I proud to be Indian

There’s this thing people keep talking about called momentum. School kids are quick to define it as “m x v bar” and get done with it. Sports commentators, however, go on and on about how important a factor it is, apart from luck, form and ability (in that order). And after watching yesterday’s IPL T20 Mumbai Indians v/s Chennai Super Kings match, I think I can safely say -

The performance by Mumbai was almost faultless. It was, to quote Ravi Shastri (and I apologize rightaway and in advance too) a good toss to win. As expected, Mumbai decided to field first. Shaun Pollock gave a masterclass (4-1-9-1) in how to bowl in the right areas with the pitch having something in it for those willing to bend their backs. He showed why bowlers like him and McGrath are like wine - they age with time and only get better as the years go by’. He also debunked the theory that people should retire once they are past their prime, because clearly, form is temporary, class is permanent. The ’special one’ from Delhi - Ashish Nehra - was not too bad either. The Dhawal Kulkarni kid bowled well too, except for the last over where the occasion got to him and he showed that he needed some more experience. But in hindsight, it was a good thing that Chennai got to 150.

What followed next was pure magic. Entertainment of the highest order. I remember reading somewhere about Sanath Jayasuriya’s admiration for Sachin Tendulkar, and he mentioned after the match how reassuring it was to have someone like Sachin at the other end. The sixes he hit (eleven in all) so easily with those treetrunk-like arms went longer than just into the crowd - they justified why Mukesbhai was willing to rely so much on his ability that he shelled out $900,000 for him. They also validated why he was considered to be the best opening batsmen in the subcontinent (and possibly the world) for a very long time.

At the risk of sounding cheesy and so very Tendlya-obsessed, I must say that it was Sachin who made all the difference. There was a certain confidence in the team, the way they stuck to the plan, how they fielded well and batted brilliantly. This could not have come from anywhere else but their el Kapitan. His mere presence was like a tonic for all the Men in Blue.

I hark back to the 1998 series in Sharjah v/s Australia when Sachin played what was probably his best ODI innings ever. I remember Tony Greig going bonkers in the commentator’s box and gushing over and over - “Oh what a player. What a fantastic player.” It’s more that ten years (!) since that happened, but the admiration for Sachin has not dimmed one bit. ‘Soorya’ is 38 right now, and it seems like he could easily play for a decade more. Maybe Sachin’s (he’s only 34 :P) resolve to play in the next World Cup (in 2011 IN INDIA!) is not as unrealistic as some people are so eager to say. Here’s hoping that he plays on and on, and that the Indians keep on winning!

Kirket-Shirket haay rabba

Random thoughts mostly disconnected regarding the ongoing IPL Twenty20 tournament:

The T.V. series ‘Heroes’ got it spot on when it urged people to Save the cheerleader. I say to Mallya - go one step forward and bring back the cheerleaders to Mumbai. Just can’t seem to get enough

SRK had said that if the Bongla Knight Riders screwed up, all he’ll need to do is dance in a few more marriages. Well …. mwuhhuhhaahaaaah *evil laughter*

Mumbai need to realise that Nehra has bowled his best, and should be dropped before he gets back to sucking and bowling low full tosses. They also need to realise that one cannot spread the cheer by having boys-who-look-girly gyrating to arbit songs.

(Ed: Nehra’s Man of the Match performance vs Jaipur notwithstanding, I still think he has been a bad buy)

Rajasthan is owned by the son of Rupert Murdoch, apparently. Smart people, these Murdochs.

(Ed: Jaipooriyans no match for Mumbaikars though!)

Chennai has all the batsmen money could buy, leaving no money to buy bowlers.

Delhi are nothing without Virender She-wag, Gambeer and Daa-won. McGrath is still a cut above everyone else.

The Deccan Chargers are like the Indian cricket team of 2001-02. Lots of stars, pathetic team overall. Rohit Sharma is truly magnificient - the best thing to come out of this whole IPL megashow. I still can’t comprehend why Mumbai didn’t pick him. Laxman’s renouncement of icon status proved to be Deccan’s stumbling block - you can’t but reward such a ‘noble’ gesture. But what this effectively means is that Laxman is a permanent fixture. And why they insist(ed) on picking Venugopal Rao is totally unfathomable.

Mohali KXP need to shield their players from Preity Zinta lest she satisfy her urge to bearhug everyone like one would coddle with a puppy. And Sreesanth needs to go and find his balls before bowling any - seriously? crying? And that too on Zinta’s arms?! And what’s this I hear about the junior players being shifted from a 5-star hotel to a local place to accomodate Preity’s friends? :O. Their cheerleaders are nice, though.

Almost forgot the Bengalurus (cricketers, that is)- probably because they are quite forgettable. The fact that Wasim Jaffer is one of their leading run scorers should be sufficient indication towards the misplaced ideas of Rahul Dravid. The story goes, that Mallya was congratulated by family and (girl)friends on assembling an awesome team, and was reminded that Twenty20 means that the entire team gets to play 20 overs, not 20 overs-per-player. On telling this to Dravid, Da’ Wall replied - “Anyone who can master test cricket can play in any format of the game. Twenty20 is all Moh-maaya. Pass the rasam.” Must mention that Katrina looks very pretty in Bangalore Red - it’s only the prospect of her coming on screen that makes me hope that Dravid slogs one over extra cover.

And lastly the most prominent aspect of the IPL coverage - the commentary! You aren’t allowed to say sixes - you have to say DLF Maximum Sixes, even if the ball barely clears the boundary. Every six is a contender for some DLF Super sixes contest which nobody really bothers to explain. When Sehwag hits a six, the commentator (Robin Jackman I think) goes - ” That’s the hundreth six of the … no wait … the sixth hundred of the … <blank>”.

The baap of all commentary gaffes / gems (depending on your PoV) has to be the wacky Paki Rameez Raja who can’t stop fantasizing about how bandied Mohd Asif is as part of his injury recovery. That is of course before he starts admiring Dwayne Bravo’s Complete Package. He doesn’t shy away from making up words when he says ‘XYZ is unorthodoxily built’. He greets Shoaib Malik’s boundary with this absolute gem - “He’s slapped one thorugh the offside… (pause) …of late I shouldn’t be saying that, slap has become controversial. He’s hit it hard through the offside.”

Arun Lal cannot make up his mind about which cliche to use, and ends up uttering the most arbit word combinations ever - “The Royal Challengers are doddering along like a dodo”.

Ravi Shastri elaborates on the enigma called Afridi who has been a teenager almost all his life until now, when suddenly the scorer says he’s 28! - “He made [the fastest ODI] 100 when he was 16 and then was in his teens for quite a while “

And (I shit you not) Ranjit Fernando puts the icing on the foot-in-mouth cake when he says - “The Chennai bench looks very relaxed … blah blah blah …. they haven’t been pregnant for some time”.

Well, some one better do something to rectify that. After all, as the spot boy- turned leg spinner- turned commentator L. Sivaramakrishnan says - “it is a hard man’s game - that is why it’s a profession.”

I’m loving it

Who wants to be a President?

Unless you’ve been living on a different planet altogether, it is impossible to be unaware of this teeny-weeny thing called the primaries going on in the US. You have the democrats in complete self-sabatouer mode (to quote J.D.), battling it out so hard that you fear the scarred/bruised candidate who wins will be too tired to continue and will go - ‘I would like to defer my candidacy for the next term or when Sen. John McCain pops off, which might very well be like tomorrow.’ McCain in the meantime must be feeling distinctly left out, and has decided to keep himself busy by touring states like Florida. This acts as a massive ego-boost, as that is possible the only place left in the entire country where people address him as ‘Hey Kiddo’.

This whole debate about who is a better candidate, who lies less, who really had to tackle sniper fire, whose laugh is more fake etcetera etcetera - the whole thing seems pretty pointless to me. Why?

Eventually, it’ll boil down to this -

Do I vote for HillRod because/ inspite of her being a white, old woman, for having occcasional bouts of insincerity and an unhealthy obsession for answering late night calls and for ensuring billy ‘the kid’ clinton comes back into the white house and resume his strict internship policies? or

Do I vote for the Obaminator because/ inspite of him being black, possibly Muslim, being associated with crazy-ass reverends, having occasional bouts of verbal diarrhoea and pointing out the bitterness in some states (which still had NOT voted), generally stuttering and stammering and giving people hope for anything and everything?

Things like ‘Plan for the future’, ‘How to tackle the inevitable dollar failure’ etc are not points of differentiation between the two candidates. All this ruckus about NAFTA - I’m sure most Americans don’t know what NAFTA stands for (which is ok, since I am quite ignorant as to what acronyms like ICICI or MCOCA stand for anyway). It doesn’t matter what the candidate’s general awareness is about things outside the American mainland. Everyone is missing a crucial point here - Who is the the average voter? What are his/her/its expectations? And more importantly - what are the things he doesn’t give a rat’s-ass about?

Note that this is the same person who voted to have George Bush in power for two consecutive terms. Seriously, that is like choosing to put a complete d**do in the most powerful position in the world for EIGHT frikkin’ years. I pause for effect here. Dubya’s disapproval rating is at an all time high - seventy percent - but I’m sure he thinks he can do better (Eh? Isn’t 70% like … not much?) 

Clearly, the average voter finds irrelevant most criteria like Global Awareness (in fact, any awareness in general), things like Decency, Consideration, An iota of conscience, Oratorial skills, Basic grammatical abilities, Consistency, Policy vis-a-vis the Latin American takeover of USnA- all these are just not important, they just don’t matter, they are moo. So then why the elaborate fuss and rigamarole when things could be so much more entertaining?

I hence propose (not entirely in jest) to have a multi-level reality show, where candidates have to go through 3 rounds of competitions/ scenarios  -

1. The Air Force One situtation: You are put on a plane which is then kidnapped by the Russian mafia who are too rich to care but still insist that a movie be made out of the incident anyway. This is tougher than it seems, because you might run out of oil midway if the OPEC countries decide to hike the price again or if the american airline industry goes bust.

2. The Independence Day scenario: Where your friendly-neighbourhood alien decides to bomb the White House because it is somewhat ugly and bland. The candidate will be graded on 3 attributes - ability to make awesome inspiring speeches, ability to be totally clueless about which country the alien is from and the ability to fly a plane - by remote control or otherwise.

3. The 24 situation: You have a nucular threat + a terrorist bombing + a rogue agent + a presidential daughter kidnapping + Chinese toys planning a blitzkreig on American markets.  This is still an easy level, because no matter what you do, Jack Bauer will eventually save the day. In case of a tie, all candidates can be tortured by Jack into giving up any information they don’t want to give up - the choice is left entirely to them. This has to be the last round, though, as the losing candidates will have to die a gruesome death, because Jack Bauer knows no mercy. 

Maybe then will America get the president she so badly deserves.

Buskya

1. This post was supposed to have been published when the BEST buses (the local bus transport system of Mumbai) radicalized its fare structure, but I ended up procrastinating.

2. Then, this post was supposed to have been published on the day of the ‘3-day’ autorickshaw strike in Mumbai (which unfairly got over in 1/8th time), but by the time I got around to posting this post, the strike was long over and forgotten.

3. All characters mentioned in this post are fictional unless they’re obviously non-fictional. The opposite is true for all facts - true unless obviously untrue.

Called BEST because it was Bombay’s Electric Supply and Travel Undertaking, the full form has been juggled around quite liberally to persist with the acronym - Bombay thus became Brihanmumbai (Greater Bombay). The Electric Supply part is still maintained (for nostalgia I guess) although Reliance Energy now has the responsibility of keeping Mumbai from darkness. Travel, though, is still spot on.

It is generally observed that there are two categories of people in Mumbai -

1. People who hate the buses and who find them painful, time-consuming, extremely frustrating and sweat inducing beasts whose sole aim in life is to prey on unsuspecting pedestrians or smaller vehicles (especially autorickshaws).

2. People who don’t hate the buses although they find them painful, time-consuming, extremely frustrating … etc. 

Most people in Category 1 are ‘outsiders’- rather, most ‘outsiders’ end up in Category 1. Note that I do not say this in a derogatory/ accusatory/ inflammatory/ Raj-Thacky manner - it is understandably hard for people to suddenly reconcile with the ‘horrors’ of bus travel. I, though, belong to the second category of people, I’m an Insider, a man on the inside, the son of the soil, boy of Konkan, a true native and all that which fills me with a lot of irrational pride - I still sometimes suggest bus travel as an alternate mode for getting from point A to point B and raise quite a few eyebrows in the process.

Given my obvious affinity for this oh-so-obvious sign of non-affluence (“Colon ‘O’! You rode in *gasp* a bus to office! *roll eyes* how cheap are you?”), it is quite natural that I should personally know a few bus conductors/ drivers. Unnaturally enough, I personally know only one bus driver. This fellow used to work in my dad’s office more than a decade ago, and I happened to chat up with him some time back.

Excerpts from a conversation with this fellow, hereby referred to as Fellow -

Me: Why this general derision for buses?

Fellow: Bilaadi snooty Mumbai people

(F is prone to using a lot of foul words which have been changed on request. Must say that his style of uttering vernacular word-barbs is quite spectacular. Some of his words can be found here, although I urge you to not spew these at random people on the street, especially those wearing orange bandanas and chanting “Marathi manoos jaaga ho” i.e. awaken, O Native of Maharashtra!)

M: Why the general disdain for all people outside the bus- people on the road, in the car, on pavements, everywhere?

F: Bilaadi snobs these Mumbai people. Not having any chendu to stand their ground and face only.

M: Huh?

F: (With a glazed look in his eyes) Yeah.

M: Glad we got that out of the way. Now, how about telling me how great BEST actually is?

F: Not yet. First, I should mention how thankless our job is. Everyone gives us infinite traas! People - for running them over; Passengers - for not waiting for them to get on/get down, or when we pain them into giving us exact change. This is a bit unfair, given that our motto always has been ‘Krupya Soote Paise dyaa’ (Please to be giving exact change). This and ‘Thou shalt aspire to drive a Ferrari’ being the two founding ideas on which our Bus-chalak Mazdoor Union was built. On top of this, our Bosses -  paining us into completing a requisite quota of passengers serviced …

M: … (interrupting) Oh ok, so that’s why you’re all grumpy and yet willing to wait for people running behind buses with arms flailing like wild chicken?

F: (With a stare that can preempt the imminent Polar Cap meltdown) … Please, do not interrupt my mousum (flow). The last time someone interrupted my mousum, I almost ran him over.

M: Thousand apologies. Please continue.

F: I am not one to crib though. All I will say is we have enough trouble. More than enough, actually. But still, I do not envy my conductor one bit. Just imagine - he has to dispense the correct fare for all possible stop combinations, ask people to give him ‘chhutta paisa‘ (correct change), yell at people to move forward - “Aage badho, idhar khadha mat raho” … Move your sorry a$$es ya’all - and at the same time not forgetting to ring the bell at every bus stop.

M: (Seizing the moment) And how ironic that when he is polite and good, he is susceptible to getting electrocuted! Ha! (Seeing the blank stare, proceeds somewhat disappointed) …  Surely getting to ring the bell so often must make it worth the trouble endured? It sure made my day quite a few times!

F: . . . *fingers drumming*

M: Anyhoo … I’ve heard that the bus routes are routinely updated?

F: Yes actually. That is something that makes me hold my head high with ‘fakr’ - we have an elaborate tracking system developed by some fairly bright people constantly monitor earnings for routes, conduct surveys and chart new routes. All this is done with the most basic of technology. Don’t be surprised if you see abacuses lying all over the planning department. Ha ha ha. (Pauses to wipe eyes)You must have noticed several routes which seem pointless in terms of traffic, or some which go through areas of apparent wilderness, eh?

M: Actually, now that you mention this …

F: Well, these routes are often expected to be future earners. Sometimes they end up being like a self-fulfilling prophecy: Projected increase in people density -> New routes -> Better connectivity -> Increase in viability of place -> Increase in density -> Voila!

M: That sounds too good to be true.

F: Well most of the times it is too good to be true. But even if it works sometimes, it’s worth the effort

M: And what about the fares?

F: Well, 15p of every fare goes to the PM’s Education Fund, which is a lot. Fares are monitored such that they are as fair as possible. Ha ha ha. (Pauses again to wipe eyes). You know, however gas guzzling the buses might seem to be (they don’t go more than 4 kmpl), it still translates into a lot of savings if you factor in the number of commuters.

M: Yo! Stop press! Important question I almost forgot! Why are you guys phasing out the double decker buses! Think of the exclusivity factor - no city in the world other than London has these monsters still running on her roads! (Nostalgically) Riding in the front seat of the upper deck, imagining that you were driving the bus all by yourself, watching tiny rickshaws getting swallowed by your bulk … sigh, those were the days. Plus, having the wind peel your face off when you vainly tried to keep your eyes open was probably the best Titanicesque moment one could had ever had! And here you are, depriving future generations of the chance to dangerously peep out of the front windows as they hope to wave to the driver downstairs? Shame on you.

F: Dude, the economics and logistics just don’t work out. A double decker bus is just not viable. Plus it is physically very unstable. And it’s too much of red in my opinion.

M: (Shocked at the jargon F just uttered, but recovering with amazing finesse) Hmm … I noticed that we now we have the daily pass/ monthly pass thingy, right?

F: Yeah. It is quite surprising that it took us so long to implement this. We now have incentives for daily users, frequent travelers, tourists and senior citizens. I am sure that the number of passengers will increase drastically now. Think about it - in just 25 bucks, you can now travel all over Mumbai as many times as you want. And soon we’ll have an integrated pass-system for Buses AND trains. Plus you have the Reliance Metros coming up. I just hope that people respond positively and use public transport more than they do.

M: Amen to that. And I sincerely hope your kind drives with less vengeance.

F: Well … (hitherto unknown red lights suddenly light up eerily in the background) … that is something we can only wait and watch! Mwwuuhhuhhaahaahhaah

M: Goodbye, and have a nice day. And don’t forget the disclaimer mentioned at the outset.

OMFG!

Stupid wordpress doesn’t allow embedding random videos (at least I don’t know how to do it …)

But seriously! O.M.F.G. What will the US candidates do next? It’s like waaaay past a guessing game now

Link

Yaa maaaaaan

A big nose can sometimes distract you from an otherwise pretty face and decent music. That’s what almost happens with Sara Bareilles in her (now old) light-and-simple single (or is it a multiple, i don’t remember). Especially notice how hard she bangs on the piano, but still manages to avoid it being painful.

 

This song and another totally random song called ‘Low’ by Flo-Rida ft. T-Pain are the two lasting memories of my recent visit to my american cousins. (I just loving saying out the name of this band in a ‘yaa maan’ Juh-maay-kan accent). The lyrics to the song are mind-boggling, and I say this without any sarcasm. srsly.

 

 

Also, I learnt that you don’t need to be a generation apart to feel a generation apart.

I feel old … oh so old … hip-hop music is known to do this sometimes

 

Moral dilemma

There’s an app in Facebook called ‘Cities I’ve Visited’ in which people can show off all places they have traveled to. For me, this app has raised a moral dilemma -

1. Mumbai (Bombay), India
2. London, England
3. New York City, NY, USA
4. Manchester, England

• Create your own travel map or travel blog
• Visit TripAdvisor.com

On my recent trip to the land of infinite opportunities and shady mortgages, I took a week off as mentioned earlier and roamed around Northern USA, which turned out to be not quite the best travel plan due to the infinite snow I encountered wherever I went. And it is the ‘wherever I went’ part which is the bone of contention … the stumbling block … the main hurdle … the faltering step … the cause of the dilemma.

On the face of it, I am now a well-traveled man, having been to Minneapolis, Fargo, Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, Ann Arbor, Detroit, New Jersey and New York City (phew). But the following table tells a different story -

Place Visited	Time spent in all	Time spent in Bus station/ Airport/ Train/ Broken down car
Edison, NJ	5 hrs	Train (2 hrs)
Minneapolis, MN	18 hrs	Airport (3 hrs), Greyhound bus station (3 hours)
Chicago , IL	6 hrs	Greyhound bus station (5 hrs), Car (1 hr)
Marshall, MI	2 hrs	Broken down car (2 hrs)
Detroit, MI	4 hrs	Airport (4 hrs)
Dubai	4 hrs	Duty Free (4 hrs)

One might scoff if I give naivety and inexperience in planning such trips as an excuse for such a sucky outcome, although in my defense the horrid weather conditions were partly to blame. Nevertheless, I would like to resolve my dilemma which is giving me such sleepless naps -

Am I allowed to flaunt the aforementioned places on the Fb travel map?

Nb: I always thought dilemma was spelled as ‘dilemna’ … but firefox spellcheck thinks otherwise

Flakes

Coincidences. Sigh.

Up until a few weeks ago, which is like more than a quarter of my entire life, I hadn’t seen snow ever. I mean, even the freezer in my house used to be on perpetual defrost or something, thereby depriving me the chance of making snowmen and all. Traveling to places where it snowed was always ruled out as a holiday option because the places used to be invariably too cold (duh, I know).

Then I come here to the US, where it snows everywhere and all the time - at least in all places I’ve been to so far. My cousins dismiss 8 inches of snow like I would dismiss 8 inches of rain. And - here’s the coincidence part I sighed about at the beginning - as I sit in a Greyhound bus staring out at the infinite snow along the road, reading the book Snow by Orhan Pamuk, which song should play on the music player but Snow (hey o) by RHCP. You just can’t make such stuff up. Srsly.

—

The aforementioned book is pretty good, btw. The author won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, and funnily I read his Acceptance speech first, which was quite interesting (link). The book has in common with other good books those two crucial ingredients which are seemingly simple but quite elusive when you sit down to write - small sentences, simple words.

—

On the topic of coincidences, here’s another one: The other book I’m reading in parallel - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - has a reference to the Sohrab and Rustam story. (That story was one of my favourite stories ever when I read it more than a decade ago - it still is, in fact) And Snow also has a reference to the story. Made me smile

The Emperor’s Club

As I sit at my desk with a nice and warm Bagel-and-cream-cheese and a cup of hot Mocha, still reminiscing about the wonderful burger-and-fries I had last night, I am forced to remind myself that New York is so much more than the food. Yes, you have pizzas and pastas and antipastas and salads and sandwiches and sushi and shrimps and beer and onion rings and Paninis and other ancient sanskrit grammarians … I forgot what my point was.

<pause for a quick bite>

So anyhoo, New York and Mumbai are so alike, it can get a bit freaky. It is heartening to see poor and homeless people here - i know that didn’t come out right, but still - it is heartening because it gives me hope. It gives me hope, that in these troubled times, we americans need to stick together. We cannot allow divisive forces to be divisive. But we cannot disown the divisive forces, because they are the reason why we exist. And everybody needs some divisivity in their lives. Now is the time for change. Will-I-am says it, lots of other people say it. If George Bush was the Decider, Obama is our Liberator. It’s amazing to see the amount of rhetoric generated on racism, black-blue-purple-white-ebony and people of other hues during election season. And this is just the primaries. Wait till the secondaries come up *rubbing hands in glee*

Man that Barrack dude is one smooth talker. If I was an American citizen, I would vote for him just because I’ll be glad to not have someone in the Oval Office who uses words like ‘misunderestimated‘. This, even when my gut tells me that McCain will win eventually (my predictions, archived for future ridicule or adulation).

But then, I digress. So I’ll get back to summarizing the great insights you can get when you stay in a new city for less than three weeks and are cooped up in the office for 12+ hours and resting at home for 8+ hours. Once you get past the food, you realize that NY can be a bit of a pain-in-the-neck, especially if you stare at all the tall buildings here. The engineer inside me marvels at these awesome structures while the arithmeticist tries to count the number of floors in each skyscraper. A trip to the top of the Empire State Building in daytime and the Rockfeller Centre (Top of the Rock) around sunset is, in my opinion, necessary to give you a feel of the enormity of the structures here. This kind of compensates for this bad habit people here have of calling the ground floor the first floor (totally unnecessary and extremely confusing).

You turn on the TV, and you see mainly 3 types of advertisements, which essentially summarize the American lifestyle (apologies right away for being too generic) -

1. Exercise equipment/ Gymming classes: There are two categories of people here: those who are thin and like to believe what they are eating is very healthly when they consume anything that’s green, thereby creating a problem for St. Patrick’s revellers; the other is the category of people who have breakfasts equal to the size of people mentioned in category one. It is hence not surprising that the variety available in clothes sized <=S and >=XL vastly outnumbers that in the ‘Indian’ sizes - M and L.

2. Cars: The distances are so vast and the public transport system virtually non-existent (especially when you leave the metros) that a car becomes a necessity. The roads are pretty good and the traffic is orderly even when crowded, which makes driving a stress-free activity. And it is fashionable to have HUGE cars. If you can’t have a large car, the only other option is a Mini Cooper -the unfortunate intermediate sedans are more or less reserved exclusively for taxis.

3. Credit: You can get credit which is specially customized for anything and everything- from houses and cars to holidays to something called ‘the purple pill’ to bridal wear - which is quite ironic given the current credit crisis. I strongly believe that ‘An excellent credit profile‘ is one of the must-have items on most kids’ Santa lists here. A survey showed that most people when given the choice between paying off their credit card bills and their mortgage bills preferred to pay the card bills lest their credit profile gets screwed, irrespective of whether they actually have a house to stay and enjoy the benefits of their spending.

(I shall gloss over the fact that I’ve watched a bit too much of TV; although in my defence, the weather hasn’t been too encouraging for strolling around on the streets)

Now that the official part of my US trip comes to end, I’m getting all pumped about the unofficial US visit part, where I will be essentially going around North-North east US as follows -

NY - Minneapolis - Fargo (Cousins) - Champaign (UIUC people) - Ann Arbor (UMich people) - Detroit - NY.

Woo hoo!

Experience?

Heard on the daily show

Madeleine Albright: I endorse Hillary Clinton because she has experience.

Jon Stewart: Isn’t that like saying my wife will make a great comedian if I put her on this show?

(Entire interview here)

Heh. Another example of humour as the ultimate end to an argument. But then Mrs. Hillary is up against a person who says he has Foreign Affairs experience because he spent 5 yrs in Indonesia … the first five years of his life. Tough choice. People can’t go all out in criticizing each other- you risk been called either a racist or an anti-feminist. Plus you don’t want to hurt the Democratic party in the long run. Very interesting stuff. I’m sure the sole Republican presidential candidate Mr. McCain is enjoying this the most