ExpertDabbler

I am really pissed off that there is not a decent portal which sells cinema tickets online in India.

Now people, don’t give me that ‘Oh sathyam sells tickets online’ refrain.
I know Sathyam, Mayajaal and INOX sell tickets online (with their lousy websites).
What I am referring here is the yatra.com or makemytrip.com equivalent for movie tickets.

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I was talking to one of my managers about the pains involved in running onsite-offshore model and he had a very candid comment to make.

“Prabu, If the Indian developer supports US operations by working in US timings, he is getting killed in due course. If the US business person sits late in the night to discuss project issues with the developer folks in India, he is getting killed too.
The alternative is to hire a coordinator who will be in US and works in India and US timings and surprise surprise he gets burnt out and quits soon.
Idhu dhaan niyadhi..”
I could not help but agree.
I am yet to find someone who is entirely happy with the onsite-offshore model but yet millions work on this.

It cooliedom vazhga! (includes me)

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I am writing this even as I am on the road to Phoenix, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas for
thanksgiving vacation. I may not know the history or the background of Thanksgiving fully but 4 days off from work, politics, mails, India dev center calls - I am not complaining.

Thanks to thanksgiving!!

Folks anyone who knows any other interesting and less comercial places to visit near grand canyon and vegas, do drop a line

For dummies, ‘ATM’ - Azhagiya Thamizh Magan.

Dear director,
If only you can cut the movie by half and roll out the title credits by interval, your movie will run twice as long in the theatres!

To Producer Appachan,
Endha saare, ningal ethara valiya producer, idhu pole…..hmmm

But then I dont blame you. In all honesty i’v seen worse movies. And i did watch this one as well.

It would be great if some television guy broadcasts the festivals and the way it’s celebrated in the country of origin to immigrant population. I think they would have a great market especially in countries which has a huge immigrant population. Will not the huge desi poulation lap it up if discovery channel comes up with a programme on the history and the myths surrounding deepavali?

By and large this is a very unique deepavali for me. I am wearing a jean which i honestly do not know when i washed last. The shirt is brand new though. Amma sonnadhu konjamavadhu kekanume. This immediately reminds me of my friend’s mom who felt bad for not getting her son who was aleady in US, a new dress to be worn today!

Deepavali brings back memories of early morning oil bath, new dress, crackers, gulab jamuns, friends from far off places calling home, Solomon Paapayya patti mandrams.

But here i woke up to the usual mayaana amaidi. I decide to call a few friends here to wish them HAPPY DIWALI and sure enough, all three of them forward it to voice mesages.
Oh yeah, I am in America and I need to run to catch by shuttle. The only pakshanam i’ve had since all morning is a can of Tropicana Apple Juice.

Unique Deepavali indeed!

HAPPY DEEPAVALI everyone!!

Here we go…

1. All bay area IT companies are essentially desi companies.

2. Desis in US have this noble habit of listening to the voice message before deciding to return the call, even when they are available. And i kinda know the reason as well. Unlike India, here 900 minutes of talk time includes incoming as well outgoing calls. A few days back, when i had a tiff with one of my friends as to why my call goes unanswered, the reply i got was, “you should’ve said the call was very important/emergency”.

Hello, had I been in an emergency i would be calling 911, not you, velakennai!!!

3. If there is one stock you’d like to buy , i’d say ask any teetotaller which alcoholic brand he knows very well and buy that company’s stock.

4. Weekend travel feels tiring when you travel, but weekend idling feels boring when you are sitting alone in your room.

5. You will truly know how lazy you are when you live all alone.

6. Of the 100 ideas that you can think of, 99 of them would’ve been already implemented by somebody, somehow, somewhere.

7. I was listening to tales of how some desis minted money in the bay area during the dot com boom and all i can say is, the H1B system here is as screwed up and abused a system one could find in this whole universe.

8. If you are aspiring to be a scriptwriter, here is a test. Try to come up with a story which has one male character, a car, a truck and vow to keep the audience engaged till the last minute.
This test holds good for a director too. Spielberg did that long time back.

Thats “brammaandam” in my lexicon and in the lexicon of every thinking man!

A very interesting article on rediff.
More on this hopefully tonight!

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.

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.