And you wondered why we need lighthouses for...

LightHouseEffect.Org

One of my good friends Nirav Desai owns the website. He has done quite an impressive work on the website and it deserves attention. Their mission in their own words: "lighthouseffect uses its web space to throw light on the efforts undertaken by nonprofits, NGOs, and social entrepreneurs in their quests to improve the living conditions of children".

My life....March -July

1) 9:00am : Wake up in the morning
2) 10:30am : Reach office
3) 12:30pm : Lunch
4) 5:00pm : Walk across the lake / play pool
5) 7:30pm : Dinner in the office
6) 10:00pm : Home
7) till 1:00am: Simpsons / Battlestar Galactica / Family guy / Comics / Novels

This is what I call 'a life of Nerd'.

Courage (A short story)

[The story is fictional and a new chapter to my collection of short stories.]

There are some unforgettable moments in everyone's lives; I have quite a few. These are usually moments of unexpected success, sad events or some amusing incidents in which you didn't play any part at all. One such amusing event will always remain close to my mind. In 5th grade we were asked to write essays in all the languages that were taught in school, i.e. English, Hindi and Marathi. Well, scoring highest grade in a language subject was different and writing an essay in that language was a different ballgame altogether. Best escape was to buy some cheap award-winning essay book and try to imitate their writing style in your essays. Well that used to work out great for me and I hope it still does for the current 5th graders.

The story is about a boy, Atul, who being a bright student, also had an unparalleled passion for languages. Teachers used to ask him to read his essays in front of the whole class. Not that his essays were great but they were original. His originality used to bowl me over. But on one such day, when we were supposed to write an essay for Marathi class, he was not prepared. The essay was about our local hero and king, Raja Shivaji. The class was scheduled after lunch break when he busily started writing his essay. There was a glitch in this essay-writing homework – an incomplete essay would affect the overall grade. After scribbling for a while he was able to finish about half the essay which was about 2 pages. After lunch-break the lecture began and unfortunately the teacher asked him again to read his essay in front of the class. The poor guy couldn't dare to admit that he couldn't finish his homework as it would affect his otherwise clean academic record. He took his book in his hands and stood in front of the class. Few of his friends, including me knew the actual facts but we didn't know how he was going to pull this off. Reading an essay that you have written and in a language that you are not quite familiar with, is a big task for an 11-year old guy. Atul started reading his essay explaining King's birth, childhood, schooling which exhausted his essay completely. Without looking at the class, staring at his notebook Atul continued his essay by elaborating about an event where King killed his arch-enemy Afzalkhan with his wits. I was amazed to see his cool, calm poise and confidence with which he was fooling the whole class but with a good intent. Well, teacher was impressed and awarded him good points for his essay. From then on he never missed his homework. The point that I realised was that a given task should first be completed in one's mind before its execution and there will be times where you will not be prepared for an event, but approaching it with a positive attitude will have higher chances of bearing success.

Innocence - A Short Story

"Oh man, I think this would be the end of my simple life. From today onwards everybody would be expecting me to act as a matured person. I have to think twice before making any decisions, I have to maintain my reputation, think about my career. My girlfriend, Priya thinks I am a loser. I wish I could go back in time and lead a tensionless life. I have to be a good son, good brother and a good citizen. I need to plans things and execute them in order to be successful person. I would read newspaper, technical and art magazines on a regular basis. I would eat healthy food daily. I would sleep early and wake up early everyday. From today I would be a changed and better person. From today..."(A lady enters in)
"Welcome to the fourth grade, kids!! I am your class teacher and I would promise you that we would have more fun than you guys had in third grade."

A Poem

On a lonely street
As you walk by
Moments of truth, you visualize
Places of beauty, you passed by

A journey full of surprises
Mind and heart need to cross by
Utter in confusion, you realize
It’s too late to go back by

Don’t you see, the poem is fooling you
To the same old plot of life and it’s saddening you

Read a poem twice
Artistic and critique eyes
A poem can be a prose
Can be simple, can be short

Need not a poem be rhythmic
Need not be it romantic
But memorable message it need to carry
With passion, substance and style

Don’t you see, the poem is again fooling you
It is leading you, back to you

Live your life on your own rules
So when you look back with critique eyes
It has carried a simple memorable message
But with passion, substance and style

The Game

"Hey Vikas, how was your day?" My replies usually are: "Busy, spent whole day trying to get bear working in the game", "I was trying to get player sit on a chair, smoke pipe, play flute, mine gravel pile". By now you might have realised that I work for a gaming company. Yes, I have been working on 'LOTR:The White Council' game (target consoles are PS3 and xbox 360) for almost 9 mons now and yes, I work for EA.

This is one of the best times to be in a gaming company. The transistion period as it is called when next-gen consoles hit the market and consumers expect games to be the same i.e. Next-gen. Gaming companies thrive hard to create a next-gen experience by taking some ground-breaking decisions and risks. I am happy to be part of this whole effort.

So what is a next-gen game? It is an open-ended question. Come to think of it, it is upto consumer's imagination. Personally, I feel quality of game should be much superior. By that I mean, game should exploit console's processing power to full extent and create a virtual-reality experience for gamers who should believe in the world that they see. If one looks at television screen, he should not be able to say whether he is looking at a game or at a movie. It is easy said than done. Interactive entertainment is gaining ground and people's attention all over the world. I personally feel it is still immature but hopefully next-gen consoles and games would be able to help bridge that difference.

Mahabharata

I completed reading Rajgopalacharya's version of Mahabharata. His writing style comprises of using simple words, small sentences and compiling them into concise chapters. I came to know about some unheard stories of our great epic through this book. I believe every emotion (desire, greed, love, sincerity et al) , social tensions and other facets of life can be found in this epic. We don't have evidence about who wrote this book (of course, if you don't believe Lord Ganesh who wrote this epic, as our mythology claims) but whoever it is has done a great job.

The thing that makes Ramayana more popular than Mahabharata is that Ramayana is a story of victory of good over evil. Ramayana deals the story in white and black whereas Mahabharat deals its epic in grey. There are times in Mahabharata where it would be difficult for a reader to determine who is right and who is wrong, which makes it more interesting due to its alignment with current practical world.

I would love to see a trilogy made of Mahabharata. It would be much better if a director originating from western culture makes it as he would visualise our mythology in his own way and give a global touch to the movie. I strongly believe our mythology if projected elegantly through proper media channels would become globally popular. Anybody up for it, Peter Jackson, u listening ????

Omkara !!!

With a quite few weblinks pointing to this blogsite, you have to be an avid reader to reach here. And if you are an avid reader you might have read lots of good reviews of Omkara by now. Let's take a different angle on the movie in this blog i.e. a negative one. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie a lot and I can go on and on about it. But pointing mistakes is such a satisfying experience :-). Here are the points where I think movie needed improvement.

1) The movie didn't show how saif convinced his wife to steal Omkara's family necklace. The woman, who gets enraged to the extent that she kills her husband for treachery, should have a strong reason to steal the necklace at the first place. I am sure Shakespeare might have explained about her character in detail in Othello but I believe that was not projected properly in the movie.

2) Viveik's roles should have been much stronger instead of being just a casanova.

3) The history of Omkara's association with bhaisaab and saif's (Langda Tyagi) association with Omkara needed more spotlight. Such character and relation development should be given higher priority over songs. Time has come for good directors to get rid of unnecessary songs from their movies. 'Company' scores higher in this aspect of film making.

4) Enemies of Omakara seems to be have given no respect in the movie. The hero is stronger only if he has stronger enemies. I understand that Omkara's enemies do not need to have much scope in the movie but their history would have helped in understanding the scenario better.

Overall the movie is a must-see one this year.
Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

Dual World

As our current world spends half its time in digital universe, time has come to look upon Heros created and revered by geeks. Yeah, I am talking about heroes of digital world who can give a tough fight to our heroes from mythology and our history. These heroes came to life from video games, comic strips, anime and other medium (which I might not be even aware of). Comic strips seem to be the originator of this whole other world where today's 40+ males can comfortably relate to. In 1970s these same geeks were outcaste and considered to be the losers. But now wives proudly discuss about how their husbands / kids play video games, read comic strips, watch anime and other sci-fi animations. So what do you think how our future looks like. As I can see it, we would end up having two lives: one in real and one is digital world. Due to increasing population the world has become quite competitive and it has become difficult to taste success in real life. That’s where digital universe will provide solace to people. Each person will have alias name, profession, home and life which he will care as much as he cares about in real world. I would like to call this whole prediction of mine as 2084 :-) (Courtesy: "1984" by George Orwell).

The Hobbit

Finally I read one of the J.R.R.Tolkein's books "The Hobbit". It is the first book in the series of "The Lord of the Rings" where he has created his own world of MiddleEarth. I liked the book for it is a kind of adventure where you would be interested to know what happens next, i.e. he has maintained a sound amount of thrill throught the book. At regular intervals in the book the author introduces new characters (new races, in fact): elves, humans, wolves, goblins which makes the story more interesting. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses and hence are interesting beings. The sudden turn of events on unexpected time seems to be the key to success to this story.

One the negative side, I felt that it would have been better if author had described each race in more detail like, what are their professions, what excites them and why they are friends / enemies of each other. Who are wizards and why they are so powerful. Maybe JRR has taken this into account in his subsequent books. One more thing, adventure doesn't seems like a diffcult journey where you get help from wizard and hobbit on a regular basis. Oops I just revealed some events from the book. For now I feel like I will be reading all trilogy of LOTR series.

Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

A coffee story

I usually avoid posting forwarded emails on my personal blog but this (Akshay Pandit's email) one is really interesting and thought-provoking.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:
"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So, don't let the cups drive you... Enjoy the coffee instead.

Irony in Cultures

After having been exposed to more than one culture, I am able to notice some distinct features in each of them. American culture, or should I say western culture, has individualistic and community-centric people. And people of India (Eastern culture) are family-centric. Let me clarify my point here:

Western people care a lot about themselves and how government governs them. They will keep track of government policies made and their impact on people's lives. But they will never like to find out who stays next to their house, I mean, they don't care much about their neighbors. They will perform great amount of community service but (at the same time) will also not hesitate to destroy their own family i.e. divorce their life partners if they think they are unhappy. They maintain safe distance with relatives as well. While eastern people don't give a damn out what government is doing for their benefit and they will not hesitate to filth their surroundings. But they know who their neighbors are and keep great relationship with them. They also tend to maintain a regular healthy relationship with their relatives. So which approach is better. In ideal world, it would be better to maintain a balanced individualistic, familty-centric and community-centric approach. The interesting part would be to come up with satisfactory explanations for why cultures emerge in different ways..

Its never late for Holi blog (And pictures are worth of million words)

Addiction

So how many movies one should see in a week to be called as a movie addict? I think I will comfortably fall in the 'movie addict' zone. Take this last weekend for example. I saw 4 movies in this weekend. And I end up watching about 1-2 movies during weekdays. So on an average I watch 4-5 movies every week. Come to think of it, I also fall under "TV shows addict" . Let me put it this way: there are very few episodes of Seinfeld, Friends, Everbody loves Raymond, Frazier, Yes Dear, South Park and Lost left that I haven't watched YET. My next POA (plan of action) is to watch Simpsons. And my long term plan is to play lots of lots of video games. Afterall, that is precisely why EA pays me.

South Park

In my experience of watching television shows, I would rate South Park in top 3 of my favorites. You already know the reason if you have watched even a single episode of it and for others it would be difficult for me to describe. My advice for you guys would be to "watch it". If I have to pick a single reason behind the success of south park it has to me Eric Cartman or should I say "unbelievable son of a bitch". People love to hate him. He is one of the best defined and well-presented characters on small screen.

I could not resist but watch all nine seasons of South Park in straight 2.5 months. To sum up the series, its all about making fun of general perseption and insulting others in a good way. Ok I will take 'good way' back. This television series makes you sit back and appreciate American culture for the reason which is intelligently stated by an anonymous (I don't who he is :-)) author: "The freedom of a culture can be determined by the measure of extent to which people can laugh at themselves".

Life in general

1) Wake up at 8:30
2) Leave for office by 9:30
3) Check office mails to see whether there is anything that needs immediate attention
4) Work for 2 hours
5) Take a lunch break
6) Start working again
7) Take a coffee break.
8) Back to work
9) Drive home
10) Eat food
11) Do some timepass
12) Go to sleep at about 1 am

Well, now i am figuring ways out to improve this schedule. There are many ways and I firmly believe life can be more interesting.

Lost

After getting some good reviews from my colleagues and friends I finally took up watching american TV show 'Lost'. I am used to sitcoms but this was a whole new expereince for me. I got instantly hooked upto it (like others) and watched almost all (37 odd) episodes in 3 straight weeks. Here are some of the reasons why you should watch it:

1) Production quality is very high. You can easily rate picture quality experience of Lost to a cinematic movie.
2) Although concept is not new, characterization stands at the top.
3) The story is totally script driven.
4) The makers have kept the suspense exceptionally fresh which makes you feel watch subsequent episodes at the earliest.

Tipping point

Well, this is not a review of 'Tipping point' book which everybody might have assumed by now. I always think about the 'tip system' as something which has been forcefully imposed on the society. Why one needs to tip a waiter for his service. From what I understand that is exactly why he gets paid by the restaurant.

I had discussion with my roommates regarding the same. Interestingly we came up with some of our own reasons about why and how 'tip system' started at the first place. Here are some of them:

1) Waiters don't get paid well. So that is why customers decided to pay them with gratitude.
2) Customers always look for some kind of royal service on their tables. So it was not a diffcult plan to come up with paying some extra money to waiter and expect some special service from him.
3) Customers wanted to impress their dinner/lunch buddies so they paid more than expected to prove how human they are.

This 'tip system' has now currently gone out of control and restaurants proudly print on their menus in bold letters to remind customers than if the group is more than 6 ppl then 15% of tip would automatically be added to the bill. Now that is insane !!!!

My Photos

Now that I have a good collection of photos, its right time to post it on blog.

Rang De Basanti

Well, the vedict out there is pretty good. And fortunately, I agree to the bollywood verdict after a long time. I happen to see this movie on the first day of release. I can say this comfortably that RDB is one of the most experimented projects in Indian cinema. I consider this movie in the same league of Lagaan. Its not surprising that Aamir leads in this movie. The impressive thing for me was that Aamir is one of the characters in the movie and the script is so strong that it doesn't revolve aroud him. Rahman is always likeable. The message of the movie is pretty clear. We should have such movies very often. If I were in place of Rayesh Mehra I would have changed the ending and replaced it with a happy one. The catchy name, attractive colors of the movie and ofcourse the script revolving around the current youth seems to me the recipe for success in current bollywood.