Kids will be kids.

Britain has the worst set of teenage kids in all of Europe, says a fancy survey. The news channels love shocking statistics’ such as these. Especially if 60% of the teenagers don’t spend time with their family at all. The survey mentions or rather explains that the kids are getting out of control by binge drinking and sexual promiscuousness because they do not have enough adult interaction. The teenagers interviewed on TV say they don’t know what to talk to their parents and they rather talk to their friends. Parents in turn are complaining that the kids don’t listen to them.

Obviously in today’s day and age if you are going to order around a young boy to come down and eat at the table you are not going to get any conformity. I hated it when I was a teenager and was just told what to do rather than when my dad explained the reason behind why he said what he said. It appealed to my intelligence. It made me feel that my parents think of me as an equal. In turn it increased my respect for them and I became more ‘manageable’. In that respect I have been a very tough person to bring up.

I don’t know how parents can turn around and blame the kids for being non communicative, it totally escapes me. These are kids born with a blank slate of a mind and you were responsible to write all the beneficial things on that slate. In turn you decide to order them around, when they go to their peers for the answers and then don’t bother with you…. You scream murder.

What’s even more shocking is that one news piece said that children these days don’t do family things. And by that apparently they meant playing board games!!! So in this technologically obsessed era parents want to improve family relationships by playing board games!!!! Am I the only one amused by such a comment?
The hard fact of this issue is parents are too bloody lazy to catch up with the type of life the kids are living today. Over half of them don’t even know how to use a computer and they expect their kids to have discussions with them? On what? The neighbour’s new car?

For a change if you want family relations to improve, instead of barking rules at your kids, learn how to play one of the smarter computer games from them and try having a good time their way.

Respect them and you will never need to bark at them ever again. They are your children not your show dogs.

Small gems.

The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life... I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer.
Bill Watterson.

Today's wish.

I know what I want.

I want to be able to highlight interesting bits of lines on a web article I read and then email it to whomever I choose, all on the same web page I am visiting. That makes my email far more personal than just a text box that I can type into before sending the person the link.
Oh and to take it up a notch just in case the techies are yawning at my request, could I also have small pop up text boxes like little sticky notes (like “MS ONE PAGE”??) where I can type in my comments or analysis to the article and then email it all as a bundle and then the same link can be sent back and forth connecting the entire discussion. Well, it may help the website get far more hits as well.
I know someone is doing it already or someone can come up with it in 2 hours. Is that someone reading my blog page?

The Honeybee syndrome.

We dream of breaking loose, running away, starting a small company; a café perhaps in a small lazy town where locals have their own heroes, their own history and their own identity. But we only dream; paralysed by the fear of mortgage payments, the loss of subtle comforts of a feather pillow and sweet smelling candles. We don’t break the rut; we don’t turn our backs to all the other rats. There is comfort in quantifying that elusive concept of value of life. Even though deep down we know, this is that one thing that should not be quantified.

Today as I was having a cup of coffee with my friend and a few regular jokes later, he happened to mention an astute thought that most people are living through a decision they probably made decades ago, bored in their jobs wondering how they ended up there. What’s seemed like a smart idea, even enjoyable some 10-15 years ago is just plain humdrum now. We fail to acknowledge that it was a smart decision in those set of circumstances, in that mindset, in that era. And the more rapidly our world changes the more obsolete that decision will become, even sooner. Some people force the idea of discipline on themselves and live with the decision; many like me stay up awake and wonder what that heavy drone feeling is?

I don’t want my life to be a series of disciplined acts; I want my life to be a series of enjoyable experiences, fulfilling times. How am I to find that balance between being able to pay my rent and not labour the weight of an old decision? Most people in the world will applaud you for your sense of diligence, but who will recognise the creativity that flows from randomness? I want to celebrate the impulsiveness in me. I want to enjoy the inquisitiveness of my childhood all over again. I don’t want to beat myself up for not being as passionate about some thing I was very passionate about 10 years ago.
I look all around me and I dread ending up a sour middle aged person just coz I didn’t indulge in my core personality attribute. And least of all I so don’t want to lose that. I don’t want someone telling me that, losing it is growing up. Coz growing up is so much more than becoming boring.

Our Startrek reality.

Are we in an age where we can live with other human beings failing us rather than having our technology fail us. I feel I can cope with a friend not being able to keep her promise than me not being able to get through the phone line to talk to my mum. How inhuman is such a revelation. I am surprised at my dependence on technology. I have in a very private way always been proud at being empathetic to people around. But if this empathy sort of stems from my high expectation on technology instead, I think that is a backward move.

I don’t know if I am one of the few or we as a society are moving towards a bubble where we better prepare ourselves for the uncertainties of human moods and behaviours rather than accept that the technology we have come to rely on as a way of life will fail us unexpectedly. Why is it such a big deal in the day if the international phone lines seem to be jammed or the internet down for a couple of mins?

I remember when computers and mobile phones was just about getting popular no one minded that they failed to deliver all the time. People however took other people seriously and relied on ‘keeping a word’ and those things were such a big deal.

Why don’t we regard human relations as much now, just coz we have some fancy looking mobile phone or a 8Mbps internet connection?

Obesity excuses needs a paradigm shift.

Easington in Durham apparently is the best place to live in Britain if you would like to get nice and chubby and fat. This morning, in the news as they were covering a report on obesity trends, this place has its share of obese people and then some. The news report argues that it being a mining town and the mining industry moving away it gave rise to unemployment and boredom which was probably the cause of most people there sitting on their couch and stuffing the food in their mouths. I thought that could be a good plausible reason; until I heard this local complain on TV that they are fat because their town has no health shops or any such thing to help them keep healthy.
This is exactly the attitude according to me that gets people fat. What psychologists would probably call the external locus of control? How will the things that depend on your activity ever be sorted by addition of a few shops? Time and time again I have heard these excuses from many people when they ask me what a good way to lose weight is, and when I tell them “lifestyle choices” invariably they start complaining about the lack of facilities. If they have the facilities then their families are not helpful. If their families are supportive then the work pressure just kills them. If the workplace has conducive policies for health then an old injury nags… and I could go on and on and on.
I am the most controversial person in my office who thinks people on a general basis are obese today because they are lazy, bored and undisciplined. But that’s not what you ought to say. You ought to encourage people and tell them positive things, like make 10mins in your day for exercise, park your car 100 yards away, pick diet coke. Come on seriously does anyone really think that going from a BMI of 40 to 22 is a matter of drinking diet coke over regular coke?

Let’s do another survey nationwide and count the health shops in every town; I bet the ones that have the most branches of Holland and Barrett’s are still not the healthiest towns.

Forest fires.

The need for a sense of identity, belongingness, home, security are all valid; even basic to our existence and survival. But when God becomes a haggle and life a hustle, you wonder in moments of objectivity if religion, tradition, ethics, culture all amount to greater destruction rather than the forward direction every religion in its own right preaches. If our very own religion does not make us live better today, if our own history forces us to fight for and on the land of our ancestors then how is any of that serving its purpose of showing us the way? Which god wanted his men to fight on Jerusalem or Babel? What good is religion to us today when all it does is create power tangents that are only too steeped in political and economic interests?

I believe newspapers today have more space than thoughts. News rooms have more correspondents than news. Media is in many ways our modern day forest fires, which help burn valuable resources and plunge mankind into misery. Government censorships are as destructive as the over zealous media. The root of the flame still flickers in each individual and that’s what really needs arresting.

The Chinese government has always discouraged the belief in religion in their country. Today even though they have their own set of problems the one massive problem that the rest of the world has to deal with is absent there. They don’t have to deal with religious extremists hindering their progress. It is printing money around the same time Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran are busy haggling over their gods, lands, culture. Not having a God doesn’t make Chinese people any less ethical, traditional, cultured, peace loving, empathetic, or passionate than the rest of the hot blooded nations.

When someone has a rock strong belief in their god and is ready to defend that conviction till death…. It worries me far more than some one admitting being confused and open to see some of the appalling things that a belief in religion today can cause. These lost souls will at least stop a moment before they shove a knife into someone’s gut. Who among these men will go to heaven, who among them will burn in hell?

How big is your world?

The more informed we get about our surrounding, our planet, science, genes and laws of nature the more isolated we get with that information. In today’s age of super specialization we know nothing about the expertise of our neighbours. It takes up so much energy for us to just gather the vast amount of information required to understand our core problem that we have lost the luxury of indulging our minds in the pursuit of an alternative concept in any appreciable depth.

When I was a kid in school, general science was fascinating, engaging, enduring and totally consuming. I was not only interested in the planets in the solar system, but how the light bulb worked and what was cross pollination. I wanted to know it all; I had the little bits of information that occupied my small childish brains. As I grew up, the amount of information required to grasp a particular interest of mine, started taking longer than I thought. I had assumed that as you know more about things, you will know more about more of it faster. But I was completely wrong.

Today, my one Ph.D. topic is all consuming. I am paranoid about my level of knowledge; it keeps me reading deep into the night, just to be able to grasp a few sentences mentioned in a peripherally important paper. However, interestingly, these peripherally important papers links up so many different streams of knowledge together that it is as fascinating today as it was 20 years ago in my general science text.
I had been complaining about my lack of time and inclination to read other subjects for a while now, but slowly it has made me realise that trying to go deep; also makes you go wider. It’s just the perspective we take.

This cross disciplinary understanding along with super specialization is what the current need in our world is. The value of a specialised expert almost exponentially increases if he or she has an understanding of aspects that may influence his work, but lies beyond his core understanding. With the emergence of a complicated society, furthered by a fast moving global community, cross disciplinary knowledge will provide many solutions to such a dynamic world. Therein lies many unsolved puzzles, therein may lay their answers. But if two scientists in adjoining rooms never ever pick up each others publications they will not be able to come together and use their intricately constructed worlds as levers for each other and we may get stuck in a traffic jam until someone steps out and decides to unweave the mesh of knowledge.

Before the motorways gets jammed, maybe its time to stop competing so hard and to look around and see the possibilities. Corporates should bring together such amalgamations, universities should set up fluid departments and individuals should de-cocoon-ize themselves.

Retail therapy powered by math lessons.

Two thirds of our economy is powered by retail business!!!!
I have always wondered that we have all these hurried media messages around septemeber, about proper financial habits and teaching youngsters about how to plan for university life and the responsibility that goes with the independence of Higher Education life. why is there not a better more planned and organised way to make the young people who are very smart in their own rights, see these basic advantages of good finance habits early on.

Why did I have to learn my multiplication tables by rote or why was searching for that Mr. X such a chore? All my school teachers had to do was teach me financial planning, budgeting, market appreciation, spending habits, influences of such habits on the economy etc through application of those stupid math tables. I am sure I would have had a great time in school. I am saying that because I am a life sciences student for a reason. I don’t enjoy mathematics, at least not in its purest form. And that is not because I don’t enjoy puzzles and problems; but because of the impression of mathematics I have grown up with. However, I have realised I am good at budgeting, good with understanding basic economic concepts as they apply to my surroundings and influence my life in a very touchy feely manner. That’s what young kids want, something they see sense into.

If you taught a kid that increasing sales of Playstations improved Sony’s market value and that happens to be balanced out by the faulty dell batteries’ fiasco which is going to cost the company, I think in excess of $400 million. A kid of today’s generation would appreciate his/her math so much more. These are the same kids that will then grow up to be responsible about their money and we wont have to teach them student finances when they are on the brink of drinking themselves silly with all their student loans. You get away with two very important life lessons, by smart teaching applications. One, you teach them to take care of their finances from a very young and impressionable age and two, they will have a better regard and relationship with their multiplication tables, unlike me.

So think about going an extra step from just opening a savings account for your kid…. I mean that was fun, but I needed more help than that. Me and my siblings pooled in our savings to buy our first 14” black and white TV!!!!

Summer Holidays.

I bet you have been thinking I was away on a nice sunny beach for the past couple of weeks, soaking up the sun, sipping a cocktail. Ehmmmm..... actually I could not afford to take the entire jing bang on a break, so I decided to just send my mind this year. It was away on a relaxing, rejenuvating summer break in the Caribbean islands. Poor I was at work, trying hard to cope without my processor. Can’t say I achieved much, (yeah I know you noticed the silence on the blog page as well) but it was nice not having to be so tough on myself, no one around to tell me what I must be doing instead of lazing around on the couch. Oh Rehana, you haven’t written a blog in 2 days, that’s not very disciplined now, is it? Or Rehana, do you really think you should be wasting your time right now loitering about town, when you could go home and finish that paper you started reading?

This mind of mine is quite a tough task master; I find it difficult to chill when it is on full throttle all the time. I am sure this is how mothers of tiny 2 year old tots feel when the baby sitter arrives. It’s been a great 2 weeks, but now I would like my mind to come back home, my skull screeches and rattles; I think I have noticed a bit of rusting on the edges in the shower this morning. I guess you will hear from me regularly once again, as the Head Master is here now (pun??!!!)

But, I recommend this activity to all, especially skimped, overworked students.... if the whole of you can't go on a holiday, just send your mind away.... It's worth the money and the peace.

Three lazy wishes

1. Nike and Apple have joined hands to bring about a more complete experience for runners. The new Nano while blasting music in your ears also records your run statistics. Infact when you download and synchronise the data, there are some cool things you can do with it, including seeing how many people in the world went for a run with their Nike-iPods around the world in the last 24 hours!!! What it still doesn’t do is decide the music too. I want my iPod to compile a playlist according to my pace/cadence. I don’t want to be stuck with an inappropriate playlist, should my mood change. This brings in the element of fun that you get in the shuffle mode without having to worry about the change in intensity that your music can influence during the run.
2. I want my G3 phone to enable other people to send alarms on my phone. Just like Bluetooth data I should be able to either accept or reject the alarm. Then there will be no reason for me to forget that I had promised to help a friend with her project. Even TV programmes can send me alarms so that I don’t forget to watch my preferred shows. I could ask utility bill companies to send me alarms about payment days and then I could even pay the bills via a text to my bank. I don’t want to go into the calendar and keep setting alarms…. It’s the most boring thing to do with your mobile phone. But I do it because it’s so helpful.
3. I want a Dictaphone the size of my iPod that when connected to my PDA or computer transcribes everything I have said to it via a reliable speech recognition software. I don’t want to listen to myself and then type all the words. Then I could decide whether I want those ramblings to be converted into an audio blog or to be deleted.
   

Mirror mirror on the wall.......

'Women in Africa and Asia use bleaches to get fairer; sometimes to a point to harming their health'. I have heard this line, this comment, in many a coffee conversations with my fellow mates. But, how is queuing up for an injection that gives you a permanent tan any less harmful or more healthy? Or even for that matter hours on your back in 40°C?

Why do people ask me with wonder what is it like to be as a society, obsessed with fairness. I generally talk about the fairness creams available in the Indian market, the demographics of the population likely to be the consumers of such products, with the same sense of inquiry I ask about tanning parlours.

Why is it so difficult to comprehend that a tropical place where the common physical feature is dark skin can covet fair skin? Perhaps, the same way that fair skinned people covet a tanned look? But I am told, “Oh, but that is different. A tan is a sign of health not wanting dark skin.”!!!!!!!! Probably, different psychological approaches by the media and marketing wisecracks, based in a more ‘savvy’ and politically correct society.

I would simply say, it doesn’t matter which way you look at the glass, it’s about the price of the drink in it. It’s about peddling consumer goods, whether its skin bleaches or tanning lotions. It’s about creating a general dissatisfaction about your physical appearance irrespective of your base primer.

If all this globalisation; which is making it possible for two people from completely different backgrounds mate and procreate will not do it…. I am sure the cosmetics companies will give a huge helping hand in creating a drab monotone shaded society.

Historical trail of sensational lines.

Are today's journalists tomorrow’s historians..... Who are historians? The ones who read history? Or the ones who document it. And these two can’t be one and the same..... They possibly can't live in the same times.

I read on Google quote for the day, Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”. I am sure he meant, he will feature in history texts of the future.... but how could he then possibly guarantee that he will be projected well? We have all read some of his work at some point. If I can remember he even won the Nobel Prize for The Second World War, which was obscenely long. But, all this still doesn't guarantee that history would be kind to him.

Churchill was a participant in the Second World War; historians need to be detached at least in principle... I am sure there will be things he must have written in that book that might be refuted in others.... so once again to the point; even though he did write history he couldn't guarantee that it was kind to him.

I think even in those days, as today; famous people would just say things for effect and attention.

The fine print.

There is a reason why no matter how smart my arguments are in the case of capitalism and free trade that I somehow don’t win over my very sceptical left wing counterparts. These days I have been feeling exasperated with these companies myself. These corporates stood for the right values in the right times. Values of service to a society that recognises its benefit and happily pays for it, coz it enriches lives, it makes life comfortable, it takes away the chores, it brings about stimulation, it informs people of things they otherwise would remain ignorant of.
But that’s not what is happening today with the markets getting more and more cramped and the competition more stiffer, instead of a simple linear relationship of better products with increasing competition; here we get to witness a scheming mind rather than a engenuine mind. These companies pay high salaries to executives who can develop strategies for trapping people into an unknown deal, which is simply fuelled by greed rather than progress. But, they refuse to pay the R&D folks half as much. The reason there are more marketing MBAs loitering about town than doctors.
Every service provided today requires you to sign some sort of contract. A contract for mobile phones, internet, TV channels, health clubs, bookstores, magazines and periodicals, insurance and even your own bank expects you to commit a series of payments before you have even had a taste of their services. You could sum up the fine print that rambles on for 14 odd pages in about two sentences;
"you shall keep your side of the commitment by paying the company regularly, we however will keep changing our standards of service as and how the market fluctuates and we may even perform to the utmost of all appalling standards".
My internet company on a regular basis has troubles with its 3Mbps line, the same one they used on me when they were short selling to me last year. But when I call to downgrade my package as I no longer use the internet the way I used to, I am told that there is a penalty to do so!!!
My landline telephone company believes in environment friendly business strategies so it does not send me any itemised bills to save paper. However I could log on their website to check my usage. When I do, that control panel keeps experiencing technical difficulties. That doesn’t stop them from deducting whatever they feel like from my account, when I talk of my statutory rights, 3 different customer service folks promise to send me my bills via email….. 3 months later, there is no bill but the direct debit every month has only inched upwards.
My mobile phone contract came with a cash back guarantee after 6 months of completion of the contract term. After tedious application forms, more like sophisticated begging, nothing comes through in the post for 8 weeks. When I enquire, the receipt doesn’t match what they wanted on it. That means if I have exchanged a faulty handset the cash back offer stands voided, even if the exchange of handset was within their exchange policy terms!!!! If I want to downgrade my monthly usage limit, I have to first serve a sentence of 6 months before I am eligible for parole.
My estate agent won’t draw a year’s lease as that would mean I get the ‘one month notice’ advantage, so he draws only 6 month contracts and there is no escaping within those six months, so if your boyfriend asks you to move in with him within the 1st month of your contract, you either lose the relationship or pay twice the rent for 6 months.
My energy supplier loves to call me and stop me in the supermarket to tell me ways of capping my electricity bills for the next 5 years. But when you ask them to explain a certain meter reading they start speaking in an aboriginal dialect and are highly trained in losing you.
The one place I did find superb service was the city council office. I informed them that I will be moving my residence and within minutes they sorted my bill and did not try to contest me on everything I said, did not even ask proof, just fixed my problem and sent me on my way. The one place where you expect back logs and waiting, complacency and bureaucracy is the one place I found superlative business tact. They were transparent as to what I am liable to pay, when I am expected to do so and what the penalties will be should I default.
This brings me to a thought, should we return to the government what is rightfully given to them by a voting public? The laws of governing a society. The laws of protecting the individual. The laws of freedom of information and punishment for anyone, however a conglomerate, for those who fail to be fair.

What's in 'my' name.

Suddenly my name is not that unpronounceable anymore!! However, not everyone spells their name like famous people choose to. Anywhere I go I get called Rihanna. There was me with my difficult name, even when there was no pop star strutting her stuff by a similar name.
All throughout since school days I have taken the effort to tell people that it’s ‘Re’ not ‘Ri’. I hate being called Rihana. That’s not me. Infact the ‘e’ in my name is almost pronounced like an ‘a’. And please do take the time to pronounce the ‘h’; it’s in there for a bloody good reason. No, not numerology folks, it’s to make the right kind of sound when you intend to get my attention. You ain’t getting it otherwise.
Now this new twinkie with some exotic twist to her name is making life difficult for me. Just when I thought that this place is beginning to feel more comfortable.
I remember overhearing conversations a few years ago in local trains in Bombay about call centre employees working on behalf of some American or European companies facing flak from their customers for not being able to pronounce their name the way they would like it to sound. Why do you then not apologise for making a sound I don’t relate to?
Today, it’s not only the jobs in western countries that are at stake of being taken over; it’s also their popular culture that stands on the brink of being sidelined. Its plain mathematics, there will be more Asian youth than Caucasians in the next few generations. Not too long from now, Rehana will be the more easily pronounceable name than Louise or Christine. If you want my grand children to get Louise right, then take the effort to pronounce my ‘h’ and bother to notice that I use an ‘e’ not ’i’.

18 and ½ inches high.

What a win!!! Simple and sweet even though it was not straight sets. The Class, the strategy, the talent, the skill and that killer instinct, which no one gets to see. The perfect gentleman in the Perfect Gentleman’s game. Roger Federer, The King of Grass. He is the Bjorn Borg, Becker, Sampras, and Agassi of my childhood.

To be fair to the new kid on the block, the least he deserved was a standing ovation…. Hope he will be the competition Federer deserves in the coming years. He is almost so on clay and hard courts…. And what a steep curve on grass this year, No pressure.

Also, Goodbye Andre and Martina. I have grown up yelling my lungs out for you guys every year and then some more. Hope you achieve other things as well as you have in Tennis.

Hooligans.

I am angry. I am angry. I am angry.
I went to more than 10 pubs to enquire if they are showing the big match today!!! Checked their huge plasma screens, salivated when they said, 'Oh yes', looked at me as if I had so lost the plot. And then I said, "You know I am asking since the football finals are on today as well". The next moment was exactly the same response in every single pub. Pin drop silence. Blank, confused and absolutely dazed expression.
The weirdest thing to me was that some of them didn’t even know Federer express was playing with the new Mike Tyson of tennis, Nadal. All they knew was France Vs. Italy. Bunch of hooligans I tell ya.
So I said screw it all and decided to screw open my best bottle of Hardy’s Crest vintage white that I had saved for my special date and settle in my couch with all my cushions and a bag of my favourite nut mix. That’s it, I am not letting these spoil sports spoil my sport.
Hope you enjoy the Wimbledon finals with your family and friends unlike me this year in a new country of football hooligans….. And the host of the world’s best and Classiest Tennis Tournament of all.
Catch you guys after the match…..

PS - I am rooting for KING of grass, Federer.... I'm saying this right now so that you don't accuse me of backing the winner after the match blog!

Voices.

Rehana – Knock knock
Workout – Who’s there?
Rehana – Rehana
Workout – Oh Hello Rehana
Rehana – Hello workout, have you seen my strong shoulders by any chance?
Workout – Oh, yes. He is out on a date with Snickers bar
Rehana – I don’t understand why he does that, I have told him a zillion times she is not right for him.
Workout – Yeah, But you know how these beautiful girls say all the sweet things and entice the boys.
Rehana – She is a bit too sweet for her own good I tell ya.
Workout – Would you like to leave a message for shoulders then?
Rehana – Yes please, could you tell him that I was looking for him and to get his act together.
Workout – Sure
Rehana – And also tell him I intend to keep a watchful eye on him this time.
Workout – Ok
Rehana – So how are back, chest and the others doing these days? Don’t see them too often either.
Workout – Oh they went out on a group holiday to southern Spain, they should be back soon.
Rehana – Cool, tell them I said hello.
Workout – Sure.
Rehana – Got to go now…. You know how I get so hungry every time I meet you.
Workout – Yeah…. A lot of people say that to me, don’t know if it’s my BO or I just tire people out.
Rehana – Probably both. See you around more often then.
Workout – Yeah… Do keep coming, I feel better with your company.
Rehana – Buh Bye
Workout – Take care and don’t be too harsh on Snickers bar if you meet her on your way home…she can be quite a good friend on those PMT days.
Rehana – Yeah… that’s true. See you later.

Time for Hollywood writers to retire.

This is absolutely a new level of fraud. A new dimension, perhaps far superior to faking one's own death. With his death from a massive heart attack on Wednesday, Ken Lay cheated justice. And then some. Not only will the Enron founder not end his days in prison, but according to legal precedent, his entire case will be erased from the records. Why? Because you can't punish a dead guy before he has a chance to appeal!!!! Guess who is having the last laugh?
Now the government has no means to collect on its forfeiture claim against Lay for $43.5 million. Worse still this whole incident wont even be mentioned in the books. Linda Lay is now officially a billionaire, no need for Cayman islands here. I want the truth documented, not this sham. I want the whole truth in history text books. How will we teach the future Jeffrey Skillings and Lays that its not that smart to try and outwit their shareholders....Unfortunately the only place you may be able to see this masterpiece of a real life unfold would be in a cinema near you, coming soon.
But for all of you sympathizers of a dead pirate, there is more to this. Think about it, now that Kenny Boy is no longer a felon, the University of Missouri at Columbia will atlast be able to fill its open Kenneth Lay Chair in International Economics.

The high of being a scientist.

Today was our Annual Research Day. The best part of the day apart from the gorgeous white chocolate chip cookies and the carrot cake is that we get to see the ongoing research of the entire faculty. The faculty of science is particularly a diverse one with physics, astrophysics, maths, material sciences, forensics, psychology and us the humble biologists. And come to think of it, in our departmental research forums we used to think that biology is so diverse! It’s absolutely fascinating to sit through presentations you have no technical knowledge about and also to talk to people who are not from your discipline. It means refining your language, making it jargon free and exciting for people who may understand the threads but not particularly appreciate the relevance outright.
I found the entire day to be an absolute high and I would recommend every university and faculty to organise one. I don’t know what about it particularly made me feel so good. Was it just the sugar overload from the cookies or the natural high of talking to like minded people or the fact that most research students have similar experiences and grievances and that you are probably not the only one self doubting your capabilities. According to me and possibly the judges the quality of posters and the oral presentations were so competitive that even we students struggled with our votes for the student prize.
There is some fascinating research ongoing at UCLAN. From calculating the age of the universe through its composition of gases to chat up lines as male sexual behaviour study. From social behaviour and gaming culture to ecoli detection with superior methods to glioma cell research to building a database for forensic analysis of knife wounds on bones to essential oils, altitude training benefits for rugby players and novel methods to cleaning up pesticide water to modelling polymer structures for building computer chips. I haven't even covered a third of it all.
We are a very small group of sports physiologists among biology and most of the time we get overwhelmed by all the cancer research and stem cell research of our department. However, today was as much our glory day as much as the life savers’ as we call them. We were all as important with our individual pieces of passion that came together and created this wild atmosphere of a young vibrant lot each passionate about what they wanted to achieve, each looking outwards as much as introspecting inwards. It was a stop-time moment to reflect on the littleness of our contribution to the vast information bank of science and a chin up moment for being such an integral part of it.
Today was the day when we, as well as our professors were reminded of why despite the recent outcry about appalling pay checks in academia we still belong here. Today no matter who won the shield everyone left the camp a winner.

Deepdale car park after a recent downpour

Don't bother if you are not a celebrity.

Two back to back pieces in the news bulletin this morning brings out the perfect mood and state of our current society. It’s an interesting snapshot reminder of how far we have come….. And what a distance it is.
A woman who had been stalked for seven years and her life totally dictated by this lunatic won the case against her stalker (well, if you call that winning that is). The stalker gets a whole five months in lock up. Absolutely fitting, for the slow process of terrifying this young girl who will probably take longer than seven years to trust anyone on the street.
But, to cheer you up let me inform you that the posh fashion magazine InStyle was celebrating its birthday. And in great style, it was the red carpet event to kill for. All the famous dresses worn by some movie stars could be purchased at the auction (of course CSR was in place and the money being donated to charities etc etc etc …. You get the point). But, allegedly these frocks were sooo ridiculously expensive that they each had a LIVE bodyguard to guard it all times.
So, we have a young girl who is stalked for years and no protection was or is available to her, even though we make this farce of calling experts on our news programs to discuss the psychological implications of stalking. But, the dress worn by Julia Roberts or what’s that bond girl’s name …Halle Berry should be protected by tough looking huge guys, just in case a size 6 starlet runs away with one of them. Those are the only ones that will perhaps fit into those frocks.

Marlboro Mum.

The government spends millions of pounds to educate people on the harmful effects of smoking. The campaigns are particularly aimed at teenagers and secondary school students.
However, walk down a typical British high street and one of the scenes will be a mum pushing the baby carrier with one hand, all her shopping loaded on the handle and puffing away a cigarette with the other hand.
No matter what you put up on the billboards if you have grown up watching your own mum smoking a cigarette while she cooked your meal, shopped for groceries or clothes, walked you to the park, how are you going to take the billboard any seriously?
I am not trying to blame only the mothers here, the same applies to the fathers too I guess.
Until and unless we don’t set an example, I don’t think we have a right to expect anything from our future generations. I don’t see the point of news analysis and business programs on TV bringing in distinguished guests to discuss the social education policies when we don’t respect the mind of a young impressionable kid. The level at which the child looks up to his or her parents needs to be put in a more correct perspective and strategies need to be aimed at more appropriate audiences. Its time we stopped making such a noise about the Marlboro man and paid attention to Marlboro mum and dad.

Men are Dogs.

You know how movies about prision life depict the territorial nature of men. It’s not that different in gyms. If I have learned anything from working out in gyms all over the world is one thing, never ever get bullied. The first few days are your acid test for inclusion- exclusion criteria and they will follow you for the rest of your time in that facility. So just like Tim Robbins in Shaw Shank Redemption you stand up for your self when this huge guy comes along and either gets all pushy or worse, pretends he doesn’t see you.
I have just changed gyms to a very fancy huge commercial gym from the low laying all friendly university gym. Nobody said anything to me the first few days, then today I was doing my sets in the vicinity of the power cage, and 3 guys; huge, muscley and mean looking came over, pretended I wasn’t there with my iddly piddly weights and just moved in and started squatting, expecting me to take my stuff and move to another place; as the kings had arrived. I waited politely for 2 of them to finish their sets and just before the 3rd one could get in, I racked my bar, lifted it, grunted my reps away, racked the bar again smiled at the 3rd guy and said, "would you like to take turns?". He said, "Sure" and moved in. From that point on, they did not ignore me, they finished their turns waited for me to do my sets and world peace was restored.
Here is the interesting bit. After about 30 odd mins I was in another section and two guys there were working out. I generally have my ears plugged into the music and my eyes on the floor as I prefer very little chit chat in between my workouts. One of them actually went out of his way to get my attention and then chatted with me on my workouts and other general stuff. What I am amazed at is the pattern of behaviour whether it is Bombay, New York, Aberdeen, Delhi, or Preston.
All these fellas don’t even talk to each other, but someone picks on the new punter, everyone watches and then makes deductions on what the group dynamics of that particular gym crowd will be.
Superb, don’t you think? I couldn’t help but smile in the shower as I was waiting for this very break through. I am in the pack from tomorrow, that’s for sure!!

Emperor's new clothes.

An Ohio man has been awarded a patent for a cordless jump rope.
-new scientist

The world... in the privacy of my ears.

I have recently taken to podcast subscribing like a fish to water. I love it. I think it fills my time off my computer with valuable inputs of information from sources that would have otherwise been very difficult to catch up with by just reading on my bed before drifting off to sleep.
Now I listen to podcasts in the gym, while I run, while I walk to work and sometimes if my brain feels sharp and confident enough even while I do chores that don’t require too much attention. I am not saying it has replaced my music playlist…. But, it surely has put it in the endangered species slot!

I used to be a bit worried about the social implications of iPods (I am using the word as a generic term for all 'personal digital players'). I thought people would now ever more not acknowledge strangers. At first, we had to risk being indifferent or even rude, depending on the society we were in, if we chose to ignore another person around us. But, now with ipods we don’t have that burden no more. We pretend that we are so involved in our worlds, that we genuinely don’t see the people around. That’s a shame, init? (Picked this one up most recently!!!)

What I am driving at is; I felt like a fake listening to music and ignoring the people around me. Deep down I did notice them and even enjoyed having them around, but was either too shy or pissed or arrogant or uncomfortable to go up to someone and smile or even say hello. I am someone who needs a lifetime to open up, once I do, I am unstoppable. My iPod made this transition bearable but interestingly even slower. All throughout I felt guilty though. Not any more!!!!
I am now listening to real people on the podcasts (I know musicians are real, but you get what I mean). And, the argument in my head today is, how often am I going to get such rich ideas with just regular chit chatting. So its good for now, I guess, until I will need a hug and have only my iPod to stare at…. That too probably knowing my luck might need recharging!!

P.S. – trivia on British MS word dictionary – I had to add iPod to it but, init is already in it!!

Every Breath you take.... the 'Police' is watching you.

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specializes in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. If you are one of the millions of people using social networking websites, be careful what you reveal about yourself, further warns the New Scientist.
The NSA could use advances in internet technology to combine the data with personal details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing it to build profiles of individuals. The idea is to identify terrorists and other criminals, but who will monitor any of this?

On one hand every website I go to whether it is to buy books on Amazon or to transfer my monthly rent to my landlord, insists that no eyes will ever be able to decipher the clear mumbo jumbo of alphabets and numbers I create as passwords or be able to misuse any of the information I feed in. They encourage me to read their privacy policies all of 2 pages long in font size 2.
Now, Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software talks about how you should always assume anything you write online could be stapled to your résumé. He says we don't realize that we could get Googled just to get a job interview these days. How very charming.
Once again I come back to the same emotion of helplessness, which accompanies any dealing with large corporations these days. Apart from the random and far and few in between incidences of an underdog biting a large corporation, the rest of us are just dog tired barking our lungs out with no effect whatsoever, except noise pollution. What could be more huge than the NSA? Of course Americans have to deal with phones being tapped, we just crib about the abundance of CCTV monitoring here in Britain. I too am warming up to the Big Brother environment. I can perhaps identify with the housemates a bit more now. Every time I write a blog, or enter my home address on a website or even say hello to my mother through an email, I feel I could be nominated for eviction. Here is to the power of the internet that was hailed as supreme by none other than top dog Tom Friedman.
Why does my Goldfish have this cheeky expression now?

Why don't I ever buy a bag of raisins?

Is this just me or there are more of you out there? We the ones who buy cereal with raisins in it and all other assortments not because it makes the breakfast interesting, but because we can dig in the box every now and then and pick raisins out of that mountain of bran!

If I really want to eat raisins on their own, why don't I just buy them on their own? It doesn't make sense at all. But, I just dont buy a bag of raisins. I never do. However, I love eating them. Everytime I am in the kitchen cooking or cleaning; I pick my cereal box and dig out the raisins.

Is this The Pleasure of Finding Things 'Out' (Sorry, Prof. Feynman, I just couldn't resist this one!) rather than just getting them? Is this some perverse way to take the harder route? Or is this just one of those habits you have no clue where and how you picked it up? Or, probably its about time I got me a life. Do you think they stock that on the same shelves as the raisins?

Where have all the monsters gone?

The power of pressure.
It makes you doubt your sensibilities when someone with more power opposes your view.
It makes you stay up late without any problems the night before an exam.
It makes teenage US marines randomly slaughter Iraqi civilians, including small children.
It drives eminent scientists like Hwang Woo Suk to fabricate erroneous results.
It gets young kids into drugs.
It forces a mother to jump in the river with her 10 year old son.
It’s what makes a good espresso brew.
It gets people to smuggle human organs and bones for money.
It gets nations to listen to President Bush.
It cultivates bad sexual habits and culture.
It drives athletes in pursuit of the summit to steroid abuse.
It forces families on the southern West Virginian Mountains to sell their land to billion dollar mining companies.
It makes us sell our souls to the media.
It makes the Indian government pass ridiculous bills such as increased reservations in academic institutions.
It makes guys in the gym pick up more weights than they can handle.
It gives bipolar disorder and manic depression to 6 year olds.
It makes researchers masturbate with statistics on the same data set to build a publishing record.
It’s what makes people click on pro anorexic web sites.
It makes people migrate from the villages to the big cities without security of any sorts.
It makes people retire in the country side to escape the cities.
It’s what helps keep WTO in check when hoards of individually helpless people join forces.
It’s what cooks your dinner in less than half the normal time.
It’s what puts the thoughts in my head under a spotlight. It’s what scares the monsters away. And that’s what keeps me from blogging every night. It’s what takes a bit of my privacy away. But, it also helps me shift out of my comfort zones and so hopefully the monsters will return and get used to the stage.

Here is to spring time!

On my way to the university library, this guy lay dead in the remains of the harsh winds and rains of last night.

When I came home later, I found this sprouting out of my lovely cactus. I had no idea it was the flowering kind!

Big Bad Wolves.

A while ago, a friend of mine and I had quite a heated argument about the companies we patronise, support and give our business to. She insisted that a pair of pants I bought for a much lesser price than a similar one she bought for almost double the rate still made more sense. It was a very politically correct thing for her to pay the higher price as she knew the other company I bought my pants from got their products made in third world countries at a cheaper rate and thus could afford the lower retail tags. So naturally I asked her if the company she bought her pants from, didn’t? She didn’t know the answer but assumed that since the price for the same pair of pants was higher they must have paid euro prices for the manufacturing!!!

This thinking is absolutely not uncommon among many people I talk to here. I have a feeling that the shrewd marketing strategies of some very savvy companies are now playing the ball with the same goal-post but with a few changes in the rules.

These companies (let’s called them the Nouveau-post-modern-The Thinking Customer-pleasing-companies) are absolutely aware of the media hype about the third world country sweatshop phenomenon. They know that if they are projected as people who ignore human rights of the third world residing populations, where most of their manufacturing takes place, then their sales in countries like Britain will take a big beating.
The average customer here sees documentaries of people working long hours in very small spaces, getting wages in a month that is less than what they make in a day, with no basic benefits such as health insurance or pensions etc. There is very little they do about the emotions that arise from such stark realities, and thus the one place they can perhaps purge a bit of their second-hand acquired guilt is by declaring a few corporations as 'The Big Bad Wolf'.

So what does the big bad wolf do now? It very intelligently kills two birds with a single stone (to be extremely clichéd, but exact). They keep the prices high, giving a false impression that it is so; since their manufacturing is not as cheap as their exploitative competitors. In the bargain they also make some extra dough which the other companies are passing on to their customers. Of course they spend on brand imaging and a few extra on "social responsibility" projects! But the sales figures point in the right direction.

Why do people refuse to see that no company that can afford the high street mall rent is still manufacturing anything locally? Why are people basing their ethical and political faiths by reading the RRP tags rather than the company documents that they can avail under the freedom of information act? Perhaps we are spending too much time on documentary watching. We are the pseudo aware. We the educated that can mobilise societies on the whole, choose the shortcut to information and the only people who seem to be benefiting are the ones that need to be put under check.

Why we don't have any 'Blue' Food.

If I ask you to come up with a Blue food item, the only thing that you will probably come up with is 'Blueberries'. But apart from that where is blue food?

we have lovely red tomatoes, green broccoli, yellow pumpkins and orange oranges but nothing for blue! Blue cheese is not even really blue.... so dont give me that one. Oh, and any one eating those GM peppers, that by now probably come in vibgyor is automatically disqualified to answer my question.

So, is there something here for the biologists, enviormentalists and theologists (I will get to this one in a minute), people who earn their bread answering such questions? Did nature on some grand secret purpose clearly leave out blue colour from our food? Probably not. Just as there is an evil hand of mankind in all things gone wrong on our planet, maybe this one too has secrets buried in history.

People who eat a lot of pigments from any food source tend to show a tinge of that pigment in their skin... like if you get a lot of beta carotene from your diet (generally due to some soil condition in which your carrots grow) you would begin to look a bit orangish. No really, I am not making this up. Its called 'carotenodermia'.

Indian mythology has pictures depicting gods in shades of blue, sort of a pictoral representation for thier royal blood perhaps. But I am thinking, maybe that was like this 'carotenodermia' disease of today; a pigment disease of those days. So people who ate blue food were worshiped. Maybe due to some geographical or climatic advantage. On realising the potentials of being gods; and to keep their 'blue pigmented skin' as a secret they went out and ate all the blue food to extinction. Blue berries didnt grow in the tropical Indian subcontinent so it probably survived. Since everything else in those days grew only in the non icicled places, there is now nothing to show for blue coloured food to our generations.

So lets just not blame this generation X or Y or Z? (I am sure they are havoc creating teenagers by now, aren't they?) for screwing with this planet. Generation 'A' was the one who started it all. It probably is in our genes.

P.S. - 28th May2006 - I found this link, which happens to be on Douglas Adam's pet project web site H2G2. First, I think it is interesting to have some real science to the gibberish I have been writing. Secondly, they have not managed to list 'REAL' blue food, even though they have come up with an interesting list. Oh and I had almost forgotton about Bridget Jones! ( Cheers, Mu Beta).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3403928

An Outsider's Perspective.

I am an outsider here. I have perspectives that dont belong to this place. I see things were there is nothing and miss the subtleness in things that you experience only with years of observations. I have lived most of my life in India, interspaced with study and travel to a few countries. India is mad, you dont understand how things go around, but they sure do! Probably thats where my bizzare and random ideas link together.
I moved to the UK a few months ago to pursue my Ph.D. Everyday is a sort of a mental compare and contrast with my ideas of society, relationships, markets and structure. Sometimes, like this weekend two interesting alien things happen to me and its a very weird sense of 'Eureka'. I havent dicovered anything new like 'displacement' but somehow another piece in the jigsaw just fits.
These are my very early days of driving in the UK and last saturday as I left to get my weekly groceries I saw the air pressure in my front tyres needing attention. I stopped over at a gas station and hung around the air meter trying to figure out what I am supposed to do. People back home just stood with long air hoses and went about checking your tyres. They said 'its done madam', you tipped them and zoomed away. Here, I was fiddling with something that didnt even look high tech, just plain dumb. As I was about this tin box, a very old lady somehow figured that I could do with some help; explained, that I need to put in a 20p coin in it to bring it to life. Hmmm interesting, I did just that, checked the air, thanked the lady and zoomed away. My thoughts still hovering around the air meter. So, you actually pay to get air in this country. Super!
The art of supermarket shopping is now more visual than thoughtful. As my hands picked the required things and dropped it in my cart, I went on a quick holiday to some place sunny ( yeah its one of the things people in the north west have in common. We are all on a holiday some place sunny until someone speaks to us). I was still in my bikini when I noticed the till point lady very dutifully filling my purchases in plastic carry bags. That was precisely when I snapped back to present tense and politley declined, as I always carry my backpack that fits food enough for me. That was it. My Eureka moment. So, you dont pay for plastic carry bags in this country ( well, atleast not overtly). Super!
Seems like I am adamant to not get to my point. Here it is then. We cant stop talking about the enviornment, global warming, the planet etc etc. All day on the radio, television, blogs thats all there seems to be out there. We even do our bits individually for the sake of our kids perhaps. We seperate our thrash, we bike to work, no longer buy 4x4's. But, we dont give a moments notice about our plastic carry bags. We are very happy about the 3 arrow circle on our cola cans and then merrily ask the shop keeper to double the bag to bear the weight of those same cola cans. Why cant we make it mandatory to buy plastic bags? Well, I see why corporates don't want to seperate the cost and want to make you pay implicitly, so that you carry their advertisement for free as you sashay along the high street holding them. Interestingly, These are the same business houses who love to scream from rooftops when 0.02% of your bill goes to a charity.
So what grand structure is this to pay to get air and not to pollute the enviornment?

When are we really going to stop making the media spoon feed us on what they assume is the right conduct, a common sensical point, the obviously deducable? All we need to do is rethink the strategies we as a collective endorse rather than doing little bits on our own. I dont disagree that every small gesture counts, but something as obvious as 'sell carry bags' so that people stop and think before they consume more than they should rather than go all the way round by just recycling them.
The one thing that would have prevented a lot of people from dying in the floods that hit maharashtra state in India in july 2005; where more than a 1500 people died, was if our sewege was not blocked with plastic carry bags. But, perhaps I am an outsider in this country.... well, all I know is that I am not an outsider on this planet.