World - How I see it

Human islands

2011-06-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

About 20 years ago, there used to be a lady living somewhere in our neighbourhood who used to walk alone at a specific time every evening talking at high pitch, fast paced, highly animated and no one next to her...our neighbours said she had some mental disorder.

Fast forward 15 years from then, as I enter an elevator in a mall I see a good looking, well dressed man, alone, talking at high pitch, fast paced, highly animated gesturing with both his hands facing the wall...he's called tech savvy, he was using his bluetooth hands free, mobile headset.

Sometimes I have literally felt like an alien when I see 19 out the 20 people around me in a bus busy with their gadgets and me being the only one switching my gaze from one to the other bemused. Going further with my observations, understandably, I see the level of comfort in staying in this state improve down the generations just as the natural progression we see with handling gizmos. The generation of the 90s late Gen-Y and early Gen-Zs who are the youngest to enter the workforce have almost transformed into a species of Homo Zappiens. They zap between identies online donning a new avatar for every profile online. In fact, even if you live in the same house with them, or in the same aisle at work the best possibility of grabbing their attention will be by leaving a 'post' or 'invite' online than attempting to strike a live conversation with them. Its so amazing to see the dexterity with which this generation could type a 'long' Short Message Service (SMS) text in their phones just by jabbing their thumbs into the little keypad involuntarily with their eyes busy on something else. My dad finds it so hard to avoid pressing 4 keys at a time with full concentration on the keypad and screen, his generation had a technological shock when telephones swiched from rotor dialling to push buttons. I lie in between, slow but comfortable with the keypad and all the menu options and not a frequent user of SMS or even the mobile phone.

It's become a common scene in urban life today and to a good degree in rural set-ups too that when people are alone for even a short while flip out a gadget and get connected to someone elsewhere either engaging through a telephone call, SMS texting or through social networking web-sites, thanks to the never ending technological innovations. Though they enable us to multi-task and complete a lot of things while on the go I also notice that it is leading to people miss out the pleasure of having a conversation with a stranger, miss opportunities of being forced out of the comfort zone leading to what I call 'lateral learning' by mere sharing of experiences which could be one of the little things that's helped our species evolve to where we are.

Something seems to be not right when people sharing a physical space fail to communicate with each other and individually go to their 'Contact list' for a conversation. Though the quality of living is improving over the years the quality of human communication seems to be detiriorating. If we decide to interact only with people who are part of our '(online) community' or share the same 'interests' and who are introduced to us only by a common friend then we are missing something...and that something is definitely not available online.

Provenance

2011-01-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

Oh no! you don't have to 'google' for this word 'cos that is what I did for you. Recently, I read something that inspired me to write this post around this term. Provenance = History of origin and ownership of a valued object. Generally used in the context of a treasured art work and more on wine. The history and origin of wine is very important for the valuation of it. A key information for wine buyers. In archeology, a variant of this term is used as 'provenience' = exact location where an artifact was found. Alright! that's about the word and its meaning. Anyone who wanted close this web page just knowing what it means may now click the 'X' button in the top right corner of this window.

Let us now look at provenance, perception around provenance of a few more things and concepts around us and how it is affecting current affairs. Let us take a very popular product which is tied to a place, 'SWISS-Watches'. From middle of 16th century when the jewelers of Geneva were forced out of their business of watch making their innovation and entrepreneurship kept them going even to this date. The jewelers turned the engineering of clock making to a craft, which they mastered NOT by mass producing, cost-effective, production lines but as cottage industry, like customized art work. They built their brand over centuries which still stands rock solid. The 'provenance' of their watches fetch them a premium in any part of the world.

Ooo! that's something hard to duplicate. In modern days superior laser technologies and advancement of science has replaced expensive mechanical movements that are prone to error factors over time with cheap but more accurate quartz oscillators. With a huge market, more competition and pricing pressures the game is different. When the job of a watch is to show time accurately, sound logic would say that it is a low cost and more accurate watch which will have better market. Contrary to it, Swiss watches are still regarded the best. It is the image that was built over centuries what is technically called the 'brand'.

Provenance not always works to the favor of the place of origin. In examples like good quality automobiles, electronics or software products from emerging countries like India or Korea. They are perceived to be of lesser quality as these countries for a very long time were seen as mass producing, low cost locations than for their innovation and quality in product design. It took some of the now top companies like SONY, LG, SAMSUNG, TOYOTA and hard to believe HONDA a few decades to shatter the stereotyped mis-perceptions and establish their new brand. Each followed a strategy that fitted them well. Some hid the popular names under a new brand like Honda-Acura, Toyota-Lexus. Some piggy backed on a host name downplaying the real origin, some get aggressive and turn their roots as the USP like Colombian coffee. Some just stick to their existing reputation and make a market out of it, still Chinese silk and Indian spices sells well due to the centuries old reputation.

Hope the next time we see the 'Made in xxxx' tag of any product, we will think twice before deciding based on what we've heard about...

Earth Hour

2010-04-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

Let's talk black and white, after all it is about keeping the light on, in this case turning the lights off. The emerging economies (BRIC) are so much power starved that it is unfair to compare the developed vs developing nations on the same scale.

But why am I raising this with a topic 'Earth Hour' ...?

Good to see that the 'Earth Hour' campaign has caught up good steam in about 3 years. It originated from Sydney, Australia in 2007 when the city's household and businesses decided to turn off their lights for an hour campaigned by WWF. Many other countries joined the next year onwards. Earth hour is observed on the last Saturday of March.

The statistics on energy saved due to this is highly debated and my verdict is that it will definitely be insignificant if we take into account the additional energy consumed by the propaganda, campaign materials and celebrity ramp walks involved, but is it really about the energy saved in that one hour? NO, to me it is more about spreading the message. The message about how much energy could be conserved by thinking a second time on the non-essential power usage we do, about bringing an awareness to people who have never seen a power cut or energy shortage in their lifetime.

Now, let me get back to my 'comparison' which I started with. At a rate of 0.7 kW per person consumption in India vs a 11.4 kW per person consumption in the US it is not a same plane comparison. 25% of world's energy is consumed by USA with 5% of world population. With 20% of the world's population, China consumes at a rate of 1.6 kW per person. I use USA as my benchmark not to point fingers rather to point out that any country that has reached a level of development of USA will be consuming at that rate. If by magic, we make all the other countries as developed as the US we all will be guzzling 11.4 kW per person which is scary, it is worse because our source of energy is mostly finite dependent on hydel or fossil fuels. I do not want to comment on who deserves more power, the developed nations whose development and better technology is also helping developing ones to be efficient or the developing nations who deserve a chance to catch up with the developed nations. It will be a never ending debate. The need of hour is AWARENESS.

If saving power is the motive, my thumbs down to earth hour campaign, it makes no senses to people like me living in place where we have such 'earth' hours almost every day and with such high power tariffs we cannot miss to switch off unwanted lights. We save much more power with regular power cuts than a once a year DAY for it. Brazil, having 90% of its power generated from water was caught a deep power crisis when rains failed for a few years. The government had to impose extreme steps like power-rationing mandating industry and middle class household to cut consumption by 70% or face a 300% fine on bills else risk lines being cut off.

As a global awareness campaign I see Earth hour is popular and hope it has the desired effect too on people who can make a difference with just a second thought

Bangalore, India during earth hour

Bangalore, India after earth hour

Avatar - setting the bar so high

2010-01-02T05:24:00.000-08:00

I watched the 3D movie AVATAR. The term 'Avatar' is not new to the cyber generation and it is not new even to the older generations in India (In Sanskrit it means incarnation). If I need to choose one word to describe the movie, it is 'Brilliance'.Imaginations in the human mind has no limits, the medium these imaginations could be manifested is the limitation. We are awestruck when these barriers are broken, every time. Jaws dropped when someone made a moving picture then when people could talk in the movie and when they could see it in colors then seeing their favorite cartoon character live and moving, when they could hear to stereo sound and then multiple channel surround sound...Records are set, only to be broken and our species is always in the pursuit to keep bettering things, which is what sets us apart. It is the pursuit to excel and control that makes us adventurous.

Not intending to write a long commentary about the plot, this fictional movie talks of the adventurous attitude added with greed driving humans to not respect the way of life of other alien beings in their land. As always, good wins over evil, in this case, evil being the human kinds.

The hero here is the story telling, I am amazed to see how much technology has enabled us to depict our dreams. There's been 3-D movies earlier but here's one I see which has not used this technique to thrill people by scaring us rather make us experience the environment. There are certain scenes where it is hard to resist putting out your hand to feel a beautiful glowing seed that descends down the holy tree. I also see that Hollywood is evolving to think beyond a limited set of sounds made by aliens or huge creatures which have been a predictable standard so far from the Dinos to Godzillas to any other kind of monsters. Here are some barking, tweeting and cawing species.

I think this 'Avatar' has set a record of sorts, hard to be beaten immediately but would love to see something that could better it soon, it is all about getting entertained. This movie does not have a special product to sell but like Starbucks and Virgin Atlantic has made it nearly impossible to duplicate the experience it sells on the product/service.

Quoting something totally out of context but I think IS relevant [Remember, this is MY blog and I reserve the right to quote unquote anything :) ].In Bhagvad Geetha, the guiding holy scripture of Hinduism, a religion practiced around numerous stories of good-over-evil, it is said that whenever the quality of humans fall below tolerable limits God manifests on earth as an 'Avatar'. Bhagvad Geetha is a book of philosophical advice given by God who rides the charriott for a prince into a battle. The prince, Arjuna, a master of archery refuses to shoot any arrows seeing that it is his own cousin brothers and uncles who are pitted against him in the battle. God advises Arjuna all about the cycle of life and explains that it is good to do anything to destroy evil. Coming back to the verse I wanted to quote:

"yada yada hi dharmasya
glanir bhavati bharata
abhyutthanam adharmasya
tadatmanam srjamy aham"

Meaning :-
"when ever and where ever there is decline and decay of righteousness,
O Bharatha (Arjuna), then I manifest myself.
In all such dark periods of history, some great master comes to present himself as the leader of men to revive the standard of life and moral values"!!!

The movie AVATAR is here setting the bar higher for 3D graphics and animation industry and is asking us stretch our imaginations far beyond huge noisy creatures and uncontrollable natural disasters or scientific experiments.

Michael Jackson - God-of-pop

2009-07-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Kid: Grandpa! Who is god?

Grandpa: Hmm...let me try to explain. God is someone who is neither black nor white, neither woman nor a man and he loves little kids like you a lot.

Kid: Why don't you simply say, it's Michael Jackson.

His public life story is a parallel to any fairy tale that we get to hear. A la Cinderella who came from a family with reportedly abusive father and 9 siblings. He came to the city, turned to a prince became the king and ruled the world owning the best, built a dream land, married a princess...pause...it's here generally the fairy tales finish as '...and lived happily ever after' and nobody questions 'what happened to them later?'

The Internet is load tested with searches from all over the planet on him and his story so I will not repeat it here but just record some of my observations, opinions and learnings from the life of a legend who I call the 'God-of-pop'.

I was a boy in early teens during his hay days. Living in a country far from where he performed didn't stop me and millions of my generation and generations that follow from being his fan. I still have the audio cassettes that were released by Grammy with his Billie Jean and Thriller albums. Even today when I shake a leg for any tune I subconsciously step into his shoes and imitate him (try to). As they say, 'Imitation is the best form of flattery', Michael is the most imitated person to ever (moon) walk on this planet. And as they also say, 'many can imitate, none can duplicate' - him. He was the first pop-star I saw who tried so much to bring awareness and gather support for people who are struggling in poorer countries or to spread message of peace and unity. His 'heal the world' could very well be proclaimed as an anthem of UN , it is my proposal to do so.

In my opinion he struggled to handle his super stardom and though he chose to live a recluse life he relied on many people to maintain his private world, and we know how it works. It reminds me of lyrics from one of the songs of Eurythmics that had won a Grammy during his times.

....Everybody's looking for something

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them

want to be abused.....

His later life was nothing but pain. When everyone would've loved to swap their life to his during the 80s, beyond the 90s people almost tried to avoid his association. Fuelled by envy and greed, he was in the news for all wrong reasons which was difficult for die hard fans like me to digest. I

am not rejecting all of the stories as false nor do I see any strong evidences to agree too but I just sympathize for such a great entertainer who had to go through all these while we missed all the good things that he could've produced without such distractions.

Because of his closely guarded life, he will ever be a mystery and there will be hundreds of stories about him that will be floated around by people either seeking a 30 seconds to fame or revealing the facts when its too late. In my opinion I believe he feared death and wanted to defy nature and stay young forever while nature was in his case playing 'porcupine's needle', the more you fiddle, the sooner and deeper it will affect. He tried to build his own world of his lost childhood behind the gates of his property failing to understand that there is no rewind button in the video player called 'life'.

It is painful to see him go away while the world was excited about his come-back but in my opinion this is how a star must vanish, big bang, at his peak. The value would have faded had he finished his tour, paid his debts and announced a graceful retirement with an eroding health that wouldn't have let him continue for long.

The album 'Thriller' that catapulted him to the top of the world had a theme of full moon and werewolf and I am not sure if anyone noticed that coincidentally the day of his memorial service 7/7/2009 was a penumbra lunar eclipse.

Bidding a final good-bye to a 11 year old man who dared to become a 50 year old boy

Michael Jackson - the legend - A modern fairy tale that ends as...did not live happily ever after*

* - Hope you will be left to R.I.P from now on

Barack 'Union leader' Obama

2009-05-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Obama has tried to appease his troubled countrymen with bills that could calm down the rhetoric on outsourcing and job creation. These announcements sounds more like a labor union leader's speech than anything that is practically viable.

The bullets:

1. U.S citizens are under skilled for certain jobs

2. There is a clear shortage of eligible man-power needed for the jobs outsourced

3. Cost arbitrage

There were 2 important announcements that came out from mid April to early May'09.

The more popular was what I call Obama's 'Bangalore-Buffalo doctrine'. While this created more news in the US for the mention of Buffalo than Bangalore it is more a taxation restructure as a disincentive to American companies creating jobs abroad. This is not seen as a big threat by people who are in the industry. The cost advantage despite this will still stay an advantage. It is a step to discourage movement of jobs out of the country. It is not long ago that Obama preached improvement of education in US for the American kids to compete with Asians. I appreciated him for it as that will be the correct approach for a permanent solution to abridge the domestic demand-supply gap. Now, I believe the economic pressure he is in has forced him to try such band-aid measures.

The other one is the prevention of companies that received money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) from hiring any of the foreign workers under the H1B visa program. It is again suicidal. If you cannot get the right skills, you cannot implement your solutions effectively and cannot improve your performance and so cannot repay tax-payers money. This is now looking to be easened from 'prevention' to 'difficult' level. A flavor of it is stopping companies hire more H1B if they already have 50% of employees through this. I think this will hurt Indian IT(ES) companies more than the former. As of 2006 data Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Satyam used over 15,000 H1B and inclduing other Indian companies the numbers would cross 20K.

So putting these together, it is a potential pinch to countries who took the H1B advantage but the government will face stiff resistance and strong lobbying from the US companies affected and Republicans. It is to be understood that it is free market economy we are in, a theory practiced and preached by US as long as it worked for them. It has become a part of the DNA of entrepreneurs of US. Such socialistic protectionism ideas will not be welcome by the stakeholders who look at the bottom line.

Between GE, Citibank and IBM alone there are close to 100,000 employees in India and they will not walk away from such huge investments just for the change in tax structure. Countries like India and China too will work on counter measures by offering more incentives for the companies to stay and continue providing employment. They could also resort to favoritism (which I hope they don't) by preferring domestic IT companies over US companies to bid for their public sector projects which would be a big $ billion business.

However, this is a good wake-up call to the majority of the companies in India and China who've been enjoying the highly paid lesser value jobs outsourced for cost reasons. It is already a bit late to move up the value chain and if they don't work now on it, it will be a missed bus that could next choose to stop at Vietnam or Bangladesh. It is then that these countries would understand the emotions of people who loose their jobs to foreigners.

I am confident that Obama and his team will try all possible approaches to advantage US and bring a quick economic recovery to the country and indirectly to the world. These policies are a part of these attempts. We need to wait and watch if they really help.

Let this tiger go extinct

2009-01-03T02:32:00.000-08:00

LTTE (popularly called 'The Tigers') - The most controversial and dreaded term/group for over 3 decades from the south of India to the deep pockets of Malaysia and anywhere in the world with a substantial population of Tamil speaking people.

Started in the late 70s, this seperatist group under the leadership of its founder V.Prabhakaran grew like a weed spreading across its ideology and crippling growth wherever it found a foot hold. For reasons of ethnicity and political supremacy this group found patronage from India which later proved too costly.

Just being one of the Tamil groups of the country taking up arms, demanding more power for Tamils of the land was considered as ineffective so this group cannibalized on other fellow Tamil groups over the years. This was done partially to eliminate the possibility of a compromised settlement short of winning a Tamil land which was beccoming the top most priority of Prabhakaran and partially to eliminate competition if such a dream comes true. Repeated attempts by countries like India and Norway to bring a peaceful end to the decades of bloody misery of the civilians has been futile. LTTE has a pattern of extending an arm for peace when the hand runs out of ammunitions and gets back to their tricks once they recuperate from losses, dirtier and bloodier than before.

Quick list of famous crimes by LTTE

Alfred Duraiappah, mayor of Jaffna (1975)

Rajeev Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (1991)

Ranjan Wijeratne, Sri Lankan cabinet minister and former general (1991)

Ranasinghe Premadasa, President of Sri Lanka (1993)

Gamini Dissanayake, Sri Lankan presidential candidate (1994)

Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lankan foreign minister, lawyer and international humanitarian (2005)

Major Gen. Parami Kulatunga, third-highest ranking officer in the Sri Lankan Army(2006)

Nadaraja Raviraj, Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian (2006)

Chandrika Kumaratunga, President of Sri Lanka (failed attempt-2006)

Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka army chief of staff (failed attempt-2006)

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Secretary of the Sri Lanka defense ministry (failed
attempt- 2006)

Initially, suspected to be trained by Israeli Mosad on guerilla warfare, LTTE must get the credit for pineering and mastering the art of suicide bombing. It runs a strong group called 'nizhal' (translates to 'shadow' in English) for suicide missions. They are also proved to have used minor children for front line combats.

LTTE is the only terrorist group in the world known to have a fleet of ships, anti-aircraft guns, air force, surface-to-air missiles and even a submarine. A submarine was captured by Indian Navy in 1992. Long before 9/11, IPKF unearthed a micro light manufacturing unit that was used by LTTE to customize light aircrafts for suicide missions. The nature of Al-Qaeda's 1991 attack on USS Cole suggests cross group relationships and exchange of expertise.

The LTTE attack on the World Trade Centre in Sri Lanka was followed by attacks by al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center in New York. The LTTE's use of a women's section has being copied by al-Qaeda and Chechen terrorists, for example the "Black Widows" who played a role in the Moscow theater hostage crisis and have carried out suicide bombings. Attacks on civilians in buses and trains in Sri Lanka are similar to the al-Qaeda attacks on public civilian transport during the July 2005 bombings in London.

The other side of the ugly face of LTTE is its political arm. With the rapid fall of the military wing it could be this arm (as in the deadly arm of an octopus) that could help the organization stay alive. The challenge being the political wing having penetrated Tamil speaking population all over the globe and working undercover it takes greater strategy to weed out their function and choke support for any survival attempt. While the military efforts depends mostly on the arms power of Sri Lankan government the political efforts would take a greater co-operation by the international community mainly India it's closest neighbour and fellow sufferer of the LTTE menace.

Learning from its IPKF experience and Rajiv Gandhi assasination India must stay resolved not to physically interfere in the internal war of Sri Lanka and fervently crush any attempts within its borders to muster support for LTTE which India had banned and branded a terrorist organization. This is also a lesson to India on dealing with terrorism with zero tolerance limits.

Congratulating the Sri Lankan government on their successful capture of Kilinochi and wishing them for a continued success until finish on this war on terror I hope that this particular species of 'The tiger' goes extinct forever.

Indian Navy destroys Somali pirate ship

2008-11-22T22:31:00.000-08:00

A job well done by the Indian Navy frigate INS Tabar in quashing an, no, 2 immediate attempts by the Somalian pirates on the merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden. The Somalian pirates are having a kill. Here is a little attempt to the understand the situation.

No one who could access internet and reach till this blog would need any introduction to the Somalian economy maybe a little bit help on geography. Somalia is located in the Horn of Africa with the Gulf of Aden to the north and the Indian Ocean to the east. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, and Kenya to the southwest. Somalia has the longest coastline on the continent. A weak economy and government and a good strategic access to the Gulf of Aden which is at the mouth of the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal - the gateway linking the east to the west has given opportunities to petty criminals to take merchant ships by surprise and get away with a quick loot.

The Somalian pirates are not expert long term sea farers or the glamorus characters we would imagine of the medeival european age. They are petty thugs who are natives of the coastland and natural fishermen who don't see any prosepect for fishing anymore. They work for richer war lords.

Not all ships captured are used for claiming ransom money, some of the ships captured from China and Taiwan which are old and of lesser value are used for subsequent missions to venture deeper into the sea and returned to the crew once the bigger fish is caught.

A gunman on a pirate ship typically earns between $10,000 and $30,000 for a year's work - a fortune in Somalia. With an exchange rate of 1425 SOS (Somalian shilling) to 1 USD a small bunch of pirates making somewhere from $2 million to $5 million of ransom money per vessel taken as hostage is a lifetime earning. They are becoming more organized which they were not when it began. The money is typically divided this way: 20 percent for their bosses, 20 percent for future missions (to cover essentials like guns, fuel and cigarettes), 30 percent for the gunmen on the ship and 30 percent for government officials. Yes, I don't doubt the last one. With so much money involved it would not be possible for this nuisance to go on for so long without without the government turning a blind eye, for a fat-fee.

It has gone to an extent where being a pirate in the town of Boosaso is a cool thing to do. They are the sudden super rich who could buy any luxury around. Women there seek the company of such successful pirates. The fresh money has in fact grown a new town called new-Boosaso.

It is good to see that Indian Navy is actively taking care of the situation there and a welcome decision by UN giving official permission to continue the great work to make sure the maritime waters are safe for merchant vessels. India has done something that richer economies didn't try to even when their ships were taken hostage. The international laws needs to be re-done to ensure safety and punishing pirates. Many a times the captured pirates are held for a few days and dumped on the nearest shore later due to lack of proper laws to handle them.

In a world economic crisis it will be worth spending a little gun powder by the 'super powers' to keep such menace under check saving time, resources and ransom money than camping for years in countries and spending money chasing mountain rats with little success.

US must re-build railways

2008-05-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the 20th century USA had a fairly good railway system which if left to grow would have given a good balance of trasportation options to the nation. Like many other capitalistic strategies the railways was bough and deliberately left to rot to death by the automobile masterminds. (http://www.culturechange.org/issue10/taken-for-a-ride.htm)

The death of railways and rapid growth of auto industry provided good employment opportunities and an excellent highway system. This also led to the dependency of the county on petroleum. Now it is in a state where without petroleum the country will come to a grinding halt and it will be chaos. Except for the big cities which has commuter railways the whole country runs on gas. Almost every person has a car without which it is next to impossible for anyone to go to work, school, go to buy grocery, etc. Even transportation of freight is much dependant on roadways than the rudimentary railway network. It's very late in the game that this nation has woken up from its ignorance on fuel efficiency and environmental pollution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United_States, http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm)

For different reasons the U.S. has not tapped its fuel deposits instead worked extra time on importing oil from other countries. With their great dependance on oil they are forced to go to any lenght to get oil into their country.

It is high time they must think of rebuilding their railway system and providing an alternative to the fuel guzzling automobiles used extensively across. It's apalling to see the most advanced and powerful nation have such a slim railway network.

It's never too late to change for the better...

Olympic torch relay - Is it worth ?

2008-04-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

The olympic torch relay is considered to be a prestigious event for all the athletes and participating nations. The once in four year event, the biggest sports event of the planet is indeed a remanant of a great civilization. It is very well maintained and evolves smoothly through the ages. The flame and the Cauldron(the big fire that burns throught the competition) is a very important and popular symbol. I personally watch only the opening and closing ceremonies of Olympics and keep a tab on the medals tally which pretty much is predictable and for this year I predict the chinese to finish first in te medals tally. It is not because they are the host but it is because of how much they took this event serious and worked for it for more than 5 years.

Getting back to the relay. A fire permanently burned on the altar of Hestia in Olympia, Greece. During the Olympic Games, which honored Zeus, additional fires were lit at his temple and that of his wife, Hera. The modern Olympic flame is ignited at the site where the temple of Hera used to stand. The relay was not a original Greek Olympic tradition. Neither were the five rings.

The rings symbolizing the 5 continents and the motto Citius, Altius, Fortius, which is Latin for "Swifter, Higher, Stronger" was proposed by Pierre de Coubertin on the creation of the International Olympic Committee in 1894. The rings and flag was officially adopted in 1920 Belgium Olympics. The motto was introduced in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

The olympic flame was re-introduced in 1928 Olympics at Amsterdam. Interestingly, the first olympic flame relay was introduced by Adolf hitler in Berlin Olympics 1936. He used this event as a propaganda medium for his rule.

Even today the torch is lit in Greece using reflective mirrors using the sunl light. This fire is backed-up and carried around the world. Recently different mediums are used like radio waves to transmit, under the sea, etc.

Nowadays, this relay is used by many organizations and activists as a good medium to grab the attention of the world. The images seen on television makes me think if it is worth anymore to take the torch around the globe spending tons of money for the security and media arrangements. After all, this is not the original tradition neither does it paint any good picture of freedom when we see more police men running around it than athletes. Finally, the relay event is a great success to any organization that tries to use it more than for the Olympics itself.

Obama or Hillary ?

2008-03-28T20:39:00.000-07:00

It's time again to take a wild guess. Now that the contest in the Republican camp is closed the whole of America and according to the Americans the world is watching history happen. A woman and a black muslim contesting and who will America vote to become their president? This is my blog and let me take a dig at this and yes my dig, it happens or not I too have the right to predict.

Firstly, despite being the most powerful country I doubt the maturity of US to choose a black 'muslim'[in quotes] as their ruler if I could say so to stress the responsibility which is forgotten for a while. Skin still does matter. And women, remember the fairer sex started winning their rights much later in a country of a very a long male dominated history.Now the competition as I see is between racism vs gender bias. Time for a big question to get answered, if Obama wins it means US is still male chavinistic and if Hillary makes it, it would prove that racism still survives in the country.

Unless Hillary does really bad or makes a terrible wrong move she will have an edge at the finish line however rough the course gets. She has got a good bunch of influential people and experienced politicians to lift her. Obama, I don't know much about what he stands for and how good he is but to me he looks and carries himself like a President. I am not gender biased, any day I would vote for Margere Thacher for any highest office. Though Obama seems to have an edge as of now I would like to see the competition till the end. Waiting to see if there is any last minute scam or international relationship targeting his religion that is brought out against him that swings the balance.

When everyone is waiting to see if the President will be one among these two we have Mc Cain silently doing the rounds. He is a war veteran, experienced and maybe in the wrong side at wrong moment with two consecutive Rebublican rule and that too post Bush election, it takes a brave man to don his shoes staring failure stright in its eye.

Behind Benazir's death

2008-01-06T00:17:00.000-08:00

It is indeed surprising to learn that Benazir's assasination is still a guess work. It is comparable with JFK's but its decades apart. We, especially the only super power USA, the godfather of the Pakistan government(if we can say so) claims of technological and intelligence supermacy but we are all guessing. Here is my guess of it, a story script which is a freeware I give to anyone who wants to make movie out of it.

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The story: Behind Bebazir's death

Political situation:

1. A country under military rule for a prolonged duration which is weakening pretty fast

2. The current ruler is well known to flex the books to his advantage for staying in power.

3. 2 exiled pre-PMs : One moderate and one pro-islamist

Bebazir (Moderate) : A girl born to the prime minister of the country. Charismatic and a crowd puller but not well known as a stateswoman. The administartive skills very much criticised as almost 3 of the times she came to power it was dimissed due to corruption and charges of mis-management. A prime contributor for these is seen to be her husband Asif Ali Darbari.

Nabas Sheriff (pro-Islamic) : Though well respected as a leader he is not as charismatic. A thinking man whose strenght which he knows would be the Islamist crowd and if he comes to power will have to walk a tight rope between the west and Islam.

The third - Kamran Khan : A well educated super star of international cricket, former captain who brought the world cup to the country. The achievements gives him an identi not enough for the political mathes.

4. Desperation of the country's military ruler to please the west for survival

5. Mounting western pressure to re-instate democracy

6. A growing problem of extremism in the western border and a booming economy in 2 of the neighbouring countries

The plot

If a fair-election happens soon in the country, it will be just a choice between Nabas and Bebazir for the lack of a strong contender. Bebazir being popular and crowd puller has an edge. If she wins, her government will again come under scanner for corruption and her husband seen as a parasitic pain.

Why stay a parasite, can the parasite take over it's host's position? If planned well, why not?

The parasite strikes, well camouflaged. The blame will go either to the notorious military ruler who would hate to let go his power and Bebazir is seen clearly as his threat. As an instinct, the military ruler will point to terrorism to defend himself. For different reasons the husband can opt not to do an autopsy on his wife's body and cover it up. If there are explosives and crowd people digest it easily with terrorism as the reason. Once convinced, the general sentiment if capitalized immediately will be towards the bereaved family and people in the sub-continent generously bring the family to power with any one at its top preferably a close family member of the victim.

So, Asif makes himself the care taker of the party, by-passing other better eligible people like Bebazir's niece who is a writer and political critic. He puts up his immature student son as the official leader and him his guide and get on to the Prime Minister seat, he no longer has to be a husband frowned upon by others and can directly call the shots. He will test the water for the first few years with the plan that if it works he will continue else stach his pocket for a life time and quit. During the first few years things goes his way. He makes new friends. He tastes power and not surprisingly is addicted.

A car crash, the student son is killed in the country where he is studying.

Asif wins for the second time. Sympathy works for him again. No one suspects a fish, but a watchful jurno writes a column "... Asif sees that if his son gets back from school he will have to transfer things to him sometime as that was the promise which he made as the foundation of his power. This is the reason he planned to eliminate his own son in a different country.." This creates a big debate and is added with a VERY bad move by Asif. The jurno is assasinated in broad daylight, the assasin caught in public who admits to have worked for Asif.

This triggers a chain reaction, the military takes over the country in an overnight coup. The prime minister runs in exile to a neighbouring country. The new dictator seals the borders and moves the troops towards it...THE END

Cricket world cup - my prediction

2007-03-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER: I am neither a regular watcher of the game nor a great fan. This is somenthing that I can't miss. This is a country where this game is more of a religion which unites people from many other religions.

I don't think India is poised to lift the cup. This is in a way disappointing to me that a legend like Sachin will be retiring without ever feeling the cup in his hand (I don't think Sachin will be able to survive next 4 years to make it to the next world cup). India owed him the cup for what he has achieved.

Australia (extra-terrestrial team) and England are teams I see who can make it interesting and may go for the finals. Looking at the rest, Sri Lanka or India from the sub-continent could make it upto the semis. West Indies is something that could spring some surprise. In group D, I would bet more on Zimbabwe than on Pakistan. Its purely due to the state the Pakistan team is now.

Global warming - melting arctics

2007-02-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

This topic has become the buzz for a decade, something we claim that our techology has enabled us to realize. With billions dollars worth of research happening all over the world, the findings and reports are still speculative. Melting glaciers are being highlighed but not the ones thar forming newly and the ones which are growing.

The general research findings say something like a .5 - 2 degree increase in temperature in the next 100 years, which is not again confirmed.

I personally don't worry about these, when it comes to weather and climatic changes its vry well known that man has got miles to go before he can confirm any of his theories. Even daily weather forecast generally goes wrong leave alone a 100 or 1000 year predictions.

Assuming this to be true, I see the change as a part of earth's evolution. How did dinosour die, weather change, if that had not happened I dont think I will be sitting in this air-conditioned room and blogging about global warming.

Maybe nature has something exciting for mother earth post-human occupation.

A fresh beginning

2007-01-21T02:53:00.000-08:00

Chill morning morphing into a warm lazy Sunday afternoon, a perfect weather for me to start this blog.