InCubbator

Two Otocorrect Jocks

2011-01-28T20:50:00.001+05:30

Malayalees have an inclination for the round "O" sound when we talk.

For example, we tend to pronounce the word "Auto" as "Oto".

Being self-conscious and also self-effacing by nature, we make a genuine effort to oto-correct when we find we made a mistake, and pretend it never happened...often with hilarious consequences...

Here are two illustrations from real life (courtesy Jeswin & Abid)

1. --- JOBY --

Joby was a Malayalee who migrated to the US. People made so much fun of his pronunciation that the poor chap even changed the way he pronounced his name! Earlier, he was Joe-bee, now he was Job-bee!

Once, when Joby had come to Bangalore, we went out for lunch at a restaturant.

After taking the order, the waiter asked, "What would you like to drink, sir?"

"I'll have a Cock please. Thank you!"

2. --- VIVEK ---

Vivek (English was not his strong suit) was out on a trek with friends when he spotted a scarecrow in one of the fields

"Hey, look guys! A scapegoat!!!"

Everybody started laughing.

Vivek quickly oto-corrected himself,

"Oh, sorry! I meant scape-got."

Film Festival Diary - IFFK 2010

2010-12-16T20:53:00.001+05:30

20101216

Think I'm retiring from this year's edition.

20101215 Optical Illusions

Was supposed to be "a delightful comedy" according to the blurbs. Delivered in parts. Interestingly characters albeit without depth - a blind man who regains his sight and along with it pessimism, an employee being trained for unemployment...Lots of humor understated

20101215 Zephyr

Nobody reminded me..what I'd noted day before yesterday! Made-up Symbolism and Songs with Meaning tire and stress me out now. Cow lost (calf without mother), mother of protagonist comes home. Later mother leaves, cow returns. Not all without substance though.

20101215 Certified Copy

If you have a good enough copy one won't miss the original. Movie illustrates the point beautifully, starting with discussions about Art - paintings and their copies. Then the lead characters (a writer and a fan) role-play as husband-wife. The lines are quickly blurred. Intriguing.

20101215

Decided to go for 3 today!

20101214 The Light Thief

Movie about an adorable inventor in the middle of nowhere. Slow-moving but poignant.

20101214

Decided to take it slow. Going for only one movie today

20101213 Lola

Remind me to never watch movies about bringing up a kid alone, woman director. No substance, some good music.

20101213

Announcement in hall: "I kindly request you to switch off your mobile phones."

20101213 Silent Souls

Depressing Russian movie about belonging and death. Merjan rituals and vodka-washes...Perhaps a dream the director or the author dreamt, should have stayed a private fantasy... Must say the movie was made with genuine feeling though

20101213 The Grandmaster

Japanese movie (1960s) captivates whether you know anything about the game of Shogi or not. Powerful acting by daughter of the Grandmaster in the scene about the Silver-Bullet move stands out as a highlight.

20101212 Of Love And Other Demons

Boring boring. A prototype of the pretentious art-movie stereotype. Provided me with a most refreshing power-nap. Rabies, a priest's love affair with a teenager...shot mostly in darkness and dungeons...made me long for the lights to come on. Shots of faces half in darkness, half in light seem to be the director's favorite trick to provide symbolism...slipping into the dark side...

20101212 Apart Together

A nice Chinese movie about a man returning to his lover after 50 years and planning to take her back from her husband. The husband agrees! Enjoyed a song that reminded me of the drinking songs of Malluland.

20101211 The Daughter-In-Law

Nice to be touched by genius every once in a while, Silent movie from Kyrgyzstan with no dialogue. Powerful storyline. Symbolic interludes with shots of animals are a little bit cheesy but acceptable.

20101211

I'm delegate number 13309.

Card Hacking With The Aashaan

2010-09-18T12:56:00.000+05:30

On a lazy Saturday morning, nothing better to do - decide to analyze cards along with Nithin "Gokul" Rajagopal aka Cindy aka Aashaan, who has an insanely good visual memory...

Each face card (JKQ) is different!

Aggression

Only card with a raised weapon - King Of Hearts

Grooming!

Only king without a moustache - King Hearts - He also has 4 hands in views. Hands up?

Only people with curls inwards - King Of Hearts and King Of Diamonds

Jack Spades is the only guys with multiple curls

Profiles

Only cards showing the side-view - Jack Of Spades, Jack Of Hearts & King Of Diamonds

Attitude!

They don't care? Looking away from Sign - Jack Of Clubs, King Of Spades, Queen Of Spades, Jack Of Spades

King Of Clubs and the Queen Of Hearts don't have their sign on their attire! All the rest do!

Who You Are Versus What You Are

2010-03-16T11:17:00.004+05:30

Of late, I have been analyzing various social interactions and personal conflicts from the angle of Who-You-Are versus What-You-Are and I've found that it explains a lot of things: from extravagant weekend shopping sprees to Daddy-wasn't-there situations to I-won't-talk-to-you-anymore personal crises...

Who You Are: There are things you do because of your intrinsic nature. You are who you are. That's the kind of person I am!

What You Are: There are things you do or want to do because of things you have no control over. Victims of circumstance is what you are. I do what I have to do!

Examples

Army officers: Attention!

People who spent most of their lives working in the army come to expect similar levels of discipline and no-questions-asked obedience in their personal lives as well. They expect you to listen to what they have to say (Attention!) and this is what often leads to coffee-table monologues!

Beggars: What kind of cheapo are you?

A beggar pleads with you for money persistently. Finally, you are touched and finally give him small change. Then It has happened to me!

Beggar: Please...Please...Please... (What You Are: Beggars beg)

You: No...No...No... (What You Are: Refuse requests for money from strangers.)

Then you finally give in...give him small

You: Here take this. Hope this change helps. (Who You Are: Human being with empathy)

Beggar: What? 50 paise!!! (Who You Are: I gave up my dignity for this!!??)

Crux

There is an Ego associated with both these components of our personality and this leads to conflicts and problems. Our irritation with people we interact with usually expresses itself with the protests: Who does he think he is? What does he think I am?

It is easier for the What-You-Are component to override and control the Who-You-Are component. I guess how comfortable you are with the sudden switch-overs will determine how happy you are...

Professionally Good!

2010-02-16T16:46:00.003+05:30

Can an exceptionally good doctor be an evil person?

A high degree of benevolence is intrinsically associated with some professions. People working in these roles are supposed to help people commonly held to be "un-evil” and we often subconsciously confuse the professional with the personals. Surely, some of the good in the work he does would rub off on him, wouldn't it?

The character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Silence Of The Lambs) was so shocking and effective primarily because of the inherent traits we tend to associate with doctors and cooks. Given that Hannibal the Cannibal was both a doctor, a good cook and a connoisseur to boot, the line of dialogue, "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti." comes as a real blood-curdler!!!

People who are “professionally” good could include -
Doctors: Save us from disease! (Godly actions)
Cops: Save us from bad guys! (Father figures. They enforce the law which is for the greater common good, ensure justice)
Cooks: Feed us! (strong association with Mother, care etc. They feed you, would never knowingly poison you, would they!)

So we tend to assume that if they are good at what they do, since what they do is for the good, they must also be good persons who will not want to do you harm. Surely, he cannot be a bad person!

There are also many movies where the "good cop" hero, also does a lot of bad, evil things. Dirty Harry, for example.

Given the choice of a lawyer, a politician and a doctor, and all of them are ready, willing and equally equipped to help (say, take care of your dog) you, who would you rather go to for some help?

Notes To My Child

2010-02-01T23:52:00.001+05:30

Don't lose:

* your curiosity and sense of wonder. Never hesitate to question Why or to ask Why not!

* your openness and ability to accept new things. This is what I thought, but it could work that way too and, you know what, it might actually be better that way.

* your lack of inhibition and shame. Don't be afraid to try out whatever's on your mind. People might think it's silly but hey, it's just them, who cares!

You'll be better off if you get rid of:

* Your naivete and innocence. Some people are evil, though most of them are harmless because they are selfish as well. You'll be better off with a slight(but hey don't overdo it), mean streak.

* The need to be/feel rewarded for every little thing you've done. Yeah, that was great all right but not everybody realizes it.

* your impatience. It could take some time before things improve.

Greenmailing

2010-01-31T18:45:00.003+05:30

We would love to go green, but we need your help...is a line you often hear from corporates nowadays. It's become so prevalent that there is actually a word that has been invented for it: greenmailing, as opposed to blackmailing.

It's only a change of shade, you know, from blackmail to greenmail. The greenmailer also aims to exploit a sense of guilt in you for his private gain. But one difference i:, the cheapo greenmailers don't have the guts to admit that they are engaging in cheap greenmail, while the blackmailer has no qualms about doing so . What was that about, Honor Among Thieves?

GREENMAIL in action

* The Bank asks you to opt for account-statements by email. Save Paper!, they say.

Distorted viewpoint? Hardly. These pleas are more about saving petty overhead expenses than about the environment. It's all about the bottom-line, and that is the bottom line!

* The Bank then sends you printed fliers about their latest loans and facilities. They even have the temerity to send you (and keep on sending you!) paper reminders of the importance of opting for paperless email-statements!

More flagrant examples of greenmailing are on view at hotels. The Hotel asks you to reduce your water-usage in the wash-room. Water is Scarce!, a prominently placed poster proclaims. The Hotel asks you to not expect a fresh towel/sheet every day. We need to Conserve Resources!, they say. The Hotel asks you to cooperate during the scheduled switching off of the air-conditioner for two hours...with the energy used by an AC in an hour can be used to...blah blah... Use less, save the environment!

Yeah, right!

Photography Was Allowed!

2009-10-11T10:19:00.008+05:30

These snaps were taken when I visited a friend's house - is it in Bangalore or Sign Land, I wonder :), the situation was signs-signs-signs. Some are signs I have (and probably never will :) see anywhere else, some are just naughty perspectives, some are just plain funny! I really had a blast taking these.

The playground was called Concrete Ground for heaven's sake, and there were so many rules that one simply could not relax there...my heart goes out to kids growing up there...

My personal favorites are the no-games-allowed in-toilets, poetic r'turn well-wishing and the children-at-play sign boards... Nope, I did not break any rules taking these pix though, photography was not prohibited!

(I suspect photography will be next! :) )

Malayalitmus Test

2009-09-19T20:33:00.001+05:30

I have devised a litmus test to determine the Malluness quotient of an individual.

Depending on how the person says the following word:
Neerazhi (നീരാഴി) - a synonym for the word "sea"

You can determine how much Malayalam a person knows, how "native" he or she is from the way they pronounce this word.

The na, ra, and zha are different!

TIDBITS
===========
From Wikipedia,

Extinct Kannada letters

Kannada literary works employed letters ಱ (transliterated 'ṟ' or 'rh') and ೞ (transliterated 'ḻ', 'lh' or 'zh'), whose manner of articulation most plausibly could be akin to those in present-day Malayalam and Tamil. The letters dropped out of use in the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. Later Kannada works replaced 'rh' and 'lh' with ರ (ra) and ಳ (la) respectively.^[70]

Another letter (or unclassified vyanjana (consonant)) that has become extinct is 'nh' or 'inn'. (Likewise, this has its equivalent in Malayalam and Tamil.) The usage of this consonant was observed until the 1980s in Kannada works from the mostly coastal areas of Karnataka (especially the Dakshina Kannada district). Now hardly any mainstream works use this consonant. This letter has been replaced by ನ್ (consonant n).^{[citation needed]}

Barking Barking Malayalam Chopping

2009-09-18T20:55:00.007+05:30

A joke that Malayalis share about non-Mallus is that the hapless foreigners always say: "Kurachu kurachu malayalam ariyum". This post is about debunking and clarifying that joke - which is quite an impossibility!

Well, a little more about the "joke".

When the foreigner (who has tried to learn the notoriously difficult-to-speak language) means to say:
"കുറച്ചു കുറച്ചു മലയാളം അറിയും ",
They end up saying it as.
"കുരച്ച് കുരച്ച് മലയാളം അരിയും.".

The former means "Little little Malayalam I know" while the latter means "Barking Barking Malayalam I chop"! :)

There is only a slight difference in pronunciation for the 'ra's involved in this statement. The normal 'ra' (റ) sound that a foreign-tonguer would utter naturally would result in the correct version (knowing-knowing) of the statement in question!

The other ra (ര) is a sound that Wikipedia tells me used to exist in early Kannada and Tamil as well; but they became obsolete there. To understand the difference between the two 'ra's, contrast the two la sounds in "Loyola" (ലൊയോള). The difference between the two 'ra' s is also the same.

The barking-barking version of the statement is actually a testimony to Malayali elitism and sarcasm. The joke is that the foreigner would not be able to say the joke... or hear it, he would auto-correct it.

It is an insider joke!... perverse Malayali humour... :)

Do It With Mirrors

2009-08-27T01:52:00.001+05:30

Today I went along with a friend to (window)shop around for an exercise-machine at the Proline shop on CMH Road. There was a full-wall mirror installed in the display/trial area. I noticed that in this mirror I seemed to be fatter than I thought I was.

I pointed this out to the salesman, who initially pooh-poohed my suggestion. (I am comfortably obese, you see... and who does not think they are slimmer than they actually are?) Then I showed him his reflection in the glass-window in the front (it was night) and asked him to compare it with the mirror. He was also startled by what he saw!

On further investigation, the mirror seemed to be slightly concave and made you slightly more convex; it most definitely had an aberration - a mistake of convenience?

What a brilliant sales-strategy!

1. You enter the shop, thinking that you are getting fat and that need to buy-equipment
2. Make the mirror show you a fatter version of you.
3. Seeing is believing, so...
4. You really need that exercise-machine now, don't you?!!

And On the Seventh He Rested

2009-08-26T23:59:00.003+05:30

I have temporarily defected from the world of gainful employment, after my resignation in July. I am taking an indefinite break from the material world (time and money). As the Tata Safari ad went, it was time to reclaim my life; it was time to rediscover some of my passions, which were slowly slipping away. My world is definitely money-less now, and also, sadly, not as time-less as I thought it would be.

Well, I do kinda miss office and I feel like writing a report. :) Here's the status report on the 50th day-versary of my quarantine.

THE LOWDOWN
================

Life has still been busy. Have been doing things that I would never have done otherwise because they are 'unimportant'.

* Was confined to bed for 6 days - bad case of fever (not swine flu)

* Cleaned up the clutter and piles of junk that had accumulated - both in my house in Bangalore and at home in Trivandrum

* Successfully came up with a blog-idea a day for nearly the whole of July

* Went around with my cousins, who had come down from the UK and the US.

* Went to watch the Badminton World Championship in Hyderabad.
Lin Dan, the Roger Federer of shuttle, won!

* Took a break from computers in general for around 10 days

* Started writing some programs (open-source) that I had meaning to do for quite some time

EVENTS
========
* Fever
* Cleanup
* Speech at family function
* Shuttle tournament - saw the World no.1,2,3,4 in action on the same day
* Coincidence - bus broke down, auto-rickshaw broke down - both on the same trip
* Coincidence - caught my ex-boss bunking office, met an uncle - both accidentally

TYPICAL DAY
===========
8-11 - Get up/breakfast, read newspaper, crossword
11-4 - Go out somewhere (there are random trips on the bus. With a pass, you don't need to tell even the conductor where you are headed. I also go to Reliance Timeout, where you can comfortably sit and browse through books. Or maybe a movie.)
5-7 - Go to read in the neighbourhood park
7-10 - Dinner, laze around
11-3 - On the computer, generally programming also browsing

LESSONS
=======
* There's still no escaping the tyranny of time.
* You can do only one thing at a time.
* It's kind of tough to be responsible for your own time; it's so easy to slip.
* Anything can start to be boring.
* My mood-fix: watching four movies in a row
* It's actually not that important to read the newspaper everyday. You know what, some articles are really repeats!!!

PoA
===
Even now, there's no time! There's still so much stuff on the back-burner to get back to! For instance there's a movie I borrowed nearly 2 years ago: The Two Jakes, unopened books (too many to list :) ), piles of documents and emails to sort... I also need to get up to speed on technology.

Plan to get everything online soon.

The (4,5) Crosswords

2009-07-17T01:58:00.000+05:30

Absolutely frustrated and exasperated with the abysmal quality of the Hindu crossword these days. Negative this post may be, but hey I got me a muse! :)

=====================

(4,5) CROSSWORDS

(ALL DOWN THOUGH) :(

=====================

1 Now in the abyss, just a good girl initially (4,5)

2 Gets confused: one Roman giant jag on Greek slopes(4,5)

3 Girl, clumsy moves ain't a jig (4,5)

4 One ganja git on steroids? Sort of (4,5)

5 Known for a half a jiff gag hints, endlessly confused (4,5)

6 Rhymher: clues neat are buggy, say 5D (4,5)

7 Always gets Aga TJ in karate dress, say gee! (4,5)

8 Respect tag for completely gaga, half nitwit? Hardly. (4,5)

9 Blasphemer in the Holy Grid (4,5)

Discards (only because I am not the answer :) )

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

Eskimo house without toilet messes up Agra monument profit (4,5)

Sings motley clue at Jain gig (4,5)

Crossword Blues

2009-07-08T01:41:00.000+05:30

Returned to doing crosswords today. Was reminded of this poem gathering dust in my vault, more than seven years I think. Thought this was occasion enough - also since now it's nearly two years since I put anything up here. Renaissance Post!

=================

CROSSWORD BLUES

=================

That morning I was out in the garden,

Body in chair, newspaper in hand

My mind none knows where

for it was lost in thought.

So many right, yet so many left.

So many acrosses, I was feeling down

Was it hell or inferno?

Ere come flying did this crow

Blacker than night

Darker even than the mind

of the grid-setter so cryptic.

Twinkle in eye, mischief brimming

the crow, he perched on the arm of my chair,,

looked through icily, said

“What have we here, boxes?

Light boxes, dark boxes,

Shaded boxes, numbered boxes

but filled, lettered ones so few.

It is, I see, that which Nature she abhors!

As to how to fill these blanks,

I’m sure, you have no clue!”

Thus spake the crow.

To these words offence I did take,

For though no master, I was no slouch

And I taught him the perilous

ways through the Holy Grid.

About how a tree was an unetched three

And how the ear was the sense organ of time

About how Al ever managed to operate the lever

And how confused fears made you feel safer.

Thus I explained to him at length

About clues- cryptic, quick, hidden

and other literal sorts you know

the rowdy, wordy anagrammic clues

and funny, punny homophones.

At this juncture,

I paused my lecture.

Not because my pupil was perplexed

rather `cos his were unflexed!

The insolent indolent crow,

he smiled a knowing smile

Not in the least awed

(I know) for now he guffawed

and then he cawed,

“Mere wordplay!

The CrossWord, tis but an eternal truth

The Beginning, cross words were heard

no sooner than God made woman.

Then so many battles, so many wars

when all people did was cross swords”

(How words could this get, I thought)

“And I believe Christ’s last utterings

are now to be had as the Cross-Words,

The End!”

Oh, the way he punned it

I knew he was no crow ordinary

Really, he was some pundit!

And then went flying did the crow.

There was nothing left to do

But to bid goodbye

and jot those immortal thoughts down.

For these crass words

I am not to blame.

(Though the excuse is lame)

These were but the crow’s words!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Tender Resignation

2009-07-07T16:30:00.005+05:30

Yesterday was my last day in my office, where I had worked for nearly 4 years. My tenure there was just like how that Mastercard ad of some time ago went: times that were more better than worse. And thankfully, it was an amicable split (in fact, I had been reading many "How To Handle A Breakup" stories on the Web of late): it was just a case of time to move on.

By a strange and unfortunate stroke of misfortune, I was not well on this last day and was extremely tired throughout. This had to do with my eggscapade of Sunday of course, had caught a bug or a curse on that caper. A major reason for my quit was the realization that there were too many eggs in the fridge of my life - stacks of unread magazines, unexpanded ideas, and many other undone things! But I do hope that this creative-exploration reasoning for my quit holds water when I'm ready to find another job!

I struggled to complete my exit formalities because of exhaustion and was forced to spend most of the day resting at my desk. Hence I was not able to bid cheerful enough adieus to people who came there to my desk and probably decided not to trouble me too much. Guys, it was just that I was ill and exhausted, not sick and tired! :)

PS Yeah, this is the explanation for the recent, increased blogging activity.

Unvital Statistics (TPS Reports)

2009-07-06T16:14:00.005+05:30

Have you ever prepared a report at work that you felt was pointless to prepare and was based on useless data?

A couple of posts ago, I'd mentioned TPS reports in passing. Here's some info. From Wikipedia: "TPS report" has come to denote pointless mindless paperwork after its use in the comedy film Office Space. In the story, a primary character is reprimanded by several of his superiors for forgetting to put the new cover sheet on his TPS report. Mike Judge, who wrote and directed the movie, said that it meant "Toilet Paper Sheet" in the movie.

TPS reports typically gather and formalize unvital statistics. Is there a correlation between the length/number of breaks and productivity? How much time is spent by the typical employee not working - blinking, walking, could be anything - how can we capture and utilize that time? Typically, these questions have common-sense answers but they need to be backed up with evidence, don't they?

What's behind the gathering of these unvital statistics? Why does it happen? Why is it so prevalent?

1. Information loss happens at each level of hierarchy. These reports are an attempt at mitigating the resultant damage.

a) Bosses get insecure because of this inevitable information loss. Already, they are losing touch with field-work and they don't want lose their utility completely. They want to take "informed' decisions and who can say for sure that these stats are, in fact not vital? Hence they want to capture as much data as possible, data being the basis for information.

b) There are TPS reports at all levels. Your TPS report is what forms the basis for your boss's TPS report!

2. It gives you, as an employee, something to do. It helps in boosting your PUF. It gives you an easy opportunity to prove your uniqueness and utility. You know what, my TPS report is the best, packs the most punch!

Data if collected has to be processed into information, interpreted and assimilated. Otherwise the effort expended on collecting the data is a waste. The time spent for interpretation and analysis of the data at each level is an acceptable transmission-loss.

My colleague (who of his own volition neither reads nor writes, hence I am obliged to document!) termed it "statistical masturbation" - because it is useful to none and, in most cases, provides satisfaction to just one! :)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Asides (Analysis/expansion later)
---------------------------------------
1. In information theory, entropy is a measure of the uncertainty associated with a random variable . Work is a random variable. Corporate hierarchies are based on information. The second law of thermodynamics, states that the entropy of the universe always increases.

Eggs In The Fridge

2009-07-05T14:39:00.006+05:30

Recently, I discovered 4 eggs in a forgotten corner of my fridge at home. I was shocked, to say the least, because I realized then that I had bought those eggs nearly one-and-a-half years ago...15 months, no kidding!

Of course, they had gone bad. I tried keeping them on a plane surface and saw that they wobbled - this way, then that, sort of like a pendulum. This, I guess (and recalling my high-school science lessons and of course Google), was due to the build-up of hydrogen sulfide gas within. So the affair of the eggs in the fridge had become a real stinker- both literally and figuratively.

I had robbed those unborn chickens of their utility and denied them the purpose of even their non-existence! Omelets, French toast, cakes... perfectly modest aspirations for eggs, these had not become even those! I decided that these eggs, if nothing, at least deserved to go out with a bang; I owed them a decent funeral.

The thing about funerals is that they are pointless unless there is a release of emotion, any emotion. No funeral is better than a nondescript funeral. How would I give them what I owed?

Now, there is something about watching the eggs go SPLAT against a wall. I don't know why exactly, but I have always been fascinated with this splatting of eggs. I think it has to do with the letting out of pent-up energy, matter which has hitherto been concealed. I figured that this would be the easiest and the best thing to do.

But there was a problem. In the urban maze that our neighborhood was, there was no suitable wall on which to throw these eggs! :( If I did what I planned to near my house, there could be trouble... there were 4 eggs, not just one or two! Daytime: He's throwing rotten eggs! At my wall! Night-time: Who's throwing stuff at my wall, and at this unearthly hour! There was also the risk of other sorts of tensions (communal?) as well...and, in any case, who knew what 15-month old eggs could contain!!!

My friend was going to Chennai in his car today; I decided to tag along. There are some outback pockets on the highway, with lots of ovoid boulders. I wanted to throw the eggs against some of those boulders on the way. Eggs on egg-shaped rocks, one with the elements. He also supported the plan; I guess his interest was piqued by the prospective splat!

On our way to Chennai, we identified the spot for the ceremony (there was a nice boulder at a turning) ; but we were in kind of a hurry, so we decided to do the honors on the way back (we were returning the same day) .

However, during a stop-over on the highway, I took one of the eggs and threw it on the road. It cracked open. I saw that the white of the egg was all gone and only the yellow remained. The yolk looked funny, it becomes sort of a gel after 15 months, you see. And the stench of it, aaarghh!

Our business of the day dragged on till evening and when we set back it was already dusk. We reached our chosen "funeral-spot" only much later. It was dark and there was heavy traffic, we could not stop! Well, when we got back to Bangalore, it was night and it was still unfinished business :(

I ended up throwing the two of the remaining eggs into Ulsoor Lake. They made a splash when they landed in the water. Then I remembered that it was a splat that I had planned. I spotted a tree on the road and I threw the last remaining against the tree. And..I missed!

Those eggs were definitely not well-done.

BeneMal Classification Of Games

2009-07-04T16:41:00.008+05:30

I think our subconscious identification with the inherent symbolism in a game is an important factor in how much we enjoy watching it. Like George Orwell said, "Sport is war, minus the shooting". Somebody else dies, so you watch?

Today I was watching a game of carroms in the recreational area during the lunch-break, and I was reminded of what a snooker commentator had said on TV a few months ago, when the player had pocketed a ball, "The ball has been released into gravity!"

The free fall of the ball symbolizes a release from suffering, liberation. The ball proceeds into a different plane and we feel happy for it. This is also true when we watch a 100m sprint for example. While the sprint is on, the runners have to keep running (suffering)... up until they cross the finish line and they are released from the forced suffering.

In games, as in life, there are rules and there are constraints. However, there is also an end to a game and we survive to reap the harvest, unlike in life. Sport is life, plus a view into the aftermath. This is what enchants us.

If you look at a game from the perspective of a ball/piece, then games can be classified as:

1) Benevolent Games

In games like snooker and carroms, we try to release the balls from the forces of friction and collisions and boundaries of space. The balls are confined to the table/board and are subjected to forceful collisions (ouch!) and ultimately, whoever liberates the board from the pain of the rolling balls is the winner.

2) Malevolent Games

In games like tennis and badminton, we try to keep the ball within the boundaries of the court for as long as possible. And while the ball is still in the court, we keep walloping it. It's almost as if we hate the ball, as soon it comes near us we hit it to the other side. Otherwise, if we allow the ball to continue in its trajectory and it is still in the boundary, we are penalized. Pure evil!

A redeeming fact though, is that if we hit the ball such that the opponent can't return it, thereby becoming agents of liberation for the ball, we are rewarded with points!

3) BeneMal Games

These are games which symbolize the fight between Good And Evil.

In a game like cricket, the batting side tries to put the ball outside the boundary while the fielding side aims to keep it in. Batting good, fielding evil? Well, Good and Evil are both subjective and relative. If you look at the game from a different perspective, the fielding side can be viewed as trying to put the batting side out of their suffering, caused by their desire to liberate the ball! :)

Football too, both teams aim to liberate the ball from the confines of the field in their own way and believes the other team's way is evil. In the midst of this conflict though, the ball keeps getting kicked around! :)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Super Chef In Shantisagar

2009-07-03T15:21:00.007+05:30

I generally have my breakfast from the ShantiSagar near my office; on most days I have rice-bath. (For non-Bangaloreans, ShantiSagar is a chain of vegetarian joints and rice-bath is a generic term for any savoury boiled rice preparation mixed with a variety of vegetables/seasoning that can be had as breakfast; Bangaloreans, excuse my poor ignorant definitions :)

Where I come from, we don't normally eat rice for breakfast. But what made me transcend my gastronomic upbringing was the tastiness and sheer variety that seemed to be on offer. Each day, there were two different types of rice-bath on offer - coconut-rice, tomato-rice, ghee-rice, vegetable-rice, aubergine-rice, pongal, biriyani, pulao, cabbage-rice, capsicum-rice...

Some of these varieties like, for example, capsicum- and cabbage-rice I had not seen in other breakfast-joint elsewhere and hence I believed this to be innovation at work. Plus, whoever was making it was enjoying his work too; the preparation was sure to be tasty without being generic, satisfaction guaranteed!

There seemed to be a virtuoso chef at work right in my neighbourhood ShantiSagar! And it seemed here, you could have your cake and eat it as well, it was cheap as well! Whether he really was a chef extraordinaire is moot, but for me the proof was in the pudding. :)

I thought a little more about this SuperChef and the life he was leading. Somebody so talented and obviously good at what he did, working at a generic food joint chain! His innovation and creativity would mostly be stifled here. Hey, this is really good mate! Exquisite! But this is not rice-bath man, could you please make some rice-bath now please?

The supervisor's perspective was logical as well: what was the point anyway? People came to ShantiSagar expecting rice-bath and not ratatouille or paella. A good ratatouille is a bad bisibelebath, and a paella is probably taboo for most of the customers. So SuperChef, his ultimate duty being to feed the clientele, would willingly submit and decide to be satisfied making innovative rice-baths.

If his creativity was to be bottled, why was he hired then? Because the supervisor only checked for the minimum qualification - "does he make good rice-bath?" - and took any added skills as a bonus freebie thrown in for him. Maybe he will invent a new kind of rice-bath and that will give us a competitive advantage! Who knows!

Surely, SuperChef was not getting paid much either. (A plate of rice-bath is priced at Rs.16 at the restaurant.) Factor in (the mandatory and natural) capitalistic measures and other hierarchical/operational constraints. Probably peanuts, kind of like minimum wage.

Why was my virtual hero doing it then? Why was he not running his own fine-dining restaurant or at least working at a five-star hotel? Probably he enjoyed what he was doing - making good food and people happy. Perhaps that's all he cared about. Or, maybe it could have been that he didn't know too much about other opportunities that existed elsewhere and was not convinced about his suitability/skills.

If you decide to check out the rice-bath in the ShantiSagar near my office after reading this and find that it's not up to scratch, maybe it's because the SuperChef got bored with the "routine innovation" or he got peer-pressured in to normalcy. But I hope it's because he saw the light and quit!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Perceived Utility Factor

2009-07-02T14:45:00.008+05:30

Why do we do the work we do? The answer is simple, isn't it? What we are doing is useful to somebody or for something.

1. Everybody is always doing some thing or the other. (I'm busy now, later man!)

2. These things are useful. (Aw, come on! Why would I do it otherwise?)

3. Why isn't the world a better place than it is? (Wait a minute, I didn't say anything about the world, did I?)

The simple answer was wrong, 2 is a lie. Not all work is useful; some lines of work can even be called destructive!...and damping forces (intrinsic inefficiency) are always in operation. But assuming that you are not evil and are not satisfied by the answers Just for a living/I don't care/Because I have to, why do you do it?

We do things because of their Utility Factor - we think it is/will be useful for somebody or for something. The Perceived Utility Factor (PUF) of what you do gives you a sense of significance and purpose; it puffs your ego up, so to say.

The higher the PUF, the happier you are.

So they tell you how every job has its own dignity and also how important what you are doing is (remember TPS reports!), and you are happy... to have made a difference but...

There exists a RUF (Real Utility Factor) as well! No matter how significant you think your work is (and by extension, you), ultimately it is worth only so much in the real world! The RUF can be a real motivation dampener! Reality, reality go away/Little Johnny wants to work.

The disparity between the RUF and the PUF is what leads to dissatisfaction.

The RUF will always be significantly smaller than the PUF. And that is the answer to why the world is not already a better place! :)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Asides

=======

1. The dual measure for this is the Futility Index (Thanks to my friend Ashish Chaterji for putting this succinctly). There are two variants for this as well - Real and Perceived. Frustration is caused when the Perceived Futility Index exceeds or equals the Real Futility Index.

2. Satisfaction is a number! It is directly proportional to the ratio of the RUF to the PUF

The Satisfaction Index, SI = k* (RUF/PUF)

Employers need to ensure that SI never approaches k (that RUF/PUF always less than 1) because otherwise the employee will lose motivation. Sometimes they do this through promotions :)!

Capture To Free

2009-07-01T16:26:00.010+05:30

When I was in school, every day during the morning assembly, there used to be a section called "Thought For The Day" where somebody would read out a famous saying/proverb/thought. The attempt was to stimulate thinking on those lines (though nobody ever did!) among the students, at least for that day.

If you subscribe to one of the many Quote For The Day or Word Of The Day mailers and then archive them for later reference (I'll read them later) you know what I am talking about. As we chug along down the tracks of life that have been laid down ahead of us, it would be good if we don't have just thoughts for the day, we should also try to have thoughts of the day.

Thoughts are fleeting; they come and go, and thoughts occur to everybody. Often you will be doing something else when they come and you will put them off till later. I'm doing this now, I can't act on that, not now. Later. And then you forget. The thought is lost to you, and you will be left searching for it!

If you are lucky, the thought will come back to you, and then what? Same story.

It is important to that thoughts don't always need to be acted on fully. Like a ghost haunts you till it is avenged, the thought floats around till you express it. Thoughts find an end in expression. Write it down or at least share it with a few friends. It does not matter even if it is not really significant or momentous; treat it like a child of your brain. An unexpressed thought is like an aborted foetus - you never know what it could grow into.

Give it a chance.

Capture the thought and set it free.

One Word Philosophy

2009-06-30T15:04:00.005+05:30

In the Beginning is the Word!

If a concept is succinctly expressible, then its power is increased manifold. Once you are able to freely think in terms of a concept, you can harness its meaning in what you do more easily. As the song from The Sound Of Music goes: when you know the words to sing, you can sing most anything. Similarly, for thought: only if you know the word for it, can you use it any way! ( Sing it! :)

I once read somewhere that in Japanese, they have a single word to describe a person who promises to be a great looker when seen from behind, but turns out to be quite the opposite when they turn around. How many times has that happened to you? And thinking of the effort involved, not chosen to share it. For want of a word, bonding and shared chuckles were lost! :) See, what power of expression means! :) (Sorry, cannot quite recall the Japanese word, dementia excuse: it was a few years ago in The Hindu, I think)

The Holy Books state that the name of God is equivalent to God itself. Christians and Jews even have a Commandment based on this: Thou shalt not take My Name in vain! Words enable us to recall the associated concept efficiently - to create an image in our minds. Indeed, this is what mantras and mnemonics are all about.

Here are some words which by themselves, I believe, are powerful enough to considered philosophies. These are often expressed as interjections and ejaculations by the speaker unknowingly, so deeply are they embedded in the mind. They embody a way of life and sometimes, in my humble ignorant opinion, typify the users themselves!

(Have desisted from citing examples of profane word philosophies. Everybody knows! )

Maqtub (Arabic, It's written)

We have tried our best, the rest is in God's hands. Or, Life is all about following the rules which have been written?

Ashte (Kannada, That's all)

It's no big deal (for me/us implied). Or, actually not much work involved?

Chumma (Malayalam, Just for kicks)

Not everything we do is for a reason, you know? We just do things for the heck of it.

Please add to the list if you know any more.

Office Heat Engine

2009-06-29T15:29:00.007+05:30

The dictionary has it that an office is a "place of business where professional or clerical duties are performed". Do you work in an office or is it just a place you appear busy (place of business)? Scott Adams, Dilbert and probably you as well might disagree, but work actually gets done in an office environment...sometimes! :)

Even though it might seem like you have done nothing, you are exhausted by the end of a day in office, aren't you? The law of conservation of energy has it that your exhaustion means there is an expenditure of energy, and spent energy is equivalent to work done!!!

An office, if considered as an entity, can be viewed as a place where energy is expended and work is done. Thus we can draw a direct parallel to a heat engine. Terms like burnout, efficiency, exhaust etc do not seem to be merely coincidental! :)

From Wikipedia: A heat engine is a physical or theoretical device that converts thermal energy (called heat) to mechanical output (called work) .

The energy input for the office comes from the employees; they provide the heat-source for the office heat engine. The mechanical output (work) of the office may not often be directly measurable or tangible but it is sure to be there (where could it go? :)! The administrative machinery could be viewed as the valves, the rewards (monetary and other kinds) could be considered as lubricants, leave is maintenance and so on!

Now, the process of energy-release from an employee is fraught with inefficiency, as any HR functionary would readily attest. The expenditure of energy or employee-combustion :) does not guarantee that work will be done - lack of concentration, time-wastage, necessary social interactions are all degrading factors as far as the efficiency of the office is concerned. There is a definite factor of probability involved.

Hence, an office is a probabilistic heat engine!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Asides

----------

*Factories and production-houses are different from offices; here, the work done is more accurately and easily measurable

*Do the other laws of thermodynamics apply?

DearDeer Negotiation

2009-06-28T10:14:00.005+05:30

In situations where you want to buy something

1) that is useful to you - you absolutely need it

2) from a person known to you - you will continue to interact with her

3) which is dear to that person - she would want it to be maintained properly.

4) which that person knows is useful to you - she knows you will gain from it.

There are many risks associated with just the exploration of the possibility of a fair deal in these scenarios. You would not want to haggle and bargain too much; you don't want to damage the relationship by exposing each other's cheapness or greed. At the same time, you would not want to pay too high a price either; you will feel that you have been exploited. Or it may be that you might think that you are doing the other a favour and that favour could weigh heavy in the future...

I'm calling this the DearDeer Negotiation technique (rather lame, I know :), imagine it is a pet deer being sold! :)). If both parties can agree to not resort to exploitation or greed, then a fair deal (to the deer as well) could be arrived at like this.

1. Take a piece of paper and write down

Your minimum:

Your maximum:

Your optimum:

2. Take another piece of paper and ask them to write down

Their optimum:

Their minimum:

Their maximum:

3. Average all three items for both

This should be done by a third party if secrecy needs to be maintained.

4. Apply the decision criteria.

If the averages are not within say 20% of each other, a fair deal does not exist (one of the reasons explained earlier will apply ) and both parties may walk away, with no damage done.

Or, you may choose to take it up as a matter to be reconsidered and discussed. There might have been factors that neither of you considered. It can be the starting point for a more direct negotiation.

No Such Thing As A Simple Poll

2009-06-26T11:06:00.005+05:30

I conducted a poll in my office yesterday to select a name/codename for a project. We had 5 options and 13 people on the electoral roll. The idea was to come up with the best name which was agreeable to the most number of people. Given the small numbers involved and the intelligence and absence of malevolence in the population, I thought it would be a simple enough decision to be made democratically. Boy, was I wrong!

The choice was to be made from a set of acronyms:
* These names were thought up by a smaller group from different perspectives on the planned project.
* All of them were acronyms with cheesy expansions - explanatory notes were provided along with the options.

We had to guard against the situation where less people thought that the chosen one was inappropriate (there is a name for this, forgot, couldn't find it on wiki), so I defined some rules aimed to prevent this scenario.

The rules were as follows:
1. It would be an open vote (no anonymity) and had to be sent in by email to a designated pollster(me) before a cut-off time.
The vote was an open one because people could possibly behave irresponsibly when given anonymity.

2. People could vote for the 2 options that they liked the best and rank those 2.
Two choices were allowed to factor in groupthink - people voting for something other than what they truly want because they think the group would want another one.

3. Formula for Calculation of the NAI (Name Appropriateness Index) for was as:
NAI = N(FirstChoice) + 0.5 * N(SecondChoice)
Weightage for the second choice was to respect the decision-making process. In retrospect, maybe that factor should have been a little higher.

4. The option with the highest NAI would be chosen.

5. Ties on NAI would be resolved by an Honorary Adjudicator.
Repolling would be invalid because of the high influence of groupthink. Plus, the title Honorary would incline the Adjudicator to make a responsible choice!

However, it turned out to be a typically microcosmic model of more complex democratic polls
1) A clear winner - There was no tie
2) One abstainer - Hated all the names
3) One absentee - Was not reachable
4) One postal vote - Over the phone
5) One invalid vote - Voted only for 1 option

The winner turned out to be a sub-optimal one and we had to have an intervention from our boss! It left me wondering how sub-optimal the results for a naiver scheme for a larger and less informed population, had to be!

Anti Patterns

2009-06-23T16:52:00.003+05:30

Had a blast with this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern
Presenting an abridged, non-technical version here, because links also die sometimes.
Check out the definitions for mushroom management!

Organizational anti-patterns

* Analysis paralysis: Devoting disproportionate effort to the analysis phase of a project
* Cash cow: A profitable legacy product that often leads to complacency about new products
* Design by committee: The result of having many contributors to a design, but no unifying vision
* Escalation of commitment: Failing to revoke a decision when it proves wrong
* Management by perkele: Authoritarian style of management with no tolerance for dissent
* Moral hazard: Insulating a decision-maker from the consequences of his or her decision.
* Mushroom management: Keeping employees uninformed and misinformed (kept in the dark and fed manure)
* Stovepipe: A structure that supports mostly up-down flow of data but inhibits cross organizational communication
* Vendor lock-in: Making a system excessively dependent on an externally supplied component

Project management antipatterns

* Death march: Everyone knows that the project is going to be a disaster – except the CEO. However, the truth remains hidden and the project is artificially kept alive until the Day Zero finally comes ("Big Bang"). Alternative definition: Employees are pressured to work late nights and weekends on a project with an unreasonable deadline.
* Groupthink: During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking.
* Smoke and mirrors: Demonstrating how unimplemented functions will appear
* Software bloat: Allowing successive versions of a system to demand ever more resources

Analysis anti-patterns

* Bystander apathy: When a requirement or design decision is wrong, but the people who notice this do nothing because it affects a larger number of people.

Software design anti-patterns

* Gold plating: Continuing to work on a task or project well past the point at which extra effort is adding value
*
Programming anti-patterns

* Accidental complexity: Introducing unnecessary complexity into a solution
* Boat anchor: Retaining a part of a system that no longer has any use
* Cargo cult programming: Using patterns and methods without understanding why
* Coding by exception: Adding new code to handle each special case as it is recognized
* Error hiding: Catching an error message before it can be shown to the user and either showing nothing or showing a meaningless message
* Lava flow: Retaining undesirable (redundant or low-quality) code because removing it is too expensive or has unpredictable consequences

Methodological anti-patterns

* Golden hammer: Assuming that a favorite solution is universally applicable
* Improbability factor: Assuming that it is improbable that a known error will occur
* Premature optimization: Coding early-on for perceived efficiency, sacrificing good design, maintainability, and sometimes even real-world efficiency
* Programming by permutation (or "programming by accident"): Trying to approach a solution by successively modifying the code to see if it works
* Reinventing the wheel: Failing to adopt an existing, adequate solution
* Silver bullet: Assuming that a favorite technical solution can solve a larger process or problem

Profoundness For Dummies

2009-06-19T00:20:00.015+05:30

Or,
How To Be Taken More Seriously Than You Should Be

Who does not want to be able to say: When I talk, people listen! Sadly though, True Wisdom is a scarce commodity and is hard-earned. But here's how us lesser mortals can do it too, nice and easy!

profound: Showing intellectual penetration or emotional depth
nonsense: A message that seems to convey no meaning

The techniques expounded and formalized here will, hopefully, enable everybody to become oysters of insight and come up with 'pearls of wisdom' . Yup, this is your TravelCard to free-tripping on the Profound Non-Sense network!

Use these tips, at your own risk of course, to create your own quotable gems! Or, alternatively, you may use these to identify formulaic crap and also assholic™ people...

1) Mystic Capitalization
2) Adage Extension
3) Kennedy Inversion
4) Reference Quotation
5) Random Punctuation
6) Typical Enumeration

BLOW BY BLOW
--------------------------

1) Mystic Capitalization
This technique is extensively used by spiritual Gurus and also by management-gurus. Words like you, the, he etc are prime candidates. Adjectives are Great as well! If the split words have more than one obvious meaning, then that'd be Great as well!

(a) Take a statement.
(b) Scan it for words which are splittable and capitalizable.
(c) Split splittable words, and capitalize!

Examples:
"Ask yourself this." ==> "Ask your Self this."
"Do you get time?" ==> "Do you get Time?"
"All that glitters is not gold" ==> "All that glitters Is not Gold"

2) Adage Extension
Stand on the shoulders of giants! Add to what they have said.

(a) Take a proverb.
(b) Take a suitable question tag-word or exclamation.
(c) Insert tag-word after proverb.

Examples:
"Slow and steady wins the race. Let's slow down steadily."
"All that glitters is not gold. Why not?"

3) Kennedy Inversion
John F. Kennedy (or his speech-writer) was a great exponent of this technique, hence it is named eponymously. Two of the examples come from his speeches!

(a) Take a statement.
(b) Logically invert it.
(c) Grammatically connect both.

Examples:
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!"
"All that glitters is not gold, and all that is gold does not glitter!"
"Let us not negotiate out of fear, but let us not fear to negotiate"

4) Reference Quotation
The more reliable the source of your quote is considered to be and the more uncommon the words in that are, the more seriously people will take you!

(a) Take a quote from an authentic source.
(b) Say whatever you want.
(c) Pepper what you say with words from the quote, repeatedly for added effect.

Examples:
The introductory section of this post uses the dictionary variation of this.

"All that glitters is not gold" - Gold, Encyclopedia Britannica pg 172
Glittering is a phenomenon..blah blah...Gold is a macroeconomic quantum...blah blah...Hence, gold does not glitter. Blah Blah.

5) Random Punctuation
Commonly used in poems to create sentimental trash. If you are talking, you can just pause all of a sudden in the middle of a sentence and then resume.

(a) Take a sentence.
(b) Insert punctuation marks at random, unobvious points

Examples:
"The train came on time" ==> "The train came, on time"
"All that glitters is not gold" ==> "All that glitters, is: not gold"

6) Typical Enumeration
Last, but perhaps the most important and the easiest technique, is the bulletization and numbering technique.

Examples:
This was it, dummy! :)

Tyranny Of Time

2009-06-18T17:15:00.008+05:30

Today my watch died on me; I am choosing not to replace the batteries. As a token rebellion.

The watch was my sign of bondage, a badge of my slavery - the time on my watch controlled me, decided what I did. My watch was my Little Lamb - I used to wear it everywhere and all the time...yeah, when I slept, even when I took a bath! Yeah, you could say that it possessed me more than I possessed it.

Only a few hours into my rebellion now, I am realizing that time as shown by my watch was not, and need not have been, my religion. What you read off your watch is just a token of time; WatchTime is just a convention.

Time is the ultimate luxury. Some months ago, I had read about the world's most expensive watch. Made by Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome, this watch actually doesn't tell you the time of day; it only tells you whether it is day or not! Fashion-statement or not, it is definitely one helluva statement to make!

Before I sign off, small cryptic confession to make: I'm on Mobile-Time now. :) Well, that is, I peek at my cellphone to get my dose of the reality low.

- Thomas Jay Cubb

ThoughtJots: Time and money are the dimensions of the social universe. You spend time, you spend money (Time-Money equivalence). Some time ago, some time back (Dimension). Money gives you power, power gives you the ability to control other people's time.

Calvinball

2009-06-13T11:24:00.005+05:30

Calvinball is a fictional game played by the protagonists in the comic-strip Calvin & Hobbes. What is peculiar about this game is that the rules keep changing constantly. All the players don't even have to agree on the rules... :)

Even though people don't realize it, everybody is playing Calvinball, all the time. In fact, it could be the most popular sport on the planet; Calvinball is Life itself. Change is constant, and we adjust. Especially nowadays, I'm sure there are many particularly evil games of Calvinball being played the world over, with a refrain of "That was then, this is now. I'm sorry, but...."

Times might be tough and you might be desperate for a win. But you must never change the rules such that Calvinball ceases to be a game. Players, even pros, play a game not just for the money but also as a part of their quest for, variously: joy, fun or greatness. "I will continue to play as long as I enjoy the game," is what we hear from players contemplating retirement.

Imagine that you were playing a round of Catch and somebody suddenly puts up a new rule that specified a whipping for every catch you drop. Would you continue? What if the ball was then changed to be a red-hot one and you were not allowed to use gloves? Would you continue? And what if somebody filled the ground with nails...

But in the games of Calvinball we play in real-life, even when the game changes horribly, we choose to or are forced to keep playing. The burdens of reality pin you down, and you hope that somebody who is un-evil (nobody is purely good, everybody wants to win) will come along and the rules will change for the better...

Lightning Strikes Thrice

2009-06-10T09:30:00.008+05:30

Believe it or not, there are witnesses, but on March 15, 2009, within the space of 2 hours I was -
1) Sneezed on by an elephant
2) Peed on by a monkey
3) Pooped on by a bird (sorry, don't know which kind :))

I was out in Coorg for a nature-trip...guess Nature didn't exactly reciprocate my love that day!
Only now do I realize the sheer impossibility of those events happening all together!

Hell, I didn't even know that elephants sneezed! (They do it with their trunk, in case you didn't know either)

Exploitation Classified

2009-06-03T16:14:00.006+05:30

To feel needed and important is a very basic human need, Man being a social animal. This lays the foundation for most social relationships, many of which are parasitic, the rest (well, almost!) symbiotic. Unpleasant realization this, but like it or not, everybody is being used, everybody is being exploited. All the time.

Exploitation is in fact so natural a state of affairs that we generally ignore this or unknowingly substitute it with less disturbing, more comforting notions like love, duty etc. This may be true even in cases where you might think you are the exploiter!

People are used like -

1) Candles
You burn to give them light in their darkness. You show the way. Without you, they could never have been sure whether they were on the right track. But when it is light again, and you are burnt out, they scrape away what's left of you.

2) Bandages
You help heal their wounds. Without you, they would (possibly, if they have clotting problems) bleed to death. You soak up their bad blood. But when the wound has healed, and you are all dirty, they throw you in the trash can.

3) Tea-bags
You refresh them when their energy is sapped. Without you, they could not have had that thought which made all the difference. They savour your flavour. But when they've had their drink, and you have no more strength left in you, they throw you in the sink.

4) Bubble-gum
You give them something to do. They chew you up, relishing your juice, moulding you as they feel fit. When they feel like it, for your pleasure (you fulfill your purpose in life) and their pleasure, they blow you up as a bubble. But the bubble is burst, and they spit you out!

README
========
1. This is actually a blueprint for a poem I'm writing; I started off with the tea-bag idea around 3 years ago. Don't know when or whether I will complete it. So sharing the idea as-is, in prose form. This is a recurring theme for me, check out a previous exploration Use And Throw, if you must have a poem! :-)

2. This *MUST NOT* affect a relationship that you and I may share!!! Hate the message, but don't kill the messenger!

3. This classification excludes those relationships based on pure evil.Or, does it?

4. Nobody even cares about doormats and tissues! Even the poet ignores them! :)

Banana Endianness

2009-05-18T19:34:00.007+05:30

Endianness In General
----------------------------
Lilliput and Blefuscu, the two fictional island nations in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, were at war with each other over the issue of the correct way to eat a boiled egg. The Lilliputians said that it should be eaten from the little (sharper) end, while the Blefuscans claimed that it should be the big (rounder) end!

Though intended as satire by the author, there are dubious merits and demerits for each approach if the issue is meditated upon, especially if the egg is a half-boiled one.

Little End Of Egg
Merit: Rests on a stable base
DeMerit: Hard to insert spoon

Big End Of Egg -
Merit: Easier to insert spoon
DeMerit: Could topple more easily - spillage

There ain't no such as a trivial thing! Everything has a purpose and there is a reason why things are the way they are. The issue is even paid homage to in the field of computers - there are such things as Little Endian and Big Endian computers!!! *** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness

Bananas - End To End!
----------------------------------------
A similar question, perhaps one with more tropical relevance, is - at which end should you peel a banana from?

There are two ends for a banana, when it is removed from a bunch - the end with the stalk and the end with the blackish button (don't know the word for the whatchamacallit, the buttonish thingy).

I had always peeled a banana from the buttony end. But then somebody pointed out that he found it unusual that one could choose to do it this way. I asked around and found out, to my surprise and shock, that many (most? ) peel from the stalky end!

Rationale unbuttoned
----------------------------------
It made perfect sense to me, peeling from the buttony end. The button was, in my book and practice, the logical peel-point; what else could it have been meant for? The button was, for unbuttoning! It was as clear as a "Tear here" marking for me.

What's more, if you did it this way, you could use the stalk to hold the banana while you ate it. logical, to do it this way! In fact, the longer the banana, the longer you need to hold it and the more logical this methodology is.

Justifying the Stalkers
-----------------------------------
But there is no rhyme without reason, is there? There had to be an explanation why so many practitioners of the Other Way existed. You've got to put yourself in the other guy's shoes, and find out why and how they fit him fine...

Peeling the banana from stalky end is also not without sense, when I thought about it further. Especially if the banana is of the shorter (plantain) kind. What happens is that when these short bananas are removed from the bunch, they break off at the base of the stalk, at the start of the fleshy part. So, when thus removed, the banana is already open; the proto-peels , they don't have to be created, unlike in the unbutton-methodology. So, the Stalker just has to extend those peels, pulling each one. Perfectly natural!

The Stalker methodology can used to advantage with longer bananas as well. The stalk can be used effectively as a peeler. Peeling with the stalk, there's no confusion: just pull tangentially to the curve of the banana, with the unbuttoning style, you need to take a decision as to which direction to peel!

Also, I observed that many of the Stalkers, with shorter bananas, used the button to pop the banana into their mouths. Press button to eject and ingest, was their operative motto. Buttons are to press?

Another point in favor of the Stalker methodology, with longer bananas, is that you can use the stalk to lock and protect the banana just in case you need to pause and resume your banana-session later! Tennis-players do this in between games.

Stalker Hegemony
----------------------------------
The world (mine at least) seems to be full of Stalkers! In the two years since the question was popped (Banana Endianness TBD) at me, I have braved many "What the #%*#" stares and worse for surveying people's banana-eating techniques, but have still not come across a natural Unbuttoner! Existential doubts have sprung up within me... Lilliput 1 - Blefuscu 0?

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Information Blackholes

2009-05-17T16:56:00.009+05:30

This is a continuation of my previous post.

Information forms the basis for actions that we take. Doing the right thing counts for a lot -
no matter where you are, what you do. And you are often defined by what you did and what you did not do.

Information is what bureaucratic hierarchies are based on: the higher you are in it, more the information that you have access to. That information is the basis of your power. Remember the professor's pet-students?

There are people who derive power artificially, by sitting on active information. Collaborating with such people can be a trying and exasperating experience.
They can be broadly classified as -

1) Information Sponges
They do this accidentally and unknowingly. To soak it up and hold it is just their nature. If squeezed, they will let it out. :) Sponges also leak unknowingly: spill what they can't hold or when in trouble. This alleviates crises on occasion.

2) Information Black-Holes
They actively suppress information and use it to derive a competitive advantage. To capture it through their gravity and never let it out is their definitive trait. Often, though not always, they lack any other redeeming qualities and hence it is sometimes for survival that they do what they do.

It is difficult to be proactive and perform effectively in the company of information-suckers. You will often be left gasping for air in the information vacuum created.

But the Information-Suckers also take a lot of the load off your back as well; they end up doing more work, being unable to ask for assistance without sharing the information on occasion! In their zealous quests for exclusive information, they unknowingly and sadly install themselves as points of failure...

Make an active effort to share information when possible and avoid Communication Breakdowns. Never be an Information Black-Hole; instead, be an Information Supernova!

Communication Breakdown

2009-05-15T16:46:00.002+05:30

Most, if not all, problems are caused by misunderstandings caused by an inability to share enough information, accurately and effectively.

Even if you realize or accept this idiomatically, it's not so easy to follow. Often, without malice, and to heroically avoid information-overload, you think :-
1. Oh, but it's obvious.
2. That's not important.
3. It's not necessary for him to know.
... and you leave out bits and pieces here and there. You think, "Why bother them with these silly things".

These seemingly minor lapses in communication, slowly but surely, add up over time and lead to information-lockout. As Strother Martin observed in the movie Cool Hand Luke (also quoted by GNR in Civil War), in another context though, "What we have here is a failure to communicate"

And then you go ahead and do something based on the information you have which pisses off the other guy. Or, he would do something that is totally below your expectations. Voila, you have a flareup and quite possibly confrontation.

Communication breakdown, it's always the same.

As it is, it is really difficult to put things across. So before you leave out anything of your communication, think carefully:
1. Is it really so obvious?
2. Is it really not important?
3. Is it really not necessary for the other person to know?

The English Way

2009-04-08T14:55:00.006+05:30

Or, The Idiosyncratic Ruminations Of An Indian On An UK Peregrination
Statutory Warning: High levels of exaggeration ahead!

"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way."
- Pink Floyd, Time.

Based on experiences during my recent sojourn there, colored with quipamenducious™ opinion; your views may vary.

1) Queues, queues everywhere!
If there are none, they will create one! Everywhere you go, whatever you want, you have to stand in a queue. Even when there is no one else, you have to create a queue (of 1!) and stay behind a line and step forward to the counter only when called.

To avoid queues for entry is a big privilege, that people willingly pay for, shelling out much bigger amounts of cash! I decided to skip a lot of sight-seeing just because of the long queues and I didn't know there was another way...

2) Thank You for the Sorry. Not just formalities.
Even when you accidentally step on people and it's all your fault, they will apologize. (Tested :)
And you are expected to say thank you for everything, every small favor received no matter how seemingly trivial or even if it is just their duty. I was considered rude and frowned upon on many occasions! :(

3) Rules rule!
Everything should be defined and people get confused easily if they are not. Follow the intercom and the sign-board to the letter. There are people who don't care as well, and they are considered to be radical, don't-care types !?! Also, people generally play it safe and don't always really know what the exact consequences are.

Maqtub. Ashte! It is written, and that's all; those are the rules and hence it is fair . Whoever wrote them must have thought it out is the general assumption. If you think you know better...

4) Fine, pay the fine!
There is a price you pay for violating rules and that is, well, well-defined. It is also collected with regularity, rigor, vigor and fervor. There is no shame associated with paying a fine.

5) Freedom for cash
If you are willing to sacrifice the flexibility of your travel plans, that is, essentially your freedom to decide when you will do something. People are used to planning well ahead, months in advance.

Of course, I paid heavily for my stubborn insistence on flexibility for my travel plains! :) I should have been more flexibly stubborn perhaps; all my tickets came with a freedom surcharge!

6) Public transport..Service?
Public transport is damn expensive. And from what I saw there seemed to be an perverse, inverse relationship between the cost, distance and number of people using that mode of transport, for longer distances. I was amazed that for the same distance the listing, in increasing order of cost, was as: car, bus (coach), plane, train!

7) Value For Money
Amazingly, the minimum bus-ticket costs more than a loaf of bread. Food for thought. :)
Depending on what you are willing to sacrifice, you can get the exact same things at different prices...

To misquote Pink Floyd's Time (again! that song is really really English), "The sum is the same in a relative way, but you're poorer!"

Deserts Were Seas

2009-02-11T22:28:00.005+05:30

Logically and poetically, I suspect that deserts were once seas.

Poetic
Both the desert and the sea are eternal sources of inspiration and sinks of enchantment. A person who likes one would like the other too...

Both are full of sand and things are in perpetual motion - it's only that in the ocean, water moves around while in the desert, the sand does. With both the desert and the sea, it is possible to stay put at one place and see the 'scape change. Things so similar just have to have the same once...

Logical
Petroleum is formed from the remains of animals and plants. Much of our oil comes from the desert, doesn't it? Now, how would the plants and animals have been buried so; it's hardly as if there were burial rituals for them, eh?

It had to be done by the waves in the seas that the deserts once were!

Time, Food And Money

2009-01-27T14:07:00.003+05:30

Food is what everybody has different amounts of,
but nobody can have more than they can have.

Money is what everybody has different amounts of,
but nobody can have enough of it.

Time is what everybody has the same amount of,
even so nobody seems to have enough of it.

NOTES
---------
1. Based on my friend Bigith's manager's time dictum.
2. Based on a childhood visit to a palace (Padmanabhapuram) , the guide's explanation of the king's charity policy.

Shoe People - Thinking Shoes

2009-01-10T12:07:00.006+05:30

Putting the adage "judge a man by the shoes he wears" and the advertising slogans of shoe-brands, a few weeks ago, and turning the Thinking Hat theory on its head (literally), I hit upon this classification of people!

1) Reebok People - I am what I am
They accept things as they are and rarely try to think beyond the established boundaries.
Limitations are a fact of life and operating within those limits is natural for them. "We don't need to try too hard, things are what they are." Theirs is not to question why...

2) Adidas People - Impossible is nothing
They always think in an out-of-the-box fashion and always (sometimes irritatingly) stretch the defined limits. Why not? They are proponents of change, and try to argue and win people over to their side. "It just has to be done!" Theirs is not to question how...

3) Nike People - Just do it
If even faintly convinced by the answers to why and how, they give it their best shot. Eternal optimists, they are the agents of change and don't think or worry too much about the fruits of their efforts: if not success, at least wisdom. "Let's see how it goes. Then we'll take it from there."

Everybody needs three pairs! But which shoe do you wear the most? You need to think on your feet.

LOGICAL LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Negative publicity is neither intended nor possible (no readers!) with this post.

Plan Hazy, Plan General

2008-12-06T00:42:00.006+05:30

I have a plan. A plan for everything, no matter what. And, it's worthless.

There are just too many things that are out of control, too many unknowns. Shit will happen yes, but you cannot possibly know of what consistency!

So, realize that your plan is just a plan and not more important than what's actually happening around you. Realize that your Plan was just a figment of your imagination at an earlier point of time when you didn't know what was gonna happen. Plans are based on inaccurate estimates of an unknown future.

Plan Hazy, Plan General. Things will be ready when the time is ripe, and not sooner. Especially in creative endeavors, omni-plans more often than not will kill the goose.

A plan gives you a sense of importance and provides you an illusion of control. "No matter what happens, I know what to do"

Plans also give you something to put the blame on. "I failed because things didn't go according to plan." Re-read... "I failed" - that was probably the key and more true part of that statement. Things rarely, if ever, go according to plan. And if they do, then it is because you over-estimated and over-allocate something somewhere.

Time-bound plans based on sequential completion of minute tasks are the worst of all. There are people who plan like I will drink water at 10, pee at 12, drink again at 1230, pee again at 230 and so on... because they "know" that it takes 2 hours for that process. This is no way to live! You drink when you are thirsty and when you can, and pee when you wanna go and you can. Such micro-planning piles on the pressure unnecessarily and causes errors and unnecessary disappointment.

But still, people overplan - plan to a granularity that borders on the ridiculous. First A happens, then B happens, then C, then D... What exacerbates the situation is when you associate deadlines with each of them. (hmm.. interesting word...dead..line..) Isn't it enough that A,B,C,D.. happen? Why worry about the order in which they happen?

Take things as they come. Take stock and do what's possible. You can run but you can't hide from reality. You can track everything but you can't plan. Beware the OmniPlan! Beware even more the OmniMicroPlan!

- Thomas Jay Cubb
(Thanks to Grasshopper Madhu for raising the question: What should I do now? Nothing's going according to plan)

Insignificance

2008-10-17T20:16:00.011+05:30

Here is a bitter pill to swallow:
"If not you, it's just another you."

Special Creatures
We are born and grow up thinking we are special. However, the blunt truth is that you were born out of an accidental collocation of random elements. Momma's blue-eyed boys keep hearing things like "you are so cute!", "that was superb" even when things were anything but! Hear something repeatedly enough and you start to believe, even the impossible.

The programming of self-belief is actually a survival tactic that is wired in to our genes; the world needs us to survive for otherwise there will be no world! :) If you were to confront the truth of your utter insignificance too early in life, you definitely would not survive for too long; the world needs its assholes. Of course, there is this possibility (very improbable, since most of us have to be average) that you, in fact, are very special and you need that self-belief to deliver your goods; the world needs your output (not you, I have to remind). It just increases the odds.

My Way Or...
We refuse to accept the randomness and illogicality of it all; we need to feel special. Realize that there might be no higher purpose, there might be no meaning, and there is nothing you can do about it, nobody even cares. So, we invent benevolent (someone who cares), anthropomorphic (someone like our special selves) gods and say that Ours is the One True Way. What we are really doing is worshiping ourselves (Our Selfs) to feel happiness and comfort.

..The HighWay
Hinduism, insofar as I know such things, is the only faith and embraces the concept and truth of insignificance. It accepts multiple faiths, even atheism :) There are many gods and you are free to worship the gods of your choice, and in the way that you choose to. Even the gods pray to other gods...

My interpretation of this - polytheistic tolerance is possible only if you accept the fact that what you believe in doesn't really change anything. Do what you need to, to feel happy and good about yourself, while you're here. You are insignificant in the universal scheme of things. The universe goes on with or without you.

Cubbism
Accept the truth and the reality of your insignificance. The sooner you do this, the sooner you will find happiness. Happiness is the absence of conflict.

End Pillow
So, your account was hacked, eh? At least, somebody thought you were important enough and that you had important secrets! The more plausible explanation is less comforting: that you were just one among the people the hacker chose in order to establish his significance! Hey, but he chose you, didn't he?

MMA2 Song

2008-09-21T00:13:00.000+05:30

Song written about work, Hindi verse.
Sung to the tune of "Socha Hai" from Rock On

==================
M M A 2 (Hindi)
Dhamas Jekab
=================

(26) Yes Franck!

Rambouillet se aati callein
Franck farmaaye Haan kar daalein
Khoon paseena sahi.
Leavon ki hai bas to khwabein
Lambi hoti jaati raatein
Build hota kyon nahin

Museebaton se ham na darein
Kaarnamon se timesheet bharein
Baat banta hain yoon
Apne apne modules liye
Namumkin ko mumkin kiye
Sun hi lo kuch stereo

M M A 2 . . . Project ka naam hai
M M A 2 . . . Haan tujhe kaam hai
M M A 2 . . . Kiya nahin to karo abhi

Janvari ya farvari
Behte hai sab delivry
Khoon paseena nahin.
USB se gaane sun lo
MP3 ya WAV bhi chun lo
Bajta hai sab audio

M M A 2 . . . Conti ka jaan hai
M M A 2 . . . Mistral ka shaan hai
M M A 2 . . . Suna nahin to suno abhi

Sannata sunayi nahin deta
Aur kharabi dikhayi nahi deta
Neeche hai sab kabhi
M C I P Queue!

(bridge)

Rambouillet se aati callein
Franck farmaaye Haan kar daalein
Khoon paseena nahin.
USB se gaane sun lo
MP3 ya WAV bhi chun lo
Bajta hai sab audio

Museebaton se ham na darein
Kaarnamon se timesheet bharein
Baat banta hain yoon.
Aansoon hai behlana kyon
Euro behte aatein to
Sun hi lo kuch stereo

M M A 2 . . . Conti ka jaan hai
M M A 2 . . . Mistral ka shaan hai
M M A 2 . . . Suna nahin to suno abhi

(x 2)

================================================

Being Actively Proactive

2008-06-12T11:17:00.003+05:30

Adjective: proactive - (of a policy or person or action) controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than waiting to respond to it after it happens

Here's how to be actively proactive:

1. Pesky
Do not mind your own business. Keep asking: "How can I help?", "Can I help?" etc

2. Snoopy, Sneaky
Overhear and help!

Art Razor

2008-04-13T23:03:00.006+05:30

==============
TJ's Art Razor
1. Art comes from the heart and inspires further art.
2. Art is not artifice.
================

Art, based on what it portrays and conveys, may be classified as:

1) What-is
Represents reality as it is. This is not a simple level to achieve. Needs to contain poignant, accurate and unobvious observations.

2) What-can(not)-be
Elements of fantasy thrown in to the mix. A parallel world is created by the art-piece, possibly with its own rules and paradigms. The more it seems like reality, the higher its quality.

3) What-should-be
Nuggets of wisdom and presentations of perfection, showing us what is wrong with our reality. This needs to be subtly mixed in, otherwise it will irritate.

The best art blends elements of all three and needs to be interpretable at all three levels.

Half-Baked Microwave Tips

2008-02-04T11:59:00.001+05:30

HALF-BAKED MICROWAVE TIPS

===========================

Your microwave can be used for more things than just reheating stuff. This pinch of theory might be what's needed to set you on your way!

HYPOTHESES

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

1. CLOSED LID PRINCIPLE

Closed lid ensures that things get cooked properly. (Heat retention)

2. OPEN LID PRINCIPLE

Open lid = food just gets heated. Of course if you heat it long enough , things might get cooked, but prefer to apply Principle 1!

a) Use open lid for reheating.

b) Open lid for initial mixing of masala (or base) with oil == the aroma spreading.

3. PASSIVE COOKING PRINCIPLE

Cooking continues for 2-3 minutes after you turn off power (if lid is closed).

LAB NOTES

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

1. For cooking rice. Add Rice and water in the ratio: 1: 2 (min) . Depending on the type of rice, water needs to be 2 to 2.5. And remember, 2 cups of rice will be enough for 3 people.

2. Cut chicken, potato & carrots into smaller pieces before cooking. Chicken in a gravy takes 15-20 minutes on medium (depending on the size of the pieces).

3. Don't add too much salt or water; it increases cooking time. Add these only, say, 2-3 minutes from the end.

4. Don't always put the oven on maximum. Medium has a meaning too!

5. Prefer to slightly undercook than to overcook. That is, if you see, say, 10 minutes in a recipe don't make it 12 or 15, just to "make sure" that things get cooked "properly".

6. For better results, stir contents at 6 minute intervals or so - to ensure proper heat circulation and so that the contents

===================================================================

DISCLAIMER: These are experimental findings From TJ's Microwave Lab.

Use at own risk! ;-) Author shall not be forced to partake of failed applications.

===================================================================

Net Games

2008-01-26T12:10:00.001+05:30

1. Don't try to win the point on your serve directly. Don't try too hard for that ace! It could lead to cheap points being given and takes away some of the fun.

2. Look and hit.

3. See where your opponent is, just after he hits his shot and just before you hit yours.

Apostrophe Catastrophe

2007-12-19T00:10:00.002+05:30

Came across this post in Blogosphere about apostrophe abuse. Ended up writing a ditty there.. but could not edit it there... could not editee/a written ditty.

The abuse of the apostrophe is on my list of pet peeves as well. (The under-use of the hyphen is a close second)

------------------------------------------------
APOSTROPHE CATASTROPHE
Or, The abuse of apostrophe's,
Or, Its not right,
Or, Soon it will find it's grave!
------------------------------------------------

Loud and strong
Proud and long
Grammarians complain
But it's all in vain
It'll happen now, and again
Then it'll be the common strain!
Sound and fury down the drain
Might as well say "Amen"!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Current Jokes

2007-12-11T01:52:00.001+05:30

While in school, we were taught that the waveform for AC is a sine curve.
The representation of the signal was like: ^u^u^u^u or /\/\/\/\/\/\/\ with a line passing through it: you know what I mean.

This realization led to the postulation of the following explanations/justifications.

1. Why don't birds on wires get electrocuted?
Because they might be perched on a section of the wire through which the wave-form doesn't pass.

2. Why we need not pay for electricity.
Because the current comes to our home and then goes right back to the power-station.

Yup, these are PJs.

3. How could power-cuts possibly help to save energy?
The power was generated by water falling on the turbines. The power was being generated anyway (other localities would have power), the water was falling. It could not go back up, so weren't we actually wasting that water!

Plastics Or Trees: Hobson's Choice

2007-11-25T23:12:00.002+05:30

It's a disposable world and convenience is everything.

With the ban on plastic bags coming into effect in many places, the usage of paper bags would likely increase. Paper bags match the convenience, accessibility, ease-of-storage etc of plastic bags more than bags made of other materials.

Plastic is notoriously difficult to dispose of, as it is non-biodegradable. But should the lives of an extra million innocent trees be sacrificed just because of our inability to exorcise the plastic demon?

Paper comes from trees - so, wouldn't it mean that more trees will have to be cut, to meet the growing demand for paper? Paper bags would also have a tendency to tear and would be spoiled if they get wet.

Which is the lesser evil? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch; to gain something, you must sacrifice something!

Counters:
1. Use cloth bags instead. <==> But maintaining the bag, keeping it safe etc are just too bugging, right? And in any case, how many should we carry around?
2. Paper is recyclable. <==> So is plastic. The question is whether we really bother.
3. Paper can be made without cutting trees too...

Vegetarian Abortionists

2007-11-24T23:16:00.001+05:30

Can a person who is vegetarian (lacto-vegetarian/vegan, the kind who avoids even eggs) by choice, because of moral reasons ("Respect life! Should not kill to eat, doesn't matter how indirectly we may be responsible!"), ever support the cause of abortion?

Is a 'vegetarian abortionist' a perfect oxymoron? If a person does both, should it not be construed/interpreted as hypocrisy? An egg is also like a fetus: if eating an egg kills the bird, the abortion kills the baby. Or is the life of a human not worth the life of a chicken?

Both the issues in question are very much what you may call matters of life and death, and are very similar.

Once we do an "I-choose-to-do-so" and enter a moral high-ground, we have to stay there, and do so consistently on similar things.* Or one has to be prepared to be branded a hypocrite!

* The same lines of reasoning would also hold for those members of the PETA (People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals), if any, who do not help suffering people.

DISCLAIMERS/NOTES OF EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------
1. Just a logical musing, not a diatribe. I have nothing against vegetarians or anti-abortionists: or even for pro-abortionists or non-vegetarians for that matter! :-) Also, nothing at all if the choice you exercise in what you eat (or do not) is as a victim of circumstance (religion / availability/ income).

2. Not to be interpreted as a case for cannibalism of any kind! :-)

3. I shall not be forced to eat gross things during the course of any argument resulting out of or inspired by this post. At the most, if forced, I will eat...my words! ;-)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Inspired by and dedicated to my dear friend Anup Kesavan.

You Are What You Say - More!

2007-11-10T20:05:00.002+05:30

A few more things that I missed out in the previous post.

A. Coffee-drinking - the next social stigma
I was asked at the dentist's whether I drank a lot of coffee because of some stains on my teeth. The dentist asked this in an apologetic manner. A couple of years ago (or maybe a little more before) it would have been: do you smoke a lot?

Coffee has a lot of stuff going against it - it is intoxicating, odorous, may be harmful, and what's more, popular too! Two decades down the line, the kid next door will say: hey mister, would you please mind not drinking that?

Anything that could possibly give on pleasure must be stigmatized; at least don't do it in public! After coffee, it would be chocolates...

B. Making Fun Not = Having Fun
Constant criticism, even if done by way of casual jokes, does not advance a relationship. We need to accept people as they are; faults are acceptable, let people be. Do not always try to correct.

C. Egalitarian Vegetarianism
Shouldn't vegetarian mean only vegetables/plant-products? After all the term is not non-dead-animal products nor is it non-killed stuff. Some people would choose to define it that way, because otherwise it would mean no milk, no chocolates! Some vegetarians take the "will-not-kill-anything-even-if-to-live" line of reasoning. Well, we have to accept it like you have to have money to make money, only life can sustain life.

D. Religious Intolerance & Smoking
This one is outright biased, opinionated, founded on coincidence, even propagandistic - I have not even checked the facts! :-)

There is growing unrest and intolerance, rising religious tensions, in the world today. Also less tobacco usage. Could the two be linked? The Holy Wars (Crusades) ended after the arrival of tobacco. Being intolerant and rude to smokers is socially acceptable nowadays. If you agree with that, then you must also agree that religious intolerance ought to be acceptable - if you worship your god, it would harm my god!

Oh my god, that was a straw-man argument if ever there was one! What an unashamed attempt at blatant self-justification? "Well, I am right and you are wrong, so you should not do whatever it is you are doing, even if it does you good, because I have a right to protect myself and I believe it is wrong and could harm me. So please stop. STOP IT!"

E. Anachronistic phrases
On a related note (to E. above). Stuff like dialing a number (remember when the phones had rotary dials?), hang up and so on. There were more examples, I can't recall now...maybe in a later post...(I wish!)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

From the cradle to the grave
Go the cowardly and the brave
The good die young, some unsung
While the evil live and thrive
The skull and bones, touch wood,
Might do you good!

Only when a man dies.
Do we realize
There are no why's
All just a roll of the dice.

(untitled, unedited poem... please excuse!)

ACD List

2007-10-26T01:01:00.001+05:30

Discovered an online database service called Zoho Creator. It's pretty cool and easy to use!

Catalogued all my audio CDs

IIM-B Vista Open

2007-10-24T20:45:00.000+05:30

20071014@IIM-Bangalore

Clipped and Collected from Kerala Quizzers orkut community.

Lloyd

Harsha Bhogle @IIM-B

Last Sunday Me,Thomas (Ex TKM) & Prashanth (Ex CET) gatecrashed into IIM-B for 'Quizzard' which was part of 'Vista' the annual IIM-B business fest. The Quiz as always started late, Written prelims of 35 qns after which 6 teams made it through to the finals... As always we 3 were left high & dry thinking about the near misses we had or what could have happened if we had written the first guess kinda thing... This normally happens when u don't qualify and mind u its a tough field out here.. KQA veterans were all there plus some QFI imports from Chennai made it even more tougher. The QM was Harsha Bhogle,Questions were set by Anustup of KQA, Harsha was at his best in enthralling the audience with his quick wit and one liners, but at times he failed to impress. The setting for the Quiz was superb except the Buzzer - as always it malfunctioned a la Wardrobe malfunctioning which has become too common nowadays the latest star being Potter aunt JK Rowling....

The saddest thing about the Quiz is only 2 Mallus were on stage, One being our evergreen Anil Sir and his partner Jayadev who is a NRK, their team performed creditably and won the 3rd spot (Anil Sir had to leave after 2 rounds to catch the 9.45pm train to Cochin) Seeing people like Anil Sir & Arul Mani I always feel that most of us should be ashamed at the fact that we don't even have 10% of the enthusiasm that they have, For every KQA quiz Arul would be the first one to arrive on his Activa and from organizing to conducting to participating he is always there, Muslims go to Mecca for Hajj once a year but for Anil Sir Bangalore is Mecca and participating in Quizzes is a Hajj that he performs once a month, that's the spirit...

The Quiz was a memorable event and as expected was won by Arul,Uduppa combo, Infosys was 2nd Anil Sir's team led by Jayadev came third and Swami's QFI team came fourth - seeing Swami coming fourth was like watching the Aussies losing a Cricket match. For questions & a review keep checking Thomas's blog - http:oraclique.blogspot.com.

Anil

Part of the questions were set by Gopal kidao another mallu who is a mainstay of QED.Questions,presentation,ambience,audience&everything was right.I still feel kicking myself for leaving early which contributed to my team ICNH finishing third.the first two teams had cash 30000inr&20000inr.we got 3k worth vanheusen vouchers.5pts&a middle aged guy who booked a ticketback robbed the team of 20k but we have the honour of surpassing QED with swami,jayakantan&sumo one of the veryfew todo this in the past 5years.
Let me also mention that Thomas won an audience prize for cracking the dream scene from wildstrawberries(bergman).And gracias,lloyd for bringing the news across

Thomas

review

it was a fantastic quiz. the quality of the questions, the entertainment factor, everything was superb. one of the highlight was harsha bhogle telling anil's team that they needed to "insert" it better, when testing out the buzzers! ... for those not in the know anil's team in bangalore is called insert cool name here)... harsha said he would add it to the list of worst things he has ever said onstage in his life...

anil had to catch a train and hence left after the first onstage round... too bad they were not allowed a substitute! they lost out only in the final round... called derailer... interesting because of the "rail" angle ;-) the team had already been derailed once!

sorry that i have not yet updated my blog with the questions (hope prasanth can send them across, i didn't note anything) and opinions... was busy at work this week... there were quite a few trivia gems.. the quizicians didn't disappoint!

yeah i got an audience prize and also made some cool cracks in the prelims... it was an enjoyable and memorable outing despite the fact that we didn't qualify... i also made what qualifies as my super blooper... wrote "lighthouse of alexandria" instead of "library of alexandria"! :-)

TRIVIA BITES
(Waiting for inputs from Prashanth)

You Are What You Say?

2007-10-24T19:08:00.001+05:30

You are what you say! If what you would say if you were there was known, is your presence really required? Do words make the man? In the sci-fi novel Wyrms, Orson Scott Card took this what-you-say-is-who-you-are principle to its logical extreme: heads of people were preserved such that they could talk, even years after the bodies perished! Talk about just being all talk! ;-)

Well, here are some things that I would have talked to you about if you had me over the last few months. These are also blog-points, hopefully I will expand on these points, but who knows! Some random thoughts in here - some trivial and obvious, some profound. Some original, some inspired. Some fun, some boring. Some are lessons, some are observations/insights yeah and some are shit. C'est la vie.

1. GREEDY DOESN'T WORK...ALWAYS
Doing the best possible thing at every point will not yield you the best results. You might even be called spineless! Greedy algorithms don't always work.

2. ON THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE
Science should not be taught in historical order. Why force everybody to learn the mistakes and then unlearn? One of the reasons why quantum physics, relativity etc still have an aura of mystique and incomprehensibility.

3. LIVE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
Hope is what keeps us ticking. Only if there is hope is there a will.

4. DEMOCRACY?
Everybody is Chinese when they are born, slowly we become others.

5. LAWS OF FRIENDSHIP
a) Only equals can be friends.
b) And there are limits to friendship no matter what you might claim. There's stuff you will and stuff you won't for a friend/relative. Remember King Lear.

6. PARTICLE METAPHYSICS
Modern physics is in many ways approaching the realm of religion. "There has to be a particle like this, so let's search for it... we didn't find it... let's think up a new particle or a new dimension!"

7. KEEP IT SHORT STUPID
Futility of writing long-winded reviews. If you like the thing or its maker and I say it's bad, you will check it out any way - how bad can it be?.

8. MOVIE CRITICISM FOR DUMMIES
Quick-and-dirty movie critique tips applicable to all movies regardless.
a) Do the characters explain some part of the story or a quirk of some other character in dialogue? If they state the really obvious, it's a very weak script.
b) Artificiality Litmus - Did the director achieve what he aimed for?
c) There were a few more... cannot recollect now

9. COMMON SYMBOLIC INSTRUMENTS IN MOVIES
a) Elements Technique - Rain/Thunder/Lightning to indicate helplessness of the characters
b) Call Of Reality technique. Phone ringing to interrupt a dream-like, unreal sequence.

X. SYSTEMATIC<=>REGULAR
Regular and systematic is best. Regularly systematic will also benefit you. Be systematic

Y. THE WILL-DO PRINCIPLE
Doesn't always have to be 100% before you try to do something, enter the fray, put yourself to the test etc. 80% should do. 80-20 rule. Can be applied in most scenarios. 20% is all you need 80% of the time. And 80% would suffice 80% of the time (wait a minute, that would be the 80-80 rule!)

Z. OH PEDANTIC ME!
The difference between continual and continuous.

A. PSEUDO-LINGUISTICS
Musings on the similarities between Kannada and Malayalam.
a) Malayalam being a somewhat recent language takes elements from both Kannada and Tamil, although the similarity with Tamil is what gets highlighted.
b) 50 is Ainpathu in North Kerala, Anpathu in South Kerala. Thantha (=father) derogatory in south.
c) The modifier for "do not" in Kannada is "baruthu", Malayalam ("aruthu").
d) Ho-Po, Va-Ba Sound Interchangeability principle
Maybe some of these "similarities" stem from my ignorance rather than knowledge of the languages in question. Take them as hypotheses!

B. THOUGHT-LOSS-ON-WRITE
Capture the thought when you can! It's the capturing that's important, improve it later. But the Heisenberg principle applies, you alter the thought when you catch it. But catch it anyway.

C. SLOW-AND-STEADY
The principle of differential change like differentiation/integration. It is suddenly that you realize that it has changed completely!

D. IMPORTANCE OF MINUTIAE
Near-complete knowledge of any activity/sphere of life/domain is beneficial. Could be anything but it is very difficult to get there. Are you there? Here's an easy way to check: have you bluffed about It, when asked about something specific about It?

Yeah that's what I would have talked about. That was TJ BrainDump 2007.

So that's all? Nothing missed? Parts make the whole, but there is always more to the whole. Or so we hope.

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Changelog
20071124 Added the cheesy titles, moved the background update to separate post

What's Cooking

2007-10-23T00:15:00.001+05:30

Background Updates
---------------------------
It's been a long time since I put up anything other than movie reviews here. It's not that I've been too busy to write, I have been writing and also updating my other blogs (programming and quizzing) regularly...er... well...frequently. I am writing to write here; expect no structure! This is a brain dump.

Life has been chugging on, and I think I have been having fun. Been quizzing a lot (no successes worth writing home about though), learnt some Kannada, got a promotion at work, playing lots of table-tennis, traveled around Karnataka a bit - trekking and stuff... all regular stuff... fun, dull but also enjoyable fun.

Have also been reading quite a bit (Kafka On The Shore, Crime And Punishment etc.) and buying lotsa CDs (burnt my fingers AND ears quite a bit) apart from watching a lot of movies. Yeah, and did I mention my Krishna conscious phase - not the ISKCON variety but the "truly conscious" kind ?

(originally as part of separate post)

Queuriestu - III

2007-09-15T11:55:00.000+05:30

Here's the third instalment of Queuriestu. Questions are simpler (I hope) this time around.

Read between the lines and think out of the box. Hope you enjoy cracking this set.

Cover me in replies, drown me slowly!

Answers next Friday.

luv

sonofdelphi

http://oraclique.blogspot.com

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QUEURIESTU - III

We Can Work It Out

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1. Won't blame you if you can't understand this. What word is derived from French for the twittering

noises made by birds?

2. Anyone can answer this one. What were the names of the tunnels built for/in The Great Escape?

3. A heady mix of current affairs and trivia. This chimpanzee was taught sign language and was named

after the person recently voted the world's top living intellectual. Give me the name...of the chimpanzee.

4. A typical, 'character'istic connection question. Connect Orson Welles, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

and Lee Falk.

5. The logo of which company, a major star of the day, is formed by its name being interleaved four

times in a circular fashion?

6. What was Linus Torvald's planned name for Linux? Free something, you say, cryptically.

7.If an aye-aye is a kind of monkey and beri-beri is a vitamin deficiency disease...,

who or what is an atlatl?

8. What did Hermann Rorschach, the Swiss psychiatrist, invent/create? What did you say that was?

9. Ozzy, anyone? What is the Osborne effect?

X. As far as currencies go, what is peculiar about the Mauritanian Ouguiya and Madagascar's

Ariary? The clue is that this question is inappropriately numbered!

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Shamelessly Me

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

Getting lonely in blogosphere...

No one visits, my worst fear

Do you my desperate plea hear?

Won't you,my dear, please come here?

Please do visit my blogs and comment.

Choose your poison(s)!

:-)

Musings - http://incubbator.blogspot.com - Hatching Zone For Ideas

Literary - http://cubbspace.blogspot.com - The Last Resort Of An Unpublished Author

Quizzing - http://oraclique.blogspot.com

Programming - http://oozone.blogspot.com

Publishing's gone to the dogs
Nowadays everybody just blogs.
Words and ideas the blogger bleeds
Nonsense spewing out at insane speeds
Who cares? Anyway, nobody reads!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Here are the answers to Queuriestu - III.

Not too many responses :-(

Perhaps I should not have opined that this was an easy set...it seemed it was not!

>> Questions are simpler (I hope) this time around.

Hope for a better response next time around.

luv

sonofdelphi

http://oraclique.blogspot.com

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

QUEURIESTU - III

We Can Work It Out

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

1. Won't blame you if you can't understand this. What word is derived from French for the twittering

noises made by birds?

* Jargon

Very few people got this one. Gibberish was a very appropriate guess, though incorrect.

2. Anyone can answer this one. What were the names of the tunnels built for/in The Great Escape?

* Tom, Dick and Harry

Anyone. Get it?

3. A heady mix of current affairs and trivia. This chimpanzee was taught sign language and was named

after the person recently voted the world's top living intellectual. Give me the name...of the chimpanzee.

* Nim Chimpsky was the name of the chimpanzee

Many of you worked it out to Noam Chomsky, but I'd specifically asked for the name of the chimp.

+I - Wikipedia has an article about Nim. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky

4. A typical, 'character'istic connection question. Connect Orson Welles, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

and Lee Falk.

* The connection is Xanadu. Have given points to all answers with this word.

They all created characters (so it was a character-istic connect) who lived in Xanadu. Coleridge

wrote Kubla Khan, an epic ode to the real-life Mongol conqueror, who lived in Xanadu. Lee Falk

created Mandrake (he created Phantom too), who lived in Xanadu. Charles Foster Kane, the hero

of Orson Welles's classic Citizen Kane, also gave his residence the same name.

5. The logo of which company, a major star of the day, is formed by its name being interleaved four

times in a circular fashion?

* Sun, the only star of the day :-), Microsystems

+I - SUN - stands for Stanford University Networks

+I - Such symbols are called ambigrams

6. What was Linus Torvald's planned name for Linux? Free something, you say, cryptically.

* Linus wanted to name his Freax !

Working the clue out: Free X (Something) and reading it aloud. Juvenile.

+I - He chose this after his friend Ari Lemmke gave him a directory called Linux because he didn't like

the name Freax. Who would have!

+I - He wanted to modify Andrew Tanebaum's Minix initially but was not allowed to. Check out my short

poem about it from http://oozone.blogspot.com/2005/11/heart-for-gnu.html

7.If an aye-aye is a kind of monkey and beri-beri is a vitamin deficiency disease...,

who or what is an atlatl?

* An atlatl is a type of primitive weapon - a kind of spear-thrower

Precursor to the bow and arrow?

8. What did Hermann Rorschach, the Swiss psychiatrist, invent/create? What did you say that was?

* Inkblot test

Where they show you weird pictures and ask "What do you think that is?". Have seen this only in

movies.

+I - Also known as TAT - Thematic Apperception Test

9. Ozzy, anyone? What is the Osborne effect?

* Loss of sales for a company's current product because of the company's yet-to-be-launched

new product.

Apple might just have done it - with their announcement of Intel Apple PCs...Microsoft keeps doing

it, but is lucky, every time!

+I - It is named for Adam Osborne; his company which went bankrupt after he announced the

Osborne-II computer.

+I - Adam Osborne died in Kodaikanal in 2003, which is when I first heard about him

QM: Apologies for the misleading Ozzy allusion! ;-) Oh pedantic me, but it is Ozzy Osbourne,

not Osborne.

X. As far as currencies go, what is peculiar about the Mauritanian Ouguiya and Madagascar's

Ariary? The clue is that this question is inappropriately numbered!

* These don't follow the decimal system.

+I - 1 Ouguiya = 5 Khoums

+I - 1 Ariary = 5 iraimbilanja.

(I've already forgotten!)

+I - Madagascar only recently changed its currency from the Malagasy Franc.

+I - Iraimbilanja means "one iron weight"

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CURIOUSEST! - Enjoyable attempts

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1. On Jargon

Gibberish (Was very popular)

2. On Tom, Dick and Harry

Jane Doe and John Doe.

X and Y

Any And One

3. On Nim Chimpsky

Noam Chimpsky

7. On Atlatl

Albino monkey with vitamin-deficiency

Inca headgear

9. On Osborne effect

An irresistible urge to eat live bats!

X. On Ouguiya/Ariary

Have odd numbered notes, like a 9 ouguiya note

The coins are all crosses (Xs)

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SCORES (chronological, quiznetimal numbering)

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

1. Dinesh Krithivasan - 4 (Fantabulous tries, early bird!)

2. Vivek Krishnan - 3 (Thanx for the extra info)

3. My Quizbox - 3 (No clue as to ur name!)

4. Srikanth Madani - 4.5 (Missed out on number-base)

5. Dijo - 1 (Minix was Tanenbaum's OS)

6. Kamal Rathi - 3 (Not B&A exactly, but OK)

7. Nishanth - 2 (Cool tries)

8. Vaibhav Devanathan - 2 (First to jargon)

9. Balasubramanian K.A - 9 (Fantastic)

X. Abid EH - 2.5 (Half for mandrake and chomsky together)

Y. Ranjith Kumar - 3.5 (Imaginative work on the connect and chimp)

Z. Rachana Parmar - 5 (Good effort)

A. Venkateshwar KR - 1 ( Entertaining as always)

B. Shashwat Quiz - 8 (Solid)

C. Anish Babu - 1 (Good attempts)

Landmark Open Chennai 2007

2007-08-15T00:15:00.000+05:30

The Chennai leg of the Landmark 2007 was conducted by Dr. Naveen Jayakumar at the Music Academy on 15Aug07. The turnout was huge and the auditorium was jam-packed, to witness the landmark quizzing event of the year. Please also check the following links for other reports:
Wenkey
Inquizition
Hindu

The prelims on the first listen, I mean while writing the answers, seemed to be pretty decent. But in retrospect, only the first 30 questions or so seem to pass muster. Hindsight is 30/40! :-) There was an unnatural bias towards Harry Potter in the set of Qs (3+ out of 40; am complaining even though we got all of them), many were arbitrarily worded (avarahonam) or dead giveaways (one Q was even a repeat from the Odyssey event) and hence non-competitive; it was all in all an uneven spread. The cut-off was way too high, 30+/40, I have reason to believe, and would have been OK only if the quality/standard was uniform throughout.

Personal. Participated as the Borobodur Orangutans - Sreeram, Prasanth & me. DNQ. Usual story! :-( Managed to predict quite a few questions in the prelims and still did not qualify! Also ended up with a bout of Chennai-belly... Was a bad outing, all round.

The final round was not so great either. Not much substance (nothing to note!) and hence I left early. Usually I stay till the end, if only because I have traveled all the way to participate. The questions were rather stale, many seemed to have been left-overs from the 2006 quizzing season! Most of the current-affairs questions were based on early, mid 2006 stuff.

There was a high level of arbitness felt in some of the Qs (possibly because of the staleness factor) mentioned above. One of the teams even resorted to answering "Michael Jackson" based answers for all Qs that came to them - just because of a monstrously horrendous and banal connection question. And the answer to one of the questions which captured everyone's imagination, dendronautics was answered incorrectly and still given points. The team had answered something to the effect of "tree climbing" when the answer was morel like "study of vegetation according to height"!

The questions in the quizzer of the year round also was of non-uniform standard. Some of the participants had it real easy while some had it real tough. Of course, luck is a factor and also, this is a subjective opinion, but this was the general impression left behind.

In my opinion, it was a disappointing show, a let-down compared to the Odyssey Open in January 2007 held at the same venue.

QED from Chennai, the crowd-favourites won again, as other reports tell me. Some fun team names as well, "Cheque De", "Eternal Moonshine Of The Spotless Behind", "Munnabhai and the Jacky Sparrows" etc

The organizers could have made (and should in future make) better use of the computer during the registration stages in order to minimize the chaos that prevailed just before the prelims. Online registration/seating reservations for outstation teams would have been really cool.

Trivia Bytes
---------------
(prelims, thanx to prasanth for jogging my memory)
01. Wolf in Norse mythology. Harry Potter - Fenrir (cracked with Norse not HP cue!)
02. Movie clip --> Harry Potter and Dolores Umbridge
03. Visual Of - The Deathly Hallows
04. Kalashnikov most famous model - 1947
05. Philippines national flower - Jasmine
06. Avarohanam -> Avatar (abstrusely worded)
07. Origin of rivers - Manasarovar
08. Dalai Lama Nobel Prize - Gandhi
09. Only Non-Indian Bharat Ratnas - Nelson Mandela, Khan Abdul Gafar Khan
10. 1991 book - Generation X
11. Etymology. Asterix cue . - Font
12. Only bulletproofable car in India - Ambassador
13. Countries with Square flags - Vatican, Switzerland
14. Visual. Pale Blue Dot.
15. Predicted by Mendeleev - Technetium
16. Ekta Kapoor. Non 'K' film - Shootout at Lokhanwala
17. Question that has to be answered in Parliament - Starred question (This was a nice one)
18. Rearview mirror (Odyssey repeat)
19. Magnetic North Pole, GPS (Have disagreement about this one)
20. Named after son of Vayu - Maruti
21. Student body with certification -
22. AR Rahman song used for - Taj promotion (Predicted Q!)
23. Visual of stained glass in study - Venn diagram (another beauty)
24. Robinson Crusoe Island (Has become a chestnut!)
25. Types of webs

(Please check the other links for a better version of the questions)

The Poemism Crisis

2007-08-15T00:07:00.000+05:30

It is sad that poems do not attract as much attention as they used to. No, I do not mean to say that poets are a dying breed. Far from it. In fact, there has been a boom in `poem-production over the years. But increased supply does not imply increased demand, `economic’ally speaking.

The core of the problem is that every Tom (includes me!), Dick and Harry wants to churn out feel-good, heart-warming verse. Sadly the stuff that comes out is often nothing short of bone-chilling! Verse. Sorry. Worse, they insist that the world celebrate their works and acknowledge them as the Tom Keats, Dick Shelleys and the Harry Brownings of the present. The PLIMs (PLIM,in case you don’t know, stands for Poet Laureate In Making) are men whose enthusiasm can be dampened by nothing whatsoever. I bet a googol dollars that even on the eve of Doomsday, a PLIM somewhere will be penning the deliverance song to be sung on the Big Day so that his work be heard in heaven.

Writing poems is not a hobby. It is a passion. I caught the `poemism’ virus last year, or was it the other way around? I became a PLIM anyhow. The thought of being a poet, acknowledged by one and all exhilarated me. I imagined my anthology being published and its contents being incorporated in syllabi the world over. I even introduced similes, metaphors and aphorisms into my poems so that the erudite student could ponder over their contextual validity and so that the examiner could spring many a surprise on unwary students.

As the poemism virus tightened its grip over me, things became worse. All I thought was poems, all I talked was poems, but I could not write any! The situation now became “Poems, poems everywhere but not a verse to ink.” To think that I was a well of poetry and I had no bucket!

One great advantage of being a PLIM is that one never has to learn grammar. Those whose hearts have been wrenched by Wren and Martin will realize that this is true bliss. The true poet spurns grammar in the same way as an Alsatian looks at a poodle. For the PLIM, marks of punctuation are but avoidable irritants. But when in doubt, he puts an exclamation mark! - and if doubt persists, can a question mark be far behind?

The true PLIM never smiles. He goes around with a permanent frown. The sorrows of the world sit heavily on him. When his mind is not churning ideas, it is polishing words. He can never afford to relax because springs of inspiration swell up in his soul. You never know when you strike gold. The PLIM’s command over the language is so great that he considers the dictionary a mere inconvenience. He creates new words at will, for do not new ideas require new words? Using old words is definitely old fashion. The PLIM does not want to be understood In fact, he can never understand his own self. He only wants respect. And every night and morn, he consigns every critic to the seventh circle of hell, the latest block there, constructed especially for this abominable species.

For the PLIM, the postbox is the sign of hope and the postman, the sign of despair. His wonderful creations are sent with great hope to myriad editors and just when he hopes, at last some bright editor has dis`cover’ed his true genius, in comes the postman and throws in bundles of discarded hope. But the PLIM, like King Bruce of yore knows no despair and sets to work yet again. Once a PLIM, always a PLIM!

TBOWM - 200707

2007-08-01T19:30:00.001+05:30

"We are in The Business Of Watching Movies." - Shimjith Ambali

20070715 Ordinary People
Superb. Oscar-winning (Best Picture, Best Direction) effort from Robert Redford. The movie is about a young boy who has difficulties overcoming the loss of his brother in a boating accident. A familiar theme but explored to great depth are the boy's relationships with his father, mother and his shrink.

20070714 Heaven Can Wait
A delightful comedy from Warren Beatty who gets a second chance at life after being wrongly killed. Beatty who is a footballer chooses to go back in the body of a millionaire. Though it is a familiar theme, some memorable scenes such as when the millionaire's wife is caught cheating redhanded. By a strange coincidence, my second movie for the day also had two

20070714 Bee Season
Though the bee in the title alludes to the spelling-bee competition, this Richard Gere starrer is more about the things people do to connect with God. Control-freak and deeply religious Gere's family's attempts to interpret and apply the Kabbalistic concept of "tikkun olam" or "repairing the world, reuniting its shards." The movie has not one but two directors - both engaging in tikkun olam themselves! Attempts to alleviate the gloom and repetitiveness with psychedelic renderings of words spelling themselves out!

20070711 The Birdcage
Robin Williams runs a gay/crossdresser nightclub (The Bird Cage) and his son falls in love with the daughter of a senator. Scenes of slapstick comedy unfold as the household attempts to cover up their true selves when the Senator comes visiting to inspect the suitability of his daughter's suitor!

20070710 Honeymoon In Vegas
Nicolas Cage falls for the crafts of a wily gambler and ends up losing his fiancee to his conqueror for the weekend. But is he gonna be losing her forever as well? Can the seemingly omnipotent millionaire trick the maiden out of Cage's hands?

20070709 Cool Hand Luke
Paul Newman plays the unflappable Luke, indefatigable and irrepressible in his quest for freedom and to be himself. in this prison flick. Memorable scenes include the egg-eating challenge, the explanation of the rules of the prison and Luke's escape'ades. Also features the famous(for me) quote "What we've got here is failure to communicate" in the song Civil War by Guns'n'Roses.

20070708 Tootsie
Watchable cross-dressing comedy. Dustin Hoffman is an out of work actor who finally lands a role when he cross-dresses and auditions for a role in a sitcom. Tootsie becomes a rage and Hoffman struggles to maintain his regular life. A useful side-effect is that he gets closer to one of her/his costars, but complications arise when the costar's father proposes to Tootsie!

20070707 The Bridges Of Madison County
Clint Eastwood, an ageing Nat Geo photographer, and Meryl Streep, a bored housewife have a brief affair while Streep's family was away for the weekend and Eastwood shows up to shoot photos of the Bridges of Madison County. The story is told as Streep's grown-up children shamefully reading about their now-dead mother's romantic liaison with the ace photographer.

20070707 Catch 22
An adaptation of Joseph Heller's classic is pretty much different from the book. Perhaps director Mike Nichols' intention was just to capture the horrors of war, the essence of the book, rather than reproduce it scene-by-scene. All in all, I felt it was darker and was less funny than it should have been. Does not do justice to the book.

20070707 Intersection
Richard Gere faces a midlife crisis, he is at the intersection or the crossroads of life. Does he stick with his wife or go with his newfound lover. The movie takes us along with Gere on a drive through the countryside and tells us the story through a series of flashbacks and incidents that help him make up his mind. Surprise, surprise it was somewhat artsy too.

20070618 Walk The Line
Johnny Cash biopic, Joaqim Phoenix puts in a decent performance as the country crooner. Primarily about Cash's involvement with his co-writer and other family problems (dad, wife).

20070618 Mayavi
Mammootty plays an ex-con who has the power/secret ability to bash up the bad guys, but only while it's dark and he is out of sight! Plot follows familiar lines, village-girl charmed, buddies turn foe - but definitely worth a watch.

20070618 Big B
Slick action flick from Mammootty. A Malayalam movie in true (well, almost) Hollywood style! The story is not much to write home about and there are no "unexpected" twists in the tale. Good, refreshing style though!

20070617 The Quick And The Dead
Sharon Stone and Russell Crowe sizzle in this Western-style, multi-starrer revenge-flick. Gene Hackman is the sherriff holding a shootout challenge to eliminate all possible challengers to his office. A young Leonardo DiCaprio too features among others. Expected a tedium of shootouts but different threads are woven in rather well.

20070617 Chota Mumbai
Mohanlal stars in this laugh-a-minute, feel-good movie. Was a pleasant surprise as I had gone to watch the movie expecting a blood-and-gore, goonda movie.

20070616 The Parallax View
A dark and paranoid thriller about the assassinations and conspiracy theories surrounding them, in the 1970s. It's a satire - there being a Parallax Corporation which is in the business of assassinating senators. A bit ahead of its time, the style followed by director Alan Pakula requires intense concentration to follow. Warren Beatty is the confused hero. I felt the footage in the Parallax test, the psychiatric test the recruit assassins have to take could have been more significant and poignant.

20070616 Boys Don't Cry
The true story of Brandon Teena (Teena Brandon), a transsexual in love with a girl. However things turn awry when her friends discover the truth, that Brandon is not who he claims to be. Hilary Swank plays the boy-girl to perfection.

20070616 The Sting
Paul Newman and Robert Redford play con-men planning to pull off the biggest job of their careers. A bit predictable but interestingly laid out as chapters! Robert Redford reckoned this was his best role ever, I read somewhere. Couldn't help but wonder how much the younger Redford resembles Brad Pitt (should be the other way around!). I think Viggo Mortensen resembles Michael Douglas too.

20070615 Blood Diamond
A pseudo "true-story" style movie, with more than its fair share of propaganda and gossip! The sheer amount of coincidences involving Solomon Vandi take the sheen out of it. Superb performances from the lead trio (DiCaprio, Connelly and Djimon Hounsou) however keeps the movie afloat, as do the fantastic scenery. The movie could have done with either a disclaimer or a true story notice - to lend it a bit of authenticity!

20070615 The Out Of Towners
Enjoyable comedy about how things go wrong for Jack Lemmon and wife when they make a trip to NY. There's non-landing flights, missed baggage, mugging, kidnapping and much more! Everything goes wrong! Was later remade, starring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn.

20070611 Any Given Sunday
Al Pacino plays the coach of a "loser" football team in this Oliver Stone film. Cameron Diaz features as the new owner of the team and Jamie Foxx plays the star quarterback. The confrontational scenes between coach and don't-wannabe-protege are, well, tiredly inspirational!

20070611 Marathon Man
What would you do when your whole world turns upside down and the people who you thought you knew aren't who you thought they were? Dustin Hoffman, as a cute wannabe-Marathoner student, faces up to the tough guys. The "Is it safe?" torture scene is memorable. The athlete shown in the recurring clip is Abebe Bikila.

20070607 Pirates Of The Caribbean 3: At World's End
I thought this was a bit too long and detail-ridden. And everybody comes back from the dead! Dozed off towards the end, which my friends told was the best part of the movie. Anyways, I thought it was better than the second part.

20070605 American Gigolo
Richard Gere plays the titular role, a gigolo framed in a murder-case. Pretty decent stuff.

20070601 The Milagro Beanfield War
Surreal film from Robert Redford which tells the story of a town which is facing a water-crisis because of a big real-estate project. The hero decides to face up to the biggies and rebels by taking water for cultivating his beanfield. Becomes the talk of the town - featuring popular, legal and even divine interventions. Charming at times, overdone at others.

Queuriestu - II

2007-07-15T12:00:00.000+05:30

hi
Welcome to Queuriestu 2. The TUTU edition? :-)
Took longer and had more fun than expected, framing this set of questions. Hope you enjoy it.
Answers next week.
luv
sonofdelphi
http://oraclique.blogspot.com

------------------------------
QUEURIESTU
We Can Work It Out
-------------------------------
Q1. Eunoia is a rarely used (you know, yeah!) term denoting a normal mental state. Root words: Eu + nous = good thinking. What's special about this word? Eminently guessable, analyze the word.
A:

Q2. Tintin was created by...everybody knows...Herge. His real name was...wait, I'll say it...Georges Remi. The question is, why Herge?
A:

Q3. You will miss this most queuriest question for sure. :-) After whom (that's correct, not who) is the unit for radioactivity named?
A:

Q4. Symbolic question. Led Zeppelin's first three studio albums were called I, II and III. Though their fourth was untitled, LZ-IV was known by another name. Gimme the name ????
A:

Q5. Which organization(?)'s name is derived from a corruption of the Greek word for circle? Don't be klueless, rounding up was one of their activities!
A:

Q6. What was peculiar about Australian fast bowler Merv Hughes's hat-trick against the West Indies in the late 1980s?
A:

Q7. Question 007. Which was the last James Bond movie with its title the same as an Ian Fleming work? Cryptic Clue: Vital shy gin delight - shaken, not stirred
A:

Q8. Googleable. Who or what is a sabra?
A:

Q9. Never mind your score in Queuriestu, but if you got an Apgar score of zero, what'd you probably be?
A:

QX. Fill in the blank. Heaven (Christian):Pearly Gates:: Valhalla: _______ .
A:

ANSWERS

hi

Just remembered that I'd forgotten to say when I would send in the answers.I decided two days after the last reply trickled in would mean it was about time. The list stopped at P. So, here are the answers.
Tough set this was, I guess. (Presented this set to crack, I would have scored 3...max) Bubbli and Venkateshwar, who attempted all the questions in the true spirit of Queuriestu, get special mentions.
Not many people spotted the anagram in question 007- VITAL SHY GIN DELIGHT shaken and stirred will give you the name of the movie (3,6,9). Take another shot at (of?) it before you scroll down.

luv
sonofdelphi
http://oraclique.blogspot.com

------------------------------
QUEURIESTU - II
We Can Work It Out
-------------------------------
Q1. Eunoia is a rarely used (you know, yeah!) term denoting a normal mental state. Root words: Eu + nous = good thinking. What's special about this word? Eminently guessable, analyze the word.
A: It is the shortest word that contains all the vowels.
+I: Mozambique also contains all the vowels
+I: Abstemious, Facetious contain all the vowels in alphabetical order

Q2. Tintin was created by...everybody knows...Herge. His real name was...wait, I'll say it...Georges Remi. The question is, why Herge?
A: Herge is the French pronunciation of "R.G.", the author's initials in reverse order.
Confession: I'd read this somewhere. l still don't know how to pronounce it. :-)

Q3. You will miss this most queuriest question for sure. :-) After whom (that's correct, not who) is the unit for radioactivity named?
A: (Question cancelled)
I lost my footing on the framing of this one. Points for everyone.
What I had meant to ask was: You will 'miss' this most queuriest question for sure. After whom was the unit of radioactivy, curie named? There is a controversy regarding whether it was Pierre Curie or after both the Curies. The answer I wanted was Pierre Curie, and why I had said you would 'miss' this for sure... (+I http://www.orau.org/ptp/articlesstories/thecurie.htm - note "named after the late Prof. Curie")
The controversy was the reason why I had asked the question in the first place, but forgot to include the curie bit! :-) It was intended as a curious, 'curie'ous, queurious question....
+I Becquerel - is the SI unit of radioactivity. Named after Henri Becquerel
+I Roentgen Equivalent Man - named after Wilhelm Roentgen
But in any case, I'd like to make a comment here - when the name of a person is asked, and is the same as the unit, please mention the name of the person not just his/her surname. I got many answers of just "Curie" - which Curie?

Q4. Symbolic question. Led Zeppelin's first three studio albums were called I, II and III. Though their fourth was untitled, LZ-IV was known by another name. Gimme the name ????
A: Zoso
The album cover had only symbols (runes?) and one of the symbols (picked by Jimmy Page, the guitarist) vaguely resembled the English spelling Z-O-S-O.
+I This was never endorsed by the band members though.

Q5. Which organization(?)'s name is derived from a corruption of the Greek word for circle? Don't be klueless, rounding up was one of their activities!
A: Ku Klux Klan.
Klue was the direct clue, the Klan introduced the k-spelling corruption in many words. Also, the Klan did round up and lynch blacks.

Q6. What was peculiar about Australian fast bowler Merv Hughes's hat-trick against the West Indies in the late 1980s?
A: The three wickets came in three different overs!
Last ball of one over, first ball of next to end the first innings and first ball of second innings.
+I: Courtney Walsh also had a hat-trick across two innings in the previous Test but it came in two overs.
+I: Best ever bowling figures for Australia - 9/121 AA Mailey v England at Melbourne, 4th Test, 1920/21

Q7. Question 007. Which was the last James Bond movie with its title the same as an Ian Fleming work? Cryptic Clue: Vital shy gin delight - shaken, not stirred
A: The Living Daylights
Anagram of VITAL SHY GIN DELIGHT. Shaken and stirred was probably a better anagram indicator from a crossword point of view, but shaken not stirred was better from the quizzing point of view. I made my pick when at the crossroads.
+I Living Daylights was a short story by Ian Fleming

QM: None of Pierce Brosnan's Bond movies were bonafide Ian Fleming novels. Anyways, he never played cards (baccarat) with the villain in his movies, hence some charm was lacking afaiac...

Q8. Googleable. Who or what is a sabra?
A: A sabra is a native-born Israeli.
QM: Googleable was a red herring to throw you off your tracks. Maybe you should just have looked it up in your dictionary or encyclopaedia!!! ;-)
+I - Sabra liqueur is a famous chocolate liqueur from Israel (Hadn't known this)
+I - Sabra also seems to be the name of a mutant Israeli with superhuman powers in Marvel Comics (Courtesy Mayura). QM: The names of comic characters often go a long way in increasing your QQ (Quizzing Quotient).

Q9. Never mind your score in Queuriestu, but if you got an Apgar score of zero, what'd you probably be?
A: Dead or seriously unhealthy.
Apgar score is a rating given as an estimation of the health of a newborn baby. If you geta zero, you are, most probably, done for!
QM: When you google, google deep! - TJ

QX. Fill in the blank. Heaven (Christian):Pearly Gates:: Valhalla: _______ .
A: Valgrind
In Norse mythology, it is the name of the entrance to Valhalla.
+I: It is pronounced val- grinned, not grind
+I: It is a software tool on Linux, the documentation of which is where I picked this piece of trivia
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CURIOUSEST! - Enjoyable attempts
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rotary Club (QM: was expected)
A Jew who is a Mossad mole in hiding
Helen of Troy
Banquet Hall
European union
Master at wielding the sabre
Odin's arms
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCORES (chronological, quiznetimal numbering)
----------------
1. Rajkamal Vasu - 5 (Good work on the anagram)
2. Dijo - 4 (Yeah, I have read the book)
3. Rajesh Raghavan - 3 (Enjoyable effort)
4. Anurag Singh - 3 (You got a point for the wild guess too!)
5. Bubbli - 5.5 (Attempted all the Qs, way to go! 0.5 for zoFo)
6. Varun Reddy - 4 (Newborn yes, but dead too. 3 separate overs)
7. Shashi Prakash - 5.5 (Didn't know about drink)
8. Rajesh Mohan - 5 (Klan)
9. Manu S Madhav - 2 (More attempts please)
X. Minhaj Alam - 5 (Nice to see you back)
Y. Prasanna Shankar - 4 (Two 0.5s in there)
Z. Santanu Dey - 4.5 ('e' comes before 'u' ;-)
A. Abhirup Ganguly - 3 (Good work on eunoia)
B. Himanshu Sapra - 1 (One on One)
C. Barb Rose Mayura- 5.5 (Thanx for all the extra info)
D. Prateek Vijayavargia - 5 (100% strike rate)
E. Prakash Swaminathan - 2 (Good working out, but two answers not specific enough)
F. Abid EH - 2 (Placements over?)
G. Mamatha Balasubramanian - 4 (Call it cues!)
H. Dinesh Krithivasan - 6.5 (Great show)
I. Srikanth - 2 (Two out of one!)
J. Samrat Sengupta - 3 (Missed shortest word)
K. Sushant Raut - 3.5 (Qurie :D Me2)
L. Nishad Manerikar - 2 (Good attempts)
M. PG G - 3 ( This line reads like a video file extension. Pray, expand ur name :-)
N. Shashwat Bhattacharya - 4 (It was not best ever figures for Australia, I could think of Shane Warne's best - 8 for 71)
O. Venkateshwar KR - 2.5 (Enjoyable as usual)
P. Ranjith Kumar - 5 (I picked up Apgar from you, remember? Back in Trivandrum?)

ASKQANCE 2007

2007-06-24T11:22:00.000+05:30

REVIEW
--------------
Arul Mani was the QM for this one. There were a couple of other quizzes organized on the same occasion which I did not attend. The prelims was decent enough and the finals were OK. Cannot recall much more, writing this after a gap of nearly 2 months now.

You can read more about the event here http://kqaquizzes.org/2007/07/05/kqa-xxiv-anniversary/

PERSONAL
---------------
Team: Past Blast Masters (Lloyd, Ramdas, Prasanth & TJ) DNQ by a longish margin.

TRIVIA BITES
-----------------
Lazarus gena
Date given - Gavrilo Princip Bridge
Mary Quant - Mini Cooper car, mini-skirt
French Somaliland - Djibouti
Ra I & II - Thor Heyerdahl expeditions
Multiskins
Baptism, Miracle at Cana, Magi - Theophanies
Castle of Otranto - Gothic literature
Binney & Smith => Crayola
Oracle of delphi - gases
General Tapioca vs Alcazar (Tintin) - Shown pic of tapioca and a castle
Bread fruit, Jack fruit
Rashomon - Japanese map with gates
Battle of Armageddon
Salt Castle - Salzburg
On the banks of Vistula - Warsaw
Liverbird
European capital outside Europe - 1816-1822 - Rio de Janeiro (of Portgual)

Verbose Monotony

2007-06-05T21:28:00.000+05:30

----------------------------------------------------
VERBOSE MONOTONY
Or what there could be in a name.
----------------------------------------------------

- I -

A man who never failed to please
Put you at ease, did John Verghese.
A man so true, a man so nice
But alas, logic was his vice.

"Hey John Verghese, 'geese' is plural
but you are just one, not many!"
A singular person in logic's noose
He changed his name, to John Vergoose.

"Hey John Vergoose, a goose is a she,
but you are male, not female!"
It was momentous, this question of gender
In a trice, he became John Vergander.

Now, there comes a time in a man's life
When he must get down and find a wife.
And John Vergander found repose
In the arms of the feminist Mary Bose.

"Hey John Vergander, post-wedlock
is it fair, that only the wife change name?"
Injustice, he always did oppose
He now calls himself John Verbose!

****************

- II -

On and on, one could eloquent harp
about the virtues of Matthew Polycarp.
A man so true, a man so nice
But again, logic was his vice.

"Matthew Polycarp, 'poly' means many
but you're just one, not one more!"
This singular man, he was rather sharp,
He changed his name, to Matthew Monocarp!

"Matthew Monocarp, a carp is a fish
but you are a man, or are you not?"
A specious issue of identity,
Thenceforth, he became Matthew Monoman.

Again, there comes a time in a man's life
When he must get down and find a wife.
So Matthew Monoman entered into matrimony
with a lovely young lady, Mary Antony.

"Matthew Monoman, post-wedlock,
is it fair ,that only the wife change name?"
Why must marriage be male hegemony?
Our man calls himself, Matthew Monotony!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

TBOWM 200705

2007-06-01T19:26:00.002+05:30

"We are in the business of watching movies." - Shimjith Ambali

20070514 Spiderman 3
Everybody needs help sometimes but Spiderman takes it a little too often in the movie versions, doesn't he? The third instalment failed to rise up to even the low expectations that I had. The tear-jerker scenes (and there are many of that!) left me in stitches. Mask-less Spidey (everybody knows by now!) gets rescued from a pounding from Venom and Sandman by his friend and/or enemy Harry. Utterly disappointing, but can't blame nobody because, in life, we always have a choice!

20070531 The Last King Of Scotland
Biopic about Idi Amin featuring Forest Whitaker in a laurel- and Oscar-winning performance. Whitaker steals all the thunder and the rest of the cast makes the most of what's left. An absolute must-watch.

20070530 Panic Room
Home Alone X and Blue Streak blended into a thriller! Artificial and manufactured story-line if ever there was one. There's a thief-proof panic-room in the house where there is a bounty which the thieves want. The break-in happens on the very day the new tenants move in, and they take haven from the robbers in the panic-room! The movie is rescued by performances from Jodie Foster who plays the distressed divorced mother with an ailing child and Forest Whitaker who plays a security-guy-turned-bad-but-all-the-same-there's-still-good-inside-me robber.

20070530 High Noon
A western that is not quite a western! There are not too many horses or gun-fights in this one. Rather, this is a rather instructive tale about how good, honest and sincere men are often left high and dry at the end by the very people they have served. Gary Cooper plays a retired(?) marshall who has to fend for himself when an outlaw whom he had put behind bars returns for revenge. The movie is shot in real-time, I think; it depicts what happens in the one-and-half hour or so after the marshall learns about the release of his nemesis. The frequent shots of the clock and the railway track build up tension and are standout features.

20070530 Babel
A four-stories-in-one and everything's-connected style artsy flick. Lives in Morocco, America, Mexico and Japan all connected through an incident that Brad Pit and wife, holidaying in Morocco, get embroiled in. The standout feature was the abundance of dialogue-less sequences, a very visual style of story-telling. The movie is more about the "connection" than anything else; the individual stories are not explained to their logical ends. Must say I enjoyed the movie as a whole.

20070526 Soft Beds, Hard Battles
Peter Sellers stars in multiple roles in this pathetic comedy... Did not, could not watch it through! Abandoned...

20070526 Charulata
Satyajit Ray movie about a "lonely wife" who falls in love with her husband's brother. Slightly abstruse and boring but entertaining nonetheless!

200070514 Keeping the Faith
Chocolatey comedy. A bit too mushy at times. Ben Stiller, Edward Norton and Jenna Elfman star. Love triangle involving a rabbi, a priest and their childhood buddy. Edward Norton's maiden directorial venture.

20070506 Bitter Moon
Sexually charged suspense film from Roman Polanski that is (emotionally) exhaustive and exhausting as well... you are guaranteed to be drained at the end of it all! The character played by Hugh Grant is drawn to the story of how a cripple (Peter Coyote) got together (in all senses of the word!) with his wife. Great stuff.

20070503 Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex
Well maybe not quite that, but a highly entertaining take from Woody Allen. A series of disconnected comedy episodes discussing sexual topics. The best sequences are the ones featuring Woody Allen as a sperm and the one in which a doctor falls in love with a sheep! A bit patchy, but thankfully, it is the mediocrity which surfaces in those patches and not the other way around!

20070501 The Man In The Iron Mask
A so-so adaptation of the Alexander Dumas novel that tells the tale, tells it quickly and entertains. Leonardo Di Caprio, John Malkovich et al star. Too little time spent on character-development, the plot stars; things happen a little too quickly.

20070501 Marvin's Room
A movie about the rediscovery of affection between estranged sisters (Diane Keaton & Meryl Streep). Keaton is the affectionate, self-effacing, all-sacrificing family-person who looks after sick dad while Streep is a fiercely independent, feminist (and selfish?) single mom with a delinquent son (played by Leonardo Di Caprio). Not bad for all the emotional baggage.

20070501 Hoffa
Jack Nicholson delivers a powerhouse performance in this biopic about James Hoffa of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a trucker's union. Danny DeVito hogs screenspace as Nicholson's sidekick, but not the limelight. Standouts are the courtroom scenes and the number of cigarettes that DeVito smokes!

20070501 Oliver Twist
Roman Polanski's retelling of the Charles Dickens story is faithful and elaborate with respect to sets and all that, but fails to sustain the interest. Both Barney Clark (Oliver) and Ben Kingsley (Fagin) act out their parts in an exaggerated manner, I felt.

20070423 Wall Street
Must-watch! Michael Douglas puts in a sterling performance as the super-investor. The movie is worth watching for his"Greed" speech alone. Charlie and Martin Sheen play out father-son roles in this one. Occasional flashes of wisdom from father and occasional glimpses of Tom Cruise from son!

20070430 Casino Royale
Spoof spoof. This comedy-multistarrer boasts big names but not too many good laughs. David Niven is the retired original James Bond who unleashes a whole brigade of duplicates (agents named James Bond) to confuse the bad guys (gals).

20070428 Terms Of Endearment
A run-of-the-mill tear-jerker (a comedy as well, it tries to be everything!); Jack Nicholson rescues the movie from the doldrums with his playboy-retired-astronaut role. Synopsis: Control-freak mother vs Independent daughter, affairs, loneliness and cancer! A very, very over-rated movie. How could it possibly have won so many Oscars! In hindsight, the movie was, I thought, pretty much similar to the later movie "Something's Gotta Give". If you liked that, you'll probably like this as well.

20070428 Quiz Show
A real-life story which shows the cheating that was rampant in the quiz (and game) shows in the early days of television. Some moral dilemmas presented and explored in a fine manner; but I felt it could have been a little more intense. Ralph Fiennes stars as the oh-so-handsome "intellectual" Charles Van Doren in this Robert Redford-directed movie; John Turturro puts in an unforgettable performance as Herb Stempel while Rob Morrow plays the the role of the investigator Dick Goodwin to perfection. My litmus test for a biopic role is: can you remember the name of the character or not? Some splendid quotes and bits of trivia as well. Which face cards are drawn in profile? Which movie won the Academy Award for best picture in 1955?

20070424 Once Upon A Time In America
A slow-moving grand epic gangster tale. Clocks in at 3:43! Took me an entire day to watch. Robert De Niro puts in a brilliant performance; he plays the part of Noodles as a young man, an older man and a very old man. The story is presented as a set of disconnected flashbacks from an opium den. The childhood section is the most entertaining but maybe that was because the gangster parts have since been told and seen umpteen times before. The Sergio Leone and Enrico Morricone combo come good yet again, almost poetry.

20070430 Moulin Rouge
A refreshingly different musical. Wonder why I hadn't watched it all this while. Set in 19th century to the words of rock-numbers. It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside!

20070430 Manhattan Murder Mystery
Woody Allen near his best. A genuine comedy, not the ROTFL type, more of humour. Diane Keaton plays the role that was originally written for Mia Farrow.

20070430 Taking Lives
Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke star in a hackneyed, catch-the-psychopath flick. Watchable, but not too good. A bit gruesome at times. The director could have spared us a lot of the blood and gore!

20070331 Dude, Where's My Car?
Hilarious. Occasional lapses into toilet-humour; it's a little bit too gross at times but it will have you rolling on the floor laughing. Guaranteed. "We are hot chicks..." is a line that never fails to get a smile out of you.

20070301 Leaving Las Vegas
Mushy movie. Cage puts in a decent performance as an alcoholic.

20070226 Melinda &Melinda
A little bit too self-important, almost pseudo-art, and the comedy is a little bit artificial. Woody Allen is not in peak form here. But the movie is not boring by any means and is eminently watchable.

20070226 Capote
An entertaining biopic-style depiction of the writing of In Cold Blood. What took getting used to was the high pitched, funny voice of the lead actor. But then that was the way Capote used to talk, as the extra documentary on the DVD showed. Was mighty impressed then!

KQA Mahaquizzer 2007

2007-05-28T15:34:00.000+05:30

The Bangalore leg of the Mahaquizzer 2007 competition was organized by the KQA at the ITC campus on Sunday. The exam(!) was administered simultaneously in 9 other cities. It was, for the most part, a great set of questions. The general opinion it was much better than those in the previous editions.

There were 150 questions to answer in 90 minutes' time. Anustup Datta top-scored with 67 points for Bangalore. I hear the national top was 71 (in Chennai). The official results and answers will be put up on the KQA blog soon. Sreeram, my friend in Chennai scored 46, he told me. The topper in Kerala was Harikrishnan with 51.

It was an enjoyable outing for me, was writing anything resembling an examination after a gap of nearly 4 years! I managed to scored 34 points out of 150 (as per my count,the cursory in-situ evaluation put me at 30; the vagaries of evaluation!). After the unofficial results were announced, Praveen, Sai, Vivek and I headed to Mangalore Pearl, a restaurant in Fraser Town, for a pork-fest!

Kudos to the KQA for a job well done!

----------------------------------------------------
TRIVIA BYTES
(110/150, watch the KQA site for full detail E&OE)
----------------------------------------------------
* 1992 Bharat Rana sent by registered post - Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
* Fruit "song of the wolf" - Cantaloupe
* Greek for hatred and cold - Styx
* Camphiris, used to dye nails of mummies - Henna
* Popeye Bulge
* Impurity list 1881 - Ivory Soap
* Two word term coined in 90s book about sleep - Power Nap
* City of Angels soundtrack, Greek Rainbow - Iris
* Kumbha mela modern => Harsha Vardhana
* Obituary 1975 misquote Shakespeare - Hercule Poirot
* Banks list. - highest altitude ATM
* Adult reproductive stage - Imago
* Island listing - Galapagos
* Julius Caesar Burial. Inspiration for Roman history book - The Forum
* Plane Mosquito aviation company - De Havillan
* Jagmohan Mundra
* Spy - Nana Phadnawis
* Number of horses > number of people - Mongolia
* SI unit of charge Coulomb. CGS - Coulomb
* 1951 case. Somebody vs State of Madras - First Constitutional Amendment
* Samuel Rubin. Paris brothers - Faberge
* Stuff about pigs and fences! Erinaceous - Hedgehog
* Brazil rock formation - Pao de Pizugur
* Mnemonic to remember speed of light. How? - Using telephonic keypad
* Somebody - Indy500 founder
* Trained to catch fish - Cormorants
* 1851 book by inventor Elastic - Charles Goodyear
* John McDermot won the first. Dominated by Kenyans - Boston Marathon
* BOMIS, beard award - Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia
* Assistant of Robert Koch - Petri dish
* Sage curse Brahma not to be worshipped anywhere - Bhrigu
* Apple software to convert to Intel - Rosetta
* Uluru Ayers Rock
* Expulsion list. Missing two name - The Grimm Brothers
* Name inspired by "And Quiet Flows The Don" - Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hain
* First reality show - Candid Camera
* Only mineral to be directly consumed by humans - Rock salt (The only shocker!)
* Hypothetical landmass, Roman May 7,9,11 - Lemuria
* Ethnical classification of idiocy - trisomy of Chromosome 21 - Mongoloidism (Down's syndrome)
* Father son duo. Father => Country - Israel and Judah
* Plant response imitation of animal - Mimosa
* Heal-all, trifoliate and five-foliate = Ginseng
* Iranian capture of British soldiers. Look like - Mister Bean
* Hurakan
* Resident of Spain, highest civilian honour - Vishwanathan Anand
* Name of character - Godot
* 1988 Nobel Peace Prize - UN Peacekeeping Force
* Saka, Kollam etc out of 29 used in India- Calendar
* Debonair founder, Illustrated Weekly - Ashok Rao Gavi
* Manufacturer of golf-clubs and tennis racquets. All England sponsor - Yonex
* Pierre De Coubertin introduced. skills needed by soldier to escape - Modern Pentathlon
* Oldest in Pirelli calendar - Sophia Loren
* River in Himalaya, Karnataka, character in Matrix Reloaded (4) - Kali
* Fallen Soldier Robert Capa photo
* Complete - Gambia, Niger, Nigeria, Congo - Senegal (rivers too)
* Islamic earthquake, also late 80s Hindi movie - Zalzala
* Hong Kong star "what Hollywood aspires" - Jackie Chan
* First Indian woman historian - Gulbadan Begum
* Former Belgian Grand Prix, health location - Spa
* Only trophy with names of all winners and management. Everybody gets to keep - Stanley Cup
* Movie called US warfare against Iran - 300
* Hungarian scientist coined "chain reaction" ~= Geo Lillard
* brother of famous person. built platform nations - Ernest Hemingway
* Persepolis ruins
* Named after Japanese steaks - Kobe Bryant (My only real miss!)
* Duel description - Alexander Pushkin
* Sanam - Idol in Arabic, Majrooh Sultanpuri popularized
* Golden flower Chinese movie - Chrysanthemum
* Photography story - Great Wall Of China
* Norwegian for destruction - Lemming
* editor of Esquire 2004, to become smartest man - Read entire Britannica
* Building, blending etc - Cocktails
* Locarnot - place where seven treaties were signed
* Lingua franca
* Oxford Cambridge boat race
* Missing movie 1939 - Wizard Of Oz
* Lumbar puncture, name of movie - Spinal Tap
* Handheld camera pioneered by Elvis => series (first 1989) - MTV Unplugged
* How to play lyre brother - Mercury and Cadatius
* Australian dollar, main city, no capital - Nauru
* Coined by Desmond Tutu at end of apartheid - Rainbow Nation
* Pilomotor reflex, 62-book horror series - Goosebumps
* Legumes name and music band former name given - Black Eyed Peas
* Company identity something. Used seasonally in India, Africa (worldwide) - Election Ink
* Format wider than tabloid - Berliner
* Vishwesarayya - "useless" - Jog Falls
* Tuartara
* Updike poem No French movie without _______ - Depardieueu (I wrote an Eiffel-tower-view!)
* Description of game - Quoits
* US National Monuments founding story
* Tributary of Colorado - Gila
* Superiority, Satisfaction, Incongruity - Smiling
* White House Design
* Steven Soderbergh - 1986 rock documentary
* Largest plant seed- Double coconut
* Plaster of Paris
* Debut in Perfect Murder - Daughter of Saeed and Madhur Jaffrey
* Brief bio - Mohsin Hameed
* Newest Independent Caribbean - St. Kitts & Nevis
* 1935 Nobel, took on wife's name - Frederic Joliot-Curie
* Theodore Roosevelt first US prez out of country - Panama
* Capybara - eaten in Venezuela, fo hide elsewhere
* according to different myths - Fire
* Battle Royale movie based on - The Lord Of The Flies
* Actor debut in 1975 Kannada movie, never in mother-tongue - Rajni Kant
* Waverly by Walter Scott
* Daredevil needs a female - Frank Miller, Elektra
* Four Quarter - Inca
* Yellow fever nursery rhyme => Jack Be Nimble
* Egyptian god, ram head - Ammon
* Blue Stone Excrement - Spirulina

Apart, Not Separate

2007-05-18T21:10:00.001+05:30

Half my team moved to a different floor today. Does distance make the heart grow fonder?

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

APART, NOT SEPARATE

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

Empty chairs and desks, now felt is pain
Now this floor is so much less fun;
You've gone, and left a void main,
But size and space spare none!

Young ones leave when they get older
But without you this place seems colder
(Fewer people for the AC,
Laws of physics, you see?) :-)

Now you have moved to floor three
A place more, where we can feel free!
That you have made the shift
Just means that we'll use more, the lift!

- Thomas

You Know Officialese TJs

2007-05-12T12:43:00.001+05:30

Three short ones, maybe more appropriate as cartoons.

IN SEARCH OF

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

A: Where can I find the pipeline?

B: Which pipeline?

A: You know, the one in which all the projects are...

THE MILLIONAIRE

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

A: I am resigning.

B: Why's that?

A: I have become a millionaire!

B: On a salary, wow! Where'd you invest?

A: You know, I've got ownership of so many things...

PHONE

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

A: Can you please ring me on this phone?

B: But why are you standing on those magazines?

A: You know, I need to take a call on a few issues.

Queuriestu - I

2007-04-15T12:00:00.000+05:30

Queuriestu, was another series of quizzes that I ran on Quiznet. Not successful as the previous series "Queuriest", due to different reasons, but I think this was the tougher of the two. Running this series also helped me stay in touch. I was in quizzing wilderness from 2003 to 2006; this series helped me a lot.
-----------------------------------

Hi all!
Old habits die hard. The Quiznet (and quizzing) habit of mine was almost well-and-truly dead! But then the quizzing motherlode pointed the way to the Young World quiz (as a spectator) and that inspired the resurrection, the Quizzerrection! :-) Have also rediscovered my crossword habit...
I name this series as Queuriestu (2)- after my old series on Quiznet, the cluesy (and classy as well I hope :-) Queuriest which I ran around two years back. "Quizzerrection" was probably a better name for this series as I can't guarantee that this will be in the Queuriest vein; this may not be QueuriesTWO exactly. But then I thought about the possible problems with spam filters and the like . :-)
I will try my best to live up to the name. I also hope that I will be able to maintain the momentum and keep going.
Shoot in your attempts ASAP. Answers and scores next Friday (promise)
// (emoticon I invented for "bye-bye") :-)
luv
sonofdelphi
http://oraclique.blogspot.com

------------------------------
QUEURIESTU
We Can Work It Out
-------------------------------

Q1. Let's start off with an ungoogleable (or is it ungooglable?) one. Gimme one word that describes the following formation.
x-----------x
|-----------|
|-----x-----|
|-----------|
x-----------x
(Hope this displays correctly. Anyway, it's supposed to be a rectangle with 'x's indicating things at the corner and the centre.)
A:

Q2. If you google, hitting below the belt, I hope you'll go straight to the foul bowl! But where are ice-hockey players (puckers!) sent for committing fouls?
A:

Q3. Anti-democracy statement: Not everyone is equal. What does the abbreviation YMMV stand for?
A:

Q4. Very literal one. Why is Cape Three Points, in the Gulf of Guinea, Ghana known as the `land nearest nowhere'?
A:

Q5. Rumble In The .... You've all heard it. Who or what is a borborygmus?
A:

Q6. Current affairs. Watergate. What was Deep Throat's real name? Cryptic Potter Clue: Possibly Death Eater Nixon's response to Voldemort's call.
A:

Q7. A bland, boaring question. To kill which demon did Vishnu take the avatar of Varaha?
A:

Q8. Computer programming trivia. What does a quine do? Goto Q8 and print it.
A:

Q9. Filler question. What's Japanese for "single number"?
A:

Q10. Let's round it off with this one. Forever with chuckers, cricket was never a gentleman's game. Who invented over-arm bowling?
A:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANSWERS

hi
Sorry for the delay. The promise of Friday was a promise broken. I apologize.
Anyways, here are the scores and answers.
Next set when the when the next set comes.... ASAP... :-)
luv
sonofdelphi
http://oraclique.blogspot.com

------------------------------
QUEURIESTU - I
We Can Work It Out
-------------------------------
Q1. Let's start off with an ungoogleable (or is it ungooglable?) one. Gimme one word that describes the following formation.
x-----------x
|-----------|
|-----x-----|
|-----------|
x-----------x
(Hope this displays correctly. Anyway, it's supposed to be a rectangle with 'x's indicating things at the corner and the centre.)
A: Quincunx
An extremely cool word to know. Starts with a Q and ends with an X! Maybe I should have given that as a clue. But that would have made it googleable.
Does ungoogleable = unsolvable? And does ungoogleable mean unattemptable???? There was just one attempt at cracking this - pentagram by SM.

Q2. If you google, hitting below the belt, I hope you'll go straight to the foul bowl! But where are ice-hockey players (puckers!) sent for committing fouls?
A: Sin-Bin
This was the preferred answer. Have given points to "Penalty Box" also. When there is "foul bowl" in the question, sin-bin is the better answer.

Q3. Anti-democracy statement: Not everyone is equal. What does the abbreviation YMMV stand for?
A: Your Mileage May Vary
Had a lot of responses to this one! Was fun to read.

Q4. Very literal one. Why is Cape Three Points, in the Gulf of Guinea, Ghana known as the `land nearest nowhere'?
A: Because it is the land nearest a location in the sea which is at 0 latitude, 0 longitude AND 0 altitude.
Most of you missed the altitude part. Half points for those who missed that.

Q5. Rumble In The .... You've all heard it. Who or what is a borborygmus?
A: Stomach fills the blank. The sound made by gas and fluid moving through the intestines.
No who answers...

5. Q6. Current affairs. Watergate. What was Deep Throat's real name? Cryptic Potter Clue: Possibly Death Eater Nixon's response to Voldemort's call.
A: (W) Mark Felt.
If you are a Potterhead, you didn't need to get the newspapers to get this one. The followers of Voldemort (Death Eaters) feel a mark burning! Thus, Mark Felt!
Some of you tried guessing the first name (incorrectly), In a quiz, any quiz, it is better to be incomplete than incorrect. Haven't penalized though.

Q7. A bland, boaring question. To kill which demon did Vishnu take the avatar of Varaha?
A: Hiranyaksha
+I: Bali or Mahabali was killed by Vishnu in his avatar as Vamana.

Q8. Computer programming trivia. What does a quine do? Goto Q8 and print it.
A: A quine is a program that prints itself.
If you follow the instruction in the question, you would have printed the question itself. The goto part was a red herring (QM blooper actually); not really needed.

Q9. Filler question. What's Japanese for "single number"?
A: Sudoku
The clue was in....Filler! Leave no word unread!
I don't think sudoku can be a replacement for crosswords. With crosswords, you can learn a lot from the answers and improve your vocabulary, but there are no such advantages with sudoku. It's hit-or-miss. Sudoku is a good timekiller though and leaves you feeling intelligent!

Q10. Let's round it off with this one. Forever with chuckers, cricket was never a gentleman's game. Who invented over-arm bowling?
A: Christina Willes.
I've given points for slight variations as well. The story, though, is apocryphal - rather dubious.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CURIOUSEST! - Enjoyable attempts
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your movement is mainly in vain ;)
Not Greg Chappell
Eccentric? (x-centric)
You sail from there around the globe and reach the same place. nothing else in that latitude!
Pentagram
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

SCORES (chronological, quiznetimal numbering)
----------------
1. Sreeram - 4 (The Early Bird!)
2. Santanu Dey - 4 (Some half-points)
3. Rajesh Mohan - 1.5 (Yeah, I am the TKM guy)
4. Ranjith Kumar - 2.5 (You missed the altitude part)
5. Venkateswar KR - 5 (Superwittive effort as expected. You haven't changed one bit! :-) Thanks!)
6. Anirudh Batra - 1 (100% strike rate, but why don't you guess more?)
7. Anees Sekhar - 4 (Solid show)
8. Sushant Raut - 3.5 (Very enjoyable effort, Mr. X SentriK)
9. Vaibhav Devanathan - 3 (Almost missed ur answers because you left the numbers blank!)
X. Kumar Vaibhav - 9 (Superlative)
Y. Divya Kanal - 3.5 (.5 for omitting the term)
Z. Akshar Chandra - 3 (100% - bring down the percentage; more guesses please)
A. Abhishek Nigam - 1 (A sin-bin win!)
B. Anurag Singh - 4 (Fortune favours the guessers. Way to go, man!)
C. Sanjeev Mittal - 4 (Emphatic display. Was quine a guess? Superb)
D. Abid EH - 4 (Where are you now?)
E. Sandeep Unni - 4 (Good to see you back too!)
F. Abhishek D - 1 (Now you do know!)
G. Srikanth Madani - 1 (Great attempts. In the true spirit of quizzing)
H. Varun Reddy - 4 (Good effort)
I. Balasubramanian KA - 5 (Smooth sailing)
J. Mamatha Balasubramanian - (Hi there!)
K. Dijo - 1 (I Almost Missed It!)

MetaQuizziks 17th Anniversary Quiz

2007-03-31T13:29:00.000+05:30

Arul Mani and Mitesh Aggarwal conducted a quiz at the Daly Memorial Hall on the occasion of their team's (MetaQuizziks) 17 th anniversary (17th!). The quiz was open only to unseeded teams, the top 5 teams had to stay out, they were [quote] banned [unquote] from participating! More info at the KQA blog.

The quiz was very good - though Arul Mani seemed to be suffering from a love-quiz hangover; many Qs were of a scatological nature! Mitesh's set was top-notch, no complaints whatsoever. The prelims was a workable set.

It was an unsuccessful outing for my team this time around too, I will spare you the laments this time around though...mainly because I am writing this after a gap of one month! :-) The cutoff was 19; we (LC, RM, P and me as PASS) managed only 12. Vivek joined another team and managed to qualify.

TRIVIA TIDBITS
-----------------------------
(will be filled in soon, promise!)

Lao Me Thanda - KQA Love Quiz

2007-03-05T14:21:00.000+05:30

QM: Arul Mani
Date: 04 March, 2007
(writing this on 01 May,2007)

Though the title was a play on Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender", the quiz was more heavily oriented towards the physical rather than the spiritual aspects of love , and the questions were definitely not tender!

This was more of a sex -quiz than a love-quiz! The QM deserves a pat on the back for painstaking (was it?) research and excellent presentation. The prurient adolescent behind the bearded, hirsute exterior of Arul Mani shone through at times!... :-) ... the set of questions put on show was enriching, if nothing else.

JUICY TIDBITS
-------------------------------
(coming soon)

Ganesh Nayak Memorial Open 2007

2007-03-04T13:44:00.000+05:30

Jaidev Karunakaran conducted the last ranking quiz of the 2006-07 KQA season, the Ganash Nayak Memorial Open, at the Daly Memorial Hall today.

The quiz had more of a current affairs, newsy, factsy bias, a welcome change from the usual KQA trivial fare. But it suffered from bad execution; the QM was barely audible and when he was, the mumblings were of an incoherent nature. The initial buzz of the audience, undeniably and predictably, turned into the cacophony of hecklers at around the half-way point! Many of the questions were real snorters and were over the top for most people. On the plus side, however, there were a few gems and some with attitude also.

I also felt that the organizers should have actually taken the time out to really remember Ganesh Nayak; there was nothing whatsoever mentioned, at least nothing that I heard, about the person in whose memory this quiz was being organized.

As seems to be the trend nowadays, we (RM, LC, TJ and P) did not qualify :-(, but there were no regrets. The quiz goes down as an unqualified failure! :-( Actually, I'm beginning to think that I ought to change the name of this blog to Losers' Whine or something! Or maybe it's that I am more a Neville Cardus than a WG Grace! Or maybe that we must tweak our team a little bit.?

TRIVIA TIDBITS
(will fill in soon, not many though)

Under The Peepal Tree 2007 Open(s)

2007-02-25T22:42:00.000+05:30

RVCE organized two open quizzes today, at the Chinnaswamy Stadium's pavilion hall as part of their annual quiz fest, Under The Peepal Tree.

1) Audi Vidi Vici
QM: RV QuizCorp girl (don't know her name)
Audio Video Quiz open to all

2) Corporate Quiz (don't recall title)
QM: Avinash Mudaliar
General quiz, mixed corporates allowed

The prelims for the audio video quiz was pretty good but the final round devolved into a Simpsons quiz - there were way too many questions based on the Simpsons (especially), South Park and the like, mainly cartoons. And to top that, it was an insipid affair as well. The presentation skills of the QM left a lot to be desired. Thoroughly disappointed with the show, and feeling a bit hungry, I left in search of food, body-nourishment because neither soul nor mind were getting with the fare being served! Hence, don't know who won it.

Perhaps the organizers should have made better arrangements - there was no food available in the vicinity, finally managed a few bites only after sneaking in to the club area. (Coffee-biscuits were available, thanks for that but no real food, should have been thought of when holding an all-day event) And never forget basic things like the introduction of the QM and so on. And general note to QMs all over, do not assume that everybody knows you (somebody must do an intro) and everybody knows what you're talking about (don't skim/skip answers). Otherwise you alienate the audience, might as well do it over the net or something!

The corporate quiz was much better than the morning-debacle. The prelims set was well-rounded, though there were way too many sitters and did not really set the tone for the final round. The final round was of a different level than the prelims and many teams found the going really tough.

The final round saw an absent QM - Avinash Mudaliar hadn't turned up and was...as the organizers put it...on the way! One of the QuizCorp members (don't know his name) did substitute duty and did a fair job of it. The questions, as Avinash later said after he turned up, was made by the QuizCorp team and perhaps that was the explanation for the confident show by the youngster. It was a hard-core trivia quiz; it was evident that the question-setters had taken pains to not tread the biz-quiz path! (...biz-quiz..that's an oxymoron, isn't it?) The rounds were called For the Peepal, By The Peepal, From the Peepal and so on.

Avinash Mudaliar,dressed for the occasion, turned up half-way through the quiz and took over from the volunteer QM. He livened up the proceedings with his maverick touch - smart-ass comments and quips, haphazardly courting and baiting the audience with prizes and so on. There were a few incidents of arbitrariness and injustices - an on-the-fly conversion of a normal round into a buzzer round, arguments with one of the participants et cetera. But hey, it's all in the game.

SuMo Yet So Far (Swaminathan and team from Chennai) walked away with top honours and the winner's cheque.They tied for first-place and clinched the issue on the tie-breaker deservedly (they had suffered a lot of negatives in the buzzer round). There has not been a single quiz that I have been to and Swaminathan was present, that he has not ended up winning! The list now reads Landmark Bangalore (my awakening), ITC Bangalore, Odyssey Chennai.... should I be his fan or am I his lucky charm?...just kidding about the lucky charm part, serious about the fan part... ;-)

PERSONAL
---------------
For the A/V quiz, I had teamed up with Vivek, called ourselves "Our Duo, We Duo". Prasanth and Lloyd formed another team. (We had thought it was teams of 4) As it turned out, together we might have, but separately we didn't... qualify! We managed 7 or so, they managed 8 or so, and that too fairly disjoint sets. Throw in a few genuine misses and you've got an unbeatable DNQer's Whine! (DNQ=Did Not Qualify). Cut off was 12, I think.

Vivek abandoned ship for the afternoon quiz, as he wanted to attend the Crucible quiz which was also happening today - ditching us in favour of audience prizes and nostalgic kicks (he had won the 2006 edition). Team PASS's was very much a sinking ship today; Vivek made a wise choice. (Intended to self-deprecate ;-) I was hugely disappointed that we did not qualify for this one; the morning's failure did not qualify as a disappointment at all. Cut off was 16 or so, we managed only 12 out of 25.

TRIVIA TIDBITS
----------------------

(waiting for Prasanth to send in the transcripts, was so crestfallen and depressed that I could
not bring myself to take things down!)

RVCE QUIZ QUESTIONS :

(from Prasanth)

I am not including the AUDI VIDI VICI QUESTIONS.

1. Sequential connect : Visuals of DDLJ, KKHH, KHNH, ADITYA CHOPRA,KARAN JOHAR and NIKHIL ADVANI.

Ans. ADITYA CHOPRA( director of DDLJ, asst.director : KARAN JOHAR)

KARAN JOHAR(director of KKHH, asst . director: NIKHIL ADVANI)

NIKHIL ADVANI(director of KHNH)

2. Connect a movie clip and a pic of Russell Crowe.

Ans.The movie is THX 1138(as in the number plate of the car in the clip), the person standing beside the clar in the clip is Ron Howard and he directed ‘The Gladiator’ starring Russell Crowe. THX 1138 is the first movie of George Lucas.

3. Actor born in Jaunpur, U.P. Popular Bhojpuri actor. But earned nation wide fame for something else.

Ans. Ravi Kissen (Big Boss contestant)

4.Visual Connect : samosas, a pic of Lord Ganesha and a pic showing Arjun and Lord Krishna.

Ans.Things that were carried to space by Sunita Lynn Williams – Bhagwad Gita,samosas and a picture of Lord Ganesha

5.Id the voice featured in the audio clip.

Ans. Bianca Castafiore ( of Tin Tin fame) singing the ‘The Jewel Song’.

6. Some description which actually turned out to be J agdish Chandra Bose describing the electromagnetic wave.

7.some ads whose connection turned out to be Maggi

8.Who comes next in the series: Amitabh Bachan, pic of Eklavya(the real one), a pic of Dronacharya teaching the Pandavas,_______: Abhishek Bachan( whose upcoming movie is ‘Drona’).

9.Connect: One picture of EP-101 and Bruce Dickinson song.

Ans.EPSON( named after ‘son of EP-101’ later became Epson).Mascot of Bruce Dickinson’s band was called Epson.

10.Id the pic.(clue: connected to a style of music)

Ans. Calypso( greek myth)

11. ID the singers in the audio clip.

Ans.Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love

12. First seen in a movie with Tom Hanks in 2000.A short biopic was sold along with the movie’s DVD titled “ The life and death of a Hollywood extra “.

Ans.Wilson the volleyball

13.Connect visual pics of two ships.

Ans. They are “Black Pearl “ of Pirates in the Caribbean and “African Queen” of the movie of the same name. The connection is they are the movies named after attractions in Disney Land rides.

14.Identify the musical instrument.

Ans. Jalra

15. A question on Black dogs( something that takes u on a “high” )whisky: basically the funda is that ‘black dog ‘ is an euphemism for hallucination due to sleep deprivation caused in truckers.Stems from the fact that black dogs dart in front of the trucks causing a wreck.

16.Visual connect : A map showing Poland, an athlete in black and white and Santhi soundararajan.

Ans. Ewa Klobukowska is the Polish athlete in B&W. The only athlete known to have failed a femininity. She was ruled ineligible for the European Cup women's track and field competition in 1967.

And the same fate happened to Santhi.

17.ID the actor in the movie clip.

Ans. David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla.

18.ID the monument in the movie clip.

Ans. St. Mary’s Virus Memorial which is dedicated to the game of Ring –a –Roses(from the movie “V for Vendetta”).

19.Connect the two pics.

Ans. 1^ST pic : Mary Queen of Scots who loved the game of golf and is seen along with her “caddies”(origin of the term)

Second pic : King Henry VIII – He loved the sport of tennis and he had ball boys who used to pick up the ball and serve it to him.Thus arose the term “service” in tennis .

The connect: terms in modern day sports that were derived from royalties.

20.Some long passage about the drawing of lines: that was Cyril Radcliffe being responsible for drawing the actual lines of Partition.

21 the actor who comes next in the video clip( features some persons about to take a draw)

Ans. R.D.BURMAN who makes his first appearance in movies in Guru Dutt’s “Bhoot Bungla”.

22. Connect the “kuku kuku “ song from the movie Khal Nayak, a south Indian temple and a pic of Tipu Sultan.

Ans. The term “choli” takes its name from the Chola Dynasty who built that temple.(don’t know wat Tipu Sultan is doing here)

23.What is Steve Buscemi in Con Air referring to when he says this(music playing in the background) : "Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash."?

Ans. Lynyrd Skynyrd who met with a plane crash in1977.

24.Showed some pics of old Indian trains(including “FAIRY QUEEN”).

Ans.The term ‘express’ came into being.

25.Visual of a flower. In areas where the ground does not freeze, it can be a spectacular member of the summer garden. They like good drainage and grow well in a soil rich with organic matter. Some species are known as Spider Lilies.ID it and describe the funda behind it.

Ans.The flower is Hymenocallis and it is the foundation of the design for the Burj Dubai, U.A.E.

26. A visual coonect showing the Watergate Hotel and a the grid design of a car.

Ans. Computer Aided Designing – first building that used CAD in designing it.

27.Visuals of some tourist spots.What is the connection?

Ans. Sites that are included in the ” Ramayana trail “ tourism in Sri Lanka.

28.Connect the two comic pics of Asterix and Obelix.

Ans. The first pic pays tribute to GE and the second to Michelin.

29.Connect and ID the pics.

Ans. Naomi Watts, Sophie Loren, Lou Dhillon, Hillary Swank and Penelope Cruz. The connect is Pirelli Calendar – 2007.

30. Connect the visuals of two mountains.

Ans. Brands inspired by mountains. The Thumbs Up logo inspired by the first mountain and the design of Toblerone chocolate inspired by Mt.Matterhorn.

31.Connect the video and Sonic the HedgeHog.

Ans.The first video to be played on MTV and Sonic the HedgeHog is the mascot of Sega.The connect is VIACOM which owns these.(also Paramount).

32. Connect the pics and ID them.

Ans. A lightning bolt, a thunderbird , Electra ( greek myth) , sten gun, canon , and an emblem of lion capital criss-crossed by swords.The connect is Royal Enfield.

33.Some persons’ names along with certain names that they gave.

Ans. It was a contest to name the AsianPaints mascot which finally ended in the name Gattu.

34.Connect brands and footballers.

Ans. Cristiano Ronaldo- Pepe Jeans ; Ronaldinho-Lenovo ThinkPad ; Freddie Ljunberg – Calvin Klein

35.What was the 2006 “Brand of the year”?

Ans. The headbutt involving Zidane and Matterazzi.Zidane was wearing a jersey with adidas logo.

36Whatz the funda behind the company Hamburg Maxheimer and the FIFA WC 2006?

Ans.It is the insurance company that had insured the FIFA WC trophy.

Solus Rex 2007 & KQA Annual Movie Quiz 2007

2007-02-25T12:45:00.000+05:30

KQA organized two quizzes at the Daly Memorial Hall today -

1) Solus Rex finals
QM: Arul Mani

2) Annual Movie Quiz
QM: Madhav Nair

Did not attend as we had decided to go for RVCE's Under The Peepal Tree. Would be grateful to anyone who could fill me in with some random stuff like who won etc. Sound-bites of the questions would also be appreciated!

(From Sai, thank you!)

Th movie quiz was one of the best Ent quizzes I’ve ever seen. (It’s so easy to have fan-boy quiz when it’s a ent quiz) Either the Simpsons crap like we saw in the morning , or some comics ( like what me n my team would do ;) ) , or some death metal… but if there was ever a quiz which had the perfect mix of the kind of questions / type of films being questioned on , this was it. I’ve been unfortunately missing the movie quizzes conducted by Madhav Nair past two yrs.

Prelims were a bunch of excellent questions, ranging from all types of films starting with > a question on Metropolis being chosen for some UN archive > mandatory question on Hitchcock. > A movie called Westworld, which became the first feature film to use of computer digitized images. Actor & Dircteor – Ans:Yule Brynner & Michael Crichton!!!( Yule plays the role of robot which is spoof on his role in Magnificent seven)
> X & Y , two famed directors engaged in a public argument in 1960’s – Ans:Mrinal Sen & Satyajit Ray. >Dialogues from which film?: “The Godfather is the answer to any question. You're at war. " It's not personal it's business." Recite that to yourself every time you feel you're losing your nerve. What day of the week is it? "Maunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday." And the answer to your question is "Go to the mattresses." Ans: You ve got mail.> Indian actor acting as Zia Ul Haq in new film w/ Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts Ans: Om Puri .> An easy audio of Tarantino talking about dancing. > One of the songs of Kaala Pathhar , became the title of the next action flick of the same film-house, which was made 25 yrs later. Ans: Dhoom >Last scene of The Apartment. (Sitter). > Opening scene of Rashomon

Me n santosh missed the cutoff by few questions, but I don’t remember sitting in the audience and enjoying a quiz this much. (Plus we knocked off few coupons , so ended with the same rewards as that of most finalists. Muahahaha! !!)

Qualifiers : Mustafa , Watwo , Arul Mani (Lone Wolf!) , Dibyendu & Sohan, and couple of other teams ( whose names i m not aware of). What was very interesting was that there were many participants who I ve never seen at KQA( so called 'non-quizzers' , whatever that means ) . Shows the interest that a movie quiz generates ;). Won by Watwo ( Arun Hiregange & Anustup Duttta ).

-- Sai Ganesh

KQA Music Open & Ladies' Open 2007

2007-02-17T21:23:00.000+05:30

Two open quizzes were held today at Daly Memorial Hall by the KQA -

1) Annual Ladies' Open
QM: Arun Hiregange
(by "popular remand"[sic], as Arul Mani had put it in the announcement)

2) Annual Music Quiz
QM: Rajesh Meher & Arul Mani
(titled "Muzak to my ears")

The ladies' quiz was a slow starter, with not too many teams turning up. In the end, the organizers decided to start off with the four teams that were present - a couple of student-teams from RVCE, a team of older ladies, and another team. There was no elimination round. The QM Arun Hiregange's choice of questions was rather good I must say, most of them being workoutable, none smacking of chauvinistic trivalization and highly enjoyable. The girls were no match for the team of ladies, who emerged convincing victors by a long way. I think the RVCE team featuring Aditi finished second; they made some good, fun guesses.

The inside joke for the day was: Kiran Vijayakumar scored in the ladies' quiz! ;-)

The annual music quiz did not draw too many participants either. Perhaps one of the reasons for this was that it was a Saturday and many companies were working (many declaring it a compensatory working day because of the Karnataka bandh on Monday). The QMs decided to start off the finals with the teams that were present (that was the order of the day!). Latecomers had to sit it out in the audience. I teamed up with Arun Hiregange for this one; both of us were casual floaters with no plans to participate actually! We still performed creditably though, finishing second-last I think.

One of the twists in the format was a round where the teams were paired up with each other (based on their standings at the beginning of that round, top with bottom and so on). Teams had to "buzz" (shout) for the question if they thought their partner team knew the answer. Signalling was allowed. If the team then answered correctly, both teams would get points otherwise both teams would get negatives. This is a cool idea (for casual quizzes at least) to ensure less variance in scores. I would call this concept "Tag Along"; I forget what the QMs had named it.

Due to mis-signalling, our partner team (the two guys with thick specs, one really tall, one normal height,don't know their names, somebody please fill in) tagged us for a connect Q. Inner Circle's Games People Play and Kula Shaker's Hush had been played. My nod of recognition was mistaken for knowledge of the answer! But in an epiphanic rush, I don't know from where, the correct answer - Joe South - just rolled off my tongue!

After Rajesh Meher handed over proceedings to Arul, there was (as expected?) a long stretch of unanswered questions. When a team finally broke the ice, all of us (including the audience) clapped!

The quiz ended off with a mammoth A-to-Z (well, nearly!) substitute-for question. We based our attempt on Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album (what with Roger Waters coming and all you see) but were utterly wrong. It turned out to be the flavour of the season, the Beatles' Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band!!! Arul Mani has the last laugh on Sergeant Pepper! We scored a creditable '0' on that one, having been thrown off track by a clue about a song based on noises in a barn (==>Animals). Sai & partner won the quiz, pipping Thejaswi Udupa's team and our dear "partner-team" at the post with a superlative crack of the A-to-Z Q.

To paraphrase and misquote Jack Sparrow: "Today will be remembered as the day that Arul Mani almost killed [the] Sergeant Pepper [meme]!". Thank god and Arul!

TRIVIA TIDBITS
(mainly from the Ladies' Open,
the Music Quiz question were largely un'note'able)
-----------------------------------------

(will be filled in soon)

Banana Endianness TBD

2007-02-16T10:41:00.001+05:30

At which end of the banana should we peel?

Mulky Memorial Open 2007

2007-02-05T18:24:00.000+05:30

The second edition of the quiz held in memory of KQA's founder and longtime President, Wing Commander G.R. Mulky, who passed away in February 2006, was conducted by the newly-christened Das brothers (Dibyendu and Vinay) at the Canara Union hall yesterday.

The quiz was more fact-based and direct than most. The quiz was themed on India – every question had an India connection. All this added up to being a refreshing change for the quizzing populace. This does not mean, however, that there was a shortage of banal (and sometimes boring) trivia here either. (Please note that arcana is also an anagram of “canara”, the venue!) All in all, it was good fun and enjoyable, although the spread was not exactly delectable.

Almost all the teams found the going mostly tough both in the prelims (the cut-off was just 12/32) and in the final round. The end-scores of all the teams were between 50 and 100 (I think). The quiz was won by Thejaswi Udupa and team. A highlight was someone in the audience shouting Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers for one Q! :-)

The trivia-bites section of this report is somewhat sparse and especially error-filled because many questions had only anecdotal and contextual relevance and meaning, but also because the answers were not projected on-screen. (This is true even of the Unmaad 07 quiz) QMs have a moral (make that legal!) obligation to inform also. ;-)

PERSONAL

I teamed up with Prashanth, Lloyd and Sai for this one. The team-name we chose was….PASS! We managed to qualify this time…eighth and tied for seventh place with 54 points. It was a good team effort even though we were mostly, justifying our name, passing! Creative guesses include Ninyankodi while destructive guesses were “The Das Brothers band” and Shivalingam for crocodile.

I had a minor row with the QMs about a question in the prelims to which we had answered “Big Brother” instead of “Big Boss” even though the connection could have logically been worked out both ways. But as always the QM’s decision prevailed and because of that we only just about managed to scrape through.

PRELIMS

1. Audio (song) – Brett Lee w/Asha Bhosle
2. On Saraswati temple in South India – in news – site of proposed IIT
3. Ravindra Jain, if he could see, wished to see – KJ Yesudas
4. Visual – woman – maker of Ravana effigies
5. Dakshina Kashi, Kumbh Mela organised – T.Narsipur
6. Left at her peak in 1966 to London to study medicine – Rita Faria
7. Ferry across the river ______-- - Zuari
8. Climb films. Indian animator – Bhim Sen (drew boos!)
9. Description of struggle of actor. Extra in Hema Malini debut – Naseeruddin Shah
10. Book cover blanked out – Upamanyu Chatterji, Weight-Loss
11. Cadres ANSAR(under 30), IKHWAN(over 30) – SIMI
12. Princely state 1891 – British restored to same status. MK Priyambada premier – Manipur
13. Visual. Painting features – Vaikkom Muhammad Bashir
14. “A Dangerous Game Is About to begin” tagline. Launched a game also with audio CD, guiding robbers in bank robbery – Aankhein
15. Set up in 1935, Hilton-Young commission. First private, then state-owned – RBI
16. Racquet-sport couple – Chetan Baboor and Jwala Khubta
17. List of nonsensical, fun invention – Prof Shonku (Satyajit Ray character)
18. Tenth day of Muharram – Ashura (Hail Prashanth!)
19. Visual. Common. Dilip Kumar, Morarji Desai – Nishaan-e-Imtiaz
20. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay compete in Madras Provincial seat. First woman to do so. Where from? – Mangalore
21. Sanctuary mentioned by Kipling – Kanha National Park
22. ___’s Odoru Maharaj, Dancing Maharaja key in Indo-Japanese relations. Manmohan Singh address to Diet – Rajni Kant
23. Mahesh L Kunshwar - famous playwright, Holi (drew jovial booing)
24. Visual. Coach of Sriram Singh, finalist 800m in 76 Montreal Olympics – Illyas Bapwar
25. Route description. Guessable. World heritage site. Have to visit by day and return - Valley Of Flowers
26. Bangalore landmark. Lease ran out. Modified from 6000 to 6 lac per month – Windsor Manor
27. First work in Hindi, about king – Prithviraja Raso
28. Sport banned in Tamil Nadu – Jallikattu (Lloyd)
29. Sanjeev Bhaskar (CanNot Recall Question)
30. CNRQ
31. Video. Syriana starting sequence.
32. Movie clip. Bemisal

FINALS

Plain vanilla visuals (written)
1. Sarla Devi
2. CNRQ
3. Nimbus chief
4. Some CEO
5. CNRQ
6. CNRQ

Theme Guess: Scams
Urea (Uric cycle shown with formulae!), St.Kitts map, Bicycles, Sugar (looked like diamonds) and so on
(Pretty Creative)

Infinite Bounds

Only comet named after Indian. Wilson - ______ effect –
Harbhajan Singh & other sportspersons – DSPs in Punjab Police
Hussein-_____ correspondence – Macmahon
One less than a crore. Place – Punalkodi
Margadarshi. Modern-day Carnatic kutcheri format – Araikudy Ramanujam Iyengar
“Hole In The Wall” – computers for all
Robert Pirsig – came to BHU for Eastern Philosophy, Metaphysics of quality
Connect – Coru, Anand, band – British Steel (Missed Judas Priest band!)
Agarkar, fish-dishes – Bombay Duck (Missed declared sitter. So pressure :-) also because there were two dishes)
Hindu Kush = Slayer of Indians
Al Beruni – crater on the moon named after 10^th century Indian chronicler

Stage 2
Socotra – Dioskoriorou
Only four kinds listed. One believed extinct now - River dolphin
Yanam
Ghatam player – Sukanya Ramagopal
Manifestation of Egyptian god “Rock worms” – Crocodile
Saif in Arabic etc. English use same word as locals for this- Talwar
Fast fast slow slow – Foxtrot (we answered cha cha cha)

Theme: Classes of Indian Navy vessels (We cracked this, though we thought it was Indian navy ships. We vaguified well enough! ;-)

IIM-B Unmaad Open 2007

2007-02-04T16:30:00.000+05:30

IIM-B, as part of their annual cultural festival Unmaad, organized an open quiz contest at their campus today. The QMs were Thejaswi Udupa and his college team-mates. The prelims set was pretty cool but the final round was a major letdown. This was despite the prelims being tuned as a sneak pre-taste of the finals (42 questions , Beatles trivia, Escher etc) . There were cushions and not chairs for the qualifiers on stage: perhaps signifying that there were supposed to be no sitters! (Bad PJ TJ!)

It turned out to be, as my friend Sai puts it, a “fan-boy quiz” with not much trivia of lasting value and worth, peppered with some fun questions (all the same) fashioned from arcana about the quiz-masters’ cultural infatuations and hobbies. For example, many questions were themed around France, where one of the QMs, as he kept periodically reminding us, had “spent three months of his life”! It must be said also that some of these questions had the fun-factor.

It must be remembered that, to rephrase an adage, the formula of “all fun and no beef” makes the audience a dull one! It was clear that the QMs were having a lot of fun, enjoying themselves – sharing inside jokes (the Das brothers and the current “in-thing” in Bangalore quizzing circles, cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper) with the on-stage teams and introducing everybody to their idols and other objects of their adoration. All this left the audience in the lurch, I felt.I am basing this judgment on what I saw of the quiz (I left around halfway through), so it might be a little unfair but this is what I felt.

Perhaps because there was another inter-collegiate quiz (IMS, big money) no college-teams made it to the final round. Because I left halfway through, I don’t know who won the quiz or about the final standings. Somebody please fill me in.

PERSONAL

My teammates were Lloyd, Rajesh Mohan and Sai Ganesh (who decided to team up with me at the venue). We called ourselves “Oraclique”! But we did not clear the prelims this time. We came real close though, earning ourselves an “honourable mention” from the QM. We lost out on the tie-breakers; we had only 0.5 on the starred questions in the prelims.

We might have sneaked through had I not made a last-minute, ill-advised change on my response “Fermat’s last theorem” to “Murphy’s Law” on a question about an equation. It was my partner Sai’s gut feeling(he couldn’t justify) against my gut feeling(with some justification). But such is life! It has happened to me before; when will I ever learn. Advice: always go with what can be justified better on a prelims Q! Lloyd said that he considered Biafra to be a miss.

(Self-note: The trip to IIM-B. Home to Marathahalli to campus! Taxi advice!)

PRELIMS

1. Word meaning master of own self. Also husband in Bengali – Swami

2. First used in 1910s for a baseball pitch – Jazz

3. Visual – map – non-fictional country – Biafra

4. 3 equations shown, what’s missing – Fermat’s last theorem

5. Video – Pat Boone covering Little Richard

6. Comic strip – about chick-picking Nash. – Richard Feynman

7. Visual. Comic characters from – Raj comics

8. Missing blank: _________, Magnum force etc – Dirty Harry

9. Visual: Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata (wild guess: wrote Zapatista)

10. Audio – singer died recently – Moksha (Forever never)

11. “No yacht was harmed in the making of the movie. It is the movie that is the shipwreck!” about - Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away

12. Posters: Jamaica Inn, Rebecca – Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne du Maurier (Cracked!)

13. Map – Identify city. American punk rocker – Gothenburg

14. Wives of Muruga (One is name of a Tamil Actress) – Valli & Devayani (Rajesh got Valli)

15. Ad campaign – acclaimed internationally not in India. Clues- Incredible India (miss)

16. Poem missing blanks – Kazakhstan, Borat

17. Connect Perfume, Miss England etc – Shilpa Shetty, Big Brother. (Big bother now! When will the BB mania stop???)

18. List 9 items. FR Spofforth etc – Laker, best bowling figures in Test innings

19. Visual: paintings Connect – Absinthe (Sai!)

20. Story named after another city. Chestnut. – Venezuela, Venice

21. Visuals connect – Gibraltar, London, Paris, Southampton – Ballad Of John & Yoko

22. St. Gobain order supplied 357 of them. Important events have happened here – Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles (QM blooper)

23. First suggested by Thomas Jefferson for Parisians to wake up earlier. Color coded map –Daylight Saving Time

24. Laxmikant Pyarelal not inspired. Decide to leave studio. Chat inspired son – Accha To Hum Chalthe Hai (Rajesh magic!)

25. Visual. Subject of controversy between two countries when lease expired. 1971. – Jim Morrison’s grave

26. Long silences of Parisian beauty => Dumb blonde (Should have worked out :()

27. Listing. Sudden drop in 1939 – Lou Gehrig’s batting averages

28. Average age:45, 16% outsiders (or reverse?), 47% from neighbor, official language also lone neighbour’s – Monaco

29. Visual sitter – Kiran Desai

30. Visual – Hugo Chavez

31. Still from movie – Ghost Rider

32. Visual connect – James Joyce, grave – Black Dahlia

33. Visual – Akbar and – Matt Groening (Sai. Would have banged my head!)

34. Visuals- house , “This is where the original soil…” – Joan Of Arc

35. Velasquez painter

36. Visual – self-portrait of artist from – Art Spiegelman

37. Tulus Dothrek??

38. Location. Story. What? - Jaipur litfest

39. Visual – MC Escher

40. Word origin story. Word first, acronym later – Backronym

41. Audio – Van Morrison Astel week

42. Crimean war connect. (We wrote Last Samurai)

FINALS

Lateral round of 5 visuals – Theme Old names of bands

1. Tradewinds – Styx

2. Soft White Underbelly – Blue Oyster Cult

3. Roundabout – Deep Purple

4. The Mega death – Pink Floyd

5. Earth – Black Sabbath

6. Quarrymen – Beatles

Infinite bounds

1. Sculpture in Perth Triangle – Penrose triangle

2. Michael Steele bassist of band inspired from Elvis grave – Eternal Flame, Bangles

3. East side gallery. World’s largest open air art gallery on – Berlin Wall

4. Rodgers & Hammerstein concentrated on King & I for 1956 Oscars. Also Carousel and Oklahoma in that year, neglected. But Carousel runaway hit song – “You Will Never Walk Alone”, theme song of many football teams

5. Missing picture in series – Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor – Richard Burton

6. A-B 1968 “wasn’t dead and that he hadn’t gone anywhere” 1999 saying at A’s death – Joe Di Maggio, Paul Simon, Mrs. Robinson

7. Visuals. Cerberus, Orpheus charmed – Tribute in literature – Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s stone

8. Oct 14, 1937. Caswell “ Do I have to watch this ___ grow”. Overheard and Stanley Woodward coined => Ivy League

9. Words if used, no ads in gmail – Forms of die, dead etc

10. Visuals. Indian gurujis. Who was missing? Sergeant Pepper cover – Mahatma Gandhi

11. Robocop movie still of car with licence plate “6000 SUX” – Anti-ad by Ford against Pontiac 6000 their competitor

12. Audio. Genre of jazz – Prasnna, Raagabop

13. Website entitled “ The ___ ___ simulator” experiment. Best result “Flavius. Hence: home you idle” – Million monkeys with typewriter to produce Shakespeare

14. List of places and date, starting with Brest and ending in Brest, France – Clemencau ship places

15. Maps. Champagne, Cognac, Bourbon, Port => all give names to liquor only if grown there

16. Space captain poem – Lonely Planet

17. Visuals. Chandigarh, works of art – Le Corbusier connect

18. Monty Python clip. Only person other than 6 to be co-credited. Later influenced – bureaucraticness of Vogons in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

19. Character in South Park – “Token Black”, introduced for the sake of having a black

20. Hell’s Angels, Howard Hughes

21. Connect. Supreme, Robbie Williams video. Inspired by ____. Roman Polanski – directed . Visuals of all of them

22. Connect. Jules Verne pic. Back To The Future guy – sons named Jules and Verne

23. Audio: Norwegian wood covered by Cornershop

24. Bar in Switzerland – Geiger bars by HR Geiger

25. Dexter’s lab. Car Mock-5 based on – Mach 5

26. Poison song audio. Visual of two musicians. => Eagles Of Death Metal (a band!)

27. Baranna, Kannada movie

28. Visuals. Lego-theme parks.

(This is where I got out!)

Proof By Quotation

2007-02-01T10:46:00.001+05:30

"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire

"Bullshit! Witty sayings are the very essence of wisdom, and I should know."
- Oscar Wilde

"People will take anything you say seriously if you put a famous name next to it."
- Albert Einstein

-From a discussion on Slashdot

quipamenducious

2007-01-31T12:41:00.001+05:30

quipamenducious

Adjective: quipamenducious (koo`pa`men`doo`shus)

n. quipamenducity

Lacking breadth of view, tolerance or open-mindedness
Having a rigid and stubbornly fixed view of the world

2007, from Skt. koopamandooka “frog-in-the-well” from ancient Indian parable about a frog stuck in a well.

archaic: quipamenducacious

Odyssey Open 2007, Chennai - Finals

2007-01-30T13:27:00.000+05:30

The final round of the Odyssey Open 2007 was, as I had mentioned earlier in my prelims post, a treat to savour. The questions were great and enjoyable. It lasted for a long, long time leaving the audience and the teams tired and exhausted but trivia-full! A couple of changes in the format were used –

i) Quiz Mountain – A sequence of questions (2,6, 12, 24 points). None of the teams maxed, though.

ii) Relative Grading in Written Round – Score for the Q depends on how many teams answered the same question correctly.

The general format was not infinite bounds(or is it infinite bounce?) but direct-indirect based round with all questions worth the same. I think this makes a lot of sense and is a lot fairer than infinite bounds–

a) Time is of the essence while cracking verbose questions. Infinite bounds disadvantages weaker teams unfairly. More on this later in a separate post.

b) Keeping track of rounds is easier.

Enough commentary, on to my transcript (very long, 4 pages!) of the session. Errors and omissions expected. Please fill in with comments if you were there and would like to add or correct something.

1. Four stories about Buddha – Connect – Four animals on the Sarnath stupa

2. Video clip from Lucky Number Slevin. “The Boss is like Anthony Dawson in From Russia With Love” Why? – Never appears in movie

3. Equal mix by weight of salt and ice – used as 0 by Gabriel Fahrenheit

4. QM

a. Youngest ever to Booker – Ben Okri. Youngest woman – Kiran Desai. Before – Arundhati Roy

b. 1992 Maastricht Treaty – European Union. Father of Euro.

c. Story – clues – worked as assistant in draper’s shop – organization => YMCA

5. Transatlantic flights. When fuel low, no option but to try to continue => “Point of no return”

6. Video – Rajni Kant fight scene from Baasha. Pic of old man. – Old man is Jack Foley. Foley artists are the ones who make “Dishoom dishoom” sounds!

7. International Society of Cryptozoology formed in early 1980s to investigate evidence of unverified species. Animal in emblem – Okapi

8. 4 feet 8 inches = Standard gauge. Used in 60% railways worldwide. Only Indian system to use this – Trams in Calcutta

(AQ) Other cities (used) to have tram systems - Chennai, Mumbai, Nasik

(AQ) MGR institution - to retail alcohol in TN state

9. Audio instrumental. Piece chosen for starting radio program. – Chopin’s Minute Waltz for Just A Minute

10. QM

a. Jackson Pollock (visual)

b. If dad is Boomer, mom is Flyer, kid => Joey (Kangaroos)

c. If H1-B for software, H1-A for => Nurses

11. Chalukyan conquest – relic of Paranjoth commander of Pallavas – Vaathapi Ganapathi (Muthuswami Dikshithar)

12. Visual of person from three angles. (Three musketeers?) Also of statue. Story? – Van Dyke drew all these because king wanted statue made and couldn’t to go to sculptor! King Charles I???

13. QM

a. WICB logo (West Indies Cricket Board)

b. Eclipse – A piece for = original Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon

c. My fair lady clip – Bow Bells – Had to be born within earshot of these bells to be called Cockney

14. Mail order seed catalogues. Used to contain stupid jokes. => Corny jokes

15. Gordon 1849 established store = Peter Orr & Sons (Local shop)

16. Bahama helped by American Prohibition, repealed-> stagnation. Similarly helped by American political event of 60s – Bay of Pigs, alternative to Cuba for tourism

Buzzer round

1. Land of coconuts – Kerala

2. Drink – Italian for gypsies – Zingaro

3. 1/16 of teaspoon – Dash

4. Kerouac described himself after trip as – “beat”

5. Purple people – Phoenicians, Creation of the world

(AQ) Deepika Padukone debut. More famous Padukone earlier – Guru Dutt also Padukone

(AQ) Turn your watch around to know GMT from IST. Mentioned in – Satanic Verses

17. Balloon story – name origin of Winnie the Pooh

18. Jaipal Singh captain of the 1928 Indian Olympic hockey gold team.Later MP. Demand in 1954 to create something rejected – but allowed recently – Jharkhand

19. Visual of birds. What’s missing? – Golf! Bogey, Ostrich – 4 under par, Condor – 5 under par

20. “Candlelight Blues” Jazz legend started radio in country – King Bhumibol Adulyadej

21. Two poems. Visual Thomas Bruce – Elgin Marbles

22. QM

a. Sea to Air To Land – one – US Navy SEALs

b. Finish fabric. French “ Gloves of Sweden” – Suede

c. Character visual – Mortiana from Ali Baba (was cracked by a little girl in audience)

23. Visual Branasi’s “Bird In Flight”. Jonathan Hayes product – Xbox-360

24. Connect. “My money went to Nigeria and all I got was lousy T-shirt!” Video: Pyar hua ikraar hua song clip. – 419 scam, movie Shree 420 – Cheating codes in India, Nigeria!

Buzzer Round 2

1. Mowgli first appeared

2. David Selznick $500 in Damned

3. Latin “waterfall”. Disease. – Cataract

4. Canada’s official entry into Oscar for Foreign – Deepa Mehta’s Water

5. Founding major league football – LA Galaxy (Beckham team)

(AQ) Albania Tehran

(AQ)Shh.. Perfume – Jade Goody

25. Tintin and Alphart – Scene description – villain pouring plastic over him. What happens next? – Nobody knows. Herge left incomplete

26. Paul Newman, Steve McQueen. Towering Inferno. Ego clash => Same number of dialogues etc. Something else also -> Diagonal billing in credits

27. Max von Laue, Jah(something) left Nobel medals with Bohr. Had to reapply for these. Why? – Stored in aqua regia to prevent slipping into Nazi hands, dissolved

28. Invented in NHL in Canada. Later in USA . Story. What? – Mexican wave

29. Florence Balcombe, love of Oscar Wilde married another Irish author. Film adaptation used without permission. Successfully sued. = Nosferatu, Bram Stoker

30. Covering for dish to avoid flies. Snack => Tapas

31. Ad =Baking Powder (visual) => A picture is worth a thousand words

32. QM

a. Checkpoints of Berlin Wall

b. SOWSPODES, US uses OWL-2 – Scrabble

c. Spanish word for chestnut. Ater its shape. Musical instrument – Castanet

Written round (Relative scoring)

1. 50 page pamphlet. Sold lots of copies. Thomas Jefferson. Other clues – Thomas Paine

2. Fil clip – offering money – Lew Wallace, Ben Hur author

3. Karora Singh Dhalliwala deman 2 lac ransom and also 30,000 troops to be garrisoned in Delhi – Tis Hazari

4. Unfurled Vande mataram flag in Stuttgart, German 100 years ago – Madam Bhikaji Cama

5. Identify missing guys – Father son pairs to have won Nobels

6. WH Davies – “What is this life full of care” poem. Autobiography of a _________ . Audio in background – Supertramp

7. Visual – Penguins known as – Groucho Marx penguins

8. Bandra Worli ceiling

33. United Fruit Company introduced bananas. Dirk browne Miss Chiquita character for ad campaign. Audio singing – “Don’t store bananas in refrigerator”, a lot of people were having problems!

34. QM

a. First introduced in 1997. Zimbabwe/England match – Duckworth Lewis

b. Before graduating from apprentice on ship, one had to tie the mast => Learning the ropes

c. Unusual choice for Sports Illustrated subscribers – whether to receive the swimsuit edition or not

35. Mark something millionaire. Clients AP, Reuters – Getty Images Jean Paul Getty’s grandson

36. Connect some visuals of art – All destroyed in WTC bombing

37. Classical Greek comedy. “alazon – “, “bomolochus – buffoon” third? – irony

38. Videos – two film clips. High Noon Fred Zinnemann, Rio Bravo Howard Hawk

39. USSR Svyatoslav Fyodorov developed process in 1970s which made him millionaire. Recently a modern version of his technique – LASIK

40. Visual. Thiruthani temple, Capitol Hill – Both 365 steps.

Buzzer Round 3

1. Uncle who got Eleanor married to FDR – Theodore Roosevelt

2. UN Security council smallest state – England (a team answered France)

3. Largest carnivore in Africa – Nile crocodile

4. 1000 wickets first – Shane Warne

5. Non borderd US states – Alaska, Hawaii

(AQ) Named for love-god disease - Venereal disease

(AQ) First 10 digits of e – Google ad for recruitment

41. QM

a. Momofoku Antu – Top Raman

b. Ted’s father, Mom 200 pounds. Some BS story – Dr. Seuss

42. Back cover of music album blanked out – Hard Rock Café

43. Herbert Baker’s new Grandstand at Lords. “Never has a stand so large held so few people.” – Father Time weathervane (very arbit question)

44. Tabla(visual). Song(audio) – Connection Amir Khusro , penned the lyrics, invented table by bifurcating a mridangam(??)

45. Indy 500 1911 winner Ray Harowcen no riding mechanic. Controversy. Introduced something – Rear view mirror, before mechanic used to tell anybody in back (I wanted to answer knew it but a team guessed!)

46. Hunti in 2002. Story. DNA samples – Sherbet Gul (Afghan girl on NGEO cover)

47. Edible item in India after African country (map shown) – Mozambique and musambi

48. Virgil described recipe for salad in Morefum. Visual of such a salad. Concept -=> E pluribus unum

(post completed 5 Feb,2007)

Odyssey Open 2007, Chennai - Prelims

2007-01-29T11:06:00.000+05:30

Here are the Q&A of the elimination round of the open quiz organized by Odyssey in Chennai on 26 January 2007. The QM was Diwakar Pingle. The set of questions for the prelims were very good indeed. The questions were relevant, trivial, informative, useful, endearing, done with a personal touch, all at the same time!

The venue was packed, both floors of it plus a mini hall(!), with participants. Yeah, like a tin of sardines! All hell broke loose just before the prelims stage, with the organizers not having a clue as to how to handle the mad rush of people. Thankfully, things calmed down and things improved by the time the on-stage round began.

The cut-off was around 24, I guess from my friend Sreeram, who had made it to the final rounds. The final round was a trivia-fest; it was Triwiali, with crackers and sparklers of questions. I will try to put up some of the questions here soon. Frankly, there is just too much stuff! A problem of plenty... The quiz lasted for more than 3 hours!

The quiz was won by Swami, VV Ramanan and teammate, who came back strongly from behind to trump the Bangalore teams. It was truly an inspired effort from them and the adrenaline could be smelled from far!

PRELIMS
--------------
1. Rabindranath sang this for the first time @ 1896 session of Congress. Published in Bangabandhu.
- Vande mataram
2. Peoples Action Party hasn't lost a single election since independence from Britain - Singapore
3. Which laboratory crosses an international boundary? - CERN
4. Visual - Rajapalayam dog
5. Video - Film dedicated to? - Steve Irwin (Ice Age 2??)
6. Audio: Bappi Lahiri singing
7. Mix of jazz, blues and gospel ==> Rock&Roll - R&B
8. Jan 25th. Scotland night. Ode To A ____ - Haggis
9. Retired in 1962. All records overhauled by Gavaskar ==> Sachin - Polly Umrigar
X. Visual - UNESCO World Heritage Site
Y. Audio - Theme song of ICC World Cup 2007
Z. Visual - cover of white mughal, william dalrymple - Bahadur Shah Zafar
A. Anand most winningest streak - Corus (Wijk Aan Zee)
B. Finnair recently launched Helsinki-Delhi. Brand ambassador - Santa Claus
C. Purandara mudra etc Thyagaraja mudra what? - Thyagaraja
D. Visual - Red shirt unveiling his own statue - James Brown
E. Audio - Raaga - Punnaraya varal
F. Recent Indian word added to OED Gujarati "without servitude" - Bindaas
G. Examples of - pangrams
H. Who visited which dictator, inspiring reforms - Friedman visited Pinochet
I. Remove two letters from country to get capital, add the same two letters to get capital - Brazil, Tunisia
J. Jefferson popularized. In Europe, was initially used for decorative purposes - Tomato, Potato
K. Visiting quiz in Delhi. Shocked to see people not knowing "mother of Rama" - Kausalya, Amar Chitra Katha Origin, Anant Pai
L. ___, ___, arub etc - Lakh, Crore
M. Original name changed after visiting ruler gave something near canal - Nehru, Orig name: Kaul
N. Story about small letters being more used. What terms? - Upper case, Lower case
O. Australian coat of arms - Kangaroo, Emu
P. Swahili word, Makonde word - Chikangunya, Dengue
Q. Like Moses, river parted for Indian myth - Krishna and Vasudeva
R. Visual: free running game - Parkour
S. (local) cookery book trivia - Samaithu Paar
T. (local) visual - mascot of Harlem Globetrotters (had recently visited Chennai)
U. Why ships' breadth 32.3m ? - Width of locks of Panama canal
(guessed Suez)
V. Duke of ___ story. Replace Amsterdam with ours! - York (New York name origin)

PERSONAL
--------------
I teamed up with a couple of guys from Chennai, Karthik Narayan and his friend Anand. All we actually had going for us was our team name, which I thought was pretty good: The 3 MUST GET BEERS! A play on The Three Musketeers, to make it bleedingly obvious! We made 17 points, I guess, which was definitely not good enough in an open quiz of this scale. Plainly put, I failed to qualify.

But the final round was worth the trip (I had come on the Shatabdi from Bangalore n the morning) just for the infotainment value. It was also good to meet up with some old friends like Sreeram and to make some new friends. All in all, I must say it was an enriching experience.

There was an impoverishing experience also though, in the morning. I got fleeced by an auto-rickshaw driver who dropped me off at the Museum instead of Music Academy (the venue), where I had asked to be dropped. It always happens to me in Chennai!

Bespectacled!

2007-01-20T11:25:00.001+05:30

On January the 10th of the year of Our Lord 2007 , I got myself a pair of spectacles. Astigmatism, weird angles, don't know what exactly is wrong. Power of -0.25.

Ego Was

2007-01-15T17:16:00.001+05:30

(From my earlier ego blurb!)

Thomas who? Thomas Jay Cubb. Programmer, writer, composer, poet, quizzer. Welcome to the Cubb!

Fame needs a name! - TJC
What's my name, again? Unlucky not to have been blessed with a particularly distinctive given name, but desperately craving fame, my jumbo ego would not let me choose anything but a homophonic pseudonym.

So it became a Jay for a J and a "Jay Cubb" for a Jacob! Thomas Jay Cubb. Now, what would you call that? A semipseudonym? A crudonym? Homophonodonym? Or just "nym", perhaps?

Expect nothing, and you will have no reason to be disappointed. - TJC
Try "Thomas Jay Cubb" in Google!!! I'm an inveterate ego-surfer. But so far, I've had to make my own web-waves to surf. :-(

No Bars (Give In Give Up)

2007-01-15T16:57:00.000+05:30

--------------------------
NO BARS (GIVE IN,GIVE UP)
(Cubb)
--------------------------

What's the point of being away from home
If you don't misbehave.
Now's the time to do what you crave
And make some memories.

But momma said, "Don't keep bad company
And only do what's good for you."
Haven't you seen it all before?
Heard it all before?

C|
H|
O| Good and bad, it's all in the head
R| Doesn't really matter which way you go
U| But remember it's just you all the way
S| So never torture yourself, either way
0|
1|

C| Give in sometimes,
H| Gotta ride to get the thrill of the chase
O| Give up sometimes
R| Gotta stop when you're lost in the haze.
U| Live it up
S| When you wanna reach out for the stars
0| Let it down
2| Sometimes kiss the ground and smell the grass.

Choose your poison, what turns you on?
Do you know your self?
No bars here, you can do what you want
Go no holds barred.

Dive in to the pool now
Go right across the water
And as the dry drop oozes into you
Are you crying? Are you laughing?

C|
H|
O| Truth or lie, illusion's real
R| Reality's just a point of view
U| But draw the line, you're all alone
S| Make it balance, either way
0|
1|

C| Give in sometimes, (live it up)
H| Gotta chase to get a prize in the race.
O| Give up sometimes, (let it down)
R| Stuck in the maze, stop and find some ways.
U| Live it up, (give in sometimes)
S| When you wanna reach out for the stars
0| Let it down,(give it up sometimes)
2| Sometimes kiss the ground and smell the grass.

What now comes to you
Is that's what is true.
What's real?
It's just what you feel.
It's who you really are.