Sweet Surprises

Surprises have their own way to amuse you and please you. And as I write this post on two experiences I realize sometimes bad surprises too have an element of sweetness in them

The first surprise I got was not planned by anyone just happened by chance and a small one.

So I have been doing late nights at office for quite a while. Being a bachelor, I solely depend on the mercy of my cook (to cook some good good) and my room mates.

Now by the time I would come back from office, the food often would be very cold. Now, my state of bachelorhood has taught me one thing, to love food and not the state of the food. So I am pretty ok with cold food, never bother to warm daal, sabji or rotis. Anyway, I used to be so hungry that anything would be delicacy for me.

But for past 2 weeks whenever I would come back sometimes there would not be enough food left .I would see other plates, where extra food has been left to waste and cringe and deliberate about , what am I working so much for, what am I living for and if it is worth it? But as usual I uwed to take whatever food is left and sit in front of TV late night, I would forget about everything else, eat quickly, watch TV for an hour and then go to sleep. Not that I don't bother. I told my room-mates over weekend to get some more food cooked but it sort of never happened.

So that day, when I came back, my room-mates were still up watching Euro Cup. I proceeded to kitchen, expecting what is in store for me. So there was pressure cooker, giving hint of some daal, covered kadahi giving hint of some vegetable and two thalis again covered.

So as I proceeded with my thali, uncovering each vessel by turn, I got the first very sweet surprise. There was bhindi, that too in good amount. There was a bit of surprise because of the amount but also since none of my room mates like bhindi, they never get bhindi made at home except only when I raise a big stink about it.

Next was pressure cooker, daal was there, just ok. Anyway I am not a big daal fan. Next in line were rotis. Today rotis were good enough in no. and in good consumable state.

Then I got the biggest surprise in the next plate. The plate was full of salad, cucumber, lemon (my favorite), chilies, tomatoes. Trust me, by the very look of it I felt elated. And that day I didn't think of any of those philosophies, just enjoyed my food and TV.

It was a fulfilling meal and although not the best of the food that I have ever had but the satisfaction after having it still lingers on.

As I finish writing this I was amused remembering a different surprise.

The difference was that the food that day was extremely crappy. I was in Mysore that time and a tiffinwallah used to deliver the tiffin for me at home. So that night I was late again, opened the tiffin to see the extremely crappy food. As I stared to evaluate consumable-ness of the food items, I left out the sabji, leaving me with some roti, rice and daal and watery curd. As I saw the food I began to realize that the experience would be a repeat of what I used to have in my college hostel. Ah, that boiled daal, that unidentifiable sabji.

Since the food was hostel-type, streategy had to be similar, I mix rice, daal and curd (all time savior for hostellers) to make a paste of it, then used paste as a sabji with roti.As I was eating it, I remembered of the jokes that me and my frnds used to crack over lunch about food, the ingredients, strategies to digest it and then stories of horrible things being found in daal. And slowly I began to enjoy the food, not the taste of it but the repository of old jokes. Again food was crappy experience was not.

Surprises Ah! so who doesn't like them, especially if they are good. But I think we should give even bad surprises a chance, who knows we may be pleasantly surprised. :)

No Research is Enough

They say sometimes even research is not enough.

I am planning to buy a laptop and somehow I'm hooked to DELL XPS laptop. I then researched a couple of websites (deals2buy and dell website) and did some comparison between 5 models of laptop and came up with the excel sheet below.

DELL XPS LAPTOP	Laptop 1	Laptop 2	Laptop 3	Laptop 4	Laptop 5
Model	M1530	M1330	M1330	M1330	M1530
Processor	T7500	T5500	T5500	T7250	T7250
GHz	2.2	1.83	1.83	2	2
RAM(GB)	3	4	4	3	3
HDD(GB)	320	250	320	250	250
OS(VISTA)	PREMIUM	PREMIUM	PREMIUM	PREMIUM	PREMIUM
SCREEN(")	15.4	15.4	13.3	13.3	15.4
Bluetooth(802.11)	b/g	b/g/n	a/b/g/n	b/g	b/g
Webcam	2 MP	2 MP	2 MP	2 MP	2 MP
Graphics Card	128 MB NVIDIA	128 MB NVIDIA			128 MB NVIDIA
CD	RW	RW	RW	RW	RW
DVD	RW	RW	RW	RW	RW
Extras		Travel Mouse	Biometric	Biometric	Biometric
Weight(Kgs)	2-3	2-3	<2	<2	2-3
Price($)	1058	1002	1003	1049	1049

Now I am confused between these 5 models as well. So I throw it open to you, what do you think would be better or rather as I intend to choose, best. Now the first question that you'll throw at me is what are my needs.

तो अब एक software engineer की कितनी जरूरतें होंगी, थोड़ा सा programming, थोडी सी movies, थोडी मस्ती, बस और क्या। Just that I don't want to end up with a slow or a very heavy laptop , to me they are as good as pieces of junk. हांलांकि मैं विस्टा नहीं लेना चाहता लेकिन मेरे पास कोई विकल्प उपलब्ध नहीं हैं।

आपको क्या लगता है कौन सा लैपटॉप सर्वश्रेष्ठ है (Which laptop do you think is the best)?

Inspiration or Conspiration

watch these two videos....



and now this video....





by now most of you may be knowing that inspiring IPL ad was "inspired" from Yankees ad on Fox TV sports commercial.

The only question is is there something like an inspiration in the field of advertising?

I can imagine it in movies. I can watch Memento and then get inspired and then write an entirely new script (suiting local audience) and make Rajini and someone else can get inspired and make Ghajini. In the end they are all different products. If I take Leon the professional, copy frame by frame and dialogue by dialogue and make Bichchhu that is not inspiration, that's conspiration (pardon the bad joke) or simply copying.

Now I just thought, in advertising the main art would be "how" to convey your message across. The word "how" can encompass a whole lot of details, but the word is the mootpoint. But if you get inspired by this "how" it surely won't come across as inspiration in the final cut!!

P.S. I am still searching who wrote those lines in IPL ad, they are really awesome.

Migration =?= Blood Brothers =?= Prarambha =?= Positive

If =?= would mean "how is related to" what would be your answer.

Well they are abstract words, but my only aim is to compliment a few people, albeit late, but in good time for the wonderful effort they made.

And the answer would be AIDS. Yes, these movies were part of AIDS Jaago campaign last year.

The words above are the titles of four small movies directed by Mira Nair, Vishal Bharadwaj, Santosh Sivan and Farhan Akhtar in that order. I remember having read somewhere that it was the brainchild of Mira Nair. These movies were even shown on 1st December (World AIDS Day) on MTV.

Now they have been been screened free on Jaman (here). I think its no use giving brief plot of each movie, since each movies being roughly 15-20 minutes long, any takeaway from this blog would be a spoiler. But there are some thoughts on these movies that I'd like to share.

So warning here to go and watch the movies first then come back and finish reading it. Also advising you all to just go and watch the movie rather than read the sub-text before watching the movie.

Blood Brothers, was one amazing story where story's progress would be anyone's nightmare, the end everyone's heavenly relief. I think this is one movie where the real embarrassment, grief is shown in one brother and courage and spirit to fight in another.

Prarambha, to me appeared a bit pot-pourri of messages director wanted to convey but the end result was something Bollywoodish- it's a good deal if you are willing to believe the goodness of the story.

Positive, again was a movie which hammers its message slowly and you actually get to know how would you feel in this situation no matter which character you associate yourself in the movie. The son's touchy temperament, mother's patience and having made truce with situations and father's repentance and attempt to get his family back.

Migration, was another classic. I really appreciated how this movie folds itself in the last moments. In the end you have a pregnant urban mother, an HIV+ rural family.

You may claim there are enough giveaways in the movie to know who-gave-to-whom. But as the street-play portrays you never know who did the character in the movie contract it from. I think you'll appreciate the ending more if I argue that hints in the movie were not enough to blame one person so we have an open-ended movie. You just know that nearly everyone in the movie is now HIV+ and they don't know who they got it from. Just like the urban housewife might feel later, who did she get it from, his husband and she might have infected the rural worker or from the worker and she later spread it to her husband.

I believe if one understands this spread-network factor in HIV and give it a thought, once can't think of unprotected sex (at all?). Another real beauty was to portray that spread of HIV infects both rich and poor alike. I would rate this movie as the best of all (despite the fact that I hate Shiney Ahuja).

But overall, all the movies were good in spreading message of safe sex while also trying to explore how your families, friend, society and above all YOU react in these situations.

P.S. I will post EPL Vs IPL comparison-II a bit later.

EPL Vs IPL - Comparison - I

Given the recent hype IPL has been enjoying, I decided to do a small comparison here:

League: Governing, Game Format, Finances

Criteria/League	IPL	EPL
Year of Formation	2008	1992
Season	April-May	August-May
No. of Franchises	8	20 (over 40 leagues have played)
No. of Matches	59	380
Location of games	Night matches on Home and away basis	Home and away basis
Revenue	Yet To Be Seen	3.7 Billion $ (2007-2008) by all clubs.
TV rights (including overseas rights)	~$1 Billion for 10 yrs by Sony (addition $10-15 million by Network Ten)	£45 million a year from 2007 to 2010
Prize Money	5 million $	£10 million
Governed By	IPL council	operated and jointly owned by the 20 member clubs.
Record Attendance for sports event (1,2)	13,094,307 (Average: 34,459) 2006-2007 EPL	425,622 (Average: 30,401) 2006-07 Commonwealth Bank Series

Finances:

Prize Money: per se is not such a big attraction in either case. EPL is owned by member clubs, so members draw their money from money pool with EPL accumulated mainly by broadcasting revenues.

In case of IPL , the revenue share model in years one to five is that 80% of the revenues from media rights are being redistributed back to the franchises, and 60% of the central sponsorship revenue gradually reducing this amount over the life of the contract.

Individual club earnings are from stadium tickets, club advertisements for both leagues. So that will be key differentiating factor in earnings of clubs just like EPL (although some difference is created at Prize Money level as well). MANU Vs Liverpool may draw record crowds so these two clubs are far ahead in the year-end earnings amongst the 20 clubs.

(P.S.:I don't know on what basis is broadcasting revenue distributed among EPL clubs and on what basis will it be distributed to IPL clubs by IPL governing council.)

Absolute fan base may not be such a big factor since TV audiences have already been covered by TV rights, where both are on nearly equal footing.

Stadium attendances will be the key differentiating factor. Average stadium attendance may be close but absolute is what is going to earn money here. So here IPL loses out and again since it is hosting much less no. of games.

EPL registers record attendances in both home and away games. Enough heat has been generated for IPL and all matches are being hosted in Indian cities (some like Kolkata which have recorded upto 100,000 in ODI matches) so here too IPL is matching upto EPL's strength.

Merchandise wise anyone can guess IPL will be nowhere close to EPL. IPL franchises are still building their clubs while EPL has a legacy of 16 yrs behind it and merchandise forms a decent part of premiership club incomes.

Conclusion:

IPL may lose out to EPL because EPL' season is longer so more matches and more money. IPL may again just lost out to EPL on per match basis as well since EPL's tickets are again overpriced (184$ for a 2006-2007 Arsenal match!!) which may not be a feasibility in India. Also IPL clubs may have negligible merchandise sales.

Click here to see 07/08 Ticket Prices for Premier League Clubs.

P.S.: I don't follow EPL so there may be inaccuracies here. Correct me if I am wrong.

Addendum

Read Ganesh's comments, I think there are certain correction to contribution of merchandise sales in my post. Also I mis-understood the TV rights part. Figures for EPL are per club.