ExpertDabbler

http://www.musicindiaonline.com/music/tamil/s/movie_name.9326/

Nothing explains my my LA trip better than this song.

AWESOME…

I can’t possibly say THANK YOU directly to the guy who was responsible for this.
That would seem chillingly formal, but yeah certain things, even the most heartfelt things to the closest of friends are better left unsaid.

Talking about LA and music , i absolutely HAVE to write about the third street in Santa Monica. I was completely blown over by the kind of live music that was flowing across the streets there.
I really really wish something similiar happens in our country. I mean India and talent especially musical talent go together. I only wish some good business man comes up with a concept and starts something similiar
to the third street phenomenon.

If we can listen to DMK, ADMK public meetings, people will only be too happy to listen to some spellbinding music from brilliant musician on the roads. Only that we need to formulate a system which does not insult and belittle musicians.

More on this later..

For now, lets start meejik and say once more to the reworked classic sung by the immortal SPB once again.

Admittedly, that was long for a heading.

A few weeks before my travel, my mother had fallen sick. I took her to a doctor nearby. The doc hardly saw my mother, asked the nurse to give injection, took 80 bucks as consulting fees, scribbled out medicines for another 100 but the end result was zilch. Eventually i took her to another doctor who charged much less, listened to my mom better, understood the problem and voila my mother was fine in the next few days.

There are some doctors in chennai who charge 300 Rs. for a consultation on common cold and fever, scribble out prescriptions for another 200 Rs which never work whilst there are docs who would not charge more than 40 Rs and yet cure their patients. I want to see more patients coming to the latter and less to the former.

Say, I go to a doctor and find him very reasonable in fees and efffective in his treatment for ailments. I get his contact info (name, phone number and area of operation) and put it in an accessible, manageable online repository. It will be managed by a group of like minded people who have no conflict of interest (no doctors). Sooner or later, we will have a sizeable database of docs with good referrals from the common man.

Once we reach a threshold, we can enter into a tie up with some mobile service provider where people can SMS and get results. The ones with good rating will get good ranking in SMS results. Any negative feedback about a doc will result in lower rating and lower ranking in the results.

To be frank, i started out with docs but i would any day try this for any or all independent service professionals.

With due respects to Google, we necessarily have to find a way to make good use of our personal experiences and build a bank of good independent professionals with their contact information. In short we need our own electronic word of mouth.

My philosophy is this, honesty and good service should result in more business, the sooner it does the better it is for society as a whole.

turkish folk dance, originally uploaded by expertdabbler.

Sleepless in seattle maybe.. but i slept well, ate well and had a good time in seattle this weekend.

This was taken at the seattle center where a turkish group was performing their native folk dance.

How does democracy function?
You are entitled to vote to pick your representative who would rule you for the next years.
What would happen if i were given one vote + hate vote in a general election?

Like, if i can say x is my choice for the MLA post in this constituency, i can also cast a hate vote on Mr Y. I can use this when i feel Mr. Y is unfit to rule.

Every hate vote will nullify a vote.

If X gets 100 votes and 25 hate votes, and Y gets 90 votes and 10 hate votes.
X’s net votes is 75 while Y’s net votes will be 80 so Y is the winner even though X has more votes than Y.

I think hate votes will give a fair indication of how many people truly hate a politician.

Since our elections are conducted using EVMs, including this feature in the next version should not be a problem. I heard a similar concept exists in some european country. I think it high time India had one like this too.

What say?

My Reliance India calling card says I’ve spoken for over 5 hours to India in the last two weeks. This is excluding the unlimited calls I make to friends in the US via my mobile.

But I already feel the pointlessness of it. I foresee a sharp reduction in the calls I make and receive in the next few weeks. Time for me to settle down in my work (very challenging one at that) and with my books and maybe some photography shoots on my own and who knows some more quality blogging or podcasting time but definitely less calls save for the mandatory ones to my mom back home.

I watch movies and then I write my own rant about them a lot later.
Some do like to call it reviews. Technically i am not sure what defines a review.
I watched Life in a Metro and Chak de sometime back. Fathima asked me to write about Chak de long time back. Fathima manichukko

Both are Hindi movies, and i know that in itself will make a lot of my friends run away from the theatres. But i felt those are two good movies. Good does not tranlate to winning the oscar for india. But good translates to watchable, decent stuff which does not insult the intelligence of the auience to a large extent.

I have to admit that Hindi cinema is slowly coming off age in terms of story selection and treatment. I would even say they show time and again they have the guts to make movies ‘different’ rom the routine fares dished out on the average.

Chak De, for instance does not bother about heroines. Sure there are more than a few girls but no heroines to run around the trees with SRK.

Life in a Metro can have you stunned in terms of some scenes. The story is definitely for matured audiences but there was nothing puerile about the picturisation.

There is no dearth of talent in India, and certainly not within the movie industry. What we lack is guts. Most of the directors do not have guts to make the kinda movies they really want to make. Producers do not want take ‘risks’ so end up running behind a hero who commands several crores and a script that would suite his ‘image’.

The end result is more often a crappy product.

Why not some software company comes up with an engine which can do the rating for a cinema?

We have engines which gives out credit rating scores for individuals in US. I am sure there are some parameters to assess the success of a movie too. Even a ball park estimate about a film’s potential vasool would help immensely for a beginning.

Gladwell has a very interesting article about this. I think a country like India where entertainment is a huge business should go for a movie rating engine.

I am just thinking, primarily because i am jobless at work for now.

How about giving a contemporary flavour to our puraanams?
Like, say Arjunan takes a new birth in India and is regarded as a world famous shooter.
We can even add that Arjun is the best in calculating the spots to be hit using Patriot missiles.
Mothathile kuri paarthu adikanum, be it bow and arrow or gun or Patriot missile, right?

I think it will be a very interesting project. And just a simple contemporary twist will add interesting dimensions to our ever green puraanams.

Mythology which is now a blend of history, imagination and philosophy should get a flavor where contemporary feel or science fiction replaces history, while the stories and scenarios be revised, if required but definitely retain the timeless philosophies embedded to the extent possible.

Mani ratnam dabbled with it for a couple of films but i am more fascinated by the possibilities of literature as such rather than as a screenplay for a movie.

golden-gate, originally uploaded by expertdabbler.

I did a search for Golden Gate in flickr, half expecting this angle to be the most common, because this is this is the easiest to shoot.

All you need to do is point your camera towards the bridge when on the move. That is not to be. Apparently, people get ambitious and want to shoot the bridge completely from the sides. Thats a lot more challenging actually.

There is a saying in coimbatore which goes like ‘Noghama nombi kumbidaradhu’.

I epitomise that in certain aspects of life

I may miss 1000 other things here but certainly desi food is not one among them:

In the last one week alone, i ‘ve visited along with gopi unless mentioned specifically

Southern Spice (Visited immediately on landing, food taste sumaar dhaan except for the pongal and sambhar which was damn good)
Udipi (good, but quantity was too much)
Spice Hut (with NV sir, good one)
Shan (with colleagues, Indian and pakistani restaurant)
Komala Vilas (Quality sumaar ragam, dont even try their vada for sure)
Saravana Bhavan (a bit expensive but food is damn good)

In between, our corporate cafeteria provided desi fried rice and channa one day.
We cooked our own food in the rooms - Rice, Tomato kozhambu (atleast thats how we called it), chappathi, Adai - we bought a can of adai batter for around 4.00 USD.

On saturday, so we had a good time in a mexican restaurant at PIER 39.
Yesterday’s dinner at a French restaurant in SFO was superb too (SFO Sundar vazhga!).

Slowly i may start craving for home made food by amma, but for now, i am having a ball.

It was around 10.30 at night yesterday. Myself, Kumar, Gopi and Kumar’s friend Sesha were just starting from a parking area to SFO airport after our punniya kshethradanams (as Sundar loves to call in our phone conversation ) like Golden Gate Bridge, Pier 39 etc.

We were to drop Sesha in the airport. His flight leaves by 1 AM and he needs to check in by 10. Technically we were already running late. We were waiting for the signal and suddenly this huge white guy walking by bangs the car from behind. Before we realize what’s happening he crosses the road, the traffic starts moving, and stops after about 100 metres..

I turn right to see clearly who was the person and here he comes charging again, all of 6.5 ft and about 250 pounds. The menace in his eyes was definitely frightening. I thought he is going to break my window glasses minimum. He banged again violently on the car top. He swore at us but could not balance himself, which conveyed he was heavily drunk.

Enaku sathiyama allu illai…

Gopi thought of calling 911 but decided otherwise since it was already late for Sesh. Later he explained calling 911 would consume another hour and Sesh might have to miss the flight.

The traffic eased out slowy and we proceeded to the airport, but we were never clear as to why he banged our car like that.

Had it been chennai, i could’ve atleast sweared in tamil to my satisfaction. No point using here because the idiot would’nt understand. I could not swear in english at that moment (maybe pazhakkam illai). Kathu dhaan vandhudhu…

The same might happen in chennai with some local rowdy too, but we need not be scared that the guy would have a gun. That’s definitely a factor here. Maybe its just my fear psyhosis that every other guy carries a gun here.

We still could not understand why did it. Race could not be a factor because he first banged the car from behind when he could hardly see us.

One interesting experience it was…

But the puniya shethradanams were awesome, the weather in SFO was brilliant. Stay tuned for more pics in flickr