5th January 2008. I’m still sleepy, groggy and quite irritable at 6 frickin’ o’clock in the morning. But what to do. Four hundred sing dollars can buy me a ticket only in good old Air India, and they can put me only on a 7.45 AM flight to Singapore. After canceling the flight that I originally booked, that is.

Did I tell you that BOTH my flights, to Bombay and back, were canceled? Not canceled as in, “Sir, we are so sorry, but due to uncontrollable circumstances, we had to cancel your flight. We apologize for this inconvenience and we shall make it up to you in whichever way possible. Can we give you options so that you can pick one that is most convenient for you?”. Canceled as in, “Both your flights have been canceled. You leave on 18th. I can’t tell you when I can offer you a return flight. Maybe you want to think about catching a bus, or swimming back or something”. I pay for a direct flight to Bombay, which is canceled. Then I take a flight that has a connecting flight at Delhi, and all Bombay passengers miss the connecting flight at Delhi because the Singapore-Delhi flight is late. Quite a fairy-tale trip, I must say, with sugar, cream and cherry on top.

Anyways. Back to the groggy Saturday morning at the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport. After having driven for nine straight hours the previous day (Andheri, Chembur, Ghatkopar. You get the picture), I have a running nose and some bad perspective. All I want is a comfortable seat where I can stretch my legs, make a humble request to the air-hostess to disturb me for no reason on earth (or in the sky) and doze off. I wait in the queue for an hour, get to the check-in counter and happily hand over my ticket while the lady at the counter happily issues me the boarding pass.

And then she says, “Sir, are you aware that this flight will leave at 4.30 PM?”

You know those situations where you are so mind-numbed that you can’t decide whether to shout out aloud, to swear every obscenity you ever learnt, or to kill someone. Well, this wasn’t one of those situations. I very vividly wanted to do all three.

If I was aware that the flight would leave at 4.30 PM, would I be standing there at 6 AM like a jackass with my luggage and a teary-eyed mom outside? They did not have my Bombay number so they couldn’t inform me earlier, but this question about my prior awareness of the situation was, well, lets say, fishing for ‘compliments’.

Then I am told I would be paid taxi fare or hotel charges. I take the taxi fare, spend half an hour to get a pre-paid taxi and head home. And near Powai while I’m thinking, “Fuck all this. I’ll go home and get some rest”, the taxi breaks down.

Then I take a rick, go home, sleep, have lunch, come back to Airport (which is a mere 24 Kilometers away from home), and finally board the plane.

Now for the best part.

“Ladies and Gentlemen. This is your Captain Speaking. Welcome aboard flight yada yada yada.

We apologize for the delay. It was due to uncontrollable circumstances that our incoming flight was late. It is beyond our control, and beyond my control as an individual, you see. And let me bring your attention to the flight crew. They are here to help you in every way possible. But see, it is just a crew of 4 for about 180 passengers. That makes it about…hmm..err.. 45 passengers to a crew member.

To give you an idea, it’s like having 45 guests at your residency whom you have to tend to and entertain for four to five hours. It is not an easy task, you know. So please be considerate while asking for help and placing your requests. Thank you for your cooperation, and I shall keep you updated on our flight details after takeoff…”

Thankfully I was bound to the seat by the seatbelt, else would’ve fallen off and did the proverbial ‘rolling on the floor with laughter’. The announcement is not verbatim as I don’t recall the entire two minute monologue, but I make this up not!

So much for flight cancellations and quirky flight captains.

(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading …

It’s been almost six months since I’ve been home. Six months since I’ve seen my dad who worked so hard all these years to make sure I get everything I ever wanted. Six months since I’ve met my mom for whom I have been the center of her universe since I was born. Six months since I have set foot on the city that made me what I am, and its local trains and bambaiya and its vadapav. Six months since I met friends with whom I grew up playing gully cricket and went to music lessons with. Six months since I have felt really loved or cared for.

Six months is not a big stretch of time, by any standards. But I know this is only going to increase. Money and success, in their varied avatars, will continue giving me reasons to run the rat race. But is it going to mean letting go of the past, its million wonders, the magic of memories and naive nostalgia? I hate it when people become memories, and memories become nonchalance. And I hate to live with single serving friends and relationships and having to search for those special moments in my everyday.

Anyhoo. I will be in Bombay from 25th December to 5th January. Landing on 24th midnight, ekdum Santa Claus ishtyle. Hope to catch up with everyone.

The Ambujam Mami Network. AKA The Gupta Aunty Network above the Vindhyas. AKA Four (not six, mind you) degrees of separation.

Different names, same purpose. A network that can put any alumni database to shame. You mafia fellas with your Omertas, you Opus Dei and your age old fraternities: here is something that is so secret, no one knows how it develops; something so deadly that your movements can be tracked/monitored/reported on a city level basis no matter which country you are in; something so effective that a single Tambram chap can find himself being introduced to someone he suddenly finds is going to be his future better half even before he can say “blitzkrieg”.

The AMN has been recognized as a potent force over many such startling revelations. For example, it almost single-handedly put the marriage-broker / tarakar / panditji community out of business (before the concept of kundali was marketed as being critical and ergo, the astrology mumbo-jumbo made quintessential). The connections are instant, the relationships forged at broadband speed and before you know it, jadagams are flying around.

To illustrate the gravity of the issue I present two sample conversations of the network building process. Compare, contrast and concur.

At an alumni meet, in some snazzy banquet hall, in some snazzy country:

“Hey, hello there. My name’s Harish. Batch of 2007. And I see… (reading name tag) you are… Rohan. Nice to meet ya, Rohan.”

“Hey, nice to meet you too. I’m from the batch of 1999. So how’s Lucknow nowadays?”

“Aah same old. Hostels 14 being built since ages now. But the second lib has come up pretty fast, just behind Manthan.”

“Hostel 14?!! Second Lib?! Manthan?! We had 4 rooms and a toilet. And a promise of a library. I have no clue what you talking about.”

“Umm.. err.. ok. So, how’s work?”

And if its a marketing maniac in an FMCG (for example, yours truly) and an i-Banker in the conversation, the situation above will soon lead to glazed eyes, uncoordinated nodding and expedited consumption of vodka shots.

But then, the AMN is not handicapped by year of passing, relatability or even industry. You just have to belong.

At Srinivasa Perumal temple, any country:

“Oh, namaskaram mami. So nice to meet you. So, enda ooru (which town do you hail from?)”

“Naangal Tanjavur. Neengal? (We are from Tanjore. How about you?)”

“Naangal Tiruvarur pakkatla XYZ kukgramam.” (translation doesn’t matter. The move is already made by now.)

“Ooohhh! How nice to meet our people. Do you know Lalita who lived in the second street next to the temple?”

“She’s my second cousin from my father’s side! How do you know her?”

“Her brother is my co-brother’s brother-in-law. You know, the one who’s called Ambi?”

“Oh, Srini daane! Of course we know them very well. So you have any children?”

“Yes, one son. He just graduated, and is working in Singapore.”

And within five minutes, the conversation has “arranged marriage” written all over it. Notice the subtle endearments, pre-existing relationships and stalker-level detailing of information. And mind you, ladies and gentlemen, I make this up not. I have seen this happen in every single marriage / sashtiaptapoorti / sadabishekam / anniversary function that I have attended. The AMN network goes by this tenet: Everyone knows everyone, or will know within 5 minutes of meeting each other.

While you are reeling under mind-twister relationships (father’s uncle’s second cousin’s daughter) the AMN is already mingling like long lost beer-buddies. And before you know it, there’s an eligible, homely sweet girl living in a street next to you, whom your mom has already met in a Tiruppugazh recital.

The AMN spans cities, nations, even generations. You are never too far, you are never too furtive. They will know, and they will hunt you down.

Beware. Run if you can. While I go visit tamilmatrimony.com and find out if someone’s already posted my profile there.

[I have to credit Pravin for the birth of the term AMN.]

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading …

Something I composed last Sunday. Done entirely on FL Studio on my comp, and damn I need to buy a keyboard soon! It is really tough to put together such music note-by-note, layer by layer…

Tranquility

Made with a piano base and a flute overlay, this song plays on the soft moods of a tranquil seashore and more piano layers before moving into a bit of classical flute towards the end.

Listen

Download mp3

Vaishnava Janato

Something I recorded a long time ago, when I was at L. Tanpura and Pad recorded on FL, voice arranged and noise-filtered on Adobe Audition. A simple rendition (not a great one, I admit) of the lovely Vaishnava Janato.

Listen

Download mp3

(5 votes, average: 4.8 out of 5)

 Loading …

First it was the synthesizer that changed the rules of the game. It made possible sampling and converting any sound and any instrument, thus enabling the sound of any instrument, even human voice to be played on a keyboard type interface.

Then we moved on to turn-tables, virtual mp3 turntables, loop machines, Studio emulators and personal sound factories. All this was a gradual progression, organic steps in music composition technology.

Until now.

The interface of generating music is moving from notes, layers, loops, samples and channels to something much more complex, intuitive and interactive. What if music was made visual, and the pattern of composition, itself as beautiful visually as aurally?

Here I present two of such next-gen devices that I have come across. Watch and be amazed. The first, and the more recent one, is called Tenori-on. This is, according to the makers Yamaha Inc,

“a unique 16 x 16 LED button matrix performance instrument with a stunning visual display. The TENORI-ON 16 x 16 LED button matrix is simultaneously a performance input controller and display. By operating and interacting with the LED buttons and the light they produce you gain access to the TENORI-ON’s numerous performance capabilities.”

The next one is a more colorful, more glamorous, and more rich sounding contraption called the Reactable.

Positioned as the “Musical Instrument with a tangible musical interface”, it provides a musical universe that is limited only by one’s creativity.

The Tenori-on, to make a simple observation, is much more user friendly, compact and musically inclined. What I mean by that is, since it is based on patterns and set to a 16 beat grid, it naturally aligns to a 4-beat rhythm and hence, sounds musical more easily. My money is on Yamaha making a lot more dough than the geek-dudes playing with the Reactable. Time will tell.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

 Loading …

First day of work (of the first job ever!) I land in the new office, clothes crisply ironed, nails clipped, shoes polished to a shine. Smartly dressed (albeit my light paunch spoiling the picture, but anyways) and attired with an attitude. I get introduced to my boss (Asian-American, Brand Manager), my superboss (Kiwi, Associate Marketing Director) and am already pretty impressed with the smart people around. Then I go on to meet the uber-efficient admin in-charge of the office, the ever-helpful JiaJia (Singaporean).

And this is when all the fun begins.

Me: Hello JiaJia. Nice to meet you. Please show me around the office, and help me set up my desk.
JJ: Hello Harrissh. Let me get your name right, I have to mail back India about your arrival. So you are Harrissh Nawa.. Nawana.. Nawaya… Nawayaa..Nawayananana…Norain…
Me: (Panicking) Just call me Harish, JiaJia. That’s like Harry, you know, with a ’sh’ at the end.
JJ: Aah. Ok OK.

One should hear the Chinese speak in Singapore. This variant of English is called ‘Singlish’ (just the way we have a Bambaiya English). JJ is one of the well-spoken Singaporeans I have met. But usually what gives it away is ‘Yaaeeesss la! caaan’.  Anything remotely related to yes is ‘can’ and anything else is ‘cannot’. Pretty logical, and pretty binary, I must say. Also representative of the simple minded straight-forwardness of most people.

The ‘caaaan’ beats most hindustani classical singers in raag and tal. I am reminded of Russel Peters and ‘Theitee four feeftee’ when i went to Chinatown. This is a fun place, I have to give it that. Small but fun. Just like the people :)

Will write about the coolest Singaporean I met, later.

(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

 Loading …

Happy new year y’all! Have been counting my blessings since the past few days…

My status message the other day, sums up whatever I have to say…

An era of poignancy, of a broken heart and lessons learnt
Of promises unfulfilled and fingers wantonly burnt
A test of strength that I’ve well passed, the tightrope
As I await to bosom the new life and all its hope…

Am looking forward to a rocking 2007! Wishing you all the happiness and success you ever wished for…

It is the final dying minutes of the class, and the mind has wandered to a myriad of questions; what would be today’s menu in the mess, which movie am I gonna watch once I get back to my room, AMR project kab karoonga, whose bday is it today in the hostel, etc, etc. The hand has taken a life of its own as it goes about packing my books and the pen into the bag, and the papers and notes are shuffled into an unknown corner. I am ready to spring to my feet and head happily to the door, and that is the exact moment when R puts up his hand up in the air and says, “..but Sir, why cant we look at it this way…blah blah blah…”

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the world of CP and its many hideous forms. For the uninitiated, CP (or Class Participation) is the art of participating or ‘contributing’ in a class where substantial weightage is given to, well, CP. Or sometimes, participating just for the heck of it. Usually an occupational hazard of taking Strat Courses.

Siva has delved into this topic before. But I wish to take it further (RCP, hehe…). Lets have a detailed look into the world of CP and its variants:

• CP: The basic, plain vanilla variety. Never to be observed. But always wished for by profs and students alike.
• RCP: Repeat CP. You repeat whatever the prof or the student before you has just said. No value add whatsoever, but who cares!
• PCP: Painful CP. The kind described in the first paragraph of this post. Which kinda makes you want to use the choiciest of expletives on the PCPer’s lineage (past and future) and beat him/her up to an unrecognizable pulp. And this thought process is interrupted by the next question in the PCP…
• DCP: Desperate CP. You can almost smell the desperation and the raw, animal need to put CP that the DCPer feels when it has been too long since he/she has spoken. The RCP and PCP champions are firing all cylinders, and that is when the DCPer feels the pinch. “Omygawd” he/she thinks “I have to speak now or my head will blow up to smithereens and spray all over the classroom” or something like that…
• ACP: After class participation. Sometimes sucking up to the prof, sometimes in desperation (when faced with a certain D or F, for example). The genuine, relevant, clarification-in-subject ACP is as common as a dodo found copulating with a chicken on a winter morning atop a volcano. You get the picture.
• ICP: Irrelevant (or irrational) CP. This is when you say something so irrelevant that the prof looks at you as if he doesnt know whether to flush you down the nearest loo or swat you like a irritating stingless bee. He has already had enough of the above mentioned CPs and then he has to deal with irrationality too. Aaaarrgh!
• And the winner for today… RTCP (thanks, Kaul, for reminding me!): Real time CP. This is displayed by a few gifted individuals, who, even though not having read the case, read a paragraph, put a CP, read the next paragraph and then the next CP and so on! Compare to run-time compilers of yore :)

More kinds later. Laff it up, and yea, no smartass comments on which kinds do I indulge in :D

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading …

I have a theory. And I have enough empirical proof from my own life to believe it holds true. So here it is:

We are trying to systematically kill intuition. All of us.

How did I come to this ridiculous conclusion, you ask? Here’s a sample list: mass education, objective question papers, market research, decision analysis tools, DSS, statistical predictions, stock analysis, financial management, artificial intelligence and expert systems, simulation models, MIS, ERP systems, JIT, exit polls, stock betas, budget estimates… I can go on and on.

Each of the intuition-killers works on the basic premise of human psychology. We are, as a species, very uncomfortable with uncertainty. We want to understand each and every occurrence and phenomenon, past, present and future. Call it reducing risk, call it extrapolation, call it simulation. Every decision assisting tool is just a different level of replacing intuition with bare facts. And this philosophy is all-pervasive. Physics requires experiments and statistics requires data. Market research requires respondents, and JIT requires inventory levels.

Futurists estimate that intuition will actually become more important as time passes. The information overload will be so mind-boggling that the ability to see a panoramic perspective will be a priced talent. I’m no futurist, but for now, I know that we have an overwhelming tendency to doubt anything intuitive or subjective.

What seems the basic problem here? The problem is of verification, of validation. But then again, the most groundbreaking of discoveries had intuition as the main reason that differentiated the scientist from the maniac. And those discoveries had the next generation worrying about validation and then going hallelujah! over the success of logic and the power of the mind. How important intuition is going to be in the future is for time to tell, but I can at least see developments which give an optimistic tinge, dispelling my initial hypothesis. What development, you ask? Why do you think consultants are paid so highly, I ask?

:)

Description of one of the blogs I visited “I am neither leftist nor rightist. I am a typist.”

So as the number of us bloggers typing away to glory scales new levels every day, methinks, what is it in this medium that the others lack, and why is the proliferation faster than a man rushing towards the loo on the verge of bladder-burst? (ah… a genuinely bad analogy… pat.. pat.. )

First of all, methinks it is the web. When I say web, it is not just the technology. It is the ease of use, ease of publishing and ease of feedback that makes the loop complete. Blogger for word; the carrot that makes even lazy-tashreefs like me to go blogetty once a many while. Halo-scan, shout boards, counters, profile viewers, template enhancers and a whole bevy of such niceties make life much easier and prettier.

But then me also realizes, it is not just the shift of a thought onto a byte and then onto a character and then onto the virtual… it is the need to shout out to be heard (and to shout out even if no one is hearing in particular) is the prime driver.

And then the veritable metamorphosis… Vlogs (video blogs), Mlogs (mobile blogs) and in a few months we will run out of alphabets to precede the ‘logs’. And then it will no longer be a log – or a record or listing of events and interesting happening. It will become a medium of information exchange and real time modification and updation. The precursor, I might conjecture, is already here. We call it Wiki.

An interesting observation: The internet, the web (i.e the hyperlinked spaced sitting above the net architechture), and now blogs are all indicative and have grown out of the single impressive factor of collaborative sharing of experiences. And the next generation of such collaboration is already nested deep in the ideas we don’t even realize are already a part of our lives. Linux, the quintessential case study on open source, is also one of the best examples of collaborative software. And then there is the big daddy of them all, Google. Their search improves as we visit a page more and more, Orkut grows as we add more friends, Blogger expands as you and me write more, and Google Answers is a site run by everyone who answers a question.

This incredible model made possible only due to the omnipresent connectivity and the hyperspace, and it has happened now. And I feel privileged to be a part of this silent revolution. I am not a baby-boomer loathing technology, nor am I a Gen-Z whiz kid who thinks Google is a given and doesn’t understand why the net is so unbelievable. I am mentally baked just right, with the understanding and the sense of awe in perfect balance. Bless the zeros and ones… and bless the future that drives our present making us goal-seek and fulfill our own Pygmalion prophecies.