Wokay!

Archive for February 2008

Ah, the Sweet Smell of Validation

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 29, 2008

Two years ago, when wondering why there are so few small cars in China, I hypothesized: Chinese banks are not particularly customer focused, and are reluctant to give car loans to anybody whose income level is not high enough to make a midsize car affordable. Chinese banks would have little or no experience with consumer [...]

xkcd Marches On

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 29, 2008

The Wikipedian form of protest first proposed by this xkcd strip has now caught on in the real world. (via)

I Want!

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 27, 2008

The coolest bookshelf I’ve ever seen:  Limited by space, we melded the idea of a staircase with our client’s desire for a library to form a ‘library staircase’ in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books. With a skylight above lighting the staircase, it becomes the perfect place to [...]

Political Incorrectness Gone Wild

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 19, 2008

Apparently, Bombay colleges are appealing to their students to refrain from making ethnic jokes, what with the inflamed situation: Several colleges — probably the city’s most multicultural hubs — have informally cautioned students to go easy on community remarks, which would otherwise mean nothing more than harmless jokes and jibes.  “The students are very young [...]

How Not to Design an Airport

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 18, 2008

Ramesh Ramanathan is fuming about Bangalore’s new airport being underdesigned and underconnected (via Ajay Shah’s excellent roundup on infrastructure). As is happening far too often these days, Skimpy beat me to blogging about the main topic. However, that just gives me more stuff to discuss. In fact, I’ll make the whole post an outsider-layperson-dummy’s guide [...]

Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 16, 2008

Amit has blogged about the Saudi Arabian ban on red roses here: The decision has been taken by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which sounds like something right out of Kafka. There’s also a CNN story on this, which contains these priceless quotes: Ahmed Al-Omran, a university student in [...]

Linkbunch Are Strong!

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 16, 2008

I’ve been looking for a Firefox extension that let’s me bookmark a collection of links into one bundle, which I can then open any time later – like a session manager which saves multiple sessions instead of just the latest one. This is useful for when you’re planning to blog about something which links to [...]

Fanboys in Mourning

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 15, 2008

RJ Malavika is getting married as I type this. If it’s a KT wedding and not a Tam one, I suppose it’s not too late to pull a Benjamin Braddock. Except that I’m happily committed to the perfect girlfriend, and Hari the Kid is in Seattle. So it goes.

H5N1 and Raj Thackeray

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 9, 2008

This has all the makings of another headless-chicken-gate: Without naming Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), the Shiv Sena on Friday made a scathing attack, calling them “bird flu affected poultry, that has no market value”. Referring to the recent trouble in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra by MNS, the editorial in ‘Samana’, the Sena mouthpiece [...]

Harbhajan Under the Hindi Jackboot

Posted by: Aadisht on: February 8, 2008

Nobody has noticed the most sinister aspect of the whole Harbhajan-Symonds-Monkey-Maa Ki controversy. Why would Harbhajan say ‘तेरी मां की’ (terii maa kii) at all? As a true son of Punjab, manly and virile, he should have said ‘ਤੇਰੀ ਮਾਂ ਦੀ!’ (terii maa dii). I can only conclude that in the Indian cricket team too, [...]