What's going on #4

Seven hundred billion dollars.

Say that slowly. Now say that in a dramatic voice, with dramatic background music. Raise your pinkie to your lips if you like.

$700 billion is the amount of money that US Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, wants to give to Wall Street to bail it out of a mess that was created largely by Wall Street’s own greed.

Do you know how much money $700 billion is? It is seven times more than what Dr. Evil demanded to not destroy the world. In other words, it is seven times more than what a ridiculous villain in a ridiculous movie thought was too ridiculous for the world to afford to pay him to stop his ridiculous plan.

This whole sub-prime mortgage crisis that has been unravelling for the past two years is so (gosh, here’s that word again) ridiculous that it is unbelievable that no heads have rolled. Literally.

I admit that I don’t know all the minute details, but this is what I believe is generally accepted as what happened:

Banks and financial institutions lent too much money to too many people without getting enough collateral in return. Once these people couldn’t repay the loans, big matata.

Some of the biggest names in the banking industry, like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, who really ought to have known better, have become bankrupt, and millions of lives have been ruined.

The three most galling points of this mess:

1. When I was doing my MBA in the UK, I asked my Economics lecturer what would happen if there was a mass defaulting of loans by consumers. He said there wouldn’t be any trouble as the amount of consumer debt wasn’t that significant. Oh, really?!

2. The big shots at these banks and financial institutions who contributed mightily to this mess by their own greed still got their multi-billion dollar paychecks, and no one is going after them. (Daniel Mudd, ex-CEO of Fannie Mae, earned $13.4 million in 2007 while leading his company to a $2.1 billion loss.) The $700 billion bail-out, as proposed by Henry Paulson last week, is a free handout to these crooks. Stop the plan!

3. The western country least affected by the crisis? France, and its lousy economy. (I told you it was “Gaul-ing”. Count this as the latest “Pun of the Weak”.) Apparently in France, if one wants a loan, one has to put down a whacking great down payment first. And monthly instalments are limited by your monthly income, so you won’t be lent more than you can repay. Well, duh, no wonder they're not affected!

I'd like to thank the Academy...

This is so unexpected. I don't know what to say. I'd like to thank Tiffany for the award, and also all the little people who do so much in the wee small hours of the morning to make this such an awesome blog.



The rules are as follows: All questions must be answered with one word, and only one word. This award must be passed on to at least one other.

1. Where is your cell phone? Shop

2. Where is your significant other? *Shrug*

3. Your hair color? Hah!

4. Your mother? Inspiring

5. Your father? Awesome

6. Your favorite thing? Love

7. Your dream last night? None

8. Your dream/goal? Peace

9. The room you're in? Bedroom

10. Your hobby? Photography

11. Your fear? Loneliness

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Home

13. Where were you last night? Bed

14. What you're not? Athletic

15. One of your wish-list items? Akubra

16. Where you grew up? Earth

17. The last thing you did? Application

18. What are you wearing? Clothes

19. Your TV? Panasonic

20. Your pet? Peeves

21. Your computer? Great

22. Your mood? Pensive

23. Missing someone? Always

24. Your car? None

25. Something you're not wearing? Jewellery

26. Favorite store? Marshalls

27. Your summer? Interesting

28. Love someone? Perhaps

29. Your favorite color? White

30. When is the last time you laughed? Yesterday

31. Last time you cried? Sunday



I pass this award to my buddies (drumroll, please)... STEVE, CHARLOTTE and LIANN.

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had to go to one of our offices access to which is restricted due to the construction of a new flyover.

Later I mentioned that I had avoided being transferred back to Pune because a workstation had been secured for me in an office in Chennai.

I failed to point out at that time, however, that these two episodes are related. I am now in the office with the under-construction flyover in front of it.

The road in front of this office is in pitiable condition. Traffic is only one-way, and restricted to a single narrow lane. There is dirt everywhere due to the construction, plus noise, dust and smoke. It’s not that bad, actually.

That is until it rains. Now we’re talking that bad. The dirt becomes, at different places, and depending upon how much water stagnates there, a combination of wet dirt, mud, slush and mire.

Yesterday, I went out of the office to look up a shop I’d visited before to see if it still existed. It was overcast when I stepped out of the office, but there was still plenty of blue skies to one side. I failed to notice the direction in which the clouds were moving. Shortly after I reached my destination (perhaps 250 metres away), the skies turned black and it started to rain heavily. And it continued to rain for an hour. Finally it relented.

By now it was the start of the evening traffic. The road was covered with both standing water and vehicles. There did not seem to be a dry way back to the office that did not involve dodging in and out of traffic. But I did notice that there seemed to be a narrow stretch of land that was not submerged under water or tyres that I could take till I got to a mound of something. If I could cross that mound, then I should be relatively safe, because there was quite a long stretch of clear pavement after that.

I made it as far as the mound. I looked at it carefully. The light was poor. It looked solid. I stepped on it. And I sank to my ankles in mire.

I use the term ‘mire’ in its most general sense, because I have no desire to analyse what it actually was. Suffice to say my shoes, socks and trousers have suffered perhaps irreparable damage. When I got home, I scrubbed my feet and legs first with hot water and soap, and then warm water and disinfectant. And the same this morning.

What was most galling about the episode is that the damaged trousers are my good khakis. And I only wore them because I couldn’t find my old khakis in the morning. I had a premonition that something bad was going to happen to those trousers as soon I put them on in the morning. As a friend to whom I related this incident later on told me, it’s what I get for breaking my own rules. Lesson learned.

O Tempora, O Mores #5

I hope I'm not violating copyright, but I found this hilarious.







I'm picturing all my blogger friends rumbling like that scene from "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy".

From the archives #1

I have a lot of old forwarded e-mails that I've felt are worth keeping, and I'll be sharing them in case they passed any of you by. (This will probably become another regular series on the blog...and a really easy one as I'll just have to copy and paste from my e-mail archives!)



CHOCOLATE

By John Scalzi

Chocolate is God’s way of reminding men how inadequate they are.

I am vividly confronted with this fact every time my wife and I go out to a restaurant. When it gets to dessert, my wife usually orders the most chocolate-saturated dessert possible: It’s the one called “Unstoppable Double-Fudge Chocolate Mudslide Explosion” or some such thing. I always wonder why anyone would want to eat anything that promises a catastrophic natural disaster in your mouth.

The dark brown monstrosity arrives at the table, and my wife takes the first bite. Before the fork is even removed from her mouth, a small moan escapes her lips. Her eyes, previously perfectly aligned, first cross slightly and then faze completely, pupils dilating in pure chocolate pleasure before the eyelids clamp down in ecstasy.

The hand not holding the fork clenches into a fist and starts pounding the table. The silverware rattles.

After about six minutes of this, she finally manages to swallow the bite, realign her eyes, and take the next shuttle back from whatever transcendental plane she’s been visiting. Slowly, her sphere of consciousness expands to include me, her husband, her life-long mate, her presumed partner in all things ecstatic.

“Hey, this is pretty good,” she’ll say. “You want some?”

No, I don’t. I want nothing to do with an object that does to my wife in one bite what I’ve worked for an entire relationship to achieve.

It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. Men just don’t have the same relationship with chocolate that women do. It’s not even close. I wandered around the office today and asked men—“Chocolate. Your thoughts?”—and the result was always the same. First, a confused look as to why they’re being asked about something so trivial, and then some lame, obvious statement: “Uh...it’s brown?”

Ask women the same question, and you get responses like “The ONLY food group,” “ESSENTIAL to life as we know it,” and the ultimate casual swipe at every member of the Y-chromosome brigade, “better than sex.” Ouch.

Some women will try to make up for that last one by quickly adding that chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac.

Uh-huh. Chocolate certainly increases desire; problem is the desire is usually for more chocolate. The best a guy can do is buy a box of chocolates and hope he’ll be considered somewhere between the cherry truffle and the strawberry nougat.

Don’t get me wrong. Guys like chocolate just fine; it’s just not essential to life as we know it. Respiration is essential to life as we know it; chocolate is simply one of those nice little bonuses you get. We won’t usually pass it up if it’s offered, but I don’t know too many guys who would get substantially worked up if it were to suddenly disappear from the face of the earth (ironic in a way, as back in the days of the Aztecs, only men were allowed to have the stuff). When I eat a chocolate dessert, I enjoy it, yes. My world view doesn’t narrow to include only the plate that it’s on.

Maybe we’re missing something. On the other hand, we don’t have to pick up our silverware from the floor after we’re done with our tiramisu. Life is about trade-offs like that.

All I know is that come Valentine’s Day, chocolate will be among the things I offer my wife. I can’t truly appreciate it, but I can truly appreciate what it does for her. Which is close enough.

Pun of the weak #18

I'm never too impressed with a potter's life work. However famous, he still has feat of clay.

What's going on? #3

I returned this morning after a great two days in Ooty (more details soon).

While I was gone, Dad caught a mild fever, and he was in bed when I came home. He was reading the paper, and I said hello and went to check my e-mail and the sports news.

This is what greeted me: in England Liverpool 2 Man Utd 1, and in American College football, Georgia 14 South Carolina 7, BYU 59 UCLA 0, Oregon 32 Purdue 26, Notre Dame 35 Michigan 17.

A clean sweep by my teams. I was thinking of putting in for long-term accommodation on Cloud 9.

Then I went back to my parents' bedroom for something and only then saw the front page of the newspaper: 20 killed in 5 bomb explosions in New Delhi.

I came back to earth with a pretty resounding thump.

News of the weird #1

I read an item in the paper a couple of weeks ago that a farmer in England had come up with an idea to keep birds from attacking his crops: he put up an Amy Winehouse scarecrow.

Brilliant!

Winehouse has a great voice, but there's no denying that with her beehive hairdo, tattoos and garish eye-shadow, there is something rather terrifying about her (in addition to her well-publicised self-destructive behaviour).

I found a photo of the scarecrow online.

I can see why it is so successful. Scary.

A different location this weekend

There may be no long-term change on the GPS for a while, but there will be a short-term one this weekend. Tonight, I'm off to the picturesque town of Ooty (actually it is Udhagamandalam, but the British couldn't make it past Ootacumund, and this in turn led to its common nickname Ooty).

I am meeting a friend at the bottom of the Nilgiri hills, and we are going to travel up in the scenic Nilgiri Mountain Railway, which was conferred the status of a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2005. I haven't done this train journey since I was a kid, and my friend, being an American fairly new to these parts, has never done this trip, so we anticipate a fun time for all.

If the photos turn out well, I'll post them here next week.

I hope everyone else enjoys their own weekends.

O Tempora, O Mores #4a

Well, it looks like we have found a way to outwit technology.

After I had pointed out how Google Reader captures the contents of all posts in its subscription list, including those that the author decides ought not to be shared with the world at large, my friend Tara D posted a solution on the comments to the post. For those who don't read the comments, here is what Tara said:

Instead of deleting the post, delete all the content of the post, and re-post it with the words "Post Deleted by the Author" (or any variation thereof), and re-save it without changing the title of the post. Of course, every visitor hereon in will see this new text, but that is a small price to pay to prevent all us evil geniuses (like me) from reading your inadvertently public private thoughts.

No long-term change in the GPS

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself without a workstation in my office in Chennai. My boss's immediate solution: whyo not I relocate (again) to Pune?

Well, for various reasons -- some old, some brand new -- I really wasn't too keen on the idea. I told him that I would prefer to stay in Chennai, and accompanied that request with some heartfelt prayers (to God, not to my boss).

Late yesterday I received an e-mail from my boss (who really is a pretty good sort) saying that a workstation has been located for me in another office (it is really ironic that an IT company struggles so much to provide computers for all its employees), which is where I am today.

So, thankfully, I will be staying in Chennai a little while longer, providing a little stability in my life. I predict it will last till the end of November.

Pun of the weak #17

Q: Which is the poorest of all jungle cats? A: The cheetah, because, as we all know, cheetahs never prosper.

O Tempora, O Mores #4

Some months ago, when I started listening to different podcasts and reading the blogs of a number of my friends on a regular basis, I discovered the joys of Google Reader. It was so convenient: enter the feed address in the "Add Subscription" box (you can get the correct address by clicking the RSS button), click OK, and - hey, presto - Reader does the rest. It downloads all entries, including those from years gone by if they have been so formatted, and automatically downloads new entries as they are published.

It's fantastic. However...

This is technology we're talking about, so there has to be a pitfall or two (dozen). Here is a major flaw that I've discovered recently.

If you decide to delete a post, the general public may be blissfully unaware of it, but not someone who uses Google Reader. Reader captures the post, and does not delete it. Worse still, I don't know how to delete a post from Reader.

So, dear authors, beware the next time you consider posting something confidential or controversial on your blog. With some people, you may not be able to take it back.

Thanks, Shanks

When I was almost five years old, my family and I moved to Birkenhead in Merseyside, just across the River Mersey from Liverpool. I suppose that was around the time that I started to recognise that there was a world outside my family and friends, and most of my earliest memories of childhood are from that period.

One of the first things I recognised was football (no, it's not "sah-ker", it's football - you use your foot to kick a ball; socks play no more part in the game than any other), and living on Merseyside, I had two choices of teams to support: the blue of Everton or the red of Liverpool. (Technically speaking, living in Birkenhead, I also had the white of Tranmere Rovers, but let's not be silly -- the Lilywhites never had a chance as they are historically rubbish.)

I chose Liverpool. It wasn't too difficult a choice. They were the new European Cup winners, their star player, Kevin Keegan, was a ubiquitous pitchman for all sorts of products, and Liverpool players littered England's national squad (never mind that the national squad was pretty pathetic back then, even by today's low standards).

The first 14 years of my relationship with Liverpool Football Club were beautiful, with League, FA Cup, League Cup and European titles galore, the deeply ugly scars of Heysel and Hillsborough notwithstanding. Life hasn't been quite as rosy since then, but days like Istanbul 2005 and Cardiff 2006 have provided plenty of smiles.

This is a long and enduring relationship. I've never been tempted to end it, even during the dark days of Graeme Souness's tenure as manager. They would have to do something quite despicable for me to ever turn on them. Having said that, Liverpool (and sports in general, I hasten to add) don't mean as much to me now as they did as a little child. I'm more likely to kick a table leg when they mess up than throw myself on the bed crying (as I did when I was 6 years old).

I was inspired to write this post after reading an article I found last night on Liverpool's official website giving details of a book that has been recently published researching why LFC are the choice of so many British Asians, from back in the 1960s, even in areas closer to other major clubs.

The most common answer: legendary manager Bill Shankly. Shankly turned a club living on past memories in the 1950s to one that was feared and respected by all by the end of the 1960s, but he did so by creating a family atmosphere not just within the club, but with the fans as well. These things resonated with Asian immigrants, who have a traditionally strong sense of family. I've seen old television footage of fans being told in 1974 that Shankly unexpectedly had resigned as Liverpool manager: they could not have been more shocked if they'd been told a beloved family member had just died. They loved Shankly that much.

Shankly pre-dates my relationship with Liverpool, but we do share one common bond: Shankly's nickname was "Shanks". So was mine.

Pun of the weak #16

During the height of the Cold War, the police kept a close eye on Karl Marx' grave...just in case it was a Communist plot.