Auto-parking

I guess one of the most difficult things of driving a car is parking and that too parallel parking. I am sure many of the drivers find it extremely difficult to do it. How about this for parking help? 

Watch this..

The technology is amazing. I am sure we will one day have "auto-driver" cars. 

Squirrels - Chip and Dale

Have always wondered how cartoons like Mickey, Donald, Tom and Jerry etc. actually were actually thought of. As the story goes, Walt Disney came up with the character of Mickey after watching a mouse nibble on some food. I bet this would have been quite an inspiration.

Coming to think I can very clearly see Chip and Dale have come from. I have these group of squirrels in my garden which seem to be well fed by the left overs which our maid leaves for them every morning. I guess they have become so used to it that they do not go in search of food else where. They have a ready made breakfast served on the table everyday. Some days I have even seen them eating their breakfast with Lays chips to go with :-).

The squirrels are amazingly quick and I just love the way they nibble away in their perched squat on their hind legs. It is a treat to watch them. And they are so timid creatures that a small movement or noise scares them away. They scamper away as quickly as they can into the trees and bushes. 

I clicked quite a few snaps these fellas. For that,  I had to do lure them with the bait at the middle of the garden and quite a long wait to get them come and pose for the snaps. :-)

Some of Disney's Chip and Dale goody's..

Recycling

Some ads are really innovative especially when they try to tell a message. Have a look at this.

Safety in Formula 1 cars

Gone are the days when car racing as a sport was dangerous. I guess they are much more safer than the driving on the present day roads in India. Have a look at these videos. This was an accident which happened to Robert Kubica in a  Formula 1 car in the Canadian Grand Prix.  The accident is so spectacular and one would assume the accident would have been fatal or the driver would have been injured seriously. But guess what, Kubica just walks away with a sprain in the ankle.

Shows the safety of today's Formula 1 cars. :-)

This is the official explanation of why Kubica survived the crash.

Color Conscious

The other day we were having a discussion regarding the skin colors of people. Nature has not made all human beings to have same skin tone. We have people in some parts of the world, with the deepest of the deep browns bordering on black, to some people who are so fair that one could even see the blood through the veins near the skin. And in between these there are people of various color tones.

Are these skin tones just the color or do they signify more in our socio-economic structure and more so in the attitude of the people? It is not rocket science to conclude that they are more than just colors. These color of the skin has created histories and also have altered the outlook of the people in general over the thousands of years of our civilization. Biologically, there seems to be no difference between one human to another which can be addressed to the color of the skin, but socially it is much different.

We all know the most (in)famous fall out of the color discrimination - apartheid. It has been one of the most despicable, events in history of mankind where the color of the skin has been used to segregate the people and more so the natives of the land. Also closer home, it was similar but though it was not named so. I am not sure how this kind of social order crept in... was it just the power held by people with a certain color of skin which caused this or is it more. But I think this started much before apartheid actually was practiced at least with that name. I feel this kind of social order has crept in to mankind, where this kind of racism has been ingrained into our genes.

Has it really been eliminated? I don't think so. They still are very evident albeit in a more subtler way. The subtlety can be seen in the way we choose our housing neighborhoods, the way we interact with people with a different color and so on and so forth. In many cases in India, even though as a race, the skin tones range from fair to dark, there can be many instances of this preferential status to people with fairer skin. It is funny to see people advertise oneself to be on the fairer side in matrimonial ads even though one is not. For example, a person with brown complexion, would advertise himself/herself as fair and a real dark person would advertise himself as brown. On the lighter note, the matrimonial ads should have an entry, just like ones age, a quantifiable measure of ones complexion.. may be in wavelength of these colors.. LOL !! BTW, people have invented a word called "wheatish" complexion, to signify a color similar to wheat.

Even surprising still is the reaction of a person on the street, to another person who is fairer.. I am talking of people, say a roadside peddler may show a slightly higher amount of respect to a fair person, on first sight until he/she has conversed for sometime when the perspective could change. But the initial reaction is something which is to be noted.

The more interesting part is the constant craving of "becoming" fair. The youth especially see that being fair instantly adds a charm in the eyes of the opposite sex and they stand a better chance of landing a date or friendship. And actually in many cases I guess it is true as the opposite sex is also from the same culture and thinks the same way. The cosmetics and marketing industry are one of the other bunch of people who cash in on this notion of the people especially the youth. Each company boasts of creams and gels and what not which can make one fairer. Some even talk about 100% satisfaction in 30 days etc. One other company markets a product only to the men folk. The ad says "Don't use creams which are meant for women, use this.. This is meant for men" LOL !!! This is a huge industry.

The ads for these products removes any subtlety I talked about earlier. They depict very clearly, how being fair was advantageous and hence their product needs to be used. There was this add for one such cream, where a girl was going to audition for the role of a commentator for cricket matches. The add shows that she was selected just because she used their cream and became fair and hence was selected. I never knew one had to be fair to be able to comment on a cricket match where the commentator is hardly shown on the television screens. :-) Such is the message which is told by the industry.

While a country like India, manufactures tons of creams to make oneself fair, there are all these people in the "fairer" part of the world, who want to become dark :-). People in Europe and America's wait for the summer and go and lie by the pool or on the beach next to being naked, wanting to get tanned. And in winter or if they cannot access a pool or a beach, they get hold of the ultraviolet or whatever based indoor tanners, where one lies down in a box with a weird light all around him/her. This supposedly gives an even tan to the whole body. This is hilarious. All of us are never satisfied with whatever skin color we have. The fair wants to become dark whilst the dark wants to become fair.

To end the post, another funny dialogue from a movie.

Son : Mother, why did you give birth to me dark?
Mother : So that you will not become dirty.

ROTFL !!!!

Big Picture

People in the present day corporate are always told of one thing.. "See the big picture". While it might be a very good thing to do.. not sure how many would have really seen this big a picture :-)

Muscle Power over Electric Power

Heard about this.. Muscle power over electrical power. We have heard that cars or road vehicles need a push sometimes when they are low on battery or some such things... but ever heard that a train had to be pushed. This bizarre incident happened in Bihar.

Apparently a passenger train was stopped by pulling the emergency brakes. When the train came to a halt, it stopped in the neutral zone between two electric poles. When the train was being resumed, the engine would not fire up. Ooops. Irate passengers started making noise.. The driver then instead of facing the wrath of the passengers, requested them to give the train a "push". The train apparently needed a push for 4 meters.

The passengers heaved and hoed to finally move the train by 4 meters in half an hour. This is really hilarious... never heard of something like this.

Now just one thing is left, the captain of a flight comes on air just before take off, while welcoming the passengers on board.. also says "Welcome aboard XXX Airways, Today we are embarking on a flight from A to B. BTW we request passengers to lend us a hand in starting this journey by giving a push" !!LoL!!

Yellow Fellow

Flowers are great subjects to be photographed. I am fond of flowering plants, and have a small garden though just in pots. How about this yellow hibiscus blooming away?

Missed by a Whisker

Well this is another of those posts which most of Bangalore bloggers would write about.. No cookies for guessing.. Traffic. Actually I will not talk about traffic per se but more on how I was surprised. My drive to work in the morning is, like most of us, in the peak hours that is 9ish. My usual drive time on a normal day (non holidays) is an average of 45-50 minutes. The fastest I have ever driven from work to home or vice versa is in 17 minutes, that was one day in the wee hours of the morning.

The drive time from home is an amazing leveller. It always happens that if I get through some part of my drive relatively jam free and make good progress, that means that I would most probably be caught in a jam in a different part of the drive. So some how or the other, the drive time comes to the 45-50 minute range. I have always wondered, whether there is communication between motorists in one part of the town to the other, where they tell that I have gotten through here, slow me down elsewhere :-).

There have been a few days where I have been slow all through and my drive time has been near the 1 hr time band. These days are not that often neither are they so far in between. Actually the evening drives back home more are less tend to be longish. I always wondered why. People who did come to work in the morning are the ones who are going to go back, then I should see a similar time in the evening too. But that is not the case, the drive takes atleast 20% more time. I presume the evenings also include people who do not venture out in the morning but venture out in the evening for shopping !!

But today was a different day. From the time I started from home today, it just happened that I never got caught in any of the jams. More so, I even did not stop in the signals where I am more than 95% sure to be caught in the red. I could not believe what was happening. Since I passed through the initial part relatively quickly, I was more or less sure that I would be slowed down later during the drive, just as any other day. But voila that did not happen. I was moving from one traffic junction to another in all greens. Yes !!! I thought I will make it this time, the sub 30 minute drive during peak hours. Myself, being a great fan of motor racing, tend to talk a lot of race lingo, so the "sub-30" minute thing. Actually I am so much into racing, that when I am driving behind a slow moving car in front, I increasingly start feeling that I am driving behind a "safety car" just like in the races :-P.

So coming back to my drive, I was like 1 Km from work, just when I thought I had the best peak hour "lap" in my bag, the jinx did set in. The traffic slowed and came to a standstill. It had taken me 27 minutes to reach there. I just needed a 3 minute drive in the last kilometer. The traffic started moving again slowly, but too slow for what I needed. I moved on and I had 30 seconds more to go and another 500 meters. But then the dreaded thing happened. The signal turned red, the second red signal in all of the 16 kilometer drive I had today. There it goes, I will not be able to make it. The count down clock on the signal was ticking by 20, 15, 10, 5 and 0. Then finally I made through the last 500 meters. So the total time I took was 31 minutes.

**Sigh** I missed my "sub-30 minute" lap by a whisker. I am not sure whether I will ever do it again. This was one of those rare occasions where I even came close to it.

Renewed Hobby

After a long time I tried something which I was fond of before - painting. It was something which I was fairly good at during my primary and high school days but never got around to paint anything after that. I has been nearly 17 years. So yesterday I did roll over the inertia and tried my hand at it. It was definitely hard thing to start of with as I was completely out of touch. But then was able to complete the painting. I chose a rather easy subject to start of with.

I made some mistakes on the way and was not happy that I made them. But when I finished the painting it was not the best of my paintings but it was better than I expected it to turn out when I started. I relived my school days when I would paint and try to mix colors to get the right hue. It was enjoyable. The very fact that I could start painting again itself is immensely satisfying. Now that I have crossed the first hurdle, I plan to paint more. So expect more..

Here is the one I painted

Spin your web

In one of my earlier posts I had talked about man made and natural, and actually I had talked about birds weaving their nests etc. Today I saw one such act of nature live.

There was a spider which had decided to make its home in my garden. So it had begun its construction activities. Spider Webs comes in different types. So this one in my garden, I guess, belongs to Aranaidae family which spins spiral orb webs.

The striking factor of this whole "construction" activity was the speed. This guy was amazingly fast. He/she spun the web which had a diameter of about a foot and a half in just around 10 mins, that too with amazing precision. It is a pity I did not record it on video.

It was too dark at that time, but I managed to get a good picture of the construction. Looks like he did not take a day off on May Day/Labor Day (Read my earlier post) :-P

May Day

Today is May Day, the first of May. May day is celebrated by many communist and socialist nations as the workers day. But actually it has spread to many countries which are not communist or socialist too and they celebrate it as a Worker's Day.

Today I too have a day off at work on account of May Day. I work in the software industry where there is no such concept as unions or the like. Even we were awarded a day off for the "Worker's Day or Labour Day". But then I found that the actual people who do the more intensive labour were really not given a day off. There was a huge construction going on near my house and the construction continued as any other day. I had an electrician come to my house for some work and he was working too. So did I see many other people working as usual even on "Labour Day".

Should they not be the people who should get the day of first before us?

Sky wars

The sky wars are raging... Indian skies have opened up for the various airlines and now there are many airlines offering services both to the premium customers and low cost customers. Now there are so many airlines to choose from to fly. Now that options are high, so is the marketing to woo the public.

This was one of the set of hoardings seen in Mumbai, depicting the sky wars. Superb.. marketing

India's world cup cricket debacle

India exited out of the Cricket World Cup 2007 early.. too early than the whole world expected. Anyway.. I am an ardent cricket fan and a great supporter of the Indian team, so naturally I am too upset about the whole episode. I was so upset the next day after the debacle that I hardly found anything interesting to do. So I don't want to ramble on further about this.

But I found something very funny. This piece is making rounds on the radio stations and I found it hilarious, not sure whether the cricketers will, but what the heck.

Enjoy..

The Ubiquitous Airtel Jingle

Way back in 2002 when we first saw this ad on TV, it blew the Indians of their feet. I think no other ad jingle was ever so popular.

It was and is still so popular that various morphs of this basic tune is still making the rounds in the ads.
It is the single most popular downloaded mobile ringtone.
Lots and lots of cars use this tune as their backup alarm.
I have even seen house bell ringers with this tune.. and many more.

A truly amazing piece of music from Rahman as usual. What is more surprising is that this is just an ad jingle, not even a movie OST or an album, and it is so popular.


Also I found so many user reproductions of this tune on the net. Enjoy some of them.

See the original one ad where it all started




Some later versions

airtel blackberry ...

Some user reproductions

Weekend Blues

Another of the long weekends whizzed past me. Every time I come close to a weekend I plan to do some of my long pending, or let me say, long planned activities, but many times they do not materialize. This weekend was a rather hectic sprinkled with some periods of illness.So in effect another weekend which went by without a lot of my "long pending" activities. The weekend had social visits and also some mandatory activities which needed to be done.

But again, I did not do what I had planned to do. Now that it is Sunday night, I am feeling bad that I lost another of the weekend.

Have you guys felt the same?

Gladiator

I have always liked many kinds of music except hard rock and anything harder than that :-) . I like Indian Classical Carnatic music and also many of the other non conventional music which is normally classified as "new age" or "world music" genres. I just wanted to share some of such music which I like. So let me start with one.

Gladiator Main The...

This is the OST of the blockbuster "Gladiator". I like the movie a lot and of course the theme music too. It has varied emotions in it of both pain and calmness. I don't understand the language, not sure what is being sung, but I can just feel the emotions from the music itself. Another of the great pieces from Hans Zimmer.

Listen to it..

Saying the right thing

A forwarded joke..

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A guy woke up at home with a huge hangover. He forced himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he saw is a couple of aspirins and a glass of water on the side table. He sat down and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed.

Rohit looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotless, clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins and notices a note on the table.
"Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go shopping. Love You!"

So he goes to the kitchen and sure enough there is a hot breakfast and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating. Rohit asks, "Son, what happened last night?"

His son says, "Well, you came home around 3 AM, drunk and delirious. Broke some furniture, puked in the hallway, and gave yourself a black eye when you stumbled into the door".

Confused, Rohit asks, "So, why is everything in order and so clean, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me? I should expect a big quarrel with her!"

His son replies, "Oh, that! Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your clothes n shoes off, you said , "hey !!!!!!! leave me alone! I'm married!"

Moral
Breakfast -- Rs. 100.00
Self-induced hangover -- Rs. 2000.00
Broken furniture -- Rs. 20,000.00
Saying The Right Thing While Drunk - "PRICELESS" !!!!!!!!!!!!

Blind Spiders !!

What do you think a spider can do that too a blind one? It has actually stopped the progress of setting up a mine worth $10 Billion. This is in Western Australia where a new iron ore mine was being setup. As part of the excavations they found few species of this spider and they were deemed as endangered species. Hence the mining has been put on hold. So what is so special about this spider?

These species of spider are a form of animals called troglobites. These animals apparently live only in pitch darkness, i.e. total darkness. They live underground in caves mainly. These animals cannot survive the normal sunlight even for minutes as they are affected by the ultra violet rays. They have adapted themselves so much to this kind of environment, that many of such troglobites do not have functioning eyes anymore. Many of them also seem to have lost pigmentation, i.e they do not have colors and are translucent. These animals feed upon few organic material found in the crevices and cracks in the rocks and also from left overs of food of other animals which frequent the caves. So these animals seem to be very much dependent on their local ecosystem that any kind of tampering with it could cause them to be killed.

This fragile ecosystem of these creatures has led to the holding of mining as it would destroy their ecosystem and hence the species itself.

What I find very interesting in this itself, is the nature of these creatures. They seem to thrive only in darkness. These guys have developed other senses like strong sense of smell, vibration sensors etc. which are needed in the dark environs over their eyes. Nature has so many different types of creations.

AT & T and Cingular

Cingular, one of the largest Mobile Service provider in USA is going to be renamed as AT & T. In this age of mergers and acquisitions, these name changes have seem to become common. But the history of this is pretty hilarious.

Watch this.. :-)