[January 16 2006]

Goodbye upsaid

Dear constant reader,

For reasons purely economical, I am moving the blog to http://sodabottle.blogspot.com.

Upsaid has been a great place to be for the past two and a half years, but I cant afford it anymore. When i started this blog upsaid was a free service and went paid after a year. It costs 2$ per month and i am not getting paid in dollars any more. So i have moved to the site of my erstwhile tamil blog. My subscription runs out sometime at the end of February, so this blog should be up till that time.

So see you guys there

Posted by Bala at 7:44 am
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[January 09 2006]

guest lecturing...

Last friday was an interesting day. I went to deliver a guest lecture at an Arts & Science college at Aruppukottai. This being a small town college, the students were very very meek specimens and allowed me to "lecture" them for one and half hours without any booing. There was a typical "function" to "honor" the chief guest (i.e yours truly) where i was thanked profusely and introduced as a great wise man. I was in casual attire (complete with dirty jeans) and must have looked ridiculously young sitting in the dais being introduced as the great wise man.

The lecture itself was easy stuff - the topic was "introduct*ion to stock ma*rkets" and i was able to blabber something off the top of my head. After enduring me for one and half hours, they thanked me for my "glorious time" (honest, these were the exact words used), was given a momento ( ;-) ) and a "ponnadai" (which turned out to be a turkey towel) . They even bought me lunch at the best restaurent in town and saw me off. I was able to pull the lecture off, as the audience was a) from a small town b) mostly under grads. Evidently all those curses given to me by own lecturers during my college years had no effect and i escaped without any bruises..

Posted by Bala at 7:56 am
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[December 31 2005]

2006!

Resolution:
Earn 1 Million USD in 2 years.

Posted by Bala at 11:10 am
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[December 19 2005]

The myth of the sacred peasantry

I read in The Hindu a few days back that Indian Prime minister quoted Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village while talking about the agriculture sector growth in India. In particular he has quoted the following lines


Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.


(Can't find the exact link)

a bold peasantry? huh... This seems like another form of labour/brawn worship. A bold peasantry was needed in the days when the labor intensive feudal societies needed a huge supply of (uninformed) warm bodies to rot in the fields and the forges. Peasantry eulogisation is for CCCP propaganda ministry. Conferring sainthood to the guys in the business of food production, does nothing to improve their condition. On the contrary, it gives the impression they are somehow better than the others who earn their livelihood by other means. In the recent few months spent near and around the Tamil hinterland, i am hearing this vein of approach from most of the people. How many sacred tillers of the soil have to drink pesticides before we wise up?

===

PS : Apparently this dysfunctional approach to agriculture is seen even in Thirukkural, where the bearded guy intones uzhavukkum, thozhilukkum vandanai seivom - inferring that uzhavu and other thozhils are not one and the same...

Update
As man has pointed out in the comments, i have confused Bharathi and Thiruvalluvar. That said, there is indeed a kural which conveys the same difference as Bharathi's verse does. I forgot which one exactly, but distinctly remember reading this in Ki Rajanarayanan's Karisal Kattu Kadudasi

Posted by Bala at 7:42 am
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[December 14 2005]

You won't like it

You cannot please everyone everytime. For instance take the guy who ended up here after searching for "n*u*de india*n b@la". All i can say to him (with a sad shake of my head) is "dude, you dont want to see me naked"

Posted by Bala at 10:41 pm
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[December 10 2005]

Its her fault..

I learnt an interesting fact from my medieval european history lecturer today. While discussing the causes for the French Revolution, he said Louis XVI had a character flaw. Apparently Louis let his wife ( Marie Antoinette) control his affairs and Marie Antoinette being a "lady" wasnt suited for that sort of work and committed a lot of blunders and ultimately led to the French revolution. I have seen this "blame it on the bitch" approach before, but this one is unique.... Viva MCP ismm

Posted by Bala at 8:25 am
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[December 04 2005]

en peru maximus

Dear Constant Reader,

I have seen the light. I was flipping through the channels and stumbled upon the tamil dubbed version of Gladiator. I became transfixed, my finger got stuck in mid air unable to change the channel and my body started shaking with nervous bolts of energy. And I attained nirvana when i heard with my very own ears russell crowe uttering the magic words - en peru maximus decimus meridius

Posted by Bala at 3:06 am
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[November 29 2005]

Just another ex-techie

Guru includes my name in the list of techies who quit to do something else. I have been receiving a small stream of visitors from his post since then. Guru has mentioned i am doing my History degree after quitting my IT job. That is part of the story. I am a student only part of the time. I am moonlighting as a equity trader trying to make it big in the capital markets most of the time. To be honest, i have not hit my history books anytime lately. Still struggling with bollinger bands and elliot waves instead of medieval history.

oh and for those people (like my dad) who think i am an idiot.... the grass is definitely greener on this side ;-)


PS : Some one else also ended up here in this blog after googling for i quit my job software engineer . :-)))

Posted by Bala at 2:20 pm
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[November 25 2005]

portait of the author as a jay walker - Part I

I have started going for long walks again . Forced to take up this habit again partly because of boredom and partly because of my fast expanding girth. I walk around 2 to 3 hours now. I am fast getting to know the main roads of Madurai. I start from the office at KK Nagar. (thats about the northern end of Madurai), slowly make my way toward the inner city. I pass through goripalayam, walk under the stone bridge across vaigai (went over it today as vaigai is having a mild case of floods), lumber through simmakal and finally end up near the meenatchi temple. This takes about an hour and half and by the time i come in sight of the gopurams my legs start throbbing and go wobbly on me. I turn around and start slowly limping back to KK Nagar. Sometimes i have to take the bus and sometimes i make it all the way back. (The legs are getting accustomed to the three hour walking sessions now)

Madurai is by far the most "rustic" city i have lived in, but this is also the most interesting one for long walks. I didnt have the habit of walking in coimbatore, while chennai's heat was overwhelming. New York was the most promising one before madurai - roaming manhattan was one of the few perks in a miserable year spent in New York. But the Madurai experience rocks. This city-yet-not-a-city is a strange mixture of rural and semi urban sights. The traffic is very light and jay walking is easy. The drivers here are certainly very meek. I can practice the art of jay walking with much impunity and nonchalance without getting yelled at here. Antics which would have drawn choiciest abuse in chennai go unnoticed here. Four wheelers actually stop in the middle of the road at the sight of a raised hand (in chennai that would mean a straight ticket to the netherworld).

Did i mention the river (or what passes for a river) crossing?. Usually this cant be called a river (like i said, today is an exception as there is actually some water in the river thanks to a low pressure system that passed over southern tamil nadu) - even the city's sewage cant make this flow - its just a piddly stream of dirty brown water. And like all rivers which have the misfortune of flowing through a city, this doubles up as the city's sewage system cum defecating ground. Walking under the bridge certainly has its interesting moments - one cannot be sure when the guy going over it decides to take a leak and let it fly all over you...

will continue

Posted by Bala at 11:23 am
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[November 23 2005]

Books for November III

1) Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan stroud
2) The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer
3) Monsoon - Wilbur Smith

Posted by Bala at 8:38 am
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[November 17 2005]

Dolarhyde does dark lord

Guess who plays Lord Voldemort in the "Goblet of Fire" ? None other the great Red Dragon - Francis Dolarhyde himself..

Posted by Bala at 8:15 am
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[November 15 2005]

redemption for robert jordan?

Just finished reading the eleventh book in robert jordan's wheel of time series - knife of dreams. Must say i am impressed. The last four or five books in the series were essentially irritating exercises in prolonging the WOT franchise. The tenth book - crossroads of twilight was proverbially the last straw that broke my back. I gave up on jordan ever finishing the series and even became a member of an orkut community called "robert jordan can kiss my a$$". But Knife of Dreams indicates that jordan is back to moving the story forward. Wikipedia says there is only one more book left in this series. As they say can't wait to read the final book.

Posted by Bala at 6:45 am
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[November 13 2005]

Entrapment

I see that chennai craigslist page has been existing for a couple of months now. The personals section in craigslist have the potential to cause "stomach burn" (translates well into tamil) to a lot of people. (especially those who belong to the desperate tamil male category like myself).

How long will it be before one of our dumbf***s (read : culture warriors) stumble into this and go blabbing to the tamil media about how the personals in craigslist is causing the "moral degradation of the younger generation"?. In this age of under cover operations, i wont put it beyond the likes of dinamalar and company to plant a phony personal for a casual encounter, lure the unfortunate responder to some place tantalising and sic the police on them. Any one planning to respond to the personals in chennai craigslist, make sure to protect yourself, lest you end up in the front pages of our esteemed tamil media clad in your underwear.

Posted by Bala at 1:22 am
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[November 09 2005]

I am sick

No THAT sick. sick as in running nose, high temperatures and recurring headaches. And watering eyes and sneezes to that. And thanks to the assorted lot of cyclones, deep depressions and low pressure systems, that keep popping up in the bay of bengal lately, the weather is turning miserable here. So dear constant reader, i might go on a short interrugnum till the phlegm stops dripping...

Posted by Bala at 12:19 pm
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[November 08 2005]

Books for November II

1) I am spock - mr spock
2) Insomnia - Stephen King
3) Raja Thilagam - Sandilyan
4) Knife of Dreams - Robert Jordan

Posted by Bala at 11:37 am
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