Promotions....

Just in one ad break during weekend movie on asianet. Mammootty and Jayaram appeared to promote 'beauty products' for the ladies, and everyone from Shah Rukh to Mohanlal to Prithviraj came to promote jewelry and sarees…

Not one actress around to do this J

Politics & Religion

1. Watching this amazing series on PBS - 'The Story of India'. There was a statement about how the king went to visit the Buddha and a generic comment 'in those times, the kings used to visit the religious leaders and not the other way around...it is still followed, the politicians visit the religious leaders' !!

2. Completely unrelated. Was watching a recording of one of The Dalai Lama's speeches in New York. He was talking about politicians visiting him. 'In India, during election time, all the candidates come visit me. They run against each other, all come and ask me to pray for their victory. What can I do? Only one of them can win! Here in the USA, during last presidential election, Obama visited me, Hillary Clinton visited me, John McCain visited me, not one asked me to pray for their victory!!'

The Medal Race

I remember a few Olympics back, when the 'Indian contingent' came back empty handed, there were suggestions on how to improve the situation. 'Like the Kenyans / Ethiopians, we will find out specific ethinc groups from the vast sub continent that can specialize in different events and train them' - said someone.

Many Olympics went by and looks like it is still each to his or her own. If you are good at something, and are lucky enough to get the money to get equipment / training, then 'all the best to you' and of course - if you get something - HEY we are all here to share your glory !!

There is one segment we are missing out on - and there is no 'investment' involved - the parents of students in US universities !! Why ??

Almost every US athlete comes from the university system (unless they come straight from high school and never got to the university). And I never knew this before - it is not just US athletes, a lot of top athletes from other countries are students training / competing at US universities.

So? - am not saying we should build a good inter-university system. There is already a huge representation of India in the US universities..and if the parents could also push the kids a little away from studies (a huge cultural shift nonetheless), we could get some top athletes trained (as I said at no additional investment)!

:)

Thank you Monkey !

My daughter started saying "thank you" a while back. In fact one of the first words she started speaking. You hand her something, and she says thank you - simple as that.

Then she started saying thank you, followed by the person's name. "Thank you amma" - even better !!

Last week, she suddenly switched over to saying thank you followed by the object she got. You give her a strawberry, she will say "thank you strawberry", or hand her the toy monkey, and of course, you get "thank you monkey!"

Don't tablet!

Recently a friend remarked "took my daughter to the doctor for a cold. He prescribed an inhaler spray! Looks like we have to find another doctor!"

Don't!. This and other new ways of drug delivery will get more common. The spray has 1/100th the dose of the same medicine as a tablet, and it reaches where it needs to (in this case, your lungs) directly.

Would you rather take a 100 times higher dose tablet, have that medicine run through your digestive system, bloodstream, liver, kidneys et all and finally give your lungs its recommended dose? We are just conditioned to be comfortable gulping tablets down.
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"Mind" the Gap

You "Watch" the gap in the US, but "Mind" the gap in the UK :)

We were driving up to Birmingham (UK, not Alabama), the rental car place had run out of GPS units (Sat Nav Units if i got that right?), so had printed directions. One step said "Take the M5 to The Midlands". Not knowing what the Midlands were, we saw signs for M5, took that, and then the next sign said M5 and also very boldly proclaimed "The South and the South West". Of course we followed that and my American colleague remarked "wow, the locals around here must be real proud of this area to put up a sign like that".

The next step said drive 32 minutes and take M42 to Birmingham. We drove 32 minutes, drove 42 minutes, drove 50 minutes, still nothing. Pulled over at a service center and consulted our "smart" phone maps.
We had driven about 50 minutes in the opposite direction, when by now, we should have been in Birmingham.

Another lesson learnt! "The South and The South West" was THE Direction, or rather the southwest region and midlands region as I later 'googled' and found out  :) That is what getting used to going North/South/East or West on the interstates will do to you. If they had gone all the way and put up a sign "Gentlemen, You are now entering the M5 headed towards The Southwest Region of the Kingdom", it may have avoided this very minor confusion !.

:))

Cooking Seafood!

After getting a pretty raw fish for lunch last time, I was more careful this time. Picked another one from the seafood section, but the menu did not say anything about what they do. It just lists "octopus in xyz sauce", or "salmon and vegetables". No indication of whether they grill it or cook it or boil it in any way. Just to be sure, asked the waiter "what do you do with the salmon"?

He said, "its salmon, with some vegetables".
Me "I can see that, but how do you cook it?"
He: "no cook, no cook"
Me: "then what do you do?"
Looks like his english was exhausted. Went and got someone else who proceeded to explain what they did to the poor salmon, which included details on how they marinated it etc etc, but nothing on how they cooked it.

Me:"so it is raw?"
New chap:"no, we grill!"
Me:"so it is cooked!"
New chap:"not cook, grill!"
Me:"got it, I'll have one of those!!"

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Broadcast your Bugs !!

A (software) company exhibiting at the tradeshow we were at recently had a banner with bullet points of all the "new exciting" features on offer in their latest software version. But they might as well have been shouting out all the bugs in their old release. The list read:

- Faster response times

- Easier User Interface and Navigation

- Improved search capabilities

etc. etc. It was about 10 bullets long, but each one was something they "fixed" in the latest and greatest release.

Not a word about what functionality is on offer !!!

Shades of Grey

I have this light grey check-in bag, been using it for over a year now..lots of trips, in pretty good shape, looked pretty new...until the last chennai trip.

i did about 4 trips back and forth between chennai tvm all on AI...if you know the grey shades in word or excel fill menu, that will be of great help...

after the 1st trip MAA TRV, the bag went from a light grey (15%) to a medium light (25%) grey, and one of the zip slider hold was broken off...

after the next trip back to MAA, it went from a 25% to somewhere around a 35% grey, with another hold broken off.

Now i have this dark grey check-in bag, been using it for a couple months now...looks pretty beat up...has only a couple zip slider holds left on it...

:))