Kiran Bedi…Yours, I remain

I am not the kinds to be inspired by random people, even if their biography boasted of great achievements. This is not because I doubt them, but I place more emphasis on the circumstances and the opportunities that led to them. Given the right setting, many more could have shone brighter than them is what I have always thought. Sheer talent is one, but that alone cannot make one an achiever. I had the opportunity to listen to several such prominent people at IIT/IISc and my corporate life, yet they failed to move me – on second thoughts, maybe they were not as great orators as they were achievers.

And then there came Kiran Bedi. One whom I had grown up wanting to emulate since the day I saw Udaan, but I lacked the physical stamina or mental dexterity. What passion and energy she combines, and packs a powerful punch. Her one hour speech was nothing short of stating the obvious, but what made it for me was the way she spoke. Dimunitive in size that the podium almost blocked her out, but she made up for it with her vigour. Here was one who was destined to be an achiever. I came away convinced, that if you have the mettle, even circumstances mould themselves to suit you.

It is not even a classic filmy case of facing the odds and then overcoming it that convinced me about this. After all, most great men and women have this story behind them and it somewhat glorifies further their status.

It is perhaps something unexplainable, it is maybe an extra dose of Horlicks, or  it may even be mass hypnotism by her . But then, I remain her fan.

Sudukobese

I recently read somewhere that playing sudoko makes you fat. It further reasons that playing such mind boggling games uses will power and that will power is no longer available to do any other form of exercise. Weird logic! By this, everybody who is intelligent or for that matter, uses their mind should be fat. I seem to like the obese club better now.

Didn’t the annual tax season just pass by?

The key proposals of the radical tax reform draft code sounds too good to be true. Someone said long ago that the only way to cut down on taxes is to take a pay cut. I agreed only because I knew of no other legal way to pay lesser taxes!

Now that they have made public the new tax proposals, I hope the government does not renege on it, and gets the Bill tabled and passed before tax time 2010.

Key proposals for individuals
(Source: http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/aug/12/new-direct-taxes-code-released.htm)

• Rates of tax to be uniform
• Tax deduction limit on savings to be hiked to Rs 3 lakh (Rs 300,000)
• Income tax slabs proposed to be changed; highest tax rate of 30% for individuals to be applicable for income over Rs 25 lakh (Rs 2.5 million)
• Security transaction tax to be abolished
• Effective corporate tax rate at 25 %
• To scrap long, short-term capital gains distinction
• Business losses can be carried forward indefinitely
• No tax deduction on interest payable on any govt security
• Base year for calculation of cap gains tax moved to April 2000
• Wealth tax liability to be discharged by payment of pre-paid taxes
• Income from certain transfers not be treated as capital gains

Meanwhile, I am taking off to la la land on the virtual savings I have made basis these tax reforms.

Phoney behavior

Cell phones have become an integral part of our lives today. We need to hang on to it irrespective of whether we are expecting calls or we are scheduled to make one. It is so much necessary for us to have it in ready to use mode, for it started off as a tool that would be very handy during emergency and that aspect refuses to leave our psyche.

In such a scenario, when it has become an indispensable part of our lives, it would be interesting to know whether the payment behaviour of cell phone users in the country has changed. It is quite common for many users to vanish without paying their last cell phone bill, especially when they are about to change cities/countries, for it is difficult to trace them then. The only other scenario when I can imagine that somebody would wilfully default on the bill payment, is when they are switching to a different network due to bad service or better service plan on the alternative. With service providers being highly competitive today, and even in cases where they do not have innovative plans that benefit a particularly unique user, they can still force payment through collection efforts if people default on their payments while switching networks.

Sloppy users are no longer tolerated. Delay in payment is adequately rewarded with disconnection of services. So tell me, if the regulators were not in place today, would we be seeing high handed behavior from these service providers.

 For there is no such thing as a free market.

Pigs can’t fly.

Is this scare about the swine flu for real? Somehow my mind fails to comprehend the enormity and the reality of the scare, especially when only a handful of people have lost their lives to it. There are so many other burning issues, like droughts, famine, floods and AIDS, and we lose people by more than a dozen here, yet they have not created the sense of urgency as done by the H1N1.

I coaxed out the following reasons from my mind as to why I should continue to believe that all this paraphernalia about the swine flu is only a scare!

1. The manufacturers of Tamiflu, and the indigenous research organizations is to benefit from this.

2. How else can you make people flock to the doctors for a simple cold/cough or flu?

3. Get throat swabs etc. of people at airports, city entry exit points etc. and profile them to identify terrorist behavioral patterns.

4. Divert attention from the GDP decline, increase in prices and such  issues.

5. Discourage tourist income to other countries, and instead force people to enjoy vacations in their own country.

6. Even if the above reasons are not convincing..it is only a scare!!

General Nonsense

There are some people who can write absolute nonsense, day after day. But at the same time, this nonsense also sets you thinking, and leaves you amazed at the power of articulation this writer posesses.

One such writer I have admired is Scott Adams of the Dilbert fame. I was a fan of his daily strips long before his blog came into existence. Now, I am beginning to feel that his blog was the reason for many of the comic strips. He would have written a paragraph of nonsense, and then the idea in the nonsense crystallized into a doodle, which was later enhanced, or copy pasted by some great animation software.

There is one other Indian blogger who comes close to this. I am talking about krishashok. (http:// krishashok.wordpress.com) I am not yet elevating him to the status of Scott Adams, but how can somebody think up of so much delightful nonsense day in day out.

Most of time, these people are talking about everyday things. It is just the tangent at which they are thinking which makes you wonder that this alternative line of thought has a more constructive use than the original intended use.

The Police brush

It was a big white canvas.

Not a spot of guilt.

The first encounter was within their borders.

Documentation and I was in order.

But they dipped their brush in a pot of grease.

Wanted it coloured gold.

Cause the pages had a little crease.

Painted it with a silver speck.

So that it won’t show on the white deck.

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Still, the canvas was now jaundiced.

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But they say the cure could only be more plush,

Not just a stroke of the paint brush.

Greed overcame the Lord of this prey.

I tore my canvas and walked away.

Not a spot of guilt (on them)
Not a spot of guilt.(on ahem)

Of what use is an engineering degree in electrical sciences if you did not know that you have to put the plug in the socket for an electrical appliance to work?

I am not going to write here about this very obvious oversight on the part of a haughty engineer I know. This post is about more complicated things.

With half the family of the above mentioned engineer in la-la land, it was high time a web cam was bought and monkey faces sent over the high seas, like Hanuman’s lanka trips. So are web cams sold by any Spider branded companies? Wish they were. .I digress.

After what seemed like Vanavasa, a web cam was bought for a little less than a grand, and positioned as delicately as stacking eggs in the fridge, over the monitor of the desktop computer.

Before this, it was debated, for a good half hour, how good is a soundless movie to one’s kith and kin, especially with a face that does not hold the interest of even the neighbourhood dog.The microphone had completely slipped the engineer’s mind and it was not bought. You ought to overlook that, for the engineer is not a sound engineer but an electrical sciences engineer.

Then, it was noticed a tail hung from near the USB connector of the web cam, and it fitted well into the microphone socket of the computer. Whoa..this definitely ought to be capable of carrying a few decibels of sound atleast. (see see..the engineer knows all about decibels and is not a fake one)

Having got this far, the rest was easy or so the engineer thought. Plug the cable into the USB port, and wait for the lights to flicker on, and surprisingly not, the engineer sees a hazy but the famous silhouette of self. (Yeah yeah..the engineer knows all about putting in the disc, and installing drivers for the computer to recognize the new hardware as a web cam) With a pat on the back, the lens focus is adjusted to reveal a more interesting portrait of self. Grinnn.

Skype was then inaugurated in the house with as much fanfare, as the superstar’s Friday release. Mustard spluttering et al. (Cooking in the kitchen simultaneously pa) to remove evil eye.

Then came the test…ENGINEER..ARE YOU TRUE BLOODED?

The microphone carried the voice through perfectly over the web messanger. Alas, if only it was a more melodious voice, the world on the other side would have been content.

Show us your face, they demanded.

The haughty engineer shyed away at first..no, its ok, it is late in the night..it is dark here…were the pleas.

Out you come, they cried hoarse.

But how????

The camera was showing off the perfect face to self, but refused to transmit over the web as though it did not want to inflict the same on others.

Off and on the web cam, camera test, works fine.

No transmission on the web.

Plug it out and plug it in, camera test, works fine.

No transmission on the web.

Plug out the microphone, camera test, works fine.

No transmission on the web.

After several hours of the Indian standard time, and Greenwich mean time having elapsed, the bulb flickered. In the mind of the engineer, silly. (FYI, the camera lights were flickering alright)

One mighty pull and push of the USB wire into the slot again, skype on, no camera test.

EUREKA…it went through.

The famous face was splashed across the globe, making it more famous. (Loud applause like in Oscar’s)

The problem was that the web cam did not know how to function in two places, 1) over the local machine and 2) the internet. Was this the engineer’s fault?

Everyone else thinks so.

You tell me.

I wonder..

When the lefties (pun intended) drive on the roads in India, do they feel like driving in a developed country like say, the U.S?

Strange thoughts Stranger days

As I was reading about how the terrorists in mumbai were conditioned to be trigger happy, was reminded of how at times I am ‘delete’ happy – in clearing several files from my computer at one go.