Random Walk

Professionalism

2005-03-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

I am talking about our dhobi who comes with his hand-cart to our layout everyday. He is amazingly dedicated and honest, and takes great pride in doing his job well. Ironing clothes is no big deal, but he manages to impart that extra touch to it. That is the mark of a true professional.

What really pisses me off is that he earns peanuts in spite of working so hard. This feeling is compounded when I compare him of one of my colleagues. She is supposedly a "software engineer", but she probably needs help in starting up Windows. She is utterly incompetent, gossips all day long, licks her boss's ass unashamedly and is a complete nuisance to everyone around. And she earns more than 10 times what our dhobi earns. Life is so unfair!

Hijacked!

2005-02-26T04:32:00.000-08:00

My IE browser was recently hijacked by a trojan called cool web search (also called about:blank). My home page was switched to some page called about:blank, which looks like a search engine and windows media player was disabled.

I was concerned that my personal data could be monitored or stolen by someone and misused. I spent the last few hours trying to get rid of it and finally managed it, thanks to Spybot, HijackThis and CWShredder - all excellent freeware available on the net. I had to use a combination of all the three software to remove the trojan. I feel much better now and very sleepy too - its 4.30 in the morning!

The new age conmen

2005-02-19T23:21:00.000-08:00

It has always amused me to see how people are so gullible as to fall for the cheap tricks employed by the "Godmen". The crook hires a few actors who pretend to be sick or handicapped. He then calls them on stage, mumbles something or touches them with his "divine fingers", and then - they are cured! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Its a miracle! Of course there is a choir playing some religious music in the background to numb the senses of the audience. At this point of time, the crook's sidekicks pass out buckets among the audience to collect money "in the name of the Lord".

This is a highly lucrative multi-million dollar business. Along with globalization, the crooks have now started to expand their business. Last month an American evangelist called Benny Hinn came to Bangalore in his private jet with a lot of publicity. This scared the Indian crooks who were afraid of losing their market, so they unanimously denounced him as a fraud. RSS and the other hindu fundamentalists too got involved and protested by burning down a few buses. What a tamasha!

But even Benny Hinn is no match for our own home bred Sai baba (the one with the sparrow nest on his head, and not the older one). True, he has set up a free hospital, but when he gets a billion rupees from the public, it will look strange if he doesn't give back a fraction of it. Anyway, if he is "divine", why does he need a super speciality hospital? He could very well touch all the sick people and cure them. Apart from curing the "sick", his favorite trick was to produce rings from thin air and give them to his devotees. One rationalist asked him to produce a pumpkin (which is too big to be hidden inside his sleeves) from thin air. Needless to say, Sai baba didn't take up the challenge.

There is another breed of conmen, the pseudo-intelluctual type. They are exemplified by Sri Sri Ravishankar (did I get the number of Sri's right?). He is very articulate, knows how to generate self publicity and looks the part. But when he opens his mouth, what comes out is an endless stream of gibberish. He also writes a few magazine columns in mainstream newspapers and gets himself invited to business conclaves. His column has been running for a few months now in the Indian Express. It seems as if he has run out of things to say, so he has resorted to crap like:

"One infinite space that is immortal means that which does not die, that which does not change. It is one homogeneous mass of knowledge and bliss and is self-contained. This definition of Divine nobody can dismiss. What is God? The infinity - knowledge of the 'knowing-ness' of the infinity - and bliss. This 'knowing-ness' of consciousness is all pervading."

The target audience of these kind of people is the highly educated, frustrated urban dwellers (mostly software engineers!). In a way these conmen are more dangerous than those like Benny Hinn or Sai baba. These guys use vacuous logic to gain credibility, and are far more cunning. It just proves that for every divine crook, there are a hundred fools lining up to hand over their money.

I sometimes wonder, why should I work fifty hours a week and earn a pittance, when I can earn millions by growing a beard, looking stupidly serene, mouthing inanities and setting up an ashram with thousands of devotees? Any idiot with a bit of luck can do it. So perhaps I will too .. so look out for Sri Sri Sri Chinamyananda Abhijit Swamiji .. coming soon to an ashram near you!

Immobile?

2005-02-13T07:10:00.000-08:00

I hate cellphones. Well, not exactly. I hate owning a cellphone, but I think it's great that others like to have one. I can contact them whenever I want. They are always within my reach!

I had bought a cellphone last year and used it for a few months, but I found it more annoying than useful. I was always "available" for anyone to call and interrupt whatever I was doing. Half the calls were from telemarketers soliciting credit cards. At first I chose to ignore the calls from unknown numbers. But one of them turned to be from my boss calling from a different number. He wasn't very pleased with that!

I am not a big fan of messaging either. If I want to contact someone urgently, I'll call him up. If I want to send something in writing, I'll e-mail it. I do not have any use for SMS. Most messages are anyway stale jokes that are being recirculated. And many are of the type "4wrd dis msg 2 10 othrs n u'll bcome rich". I received one such message fourteen times in a day!

I am by no means anti-technology. In fact I love gadgets - from MP3 players to digicams. But cell phones? No thanks! I may be "immobile" now, but I have the freedom to choose whom to call and when to call. And my boss can't summon me to work when I am busy loafing around!

Haikus

2005-02-11T10:21:00.000-08:00

Dude put up his blog
Hoping that someone reads it
But again, who cares?

Dude was very vain
One day he lost all his hair
That caused him much pain.

Dude thought he was rad
When he had his tongue tatooed
He can't thpeak now.

Dude's got a big truck
he's tryin' to make up for his
tiny wrinkled prick.

I ride my old bike
I don't fatten the wallets
of the Arab sheikhs.