Steve Jobs' cheek!!!!

Mac OS X Leopard got released a while ago.
Apparently the new OS has a new set of icons for generic things.
This is the one for a PC



Cruel I must say....

This was ripped off from here. Do take a look. Its long and technical but nice...

The experience of a common man with "The Indian Face of Global Banking"

"The Indian Face of Global Banking".
That's the motto of ICICI Bank. I am a hapless Indian stuck with a lot of accounts with that bank and I don't think I can handle so much Global Banking.
It all started when I came to Singapore (It usually does these days...)
I was living in Bangalore previously and maintained a "Resident Savings Account" with ICICI. When I came to Singapore I technically became an NRI and to keep my account running to pay EMIs etc, I had to convert it into an NRI account.
Now began the problem.
I called up the phone banking service. All the calls were attended promptly by young sounding voices which quickly took on an American accent as soon as I informed them that I was calling from Singapore.
I called up thrice to double-check what forms I had to fill to do the necessary conversion. They all said the same thing: Fill a simple form, attach a few documents, send it along and the conversion will happen in two weeks.
I did the needful.
Two weeks after sending the forms along, I received a very nice email saying that now I have fill another five page long form and also write a letter requesting the de-linking of my investment account.
I wrote a stinging reply pointing out that I had called up the phone-banking service and they never mentioned any five page long form.
The same chap replied on the following lines:
Sir, We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. Please fill the form given in the following link (which turned out to be a dead one). Alternatively you can download the attached form and send it to us.
Closer inspection of the attached form revealed that it actually was a form spelling out who I wanted my money to go to in the event of my death!!!!
Was that ICICI Bank officer trying to send me a message? (You better update your nomination! You might need it if you come to India!)
I replied in an even more stinging language to this gentleman. In reply another lady wrote back with a plausible looking form attached.
While I sat at my desk and stared at this form (Its five pages and I don't want to fill it), another nice gentleman from ICICI called. He wanted me to take a premium NRI account. When I told him the above story and also what he could do with that offer, he replied, "Sir, RBI rules require you to open this premium account also".
Now I lost it.
I told him in no uncertain terms of all the different versions of the rules and regulations I have been hearing from different officers in different departments of ICICI Bank. I also told him that if according to rules I have to open that premium account, I would like the process stopped and I would begin the process of closing my accounts fort-with. He put me on hold and came back fifteen minutes later (while I listened to some ICICI Bank jingle again and again) and went back on his earlier claim about the rules requiring me to open that premium account.
One funny portion of the conversation went like this:

Me: Your phone banking executive told me that I will only need to fill a one-page form. Now you are telling me that the process requires me to fill a five-page form.
He: Sir its possible that the process might have changed.
Me: So what's the guarantee that it will not change again while I fill this form?
He: Sir, processes don't change!
Me: (Sometime later) You told me that RBI rules require me to open an NRE account, now you are saying something different when I wanted to close the account.
He: Sir, this account has a lot of benefits, you get tax-free returns, you can send a lovely gift to your loved ones, you don't need a minimum balance, it can give you a blow-job....blah .... blah...

Whew! I will fill this form and humour these guys, but if they create any more problems, I am closing my accounts. I wish there were some way of talking to the top bosses of that bank and show them what their organization does....

You can get in anytime you want but you can never leave...

So said a very dear wing-mate of mine on Yahoo Messenger a few days ago when I informed him that these days I have switched to a Mac.
I must admit that I feel the same.
I have always used a Windows/MS-DOS PC. That's how I came to know computers. I remember very vividly my confusion the first day in IIT Kharagpur's Communication's Lab when the LINUX machine there refused to entertain my 'DIR' command.
Before that I did know that there is this thing called the operating system and that there are varieties other than MS-DOS and WINDOWS.
I first came across a Mac in Georgia Tech where a maverick professor installed only Apple computers in his lab and threw the other machines out. Then the difference did not hit me.
After that first brush, I just heard bits and pieces about Apple Computers. And all those bits and pieces were not very encouraging for me to even consider a switch. Most of the times people brushed off Mac's with the argument that once you buy it, you are stuck.

"You have to buy software for it all the time since free/pirated software is not available"

"Any documents you make on a Mac will not be compatible with any other types of machines and since most use Windows, stick to it"

I heard a lot of arguments on these lines.
But one fine day, I decided to buy a laptop. I also decided that I don't want something that everyone else has. I wanted something different.
So I plumped for a Mac. (Besides all that, it also turned out to be one of the cheaper lappys on offer)

Four months after making that decision, I don't regret it at all. My Mac is a wonderful piece of work. It works great. Its user-interface is mind-blowing. It looks gorgeous and has a very long battery life. Also, I did not need to buy any extra software. All the stuff I needed was available for free on the net. My Boss did hand me a "gray" copy of iWork but I have not used it much. I am quite happy with OpenOffice. And you know, in the four months this baby has been with me, it has NEVER hung on me!
Not that it has been entirely plain sailing. I have had major problems with my chat clients. Yahoo messenger for Mac OS X does not have voice functionality and there is no Google Talk client for Mac. I have had to do with iChat configured for Google Talk and it is less than perfect.

Having said that, I still would plump for a Mac any day.
Today my room-mate brought home his newly purchased Dell with Vista. While he sat beside me and I set it up for him, I had some difficulty hiding my distaste. Its slow, it has a lot of flab (the AERO interface), the 3D view, widgets and search look like direct copies of ideas pioneered by Mac. Plus for all this you have to put in 2 GB of RAM and it still works with hiccups while my Mac OS zips along with half that RAM.

I have never been a computer fanatic. I could never figure out what made people queue up in front of computer stores waiting for the new software/processor release. I know now. The new version of Mac OS "Leopard" comes out in less than a week and though I will not be in the queue on the first day, I will definitely buy it in a couple of months after it gets released in Singapore.


And yes, I got in the Mac band-wagon when I wanted, but now I cannot and will not leave...

Trying to uproot an addiction...

In my twenty-six years of existence, there have not been many things I have been addicted to. There was a time when I could not live without taking my nightly walk and listening to Aerosmith. That time lasted for about six months. I still have that pair of CDs here but when I look at them, I can only vaguely recall the passion I felt for its music. Its like meeting an old girl-friend long after the relationship is over and wondering what drove you to the heights of passion you experienced.

Anyway, I don't like being addicted to anything. These days I am addicted to this book called, "The Namesake". I don't have much work at office these days. Whenever I come back home (which is very early these days), I see that book lying on my cupboard. I have to try very hard to control my impulse to grab it and read it for the umpteenth time.

This is an effort to get over my addiction... After all the library lease runs out this week!

I still have not been able to figure out how book-reviewers think up the balderdash they churn out either in panning or apotheosizing a tome. Get a load of this:
"Against all that is irrational and inevitable about life, Lahiri posits the timeless, borderless eloquence and permanence of great writing"
or even better:
"The Namesake is a quietly moving first novel... Intensely absorbing....locates the universality in precisely evoked individuality"!!!!

This is my humble effort to review this gem. And if you are looking for words like that, please read no further.

I liked this book because the author, with great insight, laid bare what an immigrant feels when he leaves behind everything he calls his own to start a new life in a foreign land. To begin with, you yearn for your Mom's cooking, the surly auto-drivers on the streets of Bangalore and the "Musambi Juice" you used to drink at that shop in Brigade Road after a few beers on a Friday night. And you yearn for something else: A feeling of belonging.

As time passes, the yearning goes down and slowly, the bonds that though strained, still bind you to your motherland, give way and you become part of a diaspora. You have still the remnants of an erstwhile identity. Your children have none. Gogol is neither a 100% American nor a 100% Indian. He can either try to reinforce his American identity and be "More American than the Americans" or try to get back to his Indian roots and be a "Born again Indian". If he does nothing, he will be an "American Indian". Try as he might, he will not be able to evade one of these labels.
Though Gogol has it easy. Atleast he has a well-defined cultural system or a way of life to identify with in India. A "diasporaic" Bihari-Gujarati in Singapore has not even that.... (Thank God taking the next flight to Bangalore will not label me a "Born again Indian"!!!! Too early for that!)

My most favourite character in this book is of course, Ashima. The book begins with her and almost ends with her. She loves her family and makes 67 Pemberton Road a place which wherever they might be, Gogol and Sonia will always consider home. She is emotional, yet strong. She is the most help-less creature in this book but touchingly so. She reminds me of a help-less mother hen who is drenched in the rain and none of her kids are around to help her. That she gets up and helps herself does not in anyway decrease her vulnerability. At the end when she is left all alone, she makes it a point to pick up the pieces of her life and live her life herself without being a "burden" on either of her children. This requires a lot of courage.
I am always touched by the reference to a "teary" Ashima going back home after dropping Gogol off to college for the first time while he, un-caring, goes about doing the formalities required in changing his name.

Parents are like that. So are the children.

The focus of the book is primarily on Ashima in the beginning and on Gogol at the end.
Gogol strikes me as a slightly irresponsible child in the beginning but he quickly matures into an adult who can share his happiness but keeps his sorrow to himself. That Christmas eve, he discovers that his marriage is over but he keeps it to himself lest he ruin the holiday season for Ashima and Sonia. What are most touching are the little things he does for Moushumi.

"Occasionally, in the apartment, he finds odd remnants of her life before he's appeared in it, her life with Graham - the inscription to the two of them in a book of poems, a postcard from Provence stuffed into the back of a dictionary, addressed to the apartment they had secretly shared. Once, unable to stop himself, he'd walked to this address during his lunch break, wondering what her life had been back then."

Its very difficult not to be moved by the pathos of his love which is re-paid by nothing else but submission on the part of Moushumi. Moushumi being a free spirit cannot last in that situation for long and does not.
And that's the tragedy of life and love.