Saturday, March 18, 2006

General raves, rants and links...

The comments to the last post have kept me well entertained, but all things must come to an end, therefore, I must write again. Note to various bosses who will read this post - Its late on Saturday evening, I'm not doing this on company time.
Anyway, I was talking to someone yesterday about how I survive on Google, I mean life for me without Google would be impossible. Everything I could possibly need on the interweb, I find off the search engine, and trust me, while I'm not a 'Google writer' like many other journalists in India, through Google I am able to access a treasure trove of information - especially data. Hard numbers make a story that much more interesting and unless you're a genius and know where to get the data from, Google is the only way to find it. I also Google because it gives me a fairly decent page rank of 5/10 for some arbitrary reason - which means I get a lot of visitors to the blog looking for stuff like this. Well, I wish I knew where you could find the MMS - but I can redirect you to this torrent portal which has some of the stuff that you might be looking for - it also has a great collection of torrents of classic Bollywood films and the entire Satyajit Ray collection. Yes, yes, I don't condone piracy, but its easier this way.
And to those protestors who said Google bending over backwards for the Chinese government is a violation of democracy is hurting the 'Free Tibet' movement, I really don't know what the fuss is about. Google has been the biggest contributor to the democratisation of information in the past decade. But of course, bashing a big American corporate entity gets you good press after all. Wonder why all those people didn't make a peep when journalists across the world recieved 2006 calendars titled 'Tibet of China' from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Hmmm...
Recent events in Delhi have been very peculiar to say the least. The members of lead partner of the ruling coalition boycotted a large talking-head shop organized by a prominent media house. Now the theory goes that in some tapes some not so nice comments were passed by certain people against the Loha Lady v2.0, and this prompted an assanine reaction from the party. Makes you wonder how much different Delhi is from Chennai and Lucknow. Now, what is interesting is that it seems not all tapes (I mean who the hell uses tapes to record stuff anymore - this is the era of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Discs and we're talking tapes, Geez!) are equal. Now, back to the point, on certain tapes it seems that the man known as 'Da Pimp' and a very media-savvy businessman (who also on certain occasions has lashed out at other cricket teams) spoke about the legs of a fading tennis starlet - by the way, have you guys seen the way Martina Hingis has come back this year?
I'm flabbergasted. At the bad taste shown. Fair enough, you can understand people - well, men - can talk extremely offensively about women between each other. And such conversations should be kept private at all times. Some terms we use are - well, better kept in conversations not including the fairer sex. For example, yesterday I was talking about a sexy new starlet on the Bollywood circuit and how I like parts of her... lets not go there, lest that ruin the 'nice guy' blogger impression I've been building up. But for gods sake, gentlemen please, show some taste in the women you choose.
Anyway, enough gossip, most of what I've said is old news on the circuit anyway.
Also with reference to the last post, I'm a completely shameless soul and back to my rather vapid and pointless existence. But for some strange reason my cable TV is not working of late. Bastard cablewallah. I'll switch to DTH, the moment I get some moolah into the system, and now that I'm not paying Citibank a 46.78 per cent annual interest rate on my credit card (the bastards increased my monthly interest on my card without sending me a notification, which they are legally required to do, I'm still contemplating pulling rank on the matter or a lawyer, lets see, I'll most probably just procrastinate on the matter) - these guys are more usurious than moneylenders in India - and they're supposed to be professional. I'm rather borrow money from Salim-bhai than charge anything on a Citibank credit card. Yes, I'm that pissed off to use this blog as a corporate bashing zone.
Anyway, moving on, I use Flickr a lot, and this Wired article gives the ten best Flickr mash-ups. Some of them are really cool and a perfect way to waste your time.
This has been doing the rounds of the internet for some time now - the ten strangest Lego creations - but it still fascinates me. I still believe I have some of my old Lego sets from when I was a kid - I particularly loved their space sets. I noticed that Lego's are bloody expensive nowadays but some of the new sets are really cool.
Hotel Room Nudes, a time when I think I should have really taken a shot at photography - some of the pictures by Brian Nelson are really cool.
And of course, there is the Hollywood Animation Archive, a really neato concept for a blog.
What is the best way to raise money, a nude calendar of course. And what does the internet do, collates all of them together - warning - some calendars might induce violent wretching.
Wowee, thats a nice way to pass time.
A not-so-bad History of Pornography. That said, the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms that I had bought thinking it would elucidate me in college, had a very interesting history as well.
I don't know if this is a good idea or a bad idea. Would you buy it?
On another note, I am planning - tentatively, it must be added - a ten-day trip down National Highway 17 from Bombay to Kochi. I'm sick and tired of my Mallu friends telling me that the roads in Kerala are awesome. So this is a plan for the end of April, and I have to do it before the monsoons and before I gett too old. Anyway, there is a Saturday night to be enjoyed, so I will take your leave. Tatas, and do leave your comments, even if this is the most vaccous post you have read in a long time.
And by the way, it must be goddamned difficult to "Think Beyond the IIM's" if IIM graduates are getting offers like they are. So sorry, Mr Ponytail, but it might help if you could explain why on earth you're creating so many blogs over at MSN Spaces, has Blogger banned your IP range? Just for good measure, I'm tagging this post as well.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know what, all these IIM offers sound so fishy to me. My friend's boyfriend studies at Harvard Business School, and the average offer to a fresh graduate there hardly tops $100,000, even for investment bankers.

Unless this fellow had years of experience in global financial managment in the US or Europe before he joined IIMA, I find it hard to believe that Barclay's offered him $193,000.

Anonymous said...

Oh, sorry, that should have been IIMB. By the way I saw another article that claimed than an IIMC grad has been offered $160,000 by Deutsche Bank. My boyfriend's best friend has a Masters in Finance from LSE and has worked with Deutsche Bank as an investment banker for nearly 7 years. He still doesn't take home that kind of money.

Are these folks adding signing bonuses to their salaries?

K said...

They add the entire CTC component and very often even the variable bonuses to the numbers they announce. Its a game of oneupmanship between IIMA, IIMB and IIMC.

Anonymous said...

Hi, just coming accross your happening blog, as I was looking for S. Ray's movies. I checked desitorrent, but instead of a full collection, I only found 2 of his movies. Any idea where to find more. Pls, write me at: pierre@orangemail.ch