Sunday, August 09, 2009

kids-titbits..

Tidbits - kids.

It was Sunday and I was in the middle of my cooking & TV, it was a Tamil music channel where the anchor of the programme was asking simple questions to the caller - not like a GK or something but like asking opinions sort. A kid from Coimbatore called and she claimed doing 4th standard in a local school. And here is the question to the kid
in your class you do fight with your friends and classmates ... do you? Kid, 'yes, sometimes'. In such occasion after some time you will rejoin again - who will initiate this talking again or who will go talk first - will that be you or you will wait for your friends-turned-foe-for-the-time being ?? The kid without any thinking or hesitance said 'I' will go and talk first'. There was a big blush in the anchors face and said 'that was a real cuuuuuuuute answer ' and said 'All the best kid' !!

For a moment even I couldn’t control my surprise - Such a realistic and genuine reply !!! Hats off...When we are all kids we don’t have this ego, head-weight, rage and so on..!!! Don’t know when we start getting them ...!!


In Bruges...

I was watching a move - "In Burges"..There was a seen in the movie when a local robber who barges in to a church seeking for a confession to the father.
Father asks "what sin you committed my son", 'I murdered a person' is his reply.’ What for did you murder ?' There was a brief silence when the father repeated the question.
"For money father. I murdered for money". Father, 'who did you kill my son?' They guy 'You. I killed you'. "What, whom did you kill ??' The guy 'Are you fukin deaf I murder you..' saying so he shot the father with is gun. 4 rounds. One of the bullets passed ahead of the room . This guy now moves in to the room to see if there’s anybody ..There was a small kid with blood strain on his forehead and a small paper in his hands - kid is waiting for his turn of confession - The paper in his hand reads (1) For being moody (2) For being bad in maths (3) For being sad.


Crickematics..

Recently there was an event conducted in Bangalore by a publisher to unveil a mathematics book for kids. This book is little unorthodox - names crickematics. Theme of the book in simple - a school kid who is very fond of cricket but not interested in studies - So that author takes cricket as a medium and tries to educate that even for cricket mathematics is important...cute !!Something like - if you don’t know how to calculate average how will you know your score average - so it’s trying to teach maths with cricket’s influence. Rahul Dravid was the chief guest of this event and most of the audiences were kids from 8 - 12 years old.

After usual intros the event was open for Q & A for Dravid. Before any questions to Dravid, Organizes asked kids to limit questions only to general topics, schools, studies and mathematics. No questions on cricket to Dravid. Having said that the first question fired to Dravid was (I think some 10 yr old.).."Uncle how did you hit Six in cricket match" After a pause of 2 seconds the whole auditorium burst in to laugh...After saying no questions on cricket...will you classify this as a cricket question ? Or a maths question ?? Kids are genius !!!!

Two characters...

Two characters - far apart from their personalities, upbringing, ideologies, and perception on life & society and what not... when they meet and forced to travel together...

Character One : A typical US-return-type guy - who always carry a 'bisleri' bottle with him- who thinks Credit card is something universal and finds it hard to believe the fact that there are places in India which don't know credit card and for that matter not even ration card - who doesn't like queues, thinks here(India) even after spending extra money he is not getting ahead of the queue - who doesn't care about the people standing in the queue but just want to be ahead of all them because he can throw some money - a guy who thinks he is one that India is privileged to get because he is earning money in dollar-converted-rupee - who even changes his name to "Ars" - to make his US employer's life easier when called - where his actual name is Anbarasu a true Tamil name - A man who has never seen the reality part of 'the' common Indian - Having said that this guy is not all bad but just very selfish - but deep down the heart he is a humane - who will cry on seeing people suffering but just that never get a chance to see such things in life yet.


Character Two: This is the guy who our first character has never seen before and could not have dreamt about. A simple blue-collared employee - who strongly believes in communism and is part of a employee union - Fighting or rather protesting even to get a hike of Rs 200 weekly with the employer - Takes life as it comes - who usually travels in unreserved-class train - but always gets ticket - who is willing to stand in queue for a genuine reason and never want to jump ahead of the queue - who even carries a small meal covered in a news paper while traveling in a low-cost-flight - who has lots of friends across states and has good network still down to earth - who thinks life can be runned with any money in hand - who thinks its possible to even travel from Orison to Chennai with just Rs. 15 in hand. and more interestingly will find a mode of transport for that just Rs.15 - which usually baffles the other character - a guy who met and came alive from a drastic accident some years back and has his face damaged - damaged to the extent that it gives a real, scarry look - with multiple scar in his face - full of yellowish untamed-teeth - wearing a 2 inch-spectacle - and with one of his leg shorter than the other due to this accident and always lymph while walking - a regular blood donor - who always fight against employer-exploiting-employee - who carefully carries a piece of cucumber and salt-chilly mix along during a flight trip - simply put a Practical Guy in mid 30s - who can never impress anybody at first look instead make people think who the hell this cripple is and what damn thing this guy knew - people didn't even bother to stare or look at him - who believes god is not a 3rd person of some divine entity but the one who empathize on the sufferings of others (which happens to be the theme of this...) - who argues, rationally, for anything and has a reasoning for everything - who even gets angry in a very cool composed manner


Character - 1: Played by Madhavan. Typically playing against Kamalhasan is just impossible - Everyone had failed - be if Arjun, prabhudeva or whoever - you just cant match to this magical name - Kamal. But Madhavan is different - may be the gravity and casting of the character. This guy has really done a great job. At times he might have surprised Kamal too.

Character - 2: Kamalhaasan. The names says it.Should I specify anything - even after this!!! Such a heavy character Kamal just carries so simply and casually. Am satisfied to see Kamal back again in such a landmark type character. In my view this is "The character" of the decade. With the due-respect to other India actors (note: Not just kollywood) nobody can even dare to take this role and match Kamal. Once you have seen the promo of this movie - kamal with a scar face and thick glass - Its too hard for anybody to resist from watching this movie. One request .pls..pls..for heaven sake DONOT remake this move to other language and have some 'stars' playing this role which will only bring shame to that movie industry - a similar nonsense already happened in the name of "Dayavan" already. This is one movie where you can enjoy Kamal to the fullest and will have a complete satisfaction of watching a real-good movie. truly a real good movie



Fact is this movie was declared Flop because of poor reception in box-office...but I have seen this movie may be 10 times now and I own a DVD. The theme of the movie , only the theme is based on the English movie - Planes, trains and automobiles. However the rest is real genuine.

Moral of the story !!!

This is a funny incidence that happened in our project

Poet: The term usually we use for someone who talks..and only talks, without making any sense and having less understand of the project, technology, customer requirement and what ever you needed to know in a project - in other words a typical damager piece, I mean a manager piece.

MH: He is one of the very soft spoken members in the team, who will usually be taken a free-ride whenever people feel like. He never says No. Be it a tech-lead, manager, subordinate and even for people from other project. Very calm and always a soft target fro "career-climbers”!!!

Situation: MH is recently moved to this "support" group which is primarily doing production support - obviously he didn't like the but in the name of recession this happened.
Poet is the co-lead of this support team and also MH's X lead. May be MH always wanted to give-it-back to Poet. Now the

Story:

Poet: Hi MH. We have an issue reported by the customer on X (lets call the module as X). And we have to fix it.

MH: (Annoyed by this attitude). Ok 'll have a look. It will take 5 days to fix it.

Poet: 5 days !! That is too much. It shouldn’t take more that 2 day to solve this.

(This rubbed salt on his injury - since this poet has no clue what it takes to fix it.)
MH: Do you understand the issue customer report on "X" .

Poet: I went thru the issue but No I didn’t understand.

MH: Do you know how X is designed.

Port: mm...No not really.

MK: And about the customization part done on X.

Poet: No. But see this is important issue report and wee...

..Abruptly Cut by MH..with the raise in voice .

MK: Do you know how this is expected to work. And are the operations are using the same way it is expected to behave.

Poet: you can ask them!! (them being customer !!!)

MK: So you don’t know. Finally do you know what the problem user is facing while doing this?

Poet: (Silently Nodding the head...saying no) !!! But we committed the ETA as 2 days for this .

MK: (With a volume which nobody had seen MH using till day ) So. You don’t know the A, B, C of this, nor the issue what customer is reported. But you went ahead and committed 2 days without knowing anything.

Poet: (Caught red-handed and silent now.).

MH: Never come to me with an ETA. I'll give the ETA.

Poet: (Still silent. About to return to the desk, after getting butchered by MH so openly..)

MH. So what is the Moral of the Story ?!?!?!?

Poet: With a 'what do you mean' look on her face ..turned to MH again..

MH: This issue will take 9 days Now. So inform the customer.