The difference between Americans and Europeans ?

I have come across this difference many times. Not first-hand, certainly, but in many books and articles. P. G. Wodehouse has made innumerable allusions to this great difference, often with great humorous effect. (The funniest example would be the scarab collecting American in Something Fresh.) Many writers, (e.g. Grisham) whose stuff I have read, have commented upon this. An uncle of mine who has had the opportunity to interact with people from both these regions has also mentioned this difference.

And today, in an article on Fortune.com, Jean-Marie Eveillard, a French who has work in the US for the major part of career, has been quoted as saying

"... Shortly after I retired, a friend of mine who's in the business said to me, "Ah, well now you'll have plenty of time to run your own portfolio." I told him no. I kept my money in my funds - or what used to be my funds - because it would not have shown great confidence in Charles if I had taken my money off the table.

Also, one thing about Americans - something I think is very positive - is there's this idea that God did not put us on this earth to do nothing. No matter your age. Whereas Europeans believe that once you retire, there is nothing wrong with doing nothing.

I was reading the financial newspapers, I helped teach a course on value investing at Columbia Business School, but otherwise I did not have a very active retirement."

Sartorial Gaucherie

Recently, a friend of mine, who doesn't quite maintain a certain minimum standard in wearing decent clothes, told me, quite sheepishly ofcourse, about a very amusing incident. It seems he was standing in some shop waiting for the shopkeeper to hand over to him the items he had ordered. A lady entering the shop was deceived by his appearance into thinking that he was the shopkeeper's assistant boy. She apparently stood in front of him and was staring at him, expecting him to ask her 'Memsaab, kya chaahiye ?". My dear friend was oblivious to this, and was staring somewhere into deep space, one hand on his hips, the other drumming the latest tune of some Tamil film. Ofcourse, the lady mistook his idyllic behaviour for dereliction of duty and, much to his surprise, poked him in his side, near the ribs, and snapped, "Ja, mere liye woh Fair and Lovely ka cream leke aa."

Something like that happened with me too, many years ago. Now, I am not overly fastidious as far as clothes go, but I do enjoy wearing good clothes. I may not be fashionable, but the clothes I wear outside home aren't that bad either. But there was a time when I was young, when I wasn't the slightest bothered as to what I was wearing or how my hair clumped over my head. In fact, I was anti-fashion. (Ofcourse, my hair has almost always been in a frowzled state, and though now I care how it looks like, it still is.)

I was spending my summer vacations with my grandparents, and had just arrived there the previous day. They live in a building that has three lifts - the centre one is for residents and their guests, and the two lifts on either side of this lift are for the working class people. I don't quite care for this differentiation, and back then, certainly didn't. My grandmother sent me to buy some grocery items. I checked which lift was closest to my floor, and since the third one (the working class one) was the nearest, I pressed the button for that lift. When I came back from the shopping, I saw that that all the lifts were on the ground floor. So I naturally started walking towards the centre lift.

This was me. A cheap polythene bag in my hand, containing an assortment of vegetables - dhaniya, tamaatar, onion and the like. Rubber slippers on my foot. A very shabby and old pair of shorts, and an equally shabby, and moreover stained T-shirt. There were a few holes in it too - it was one of my old favourites and its material had become soft over the years. Hence, inspite of the holes, I used to wear it, especially on hot, humid afternoons such as those of Bombay in May. And the hair. Oh, that wild sweaty dishevelled shock of hair, that has scared off so many potential caresses from loving aunts, soiled many pillow-cases and made barbers wonder whether they should borrow those grass-cutters from the nearby gardener.

Well, I was told to take the other lift. "Main yahaan rehta hoon.", said I, and walked into the centre lift, wondering whether the liftman had gone nuts. The liftman had no option but to operate the lift. He did give me some peculiar stares though.

And that was that.

More kudos Google's way

Yesterday I used Google Notebook (http://www.google.com/notebook) for the first time - and I'm very happy with it. It is an excellent piece of software, and very useful too, especially for a person like me who reads a majority of his articles online and likes to store the better ones. There are some bugs that need to be sorted out with, in the word editing section. However, they are very trivial bugs, so they did not pose much of a problem in the end as I found out a way around them. (And tell me about a word processor that does not give problems when you directly copy a highlighted amalgam of text, script and pictures from a webpage.. MS Word surely does !)

I've already made separate notebooks for all the distinct verticals I could think of - I thought that would be better idea as compared to make similar sections under one notebook. If you don't get what I'm saying, just give Google Notebook a try, it is definitely worth it. While scanning through some info on Notebook just now at Wikipedia, I found out that Micrsoft has had a somewhat similar product in its stable for quite some years now called Microsoft OneNote or some such thing. I think it is time they started offering some stuff free and online, otherwise they are going to lose many a valuable customer.

While on this topic of Microsoft, Google, open-source, piracy etc, I would like to make a mention of an article written by a friend of mine, which I thought was very good. Take a look at it. I too have some stuff to contribute on this topic, but I think I shall write it in another post.

Overheard

Location : Outside a shop called Jack's where we used hang out during a break in our coaching classes.

Faiz : "D, dude, you are like a barometer."
D : "Why man ?"
Faiz : "Because a barometer has vacuum at the top."
Burn ! Laughter for 10 minutes.

Explanatory Note 1 : D was our favourite bakra. Initials used to protect identity.

Explanatory Note 2 : It is possible that this joke might have crossed paths with the reader. However, I assure you that the joke was cracked originally on the spur of the moment by the aforementioned Faiz.

Wireless

I love things that are wireless. By wireless, I mean absolutely without wires, not just wi-fi. I believe in the literal meaning of wi-fi - wireless fidelity - loyalty to that which is without wires. And fidelity towards wireless need not be restricted to snazzy electronic gadgets - it can be applied to almost any gadget or machine.

The arrival of mobile phones, satellite communication techniques, technologies like GPRS, CDMA, 3G etc. are slowly but surely negating the need for having wired telephone and internet access. Sure, wired communication is still safer, cheaper, faster and more reliable for the general public. Sure, all internet traffic travels through gargantuan and serpentine layers of undersea cabling and a worldwide network of telephone cables. Sure, Relcom purchased Flag Telecom and recently finished laying cables across the length and breadth of India. In my opinion, however, wireless is the proverbial 'lambi race ka ghoda', the technology of the future which will render wires obsolete within the next few decades.

I dream of a world in which all voice and data communication takes place only through the wireless medium.

Today, an ever increasing number of people own personal computers. Organisations invest heavily in a lot of computer hardware - PCs, network routers, storage and backup media, etc. All these are connected with wires. The standard desktop PC is a huge mess of interweaving wires - the daily jhaad-poos-waali-bai's worst nightmare. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, printer, scanner, webcam - all have to be connected to the CPU. There are inter-speaker wires for those 5.1's and 7.1's. The iPod has to be connected with a wire as also the mobile phone. Add to that all the power cables and internet cables. It's a mad, mad world. But nowadays, wireless mice and keyboards are becoming cheaper, and hence, more popular. The other components still use wires only, but this is set to change with bluetooth and other such short-distance high-datarate technologies being invented, perfected and mass distributed. Laptops are also being used by many more people, and a laptop is one of the strongest proponents of the wireless world.

I dream of a world in which laptops and slim wifi-communicating-component-based desktops become commonplace, and all communication with PnP devices is wireless.

Some years back, these people we knew, had purchased a flat in the outskirts of Pune. Since the area was in the purlieu of city, the municipal corporation wasn't supplying water to that area. The society had to make do with a couple of borewells dug up near. However, this water contained salts and other minerals, which made it non-potable. Hence, they had to purchase those 20 liter plastic cartons of water. Later, however, they came across this machine in an ad, which converted the water vapour in the air into drinking water. The manufacturers guaranteed atleast 20 liters of water a day. I do not know whether they actually purchased the 'aquator', but it lent high-octane fuel to my imagination - it created the possibility of elimination of water pipes from our lives. In the same way, a device could be created that would 'vaporize' all the used and unclean water, or better still purify it immediately for reuse.

I dream of a world in which there are no ugly waterpipes disfiguring our homes and bathrooms, and where the atmosphere itself is a conduit for all the water that we need.

Quite a few people must have read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. In that, the leading hero, John Galt, invents a motor that is able to generate electricity / power from air. It is certainly a very fantastic claim. But, having seen the great leaps taken in technology over the past decade and a half, one cannot discount outright the possibility of such an invention taking place some years down the line. And if the invention is exactly the way it is described in the book, producing energy from thin air and yet not polluting it a bit, then it would solve 90% of the world's problems - think fuel shortage, oil and gas wars, related inflation, environmental problems and global warming. But, my focus is not on that. I look at the beauty of it - no horrendous transmission lines dotting the horizon. No ugly tangled masses of wires near your house. Clean standalone devices. No wires to trip over.

I dream of a world in which there are no messy wires spoiling the beauty of compact devices.

Some things that I wish for, especially those in the previous paragraph are way too far-fetched. However, the other things that are mentioned are very much feasible - and have already been implemented somewhere or the other. I really can envisage something like this happening in my house. Imagine your music system, your laptop / cool wireless compact lcd-screen desktop, your portable music player and your mobile seamlessly connected through wireless medium, offering an unimagineable fluidity as far as your data is concerned.

I dream on . . .


Disclaimer : This post has been written on the spur of the moment and without any research. So, some claims might be very far-fetched and some closer to reality than can be imagined.

Gadgets I'd like to own

I am an out-and-out gadget freak. Just seeing a new gadget can make my day. Owning a new device keeps me happy for months. If someone even touches any gadget I own, I become restless. I hate lending my gadgets - though ofcourse, nowadays I have consciously decided to become generous, because I don't like to borrow something and then not lend in return. Still, I am very particular as to who I lend my gadgets to.

As a student, who has not yet settled down on his own, I feel these are the gadgets I would like to own to feel complete from a luxury point of view - a laptop, a mobile, a flash memory mp3 player, a portable media player, a satellite radio set, a digital camera, a handycam, a good set of portable speakers and good set of headphones. Ofcourse, this is all fantasy - I don't quite have the money to own any of these gadgets !

Laptop - A Sony Viao or an Apple iMac would the most preferred. The high-end Dell or HP laptops would be good to, but I have a great attraction towards products from the stables of Sony and Apple. Since I'm in India, buying an iMac would be like buying a car that works perfectly, but only on 5% of the roads. So, Viao it is. I would love to buy that model which supports Blu-ray disc-writing - and I would like my laptop to be a powerhouse of sorts - high RAM, a humongous hard-disk and a fast dual-core processor.

Mobile - Again, the iPhone is ruled out as of now. So, I would either opt for a Nokia N series mobile in the 90+ series or the Moto Razr 2.

Mp3 player - I would like to own two mp3 players. The iPod nano and the Sony exercise walkman player, both with flash memories of 4 or 8 GB.

PMP - Without doubt, the COWON A2. A friend of mine has it, and using it is a delightful experience.

Satellite Radio - There's not much choice in India, so Worldspace it is.

Camera - The most expensive Cybershot offered by Sony.

Handycam - A digital hard-disk based handycam from Sony again.

Speaker Set - Any speakers from either Creative, Bang & Olufson or Bose.

Headphones - Since Bose has been advertising their headphones so much, Bose it is.


Aaah ! Just thinking about these gadgets has released a flood of endorphins and other happiness and exhilaration inducing chemicals in my body . . .

A wise saying in Marathi

For the past half an hour or so, I've been trying to figure out how to publish a post using the Devnagiri lipi, but my wetware is slipping, so I am forced to write it in English. Readers familiar with Marathi will, however, surely be able to understand it - and appreciate the wisdom behind it !

"Zo pahiley naak dharee,
Toch aahe paadkaree"

Translated, it means, whoever clamps his nose first in disgust at the foul smell of a possible fart, is the culprit who has let lose the noxious gases from his flatulent abdomen.

I do not expect a person unfamiliar with Marathi to find this very funny, but if you understand Marathi well and yet do not find this funny at all, then please forgive me. As a weak excuse, I would like to quote David Ogilvy, who, in one of his books has made this very memorable remark - "From my father I inherited two things - smoking a pipe and a scatological sense of humour."

My father certainly does not smoke a pipe, and neither do I, but as relatives and friends will vouch for in all earnest, I have certainly inherited a very morbid and scatalogical sense of humour from my father !

Update - For some arbitrary reason, today (Sunday, April 06, 2008), I figured out how to do it . . . here is the Marathi version

जो पहिले नाक धरी,
तोच आहे पाद्करी ||

Suicide : Crime or Not ?

I feel that committing suicide is not a crime, and a person who has tried committing suicide with sincere intentions and has failed, should not be penalized. However, I am all for suicide being a severely punishable offence. The reason is that this will serve as a deterrent for all those people who feign suicides to generate attention or sympathy. And, the declaration of a suicide attempter as a criminal, will indirectly benefit the people who really want to commit suicide, in that, they know that they cannot fail - the life which drove them to suicide will become even worse.

Dry and droll

Years ago, while leafing through Reader's Digest, I had come across this joke. A man who was going through the diary of his grandfather had sent Reader's Digest an entry on some date long ago -

"Raining heavily.
Day gloomy.
Drank 2 pegs of Scotch whiskey.
Day still gloomy."

I had found it so funny that I remember it well even after so many years. My afternoon is also passing somewhat like that.

"Very hot, humid and dull.
Day gloomy.
Drank water from one coconut.
Day still gloomy."

The Educated Cobbler

This is a true story. I repeat, this is an absolutely true story with no fabrications or exaggerations whatsoever.

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I was in Calicut at that time and my sandals needed repair. I remembered that quite a few cobblers used to sit lined up along the road near the local Medical College. I went there by bus, and sure enough, there were around four cobblers there, sitting solemnly on the road with their backs resting on the railing separating the road from the pavement. Each one of them was sitting on those tarpaulin mats, with a black umbrella somehow propped up to protect themselves from the heat of the sun. I picked one of them who seemed idle at that moment and removed the sandals from the plastic bag. Since I am not quite adept at the local language, I decided to avoid speaking as far as possible, and using gesticulations instead, to communicate.

I pointed at all the places where the sandals were torn, looked at the cobbler, nodded and said "Stitch haan.. here".

"So, you are a student ?".
"Uhh.. eh ? Ah, yes.. I am studying at NIT Calicut."
"And what is your name ? I am Sam."
"I'm ---."

And so on. Sam told me that he had been befriended by a professor of English at some college nearby, and this professor had taken the efforts to teach him English. Not only that, he had also lent Sam many books from his personal library. That was many years ago, and this professor was no longer alive. After that, Sam had taken to travelling in and around North Kerala and North Tamil Nadu - "cobblering" along the way - he had spent some years in Coimbatore, and now he was back in Calicut. Amazing !

"Stalin was from a humble background too. His father was a cobbler, like me."
"You mean Stalin, of Russia ?"
"Yes. The dictator of Russia."

So, this guy was really well read. I made a mental note to check this up, but I was pretty sure it would be accurate.

We continued chatting in English - about the weather, about Malayam, about English, about Bombay... A boy carrying some glasses filled with black tea, "chaaya" in local parlance came by, kept a glass near the mat, and went on with his round. The cobbler took the glass in his hands and asked me - "Would you care to have some tea ?". I politely declined. He took a sip, "It is very strong. All of us cobblers here drink this black tea. We need it - the heat makes us tired."

Now the sandals were done. He showed me the new stitches. He had really stitched the sandals well.

"How much ?", I asked.
"15 rupees."

That was very reasonable. I felt he should have asked more - and I wanted to pay him atleast 20. But, for some reason, I felt it would look odd, and he had that gentlemanly air and that pride about him which made me hesitate paying a tip. So I paid him the 15 bucks.

I wrapped the sandals in the polythene bag and turned to go. Sam took out a bidi, lit it up and said grandly, "Now I will fag !".

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View from PJ Towers, Dalal Street