On Men

I came across this strange article on men through a friend
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article4448371.ece. I felt wowowow when I read it. I am amazed. Is there really a woman out there who can understand so much about men?

The other day I was talking to a friend who, out of the blue, said to me that woman these days are taking advantage of men (I think she was referring to husbands) and making suckers out of them. And that they (the women) ask for expensive gifts, diamonds etc. And what really do the women contribute in return was her question. She was introspecting and thinking aloud.

Women believe that men have only one thought in their brain (you know what thought). I find it strange. I mean the tendency towards "men bashing", the tendency to use cliches, "most men are this/that" which I would say is quite untrue. I have come across more acts of selfishness, commitment phobia,  intense focus on the buttered side of the bread in women than they are given credit (should I say "debit") for. While all the time there is a sweet, gentle, angelic look on their face and they say "we want only love and affection, we don't care about money".

How many women have we come across who chooses a partner who has less education, and earns less than them? Or do women think that only the rich/  educated men are capable of showing love and affection?

How much of the family expenses, chores are handled by men? My friends quickly point out that men hardly do anything at home. I would agree with this statement. What share of the expenses is borne by women? How much of the expenses are for herself? Why do I rarely find women talking about this? What causes a person to live in an imaginary world with little acknowledgment of reality? 

Why is a man spending so much on his woman? Does he really deserve such a bad rating?

Like my friend asks in her blog "where are the real women?", I too have the same question. Where are those women who are committed? And who don't spend at the drop of a hat, who spend their time productively instead of frittering away their time. Where are they?

Of course when I say man/woman I refer to most and certainly not all. There would be quite some men/women who are different.

Vetham Puthithu

I saw this movie today after a long time. Instead of writing my own review of the movie I picked a review which is fairly nice and accurate. http://iblogsak.blogspot.com/2009/04/vedham-pudhidhu.html. The character played by Satyaraj is very nice. While the movie is said to talk about the social divide in Tamil Nadu, what I found nice was the segregation of religion from values. Unfortunately in India, the two are considered synonymous. Bharathiraja, the director of the movie, brings out the distinction very nicely between the two through the role of Satyaraj.

The movie brings out the differences between the Brahmin and the Thevar community in the way they speak Tamil differently and their different food habits. It's fun watching the two communities interact. The movie goes on to show that sense and values do not necessarily go hand in hand with theism.

The movie is a must watch. 

Incidentally a friend of mine was talking to me about "Real Men" and complained that it's so very difficult to find such men these days. And then we started defining a "real man". Well I would perhaps venture to say that the character played by Satyaraj is a "real man".

Here is the link to the movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkZjte93qRM. 

Some Old Hindi Movie Songs And Their Originals

I have written about my interest in old Hindi and Tamil songs (http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/01/old-mostly-bollywood-videos-of-50s-and.html). This post is about copies made from songs in Western countries.

Today I came across this article
http://dustedoff.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/ten-of-my-favourite-inspired-songs/. I found it very interesting. It listed 10 hit songs of the yesteryears which were inspired from tunes in Europe and Americas.. Especially listen to Dil Tadap Tadap Ke whose original is "Szła Dzieweczka" a Polish folk song.

Another song which has a European heritage is "Ithnaa Naa Tum Mujh Se" from the movie Chaya which closely resembles Mozart's 40th Symphony . Both the tunes are amazing.

While the resemblance of the tune (between the European and Indian version) is striking in the Chaya song it's marginal in the Madhumati song.

Apparently the song "Oh My Darling Clementine" inspired "Aye Dil Hai Mushkil" from CID.

Somehow I felt good. There do seem to be really good tunes outside of India which I am not aware of. It must be interesting to listen to these.

And this is from a Turkish song - Aawaara Hoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhFkEodb9Wc

Kanden Kaathalai

Kanden Kaathalai is the title of a movie I watched on TV today. I was told that it was a remake from the Hindi movie Jab We Met. I was watching the movie, I liked it so much that I read up on the Hindi version on wiki. Apparently it is a romantic comedy. Few days back, another friend of mine with whom I discuss movies, said that I favored romantic comedies. Till she said that, I didn't even know of the term "romantic comedy". "Romantic" is one of the few words that isn't part of my vocabulary. My friend is perceptive. Dieki.

Coming back to the Wiki entry on "Jab We Met", I realized that the theme of this movie seemed unnaturally similar to another English movie "Walk In The Clouds" starring Keanu Reeves that I had watched years earlier. Then I read about the Tamil movie. Neither (Tamil, Hindi movie) of the Wiki entries seemed to indicate that these movies had borrowed from the English version. Walk in the Clouds was apparently copied from an Italian movie Four Steps In The Clouds.

But it's a strange thing. A stick in the mud like me likes "romantic comedies"? Huh.

Google Search And Mobiles - How Our Lives Have Changed

Back, when I was in my early teens, I used to wonder why we have to carry money in our pocket. Money always belongs to an individual. What if each person had some way to identify the (amount of) money that belonged to him (like his fingerprint)? All that was needed was a way of transferring money from one person (A) to another (B). A would "say" I give $5 to B and voila... A's balance would decrease by $5 and B's would increase by the same amount. This was my thought in those days when I had not heard of ATM (debit) card / credit cards etc. Money nowadays has become fungible and transfers can be made in a variety of ways other than giving a currency note (or bill).

So much has changed in the last 40 years.  What else do I feel has made a drastic change in our lives? I am amazed by two things. Search (as in Google search) and mobile (telephony).

If we take Google (search), the idea of searching based on words/phrases and not having to know where the information is is fantastic. It has created a paradigm shift in the way we do things. We don't need to remember things. We don't need to remember where things are to be found. We have moved from facing difficulties in searching to making good use of the information that is now readily available. 

Mobiles, in the same way, have made a big change in the way we interact and communicate. Gone are the days when we had to wait 10 years (in India) to get a landline telephone installed. And so also the days of waiting for the postman to deliver letters from friends and relatives. We communicate instantly. Information about friends/relatives is immediately available. Now the question is: what do we with the information? 

But there are a few things I find irritating about Google search. I find that searches at the same time:

1. Give different number and ranking of results with the same keywords by two different people.
2. Give different number and ranking of results in the same computer in two different browsers (for example Internet Explorer and Chrome).
3. Give more results when more words are given in the search (I intuitively expect fewer results when I give more words in the search).

Another issue is that the number of results mentioned by Google is usually higher than the actual number of results (if we browse through each of the pages of the results we can observe this). All these make me feel that a more appropriate name for Google would be Googlantika OR Googlee OR Googlea.

Each of this is an irritant and causes me to wonder whether the search results are accurate. Of course I don't mean to say that bing or yahoo search are any better. I don't use them so I can't say how they behave. Google search is amazing but for these irritants.

Notwithstanding these irritants, Google search and mobile telephony have made a big impact in our lives. This makes me wonder how life will be 40 years hence, say in 2050. Will our travel be cut down drastically? Will we do most things through video telephony? (This is what my brother says will happen in the next few years).

Will we have an enhanced "google earth" which can show streaming video if we were to give the latitude/longitude and altitude of any location? How would life be then?

Want to know how your grandmom is? Sure, specify her location and see for yourself (provided you are given security sufficient access by her). Maybe the tool that exists then won't even need her location. She (like any mobile today) may inform her whereabouts and the tool can find out where she is.

Will the world become like European Union where there is free movement of people? And maybe we will have fewer currencies and languages spoken?

Will information search become hierarchical instead of flat meaning an automatic ability to search deeper in a restricted area and make information available from sites that require further levels of authentication?

Maybe our daily diet will be available as a concentrate/tablet (so many calories of proteins, so many of carbohydrate etc). Maybe there will be another tablet which will extract so many calories from our body obviating the need for exercising.

Maybe we can charge our mobiles through wireless. No need to be connected to an electrical outlet. Computers will become the size and shape of an ebook reader (with no separate mouse or keyboard). And may perhaps look a normal telephone when earphone is hooked to it. Videocalls can then make sense. Imagine having a videocall when you have the mobile right next to your ear? What does the other person see?

And maybe our homes will be standardized so we won't always come back or stay in the same home. Maybe we will decide which "home" to get back to. Nor which office to go to.

Maybe we could tailor make our babies. Just provide the specification. An enhanced IVF will do the rest.

And perhaps we will find a way to transmit smell. And color of our dress, furniture can be changed at will ("personalized any time").

How does all this sound!!

International Beach Volleyball Tournament - Chennai Challengers

Recently there was an international beach volleyball tournament held at Chennai with teams participating from many countries in Europe, Asia and USA. Some teams had participated in Beijing Olympics and some had won international tournaments.

I am interested in volleyball so I went to see the matches. It was interesting and in sharp contrast to the Commonwealth Games starting in Delhi tomorrow. The volleyball tournament of course was far smaller in scale. There was only one “beach” stadium with 6 courts, makeshift stands. And competition money was probably less than $100,000 for all the teams put together. The organizers did not mention the schedule of the tournaments so one went there to watch whichever match was being played.

I saw a white couple with a small (about 4 year old) Indian boy. They seemed to be family. The woman and the child were talking to each other and very comfortable with each other. I was wondering how they were communicating. Which language? I never did find out till the end. But it was interesting to see the small boy sitting on the “mother’s” lap and chatting with her. 

I was watching an Indian woman’s team play against a German team (many countries were represented by more than one team). The Indian team had one player who was lean, tall and dark who played pretty well. The other Indian player was quite short and stout and not nimble enough to play at this level. Quite an odd combination of players in that team.

Of course the Indian women were conservatively attired and not in biks (femmo's abbreviation for bikinis) as the other women were.

Later I was talking to one of the players. I asked him where he was from. He said he was from Greece. I asked him whether he liked Chennai and whether this was his first time in Chennai. He said yes he liked Chennai but it was too hot. I wondered what he would have said if he had come to Chennai in the middle of summer (in April/May).

On the whole the tournament was fairly well organized (it was certainly not a world class stadium by any stretch of imagination), the “stadium” was created by cordoning off a section of the beach with a temporary perimeter constructed around it. I think the players had a fairly good time playing here.

When I was taking pictures (videos actually), I came to appreciate the difficulty in tracking the ball closely. I had to ensure that the camera was following the ball and that the ball could be seen at all times (while I realized this, I didn’t do a great job of it). And I also had to zoom in to get close to the action. And if I zoomed in then tracking the ball became much more difficult. Optimizing the two was quite difficult and I was very apprehensive about the (quality of) pictures I took. When I watched the replay I breathed again. They didn’t turn out as badly as I had expected. The video shooting of the game was an interesting exercise, quite an eye opener for me.