Got tagged by Silverine twice :). First one is still on the works, then for a change i thought i will move onto the second tag. This looked easy enuff in the begining but then found out to my horror that this one requires a lot of honest answers :).
Actually once i started to write this blog it was quite enjoyable. I have never ever jotted down all the things that i want to do. So like Jiby suggested it is good to have them all in one place so that we can check back after 10 years to see how we are doing. So here i go!
Seven things you plan to do before you die (well actually i dont plan to die..but i guess i have no choice there!)
1) Become an entrepreneur
2) Write a book (Sighs by overworked, exasperated editors :) )
3) Run the Boston marathon
4) Climb K2 (earlier it was Mt Everest but people have started landing helicopters there..yuck!)
5) Visit the coldest desolate places in earth and trek through them. The places i have in mind are Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Antartica, Lapplands (sweden)
6) Do a Phd in economics (this is just for intellectual masturbation haha!!)
7)Become a gentleman farmer/planter in munnar or its environs. Retire there with a huge library, gallons of single malt scotch and a cook who can make beef dry fry (well..even a wife would do i guess!!!)
Seven things you can do!
1) Become an entreprenur
2) Run the bangalore marathon
3) Go for the one month mountaineering training camp in Uttarkashi and trekking in ladakh & sikkim
4) Learn cooking (incase no cook or wife wants to settle in munnar!)
5) Build up a huge library
6) Retain all the beautiful friendships i have gathered and build more
7) fall in love and stay down...forever!
Seven things you cant do!
1) I cant be a pessimist
2) I cant look down on people
3) I cant stop reading
4) I cant stop trying to flirt (and fail miserably:) )
5) I cant dismiss "chick flicks"..infact they are my favs
6) I cant tolerate loneliness
7) I cant forgive treachery, arrogance and cowardice
Seven things that attract you to opposite sex (ahem could it be sex?:)) )
1) Adventure
2) Humour (the more sardonic the better)
3) Independence
4) Intelligence
5) women who can give you the space you need and ask for the space they need
6) Women whom i can talk to for hours and still feel the desire to continue talking
7) Women who likes me for what i am and never tries to force me to do anything that i dont want to (ok..cleaning is excused, so is washing and ironing!! )
Seven things you say most!
1) deyyyyyy
2) Athu pallil poyi para
3) machaa
4) beeeer
5) kallu readddddy aano???
6) ahem..well...er...
7) and several colourful words i use in the company of my school/college friends
Seven celebrity crushes
1) Nandita Das - for the sparkle in her eyes
2) Audrey Hepburn - again the sparkle
3) Princess Diana - for the grace
4) Demi Moore - for the sheer sensuality
5) Meg Ryan - for the innocence
6) Arundhati Roy - for the wild streak (even if i dont agree with half or even more of what she says!)
7) Helen Hunt - I dont know why!
It's been a revealing experience to jot down this blog. I actually spent much more time than i planned on this blog. But every moment was worthwhile. Thankx silverine!
Now that i have written down these desires of mine for all eternity to see (gee..i am really stuffy!!) am planning on how/when to do quite a few of them!
Unfortunately most of my friends from the blog world have already been tagged for this post. So i would tag Deepak George in the hope that he finally resumes his blogging. Ponna are you listening?
cheers
anish
September 11, 2005
August 30, 2005
When A Giant Killer Become The Giant
For the last 7 years or so Google was everyone's darling!.
Initially darling of hard core techies, then of normal people (not that techies are abnormal) who frequently use internet search, then of the general public as they caught up with the David vs. Goliath drama and finally of the financial markets (since its IPO last year)
For silicon valley, desperately looking for a company which can take on Microsoft (and disappointed by failed messiahs like Netscape) Google was the big hope!. I remember joining my post-grad course and hearing about this "search engine" on the net which can give you all the information u need (and some u dont!)..all done at lightening speeds!. Ever since, i have been a google fan.
But the attraction of google was not just its superior product offering but also the "Under dog" image. David vs. Goliath fight always ensures that the audience is one-sided. But what may be google forgot was that if David wins then he becomes the next Goliath and that other lil Davids will be taking aim at him.
Well, the honeymoon seems to be over for the google phenomenon!. Google itself has become a giant, humbled Mircosoft (as admitted by Microsoft themselves). Now the Google giant is moving into so many non-search fields that they will inevitably step on the toes of other startups. Now the cycle will start again. Google will become the company that everyone in silicon valley will want to beat.the competitive streak in the valley will ensure that. good luck guys!
I found these two articles both by New York Times. Made interesting reading!
Relax Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn As The Villain
This is about how poaching and jumping on to every possible opportunity in the net by Google frustrates startup co's
Google Anything, So Long as It's not Google
This is even more interesting. A reporter from CNET wanted to write an article about privacy on the internet. She hit upon a novel way of begining the article. She spent 30 minutes googling on Eric Schimdt (CEO of google) and began the article with what info she found. So what would you expect google to do? well i would have expected them to have a good laugh and join in the debate.
What google did was to complain to CNET abt disclosure of private information (come on guys...it came from ur search engine itself!) and then went ahead and announced that it will not speak to any CNET reporter for one year!!!.
Signs of hubris?? or is it a sign of google becoming just another faceless corporation?? well the jury is out..and google better watch its steps
cheerio
MoC
ps: blogspot is owned by google i believe :)
pps: i remain an ardent supporter of google and its products. I hope they dont change , but history suggests otherwise. Every "innovative company" ends up becoming a follower, thats the life cycle i guess!
Initially darling of hard core techies, then of normal people (not that techies are abnormal) who frequently use internet search, then of the general public as they caught up with the David vs. Goliath drama and finally of the financial markets (since its IPO last year)
For silicon valley, desperately looking for a company which can take on Microsoft (and disappointed by failed messiahs like Netscape) Google was the big hope!. I remember joining my post-grad course and hearing about this "search engine" on the net which can give you all the information u need (and some u dont!)..all done at lightening speeds!. Ever since, i have been a google fan.
But the attraction of google was not just its superior product offering but also the "Under dog" image. David vs. Goliath fight always ensures that the audience is one-sided. But what may be google forgot was that if David wins then he becomes the next Goliath and that other lil Davids will be taking aim at him.
Well, the honeymoon seems to be over for the google phenomenon!. Google itself has become a giant, humbled Mircosoft (as admitted by Microsoft themselves). Now the Google giant is moving into so many non-search fields that they will inevitably step on the toes of other startups. Now the cycle will start again. Google will become the company that everyone in silicon valley will want to beat.the competitive streak in the valley will ensure that. good luck guys!
I found these two articles both by New York Times. Made interesting reading!
Relax Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn As The Villain
This is about how poaching and jumping on to every possible opportunity in the net by Google frustrates startup co's
Google Anything, So Long as It's not Google
This is even more interesting. A reporter from CNET wanted to write an article about privacy on the internet. She hit upon a novel way of begining the article. She spent 30 minutes googling on Eric Schimdt (CEO of google) and began the article with what info she found. So what would you expect google to do? well i would have expected them to have a good laugh and join in the debate.
What google did was to complain to CNET abt disclosure of private information (come on guys...it came from ur search engine itself!) and then went ahead and announced that it will not speak to any CNET reporter for one year!!!.
Signs of hubris?? or is it a sign of google becoming just another faceless corporation?? well the jury is out..and google better watch its steps
cheerio
MoC
ps: blogspot is owned by google i believe :)
pps: i remain an ardent supporter of google and its products. I hope they dont change , but history suggests otherwise. Every "innovative company" ends up becoming a follower, thats the life cycle i guess!
August 17, 2005
When Genius Comes Of Age
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Well..its been a long while since i posted. Unfortunately, i was down with a severe attack of laziness. Medicines couldnt cure it, well-meaning advice from friends also failed, finally somebody kicked my butt real hard and i woke up with a start. so here goes :)
A few weeks back, I had gone to pick up a friend from IIT Madras. That was the day when over 600 freshly minted JEE successes joined the institute for its renowned B.Tech program.
It was great to see those 17-18 year olds (sprinkled with a few older ppl who made it in their second or third chances). The parents were proud, the kids (more like my younger brothers) were nervous but jubiliant. Both had good reasons to feel the way they did. The kids had slogged, they had focused their entire life in the last few years to make it through what probably is the toughest examination in the world. The parents had dreamed about this ever since the kids were born, doled out huge amounts for coaching institutes and stayed right with their kids during the tough times.
Coming from small towns and occasionally even villages, they have been the brightest kids in their class ever since they can remember. Entire communities would have cheered them on (but they did the slogging all alone) and celebrated with them when their efforts were rewarded. Some of them might be disappointed that they did not get their preferred branch but all of them believe, deep in their heart, that they are the BEST in the country (which given the population almost automatically means best in the world too).
So I thought my next blog will be on them. But why? I never managed to get through the JEE. I went to a local engineering college and was totally happy with that. So I never passed through hallowed portals of any IIT’s (except as an occasional visitor). But, later in my life i have had several chances to interact with lots of IITians. Some of them became close friends. Before i met any of them, i had this awe stuck idea of how all of them were geniuses. But after meeting them, i found out this wasnt the case (despite what the media says). So my title is not exactly correct.
But didnt Thomas Edison say that genius is 99% prespiration and 1% inspiration? This quote is so true in this case. In an age when teenagers want to enjoy life before they have earned the right to do so, these guys (and gals) are so extremely focused that normal human beings (read not so focussed individuals) can get psyched out. I remember a close friend, next door roomie for two years, who had topped IIT. Even during our hectic schedule, i often used to go to sleep at around mid night after saying good night to him. He will continue to burn the midnight oil till 3-4 AM and then wake me up at 7 (he often had to run away from the room as a sleep-deprived enraged mallu arose with murder in mind!)
To the class of 2005 at IITM: Some of you will become hotshot investment bankers, others will strategize for corporations, few will sell detergent powder, others will be sucked either into the IT industry or to academics. Very few will become eminent scientists or entrepreneurs, just like it is at any elite institute be it IIM's, IISC's or the ivy leagues. But you guys have made it thus far!. You have entered the hallowed portals of this institute. For the next four years you will be slogging ur butt out. Some of you will find for the first time in life that u may not necessarily top academically in every exam. A few of you will figure out that engineering is not for you. Dont let these things worry you too much, because you have earned the right to be proud. But dont dwell too much on the past successes either, because future is beckoning and increasingly it is a future which demands achievements made yesterday and not four years back.
Finally two incidents occured while i was in the IIT campus which will remain etched in my mind for a while
scene 1: I am talking in mallu with my friend in front of the Brahmaputra hostel. A mom and a soda glass wearing son passes by. They hear the mallu language and the son, desperately trying to become friends with seniors to avoid the inevitable ragging, comes and joins in "chetta keralathil ninnu aano (as if that wasnt obvious!)". we started talking, he introduced himself, he is from a village near thrissur, joining aerospace dept. i was really amazed and congrajulated him. His mom was beaming. my friend introduced himself and the guy greeted him with the required reverence. Then i introduced myself and as soon as he heard that i am just a visitor and did my engg from kerala itself, he turned away with that "proudly arrogant" look. A few years back i would probably have been offended with that look. But today i am much more matured (dont u dare dispute that!) and was just happy for him. He looks just like a kid. so here is wishing you all success in becoming an aerospace engineer!
scene 2: I am leaving the campus at about 10 PM. Near the gate i can see a small family probably from up north of india. Gal (obviously a fresher), Dad and Mom doing the farewells. Dad and Gal were hugging tightly and inconsolably crying. I believe dad was crying louder!!. Mom was standing next to them with a slightly exasperated look. I had one look at the scene and couldnt help smiling. Mom noticed the smile and gave me a "these are both my kids" smile in return.
i smiled right back!
July 17, 2005
The Art Of Eating One's Words :)
A few weeks back i re-published an obituary, of someone whom i thought was a hero. Since the source was The Economist, there was no need, i felt, to check the veracity!.
Alas, it seems even Economist was fooled. Naki was a nice even brilliant guy whom apartheid broke. But he was not the person who removed the donor's heart during world's first heart transplant.
Link
ON JUNE 11th this year, The Economist published an obituary of Hamilton Naki, a black medical researcher at the University of Cape Town. In that obituary, we described Mr Naki assisting in the first human heart transplant by removing the heart from the donor, Denise Darvall. Our account was drawn directly from Mr Naki's own words in interviews.
We have since been assured by surgeons at Groote Schuur, the hospital where the transplant was performed, that Mr Naki was nowhere near the operating theatre. As a black, and as a person with no formal medical qualifications, he was not allowed to be. The surgeons who removed the donor's heart were Marius Barnard, Christiaan Barnard's brother, and Terry O'Donovan. A source close to Mr Naki once asked him where he was when he first heard about the transplant. He replied that he had heard of it on the radio. Later, he apparently changed his story.
He changed it, it seems, not simply because of the confusion of old age, but because of pressure from those around him. Mr Naki was already a hero, as a man of scant education who had trained himself to carry out extremely difficult transplants on animals. He was also a martyr to apartheid: a man debarred from the proper exercise of his skills, and even from fair pay, by an iniquitous regime. (Christiaan Barnard admitted that, “given the opportunity”, Mr Naki would have been “a better surgeon than me”.) For both reasons, his role was gradually embellished in post-apartheid, black-ruled South Africa. By the end, he himself came to believe it.
The process was assisted by hints from Barnard that Mr Naki had helped him in ways that were not fully known, and by the fact that, under apartheid, any such help on white human subjects would have had to be secret anyway. In the end, a story took shape that looked so plausible to the outside world that not only ourselves, but the Lancet, the British Medical Journal and many others accepted it. Yet the same story appeared so ridiculous to the University of Cape Town, staff say, that they did not trouble to deny it.
To report this misapprehension is doubly sad, apart from our own regret at being caught up in it. It is sad that the shadow of apartheid is still so long in South Africa that blacks and whites can tell the same narrative in quite different ways, each suspecting the motives of the other. And it is especially tragic that it should have involved Mr Naki, a man considered “wonderful” by both sides, black and white, and whose life should still be seen as an inspiration.
Alas, it seems even Economist was fooled. Naki was a nice even brilliant guy whom apartheid broke. But he was not the person who removed the donor's heart during world's first heart transplant.
Link
ON JUNE 11th this year, The Economist published an obituary of Hamilton Naki, a black medical researcher at the University of Cape Town. In that obituary, we described Mr Naki assisting in the first human heart transplant by removing the heart from the donor, Denise Darvall. Our account was drawn directly from Mr Naki's own words in interviews.
We have since been assured by surgeons at Groote Schuur, the hospital where the transplant was performed, that Mr Naki was nowhere near the operating theatre. As a black, and as a person with no formal medical qualifications, he was not allowed to be. The surgeons who removed the donor's heart were Marius Barnard, Christiaan Barnard's brother, and Terry O'Donovan. A source close to Mr Naki once asked him where he was when he first heard about the transplant. He replied that he had heard of it on the radio. Later, he apparently changed his story.
He changed it, it seems, not simply because of the confusion of old age, but because of pressure from those around him. Mr Naki was already a hero, as a man of scant education who had trained himself to carry out extremely difficult transplants on animals. He was also a martyr to apartheid: a man debarred from the proper exercise of his skills, and even from fair pay, by an iniquitous regime. (Christiaan Barnard admitted that, “given the opportunity”, Mr Naki would have been “a better surgeon than me”.) For both reasons, his role was gradually embellished in post-apartheid, black-ruled South Africa. By the end, he himself came to believe it.
The process was assisted by hints from Barnard that Mr Naki had helped him in ways that were not fully known, and by the fact that, under apartheid, any such help on white human subjects would have had to be secret anyway. In the end, a story took shape that looked so plausible to the outside world that not only ourselves, but the Lancet, the British Medical Journal and many others accepted it. Yet the same story appeared so ridiculous to the University of Cape Town, staff say, that they did not trouble to deny it.
To report this misapprehension is doubly sad, apart from our own regret at being caught up in it. It is sad that the shadow of apartheid is still so long in South Africa that blacks and whites can tell the same narrative in quite different ways, each suspecting the motives of the other. And it is especially tragic that it should have involved Mr Naki, a man considered “wonderful” by both sides, black and white, and whose life should still be seen as an inspiration.
July 07, 2005
For Men: Skip The Deo :)
No comments!
Rediff Aricle
What kind of men do women like?
July 07, 2005
Women tend to choose genetically superior men for their short-term sexual relationships and are most likely to cheat on their long-term partner when they are at their most fertile period, according to a study.
Czech researchers, whose study was quoted by Nature magazine, found that the smell of a socially dominant male is most exciting to women in stable relationships, especially on days when they are ovulating.
Jan Havlmcek, of Charles University in Prague, and his colleagues asked 48 men to complete a questionnaire, rating statements in order to score the volunteers' social dominance. The researchers also asked them to wear cotton pads under their arms to collect sweat.
A group of 65 women then smelled the pads and rated the sexiness and masculinity of the scent. Women in the middle week of their menstrual cycle, the point at which fertility is at its peak, tended to prefer the smell of the men who scored highest on the dominance quiz, the study revealed.
This preference was not shown by women at other points in their cycle, the researchers say. The results support a theory of mixed mating strategies, which argues that women should want different things from different men at different times.
Females are expected to pair up with the males most likely to invest in parental care, but any affair is likely to be conducted with successful males who, although they may not be good dads, provide good genes.
"Other studies have shown that women are more likely to get involved in extra-pair affairs during their fertile period," Havlmcek says. "We suppose that in such cases more socially dominant males would be preferred."
Rediff Aricle
What kind of men do women like?
July 07, 2005
Women tend to choose genetically superior men for their short-term sexual relationships and are most likely to cheat on their long-term partner when they are at their most fertile period, according to a study.
Czech researchers, whose study was quoted by Nature magazine, found that the smell of a socially dominant male is most exciting to women in stable relationships, especially on days when they are ovulating.
Jan Havlmcek, of Charles University in Prague, and his colleagues asked 48 men to complete a questionnaire, rating statements in order to score the volunteers' social dominance. The researchers also asked them to wear cotton pads under their arms to collect sweat.
A group of 65 women then smelled the pads and rated the sexiness and masculinity of the scent. Women in the middle week of their menstrual cycle, the point at which fertility is at its peak, tended to prefer the smell of the men who scored highest on the dominance quiz, the study revealed.
This preference was not shown by women at other points in their cycle, the researchers say. The results support a theory of mixed mating strategies, which argues that women should want different things from different men at different times.
Females are expected to pair up with the males most likely to invest in parental care, but any affair is likely to be conducted with successful males who, although they may not be good dads, provide good genes.
"Other studies have shown that women are more likely to get involved in extra-pair affairs during their fertile period," Havlmcek says. "We suppose that in such cases more socially dominant males would be preferred."
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