October 3, 2008
So I finally got around to reading The World is Flat. My cousin who I’m staying with (and whose usual reading is self-help books) had MED for it and in a moment of weakness I succumbed.
I didn’t find it as terrible as Prof. Ed Leamer’s scathing review (so scathing, he takes no less than 51 pages to scathe through) makes it out to be. The difference drawn between wholesale reform and retail reform was one of the better parts of the book, and the first time I’ve actually seen it drawn outside of a one-off newspaper op-ed or blogpost. On the other hand, the breast beating about declining standards in American education and what should be done about them, are entertaining to read but manage to contradict the rest of the book stunningly.
The overall impression I got of the book is that Thomas Friedman is to business journalism what Navjot Singh Sidhu is to cricket commentary. While there is an actual concept at the bottom of everything they talk about, these guys fall in love with their metaphors, to the point where the metaphor takes on a life of itself, and it becomes impossible to find the funda. Such is life.
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Books Movies and Music | Tagged: globalisation, Navjot Singh Sidhu, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman | 
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Posted by Aadisht
October 3, 2008
Skimpy has not one but two posts where he abuses the students of these days who are useless and lazy incompetents who don’t speak IIMB lingo and don’t organise the IITM open.
Although “these days” are just two years after “back in our days”, it’s never too early to abuse your juniors. It’s one of the great natural processes of life, rolling on through the batches. It gives people who miss college and are annoyed at work an opportunity for some pleasing schadenfreude. And in this sterile modern world of ours, it’s the closest substitute for the tribal elders performing ritual circumcision on the young and grumbling about how they can’t take it. In our day, of course, Lord Kamaala was the tribal elder.
The role of grumpy old men in any society is a greatly underappreciated one. Fortunately Skimpy is carrying it out with aplomb.
Leave a Comment » | Links, Quizzing | Tagged: back in my day i used to walk ten miles to school!, barefoot in the snow!, grumpy old men, IIM Bangalore, IITM Open, ritual circumcision, tribal elders, uphill both ways! | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
October 1, 2008
I am starting yet another NGO. This one is in response to people everywhere adding an extra ‘o’ to the word ‘lose’. So we have TOI editorials talking about India loosing the war on terror, blogposts talking about Ganguly being a looser, and news tickers flashing breaking news about investors who loose money on the stock markets.
This regrettable tendency is leading to an excess amount of ‘o’s in the English language, which may eventually overwhelm its carrying capacity. To bring the ecosystem back into balance, I propose that we start writing the actual ‘loose’ with only one ‘o’. So we would have lose jeans, lose women, losened monetary policy, and Nokia’s losening grip on the Indian handset market. People would go to gastro-enterologists complaining of lose motions.
I think it is time to unleash this idea. Or rather, to let it lose.
Leave a Comment » | Campaign to Losen Standards, Language | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
September 29, 2008
What do exploitation movies exploit? Stereotypes?
P.S. This is a serious question. Wikipedia isn’t any help.
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Posted by Aadisht
September 27, 2008
In three hours of extensive enthusiasm, Kodhi and me have come up with what we think is the greatest travel route ever. I decided that it would be cool to travel overland from the Pacific coast of Asia to the Atlantic Coast of Europe. In a stroke of genius, Kodhi decided that it would be even cooler to travel back to the Pacific coast once the Atlantic coast had been reached, with the additional rule that you couldn’t visit any of the same cities. We came up with the following route, which (I repeat myself here) is the greatest ever (except that we couldn’t fit in Ulaan Bataar). For your viewing pleasure, here it is:
Hong Kong – Beijing West
Beijing – Urumqi
Urumqi – Almaty
Almaty – Tashkent
Tashkent – Samarkand – Bukhara – Nukus
Nukus – Turkmenistan (border crossing) – Ashgabat
Ashgabat – Merv
Merv – Mashhad (border crossing)
Mashhad – Yazd – Shiraz – Esfahan – Tehran
Tehran – Tabriz – Istanbul
Istanbul – Sofia – Belgrade
Belgrade – Sarajevo – Zagreb – Ljublubna – Venice
Venice – San Marino – Naples – Rome – Florence – Genoa – Milan
Milan – Ventimegla – Monaco – Nice
Nice – Perpignan – Barcelona
Barcelona – Valencia – Sevilla
Sevilla – Faro
Faro – Lisbon – Porto
Porto – Vigo
Vigo – Madrid – Bilbao – San Sebastian
San Sebastian – Bordeaux – Nantes – Paris – Lille – Brussels – Antwerp – Rotterdam – Den Hague – Amsterdam
Amsterdam – Koln – Bremen – Hamburg – Berlin
Berlin – Prague – Vienna – Bratislava – Budapest – Krakow – Warsaw
Warsaw – Minsk – Vilinius – Riga – Tallinn – St. Petersburg – Moscow – Vladivostok
This will take 13 visas (I counted) and cover about twenty or thirty countries (I didn’t count). Porto is basically journey’s end on the first leg of the trip since that’s where Vasco Da Gama started from. The trip starts with the trans-Chinese railroad and ends with the trans-Siberian railroad.
Since Kodhi and me are poor FMCG traveling salesman and retail broker in the midst of a financial crisis, and we don’t have the coolth that Popagandhi has to just pick ourselves up and start traveling, please contribute generously so that we can quit our jobs and undertake this trip. We will be very grateful for this act of kindness.
Leave a Comment » | Personal, Travel | Tagged: europe by rail, i will be very grateful to you for this act of kindness, overland, popagandhi, schengen visa, silk route, trans-siberian, uzbekistan | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
September 27, 2008
Yesterday, Skimpy forwarded me this link, and immediately changed his tagline to “2 dollars. Why didn’t I bid for Lehman Brothers?”. This sparked the following conversation.
me: Look at it this wat
*way
$2 = 93 rupees
3:26 PM
with that you could buy a hummus and pita bread
and have some change left over
would you be happier owning Lehman?
Karthik: 11 11
me: or having hummus and pita bread
Karthik: hummus
The original inspiration for using Lebanese fast food as a standard store of value came from this profound post by Kunal. Please read it.
Later on in that conversation, I brought up employee buyouts. But things quickly took a scatalogical and American-beer-bashing turn:
me: you know
4:30 PM
at two dollars, why didn’t the employees buy Lehman?
Karthik: agreer
would’ve beenfight to split the cost da
4:31 PM
2K people together put together 2$ => each guy pays 0.1 cent
how do they pay that to each other?
jai
me: in beer
4:32 PM
Karthik: dei you don’t even get half a glass of beer for 2$
so what? each guy contributes a drop or what?
me: or they can deduct it from their PF
Karthik: 11
me: axshully
American beer is piss
Karthik: 11
me: each Lehman Europe banker contributes one drop of piss
Karthik: hahahaha
that’s tough too
just one dro
me: sells it to Dick Fuld as Budweiser
It’s not that tough. They can use droppers or something.
4 Comments | Arbit Fundaes, Finance, GTalk Profundity | Tagged: American beer, beer, Budweiser, Dick Fuld, financial crisis, Hummus, Lehman Brothers, Nomura, Pita Bread, Tsingtao proves the Public Sector can be competent | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
September 24, 2008
Raj Thackeray bitches about how bhaiyyas from the cow belt come to Mumbai, become cab drivers, and steal jobs from the Marathi Manoos. I’m not sure how he’ll react to this amazing story (TOI link. I’m sorry, but nobody else is carrying it). Here’s the summary:
- Shop assistant steals two kilos of gold from a Bangalore jeweller and decamps to Mumbai, intending to go further to Dubai and live a life of pleasure alone
- On getting off at Dadar, he gets into a cab being driven by a UP-wala
- Cabbie realises that shop assistant is new to Mumbai and drives him all over town with the meter running
- While in the cab, the thief tells the cabbie about his nefarious doings and his plans to move to Dubai
- Cabbie tells thief that he needs to get a passport and visa first, that he has a friend who’s a visa agent, and that he’ll take thief over to meet him and get a visa and passport made
- Cabbie drives around Mumbai with the meter running even more on the pretext of taking thief to visa agent
- After a whole day of driving around, the thief needs to pee and gets down
- The cabbie drives off with the two kilos of gold
- The thief is indignant and goes to the police station to complain about the theft of the gold he’s stolen.
- The Mumbai police check with the Bangalore police, and book him for the original theft
- The cabbie remains at large
The whole thing is like a Saki story. I love it.
Leave a Comment » | Weirder Than Fiction | Tagged: bhaiyya, cabbie, dubai, gold, ill-gotten gains, life of crime, live a life of pleasure alone, marathi manoos, mumbai, on the lam, raj thackeray, riotous living, taxi | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
September 24, 2008
So John McCain gets elected and to make up for all the allegations about lack of foreign policy experience, the first thing that Sarah Palin does is to go on a world tour meeting heads of state. And since she’s a hockey mom she takes all her kids along.
In Australia while Palin is meeting Kevin Rudd, her kids go around seeing all the famous sites. The guide takes them to Bradman’s house. While they are just outside it the paparazzi photograph her youngest daughter. What is the headline in the papers the next morning?
Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | PJs | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
September 23, 2008
How else do you explain this?
“Such a person must be taken to be astute enough to know the difference between a Harry Potter film and another titled Hari Puttar. In my view, the cognoscenti, the intellectuals and even the pseudo-intellectuals presumably know the difference between chalk and cheese or at any rate must be presumed to know the same,” the Bench said, dismissing the plea to pass an interim stay on the release of the film with the same title.
(Indian Express)
Leave a Comment » | Language, Weirder Than Fiction | Tagged: cognoscenti, hari puttar, harry potter, pseudo-intellectual, reva khetrapal | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht
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