you! :)

The purpose of me starting to blog is to have a digital account of my life. My blog is a chronological satire on my life itself. The idea is to provide the older me with jokes to laugh at when I eventually run out of them! Naturally, when there is nothing on my blog, there is nothing happening in my life that is even remotely interesting. That was how the last quarter was. A dumb, monotonous, routine oriented, pale 3 months fading away from what was once a pulsating, colorful life. To some extent there was a profound nothingness everywhere. Whatever you find in this post after this sentence is an attempt to capture that nothingness. Please don't take it seriously if there is nothing, absolutely nothing after this in this post!




















Well, I told you there might be nothing, absolutely nothing in this post! The one good (or bad) thing that happened in the last quarter is that I turned 24! I am just getting older not any better, therefore happy! Starting a fresh life in a fresh year. Having bid adios to formal education and all its thrills recently, I am stepping into the longest phase of my life - career. Only time can tell whether times will be exciting or exasperating as they pan out. However they are, we will keep poking fun at them in this blog! And now I truly promise to do it regularly. Happy to be back blogging.

Dear nothingness, RIP! Dear world, here I come to raaak!

Cheers :)

The Un-terview!

Hypocrites. Who? Us. Yes, you heard it right. It is all of us I am talking about. Think about it, don’t we do a lot of things according to an unwritten credo? Nobody knows why, nobody asks why and nobody wants to know why. We all just follow what we are told we are ‘supposed’ to do. Let me restrict myself to just one ritual we all (well, mostly) must have gone through, campus interviews. So now how many of you are smiling at your computer screens? Lies, cold blooded lies, aren’t you thinking? Yeah, me too, same feeling.

One thing I could never understand is how we were able to get away with all those lies. Everyone knows it. I know it. You know it. Everybody who ever gave an interview knew it. Everyone who will give interviews will come to know of it. Even the HR who took your interview knew it. I know I have shared my blog link on my linkedin profile. So the future HR who might recruit me might come across this. And even he knows it! Then how do we get away with it? Is it some sort of a capitalist conspiracy? Do they select the guy who lies most convincingly and with conviction? The girl anyways gets selected, she doesn’t have to lie. Chivalry, apparently! Now shall we stop calling it interview and refer to it more appropriately as un-terview?

Being the humourist, creativist and couragist I am (comedian, creator and bold dint go well together!), I started thinking how it would be if I decide to talk in an interview after taking an oath on the Bhagavad Gita. Well, find the transcript of the fictitious interview below. Warning – The transcript is fictitious. I advice you not to use it in any space other than pointless lunch table conversations. Rest is up to your risk taking capabilities. At least, I am not gonna use it.

In the transcript below, Q denotes the question posed and A denotes the answer to be given. Lets start.

Q – Why did you choose to do MBA?
A – There is no better and safer way to become rich!

Q – Why did you come to this college?
A – Well, this was my best admit card! (This was my only admit card!)

Q – Why do you want to join our company?
A – I am finding it really irritating to cough up a new idea for every company (especially when I have multiple interviews on the same day.)

Q – What are your short term and long term goals?
A – Short term – To get this job. Long term – To get a job in a profile and company I want to!

Q – Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A – Yes, I can’t even see whether I will get through this interview or not but I will be able to see five years into the future. Perfectly valid question!

Alternate answer, choose between the two based on your courage and humor levels.
Q – Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A – Happily married with one kid and another on its way.
Sub-Q – No, no, I meant something ambitious.
Sub-A – What I just said was pretty ambitious!

This seems more like it. Can somebody do this? Whoever does this will be my undisputed corporate hero. Lets wait for him!

Cheers

P.S1 - I wrote this blog on April 1. Join the dots if you are smart, move on to PS2 if you are not!

P.S2 - Sarcasm is not a dead art, yet!

The 'H' factor

Dear people reading this, people not reading this, Barrack Obama, the pretty girl that travles with me in the same bus everyday, Lalit Modi, the unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests, and everybody in general, my name is Vasanth Kumar and my patience is running out.

You must be wondering what went so wrong with me that I had to suddenly come out and proclaim my name. I had to. I am fed up of (almost) everyone spelling my name wrongly. For heavens sake, my name is not Vasant, its Vasanth. This is a trend I have observed especially in north India. Yeah I know, being a domicile of Tamil Nadu, the rest of India is north for me. But I still find solace by using 'north India' in the conventional sense. I don't understand what is wrong with them. What do you call that that comes after ninth? It is tenth. Not tent. Nint is not even a word! You get my point? This is how the English language is supposed to work.

Forget the esoteric nuances (?!?) of the English language. Can't you people respect somebody's name? Can't you see the e mail signature and just copy the name written there? Or are you simple oblivious to the letter 'H' when used in such connotation? Disrespecting somebody's name is as serious as disrespecting that somebody itself. When will you learn that? The worst part with this behaviour is the look on their faces as if they are completely innocent and the fault is mine to have had such a wierd name! I don't know how I am supposed to explain it to them that this is not how the rest of English speaking world (what? where does it exist?) percieves the 'H' factor. I am growing tired, really tired of this. Please spare my name!

I have nothing against north India (again) or north Indians (AGAIN!), its just that I feel like biting your head off when you misspell my name... whoever you may be, even that unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests!

No cheers this time...

Vasanth Kumar K

P.S - For those who still don't get the drift, I am trying to stir a controversy against north Indians (oh come on...) by blaming them for their magical talent. Spread the word, make me famous. I see myself giving interviews to 24x7 news channels. Make it happen.

P.S2 - If I REALLY become famous (half hour interviews in at least two national news channels), I will sign autographs for free to all those who comment on this blog. Hurry, offer valid till stocks last!

The curious case of my fellow human's brain!

Again, no blog for two months. I prefer to blame it on my tight schedule rather than on my lack of motivation :) Well, now I have motivation on my right hand and time on my left hand (I wear watch on my left hand :P), I decided to do this thing - write random things in the hope that it will come across random people's monitors when they are randomly searching the web for random items!

The last sentence was completely random. Anyways, getting to back to my story, the curious case of my fellow human's brain. We have all been told humans are blessed with a special something called sixth sense. Might be. But the problem is most of my fellow humans refuse to even accede that they have it! (No, no, not you. The rest of 'em!) Unlike that genius Calvin opting to ignore common sense, our friends ignore their sixth sense inadverdently. One leadership guru once said, "Don't ask why, ask why not". As usual, we listened only to the first half of his speech (slept through the rest) and followed it diligently. We never ask why. We never conteplate why we do stuff. We never realise we appear plain stupid in the eyes of who ask that dangerous question, why! Let me quote a few instances.

The scene is set in an airport where I am waiting for my boarding call. The aunty with my microphone finally announces my flight is ready for boarding. Immediatley everybody picks up their luggage, go stand in the long queue in front of the boarding gate. It is ok if a coupe of ladies do it, but smart gentlemen in suits doing it is just hilarious. No offence ladies. I don't mean you are dumb, I just mean it appears dumber when men do the same thing as you! Now, I have my boarding pass with my seat number printed on that. Its not like if I go late, I might see an adamant kid sitting in my window seat refusing to get up. (Even if it happens, you anyways get to see nothing after take off!) Now that I have a boarding pass, the airlines cannot operate the flight without me on board. They have to find me and throw me in. So why can't I use it as a privilege? Why should I go stand in a queue for 15 minutes carrying my luggage waiting for them to open the gates? When these people do it, it gives me a feeling that they are waiting to board a B.E.S.T. bust at Andheri bus stop, not an aircraft! Why?

This is one scene I watch everyday. Mumbai, central railway line, train compartment. From the outside it seems damn crowded, from the inside it appears half empty! Yeah, these commuters pick the most strategic position to crowd - the passage between the doors on both sides of the compartment. It causes great inconvenience to other passengers alighting and boarding the trains but they never seem to care. These are not the bunch of blithe college kids hanging on the foot board for some fresh air. I would know them, I was one of them. These are family men, mothers, grown ups, all regular commuters. They just stand there, they don't care if there is space to stand inside the compartment, they don't care if there are vacant seats in the compartment. I have to wrestle my way everyday to get off at my station. There are also other kind of people, the ones who come and stand in between seats even when the compartment is half empty. Dude, did you drop your brains when trying to board the train? Why?

There is a theory that we are living in a 'Matrix' style simulation of some extraordinarily smart aliens. Seems right! The above mentioned are just some flaws in their 'code'. Areas were intelligencce was forgotten to be programmed into the omnipotent (what?) human brain. May be the aliens' testing department is not as competent as the one at my office!

The more I think about it, the more similarity I find in humans' outlook towards brains and money. For instance, we always think we need more of both. We always think our neighbour has more of both. Even if we were given copious amounts of both we would simply misuse them and waste them. At the back of our minds we know, if not used both gets wasted and we never cared to change our outlook towards both of them! I rest my case here. Don't ask why.

Cheers!  :) 

P.S - It seems if I don't blog for a long time, I compensate by writing a long post!

...and we are done !

The last time I had to write a similar post I started it with, 'all good times come to an end'. But now I am starting with, 'all best times come to an end as well'. Its done. The blissful stay at a slice of heaven on earth, NITIE, is just about to end. Now I feel like that F1 car that rammed into a wall! Lost, confused, sad, out of shape and out of comfort zone. WTF!

You tend to notice that you are growing up when you start losing stuff. People lose youth, people lose free time, people lose freedom, people lose brains, and some people lose hair! Now I have lost one thing that I have had since my very early days of childhood, formal education. It feels really awkward. No more waking up late, no more bunking classes, no more classes, no more hostel rooms, no more getting dad's sign in report card. But on the flip side, no more attending useless classes for attendance, no more insane writing for 3 hours in the name of exams, no more assignments, no more homework.

Everybody has gone through college. Everybody knows how it feels to get out of college. So I will stay out of the touchy-feely stuff here. My kith and kin have always asked me what was my biggest value add in MBA. I've always maintained a modest, 'I don't know', and its true. I seriuosly don't know. But I am sure about one thing, the experience here was worth screwing 18 months of my life. Seriously I never imagined I would get to share my plate with a Delhi-ite, share my glass with a Odiyan, party with a Punjabi, get drunk and blabber to a Marathi manoos, teach Hindi to a mallu, watch a goult movie in Mumbai with a confused Kannadiga, get bumps from gals for my birthday and many more! I am definitely much more sophisticated and refined than what I was. I guess that was the biggest value add.

Well, even a thousand pages wouln't suffice to describe the 600 odd days spent here. But even in a sky sprinkled with sparkling starry moments, some stars do sparkle brighter than the others. The crazy room mate, legendary 422, awesome 4th floor, overwhelming tam gang, kickass fourth hostel gang, rocking PMG, dangerous baba's office, pond, night outs, maddu mess, insane parties, nescafe, ten people sitting in a dinner table meant for four and things like these can even stand the test of amnesia. I have friends from all parts of India! The humble fact that I am carrying more than 32 GB of photos out of this place sums it up!

It would be sheer betrayal if I don't mention Prerana here. If Prerana'08 redefined the concept of hardwork and responsibility, Prerana'09 redefined the concept of struggle, setback and stress. Prerana is not an event, its an institution unto itself. The most meaningful thing I've been a part of in NITIE has to be Prerana, not even the MBA. Prerana taught us a lot of things which cannot be put in words. Although what takes the cake is the scientific art of handling the dragon! NITIE rocks, Prerana double rocks!!

I am emotional, I am sleep deprived, I have nothing to do, I am leaving this place is less than 36 hours, I feel like writing about NITIE for hours. I rather choose to end this post here as it is wrong to try and fit every emotion into words. No human language is capable of doing that. It would only distort those emotions. Let them be unsaid and better remembered. I minced my brain really hard to come up with a simple sentence to explain it all and I think I succeeded. All those of you who cared and shared, thou shalt never be forgotten!

Pepole going through this blog, kindly take out a minute to comment. That would remain as a proof that our lives were intertwined at some portion of the space time continuum!

Cheers

P.S - Things are really changing. After a really long time, I am going to sleep before midnight!

P.P.S - On second thought, certain things never change. I am yet to submit assignments worth 80 marks! NITIE rocks, in past, present and future!

BEST... Or is it?

The first time I landed in Mumbai, my friend said "We will go by BEST bus". The moment I saw the bus, I said "Good one bro! :)". He replied, "Dude! That was not supposed to be a joke". Oh!

This one falls under the category of 'unintenionally funny'. You think of some cool thing, give it an awesome name but in the end it falls flat, even funny. Mumbai's BEST, is one classic example. I don't blame them either. When you gotta manage such a huge city, you tend to miss out somewhere. Some aspect, some area, some system, some random thing doesn't get the attention and it stays a part of prestigious history. Now lets take a look at why BEST buses are not the best (not even close :P)

First impression... was a worst impression. Even my school bus sports better style damn it. Painted red, absolutely cuboidal, looking like straight out of a museum...! When rest of India is going for low floor, air suspension, ergonomic seats, bright colors, our friends at Mumbai never felt the need for all those. I guess these buses are a part of their tradition. You might catch an enthusiastic guide say someday, "You see the Taj, it is older than the Gateway of India. You see that bus, it is older than the Taj" :D

I lost myself in the beauty of the bus as it crossed me. Suddenly I realized I had a bus to catch and... WTF! There is no route number at the back! Are we supposed to randomly run behind buses, overtake them, check the route, and then climb onto them? Are Mumbaikars such good athletes? Or is this some sort of practical joke? Just imagine how it will feel if you finally overtake a bus, but its not the one you want and the driver grins at you and says, "Gotcha!" When I enquired about it further an effervescent college kid said, "The route number is there on the left side of the bus". So what dude, I cannot overtake the bus from the left. Traffic rules don't permit it you know. :)

Somehow I got onto a bus and one look inside told me that the bus might actually be older than the Taj. When I purchase my ticket comes the next surprise. Everything on the ticket is printed in Hindi, even the numbers! Beleive me when I say its been 17 months in Mumbai and I still have trouble deciphering numbers in Hindi. I've used the word decipher in the previous sentence intentionally. I suggest carrying a number catalogue with you to help you out. But there was more. The price printed on my ticker was Rs. 6.86. Seriously, six rupees eighty six paise. Do you guys really live in prehistoric era? Thankfully there was no 'Please tender exact change' board put up in the bus :)

Not that Mumbai is otherwise perfect or for that matter any city is perfect. They all have lots of scope for improvement. But what got me going was the name given to these buses, BEST. Although these buses go a long long way everyday, they still have to go a long way before they can become what they are called, BEST.

Cheers  :)

P.S - BEST stands for Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport!

Need to bring private capital to finance higher education in India

The following article written by me was published in the Financial Express newspaper national edition dated 19 October 2009. Online copy can be found at http://epaper.financialexpress.com/FE/FE/2009/10/19/ArticleHtmls/19_10_2009_010_003.shtml?Mode=1 I can discount one thing from the list of things to accomplish in this lifetime. Alright, now the article,

Education sector, like any other in India, invariably stares at the same horizon – one billion people and counting! When exploiting economies of scale is one side of the coin, the myriad challenges faced in reaching the masses becomes the other daunting side of the same coin. Before attempting to answer the question posed, let us define the boundaries of the playground. For the sake of this analysis, any kind of formal education undertaken after 12 years of schooling has been considered as ‘higher education’. The ever rising applicants/intake ratio in all the top notch institutions of India has indicated the clear inability of the government to provide quality higher education. Can the time tested solution called privatization be applied to education sector? Probably yes, but only in certain pockets.

If we look at our government’s spending pattern towards education, lion’s share is allocated to the top institutions offering professional courses such as engineering and management, majority being government institutions. Other disciplines such as arts and sciences receive very little funding from the government that they can even be termed neglected. But it is a fact that no country can survive with engineers and managers alone, whatever their levels of competence be. A developing country like India needs scientists, lawyers, farmers, artists and philosophers in same numbers as engineers and managers. It is time for the government to seriously concentrate upon hitherto neglected disciplines and lend them a helping hand.

In order to do that, the government simply cannot redistribute the allocation of funds because it will stall the development of the top institutions which can be detrimental to the nation building process. So there is a clear need for generation of extra funds and this is where the private sector can pitch in. But the problem is private sector is interested only in commercially viable ventures. In other words, private sector will be interested in financing tech schools and business schools only. This is evident from the sheer growth of private engineering and management colleges in India. Here 2 ways of bringing in private capital exist – setting up private colleges, bringing alternate revenue stream for government colleges by way of consultancy and training programs. The government should strongly encourage the latter and undertake a regulatory role for the former. This would both decrease the stress on the government and ensure availability of quality education.

The government should consider the extra funding thus generated as savings and reinvest these savings in building a strong arts and science base because at this moment it is these courses that need utmost attention. There is a need for extra funding in these sectors whereas the funding can be generated only through professional courses sector. Thus there is a need for bringing private capital to finance higher education but what is more important is an intelligent redistribution of funds. If the redistribution is not proper, the chasm between professional and non-professional courses will continue to grow which is not a good sign for tomorrow’s India.

Leave a comment if you like it.

Paradigm shift

Our upbringing in this world has been shaped by many conventions, many of them dictated by a lot of paradigms. The problem with these paradigms is that they are suitable only for the contemporary times in which they were told. They are never updated. How about updating some of them? Yes, it is time we say the unsaid, add disclaimers wherever necessary, clear some confusions and change the unchanged. Here is a sincere attempt to modernise some of the well known paradigms. You have all rights to use them at will. Oh yeah, comments in line  :)

• Failure is the stepping stone of success, only if you step against it! you gotta work baby!
• Don't count your chickens until they survive for at least a week! competitive environment boss  :|
  
• Don't count your chickens until you are done with your chicken soup! you naughty boy ;)
• A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, only if it won't poop on you! gotcha...
• The way you look at a glass half full or half empty depends on whether you want it to be completely empty or completely full! this did not occur to me when I was drunk :P
• Silence is the only thing that can be misquoted in any number of ways! be careful!
• Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, Apes are from this place, Earth! now tell me, where are you from? ;)
• Don't go where there is a path. Instead go where there is no path and leave a trail. only then someone will be able to find you and bring you back!
• The early bird gets the worm, the last bird gets the sleep. Make your pick.
• Nobody travels on the road to success without a puncture or two. remember, no stepney allowed!  :(
• Hope is a good thing and no good thing ever dies. we hope so! :)

I think now these are contemporary. Nothing is left unsaid and hopefully nobody can sue us for not providing the disclaimer. I will again come out with a different set of paradigm shift once I figure out enough paradigms that can be shifted.

Cheers!

P.S: If you want to shift any paradigm, you can do so in the comments section!  :)

Fly - Flu - Flown!

Wierd title? May be, yes. But thats the truth I have been seeing over the past 2 weeks or so. The swine flu has got so much attention that I won't be surprised if the past tense of fly is henceforth spelt as 'flu'. But is all this hype justified? Absolutely not. For the sake of convinience, let us look at the case in the eyes of a solitary individual, holed up in a corner room, in an obscure location, in one of the buzzling metropolis - myself!

Some day 3 weeks ago, swine flu broke out. And what followed was pure mayhem. Nobody understood what was happening. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody did what was suppossed to be done. Now, the virus has dissappeared. Just like that! But the point to be pondered is how we responded to the issue. One person got into a hospital and the N95 masks became ubiquitous. Seriously, from when did we start respecting a stupid virus? Did anybody look at its side effects? Some guy stole buscuits from my neighbour. We couldn't even find out who it was as he was 'masked'! ;) One banner in some website read, "20 people get swine flu, everybody puts on a mask. Millions die of AIDS every year. Nobody puts on a condom." Agreed!

I have heard that we are living in 'information age'. Thanks to swine flu, I understood the full meaning of it. Every two minutes some mail relating to H1N1 virus popped in my mailbox. Even people who have not sent me a 'hi, how are you' in years started sending me H1N1 awareness mails! For the sheer lack of a much larger term, I have to call this an information overload! The spreading of these mails actually challenged the spreading of the virus! I heard someone saying the virus lost to the mails! :P So much unnecessary information on dos and donts that I forgot which was which and happily committed a few donts! If only, the virus had known this... :) But seriously, one thing that apalled me is nobody ever forwarded so many mails when there was a blood requirement or some charity happening for some orphanage. God save our generation.

Talk about the media. These guys exploit the one marketing strategy not taught in any B school. If it is controversial, it sells. If it is novel, it sells. If it is both controversial and novel, it sells big time! Every other news channel ran and reran news items about H1N1. I hope there was no saas-bahu serial episodes revolving around swine flu! ;) The only thing these media houses could have done extra is to interview the H1N1 virus itself. This could not be done as the virus was 'busy travelling'. :) Discounting this, the virus got more publicity that it would have ever imagined in its wildest dreams! I am still waiting for the day when our media 'grows up' and starts acting maturely.

What did I do? Nothing! Seriously! I did not go home. I did not waste money on a mask. I had cold but did not take any medicines. I roamed all around campus, ate out, had cold drinks, ice cream and what not. This is my way giving the 'F' word to the virus. :D "Catch me if you can" ;) But the worst part is, the two week break given has made me so darn lazy. I got used to all the nothingness. I want no class, no attendance, no tests, no work. I want to jus keep on sleeping on my (un)comfortable bed :P

Last thurday things started turning around in campus and from yesterday it is almost back to normal. It read some report stating WHO has predicted a second outbreak of H1N1 and the second innings can be worse than the first. I can't confirm whether its a genuine report or some news channel trying to sell the controversy. But if at all there is a second outbreak, only god know what will happen...

Cheers!

P.S: I wrote the first para of this post a week ago. H1N1 has made me so lazy that it took a week to write the next few paras!  :)