Once Confucious dreamt that he was taken to meet the Damned in hell. He was very surprised to see that hell was an immaculate banquet with the most delicious food he'd ever seen just waiting to be eaten. But there was a rule, everybody had to eat with chopsticks, and the chopsticks were five feet long. The Damned were starving, because no matter how hard or how long they tried, they never could get the food into their mouth.

Next, Confucious was taken to see heaven. This was again an immaculate banquet with delicious food. This banquet hall had the same rule, everybody had to eat with chopsticks that were five feet long. But people here were happy, because they were feeding each other!

Spiderman 2 goes the way of the Chicken Chowmein

I saw something very cool on MTV today. They're adding an Urdu song by the band Strings to the Spiderman 2 soundtrack. We're beginning to do to Hollywood flicks what we've done so long with Chinese food, localizing it to our taste. Not that this is a bad thing of course, I think this is excellant. You can read more about this here. The number's called Na jaane kyun (literally translated, "don't know why") and is quite good. My problem is that it is a typical Strings number, melodious and long-stretched vocal wise (remember Duur??). I would've thought a band like Junoon or even Parikrama could've come up with something that had a little more bite, suited the theme more. Anyway, this is a good thing so I won't bash it too much. I'm just hoping that Spidey 2 and its soundtrack do well so that this trend can continue. By the way, the song is not on the international soundtrack of the movie (I checked imdb), but that can't be too far along.

Some more music news. Emma Bunton's latest album FREE ME just came out in India. The album had been doing reasonably well in the UK while I was there. The mojor development is that Emma Bunton's gone HOT with this album. She ain't no baby spice no more. I personally like the sound of the album too. It's got that airy, echoey 80s pop feel about it. Think Bangles, Cindi Lauper, Culture Club. The lyrics aren't too brainy either, but the album is okay to pass some time. I know I might be putting myself up for a few brickbats by praising a former spice girl for anything other than her ahemm...aesthetic assets, but I happen to like this sort of music, what can I do?

Also caught a new advert starring Amitabh Bacchan (for those of you who don't know, he's only the biggest, most famous star in Indian cinema). The ad starts out well, he's talking about his film career and the difficulties he faced, and how satisfying its been. And then he begins talking about what helped get through it all. That's when he stands up and pisses all over his credibility. Can you guess what he's selling?? It's Navratan tel, a third grade, cheap, crappy hair oil. C'mon man!! How important can money be to you? I seriously doubt he ever uses the product himself, and by doing this sort of thing, he's throwing away the little credibility he has left with the current generation. In fact, even the way he speaks now sounds practiced and put on. I mean, I know he had a heavy voice up until around the time he was 40, but after that he probably started losing it. And now I just know that the way he speaks on screen is not what he sounds like in real life. I mean common, who does he think he's fooling! Its just sad to see such great people grow old so ungracefully. Now I know how Ronald Reagen's admirers felt when he got sick with Alzheimer's and couldn't even remember his speeches anymore.

My mini-mini! Notice how the remote control's bigger than the car. Fun! Oh, and that stuff in the background's my dinner. 

My spanking new PS2. Now that's what I call beautiful!! No woman can match up to that! 

Stupid is as stupid does.... :) 

Puneet Nayyar in a Ferrari 6-bar cap with a Ferrari 1/43 scale model. Ferrari hater in Ferrari gear! An irony in pictures! 

In case you don't know me personally, this is me! Yeah, I know I'm ugly :) 

I am soooo.... bored right now! I got nominated for this stupid CMM training, and that too on a bloody Saturday. As I write this, this guy from a quality consulting agency is trying to pounds facts about CMM into my head. I can't even keep my eyes open anymore. I've already gone out once by pretending I got a phone call, not sure whether I should try that again. God!! 10 more slides to go. MUST KEEP AWAKE!! Samrat, you moron, return my call so I have an excuse to get out of this dump. Thankfully, most of the girls here are worth looking at. That won't help me much if I die of boredom though. And why is every next slide very very important to this guy??

Ok, enough ranting.

Just enabled comments on my blog. Not that anybody's reading...

Heard this?? Hutch (a cellular provider in Delhi) is actually going to launch Push-to-talk in India!! In fact, I saw an advert for it the other day. Basically, what the service provides is a walkie-talkie like functionality where you push a button to talk to somebody who you've already previously set up for the service. This service was first launched by a provider called Nextel in the US, and at the time it was thought of as nothing but a cute toy. Lately, most providers all over the world have been discovering the potential of this service and have been trying to play catch up.
 
Back to Hutch though, I don't know how they are going to price this yet, or whether it is going to be compatible with other providers. It would be great if they just used Nextel's pricing model as a reference. Basically, Nextel just charges a higher rental fee to people who want to set up push to talk with another Nextel subscriber. There are no extra charges for the airtime used. This I believe has earned them a lot of loyal customers.

Direct quote from a story on Slashdot:
"The Register reports that six more US Universities and colleges have agreed to enter into protection schemes with the RIAA. In short, several institutions have signed deals with the RIAA's lapdog, the Napster music service, to 'goad these schools toward..."
 
These are sad times indeed. Napster's actually being called the RIAA's lapdog. I hope the generation after me who have all the benefits of legal(??) file sharing software remember the kind of contribution that Napster made to it all. It's sad really, when a pioneering innovation such as this has to demean itself to these levels just to survive.

At long last, it has finally come to pass!! I am going to go buy myself a PS2 today and loads of games to go with it! Oh, happy day.

Holy shit!! It changed my homepage! The new version of MSN Messenger changed my home page. this is going just too far. That's it, I've had it with Microsoft trying to push crap down my throat. I'm off to give Some deep thought to my plans for revenge. Meanwhile, DO NOT INSTALL THE LATEST version of MSN messenger. It stinks like a stinky dog's ugly butt.

I just logged into the MSN messenger, and it prompted me to install a newer version. Like a dutiful tech. slave, I accepted the invitation and was soon on my way to installing the latest and greatest MS has on offer by way of messengers. After the install was complete, lo and behold, I see a dialog box asking me to set my particular brand of English. I was half-ready to leave English (United States) selected and move on, when out of interest, I opened the drop down and discovered English (India)! Apparently, Microsoft's finally woken up to the existance of this billion strong demographic.

My adventures didn't end here though. Upon clicking next, an internet explorer window popped up with a brand new MSN toolbar installed. The point to be noted here is that I'd never asked for anything other than the latest version of the messenger to be installed. How the search toolbar ties into the messenger is totally beyond me. What's worse is that the new MSN toolbar looks exactly like the Google toolbar that now sits above it. Looks like MS have pulled off another embrace and extend. Not that I use internet explorer at home these days, but this does peeve me. What gives Microsoft the right to slip this unwanted product into my life anyway??

This leads me to a larger problem. Too often, providers of free (or seemingly free) services seem to go too far. I mean, i can understand the advertising, the popup news widgets, and even the occasional promotional IM or mail message, but installing a whole new product on MY COMPUTER without MY permission is going too far. Providers seem to think that because they provide a free service, consumers should pony up and just take whatever they might throw at us without any sort of protest. I daresay that that is a view shared by some of the consumers too. I tend to think that a consumer's rights must have nothing to do with a product/service's pricing, free or otherwise.

Test blog entry using my PDA.

It's beginning to happen, humans are finally turning into cyborgs. Not that it is a bad thing, not necessarily anyway. There's a mexican attorney general who's had a chip implanted into his arm. Japanese school children are going to be tagged with RFID. What do you think about this?? I haven't formed a view so far, and probably never will.