More Gandhigiri for Bangalore Traffic

Recently I ranted about Bangalore traffic and the need to plonk offenders up for public 'applause'.

Apparently there's a group of professionals here who had the same rant, but took a more genuine Gandhigiri-type approach. They've set up Smiling Drivers - focused on trying to avoid road rage and encouraging a more friendly driving discipline.

Have a looksee at their stuff. For now they've only got stickers and an Orkut community lamenting Bangalore traffic, but will be interesting to see if the folks can sustain this through.

The Idiot Box Journal

Today was a busy day for prime time TV. I made it back from a hectic office day literally at the very minute Heroes Season 2 kicked off on Star World.

HEROES :
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I'd enjoyed most of season 1, till the damp squib of the finale, where, rather predictably, Sylar disappeared mysteriously; rather dramatically, the Petrelli brothers zoomed off to a suicidal sacrifice, Hiro Nakamura zoomed off to ancient Japan; and the rest, rather apparently, were left to pick up the pieces and move on. The start of season 2 picked up the stories of Hiro and his Takezo Kensei, Kaito Nakamura and Ando, Matt Parkman, Claire and Noah Bennet, Dr. Mohinder Suresh and the Petrellis (yeah the brothers survived, would you believe it), while introducing three new potential 'heroes'. Doubtless we'll be hearing more about the other characters from season 1, and be introduced to more new ones.
While the WGA strike has affected completion of season 2, this season was apparently anyway broken down into two parts, and they finished the first part before the strike, er... struck. So hopefully we'll get to follow a full story arc.

Brothers & Sisters
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Just two sentences - I can't stand Holly Harper. Calista Flockhart can do a good drunk.

House
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Plot: Take a fistful of diseases, pop them into a young orphaned man, and have his orphaned siblings act all cute and worried. Eh, what's new. Make House's life worse by making him pine for painkillers, and having a mad cop on his tail. Feel sorry for Wilson.

MTV Imported and Non-Stop Hits
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To keep me company while I work on this blog.

And then it was time to sleep.

Lead India, Bollywood

As we celebrated our 60th year of Independence last year, most media channels and papers flouted the great history gone by and other blah. Tsk. Seen that the previous year. And the year before that, and before that....

But the Times of India did manage to come up with a new one - the Lead India initiative. Lead India played on the prevailing sentiment of the urban educated populace that ‘‘Good people don’t want to join politics" and set out to look for the one potential leader who could act as a change agent. The winner would get a lump sum amount of cash to be able to implement their dream project, as also widespread promotion across the newspaper and TV that would act as a springboard to public life.

They received a lot of applications. Initial public reception was also promising. After various interviews, discussions, debates, they came up with 8 city-level winners, who would then slog it out on national television. These eight came from various fields - lawyers, ex-venture capitalists, ex-CEO, civil services, etc., all who have been working towards some form of social or infrastructural upliftment. You'd think it would require more intellectual folks to be able to grill these contestants to find the winner.

Yeah, the Times of India found the intellectual, intelligent jury members to put the contestants to test. They found them in Bollywood.

Yes, India's favourite mind-numbing profession provides majority of the judges. It's generally belittling the whole point of it, but more importantly, my heart goes out to the contestants who are made to answer to these folks!

A sampling of the questions contestants have been quizzed on can be found in these excerpts from the Lead India site:

"...The jury was in its element in the ‘bluff round’. Each finalist picked a judge, from whom Kher asked a question. The judge would provide an answer, after which the finalist had to guess whether it was correct or a bluff. Abha Singh thought she had a sitter when Kher asked Javed Akhtar what was the only category for which Sholay won a Filmfare award. “Best dialogue,” he replied. Singh agreed. It turned out the answer was Best Editing! “We (Salim-Javed) did win Best Dialogue that year, but for Deewar,” explained Akhtar..."

"...The audio-visual round was next. One of the visual clips was from the popular Sanjay-Dutt Hrithik Roshan starrer Mission Kashmir. “I suppose you think I’ll ask you the name of the movie,” chortled Kher to Delhi’s Sanjiv Kaura. “But tell me, who played Sanjay Dutt’s wife in the movie?” “I didn’t even know the name of the movie,” admitted Kaura..."

These were from the 'first competitive episode'. Great way to start - we can't have folks who know squat about Bollywood running our country!

Talk about poor finishing.

The attack of the shop-person

So, how familiar is this scenario:

You walk into a deparment store, hoping to browse through all their stuff, leisurely try out the various stuff they have on display, find that one thing that really gets your fancy, and walk out having made that perfect purchase.

But, what's this? Suddenly you find yourself hurrying just that little bit, suddenly you feel something boring into the back of your head. Suddenly you feel pressure.

And then you realise, there's a shop person on your tail. Trailing you every step you take. Literally.

GRRR!

Am sure there are some guidelines somewhere on the right etiquette for shop-persons. Tailing prospective customers within less than an arm's length is just not cricket.

The zen of tenpin bowling

I participated in my first competition of the year today. As happens every time, it's been a long break, I've gained weight, and I'm out of touch.

It took a call from an enthusiastic collegiate girl to shake me out of my laziness (and specifically, window-shopping) and at least start some practice, the last weekend. There wasn't much to expect from me in terms of performance, but, it's always amazing how the game grips you once you start off.

I reached late and I missed the practice frames, but started off with a strike. Hm, not too bad. Ooh, the right side spares work too. But oh, the hook ball ain't getting off the hand so well. 133, and then a 169 and you would say, things are getting better for a first competition. Sure they did - a fantastic 98 followed. Bah!

Right, so things follow up on:
- Find and make time to play
- Increase right wrist and finger strength so as to be able to hold the ball
- Bend!
- Follow through!
- Get rid of the dropping sound!

The zany words Doctor Who added to my lexicon

1. Raxacoricofallapatorious
2. Bingle-bongle dingle-dangle yikkidee-do yikkidee-da ping-pong lipi-tapi-tuta (Although, I should really attribute that to David Tennant, not the Doctor)
3. Allons-y! (Hence the alias, Allons-y!)
4. Timey-Wimey! (Hence the... oh, you know!)
   
5. Dalekanium (not Dalek, Dalekanium)
6. The Mighty Jagrafess of the blah-bluh-tongue-twisted-blah
7. Pash-Pash
8. Ontological paradox (While the Doctor never really used that term, he nearly always creates an Ontological Paradox! What's an Ontological Paradox? Read about it here)
   

Do add!

Nano or No-no: Inspiration or Botheration

I had actually started out to write a post about how I worried about the Nano causing a quantum jump in traffic. Shashank and I had a very long (and turbulent) conversation where in the end we both agreed (I think!) that getting the Nano out is a great achievement, but couldn't decide on the impact.

He said: That's the government's headache. Don't blame Ratan Tata. Applaud him for now.
She said: But even if the government wanted to do anything now, it will always be behind time.

He's right, of course. I'm only looking for Utopia. I still worry about the state of traffic, but I think what Shashank wanted to say is actually succinctly expressed by CK Prahlad in his article in the Sunday Times on January 13:

"I think this is the wrong starting point for debate. We should ask ourself: What if we devoted the same energy and ingenuity to solving the problems of discipline in traffic management? In energy efficiency? These problems may lead us to breakthrough innovations. But I am glad that the debate has started. That is a good sign. This innovation is serious.

But now, let us celebrate."

More representations of Shashank's views also expressed in this article in the same paper.

So yeah, Nano: Inspiration!

Space Lord?

Hmmm, the Doctor actually travels through both time and space. His TARDIS stands for Time-and-Relative-Dimension-in-Space.

Then why is he only a Time Lord? Why is he not a Space Lord?

Timey Wimey revealed

So the few people who have been kind enough to visit, have wondered why the blog is called Timey Wimey, and then goes on to only have posts under Rants and Raves.

Timey Wimey is from, of course, the great Doctor Who (or should I instead credit it to Steven Moffat and/or David Tennant? - and thank you, Anglosaxon, for the correction), but the thematic is that of the Time Lord who traverses time, and the thematic of this blog will hopefully be a comment of the times we traverse.

Of course, eventually we will have posts dedicated to the great Doctor (To Star Trek - all due respect, but you really were only about the initial Kirk and Spock series anyway), under the label 'Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey'. (Any other apt ideas?)

(Plus, I'd grabbed the URL as soon as I could to make sure it was mine!)

Bangalore Auto Strike - Wanted: higher tariffs for higher fleecing

So Bangalore autowallahs want to go on a strike in demand for a higher tariff.

Now, they may have a reasonable point in that they get only Rs 6/km in a city where fuel prices are the highest, whereas autowallahs in Mumbai earn Rs 9/km.

However, where Mumbai autowallahs are industrious and earn their livelihood by taking you anywhere, near or far, their Bangalore counterparts are very... well, to put it politely, 'picky'. To start with, they must need to feel like taking passengers, and then, you have to want to go to the same area they happen to be headed towards, and the destination must be at least 10 kms away. And that's not enough, once you meet these two criteria, it is but obvious that you need to pay either a fixed premium, or a 50 - 100% premium over the meter tariff (the accuracy of which is anyway doubtful).

So commuters are anyway paying a very high premium to start with, and metered tariffs are non-existent. So, if these demands are to be met, can they also counter-agree that they will offer full service? That they will take commuters anywhere, near or far? BY METER? Or will we just see increased tariffs being the excuse for higher premiums (read: higher fleecing?)

Bangalore Traffic needs some Gandhigiri

With two wheelers thinking they have the right to the pavements over pedestrians, buses thinking they can change lanes at will, cars honking in bumper to bumper traffic (really guys, what do you achieve with that?!), it's sad to see the rapid degeneration of basic manners.

These folks quite frankly deserve a thrashing, but I suspect that will throw up no results.

I'd rather they were rounded up and displayed in a public forum for a 'mock applause'!

Sydney Test brouhaha - really, Mr. Waugh

So a lot of people are up in arms about the Sydney Test (for those who actually haven't heard about it, here you go). Now I won't really add to the stuff already said, but, I chanced upon this article, where Mr. Waugh goes:

"Teams playing against Australia fail to understand that banter, gamesmanship, sledging or whatever anyone would like to call it is just the way Australian kids joust and play in the schoolyard and backyards."

So what does this say: Whatever they do unto others, is 'just the way they joust and play', it's 'their culture'. But whatever gets done unto them, is black-and-white racism???

There is no denying that racism needs to be dealt with severely. There is also perhaps no denying that something must have been said - if not in the Sydney Test, then at least by the spectators in Mumbai. Has someone taken a moment to think about whether the comments were actually racially inspired or 'just a joust and play'?