Brown Motion

A span of 100 years.  A century of changes.  Human beings have been through a lot of it.  Good, bad, mediocre, atrocious, hilarious, climactic, dazzling, exponential, exceptional.  Pick your adjective. From spare change to QR codes. From interpersonal dialog to text. From lack of clothing to fashionably less clothes. From starving in hunger to fashionably bulimic. From walking miles for water to running on rubber belts and then consuming (smart) water. From life threatening illness with no cure to overdosed deaths. From Teddy to Trump (or bear to a duck if you prefer animated analogies). In so doing one could easily argue we just came full circle.  And boy did we learn a thing or two? Or nothing? Not long ago in India kids woke up to the chants of the lord's name like a Pandurang or Vishnu, alternately that of Allah, in certain households and had to use that to their advantage or so the theory went.  The lord god watched them as they grew to be...

A movie review is like asking if you like Durian.  Or Ice Cream or Bacon.  Very personal.  In my opinion couple of films we watched this weekend fall in the bucket I will call stunningly stupid. As in no redemption qualities whatsoever. They cost me nothing.  Borrowed from the public library.  That was a plus.  And one of the films had a mildly watchable Alicia Vikander.  That film was titled 'Lara Cross Tomb Raider'.  While some infantile curiosity made me pick up the film it did have an element of action that kept it somewhat watchable.  Using the hackneyed trick of creating mythical oriental sounding names from an alphabet soup to depict long lost islands in the sea of Japan, to overusing CGI to a somewhat skimpily clad skinny woman running around falling debris the director was able to keep me watching the predictable ending. The story lacks any originality or purpose and is stupid on many levels.  I will not divulge all the ...

Why do people do or say things on other people's behalf?  What about bewhole?  This whole half assed business is disturbing I tell you. And if they did go and do something on someone else's behalf what happens to the other half?  As to the quality of halves which one is the better one?   Gents to be polite always introduce their spouse as the better half.  But then that could simply mean they themselves are the best half? There are so many other halves out there at this point that there is no point in even discussing it.  But yet here we are. Doing just that.  Speaking of the haves and have nots they too have their share of halves.  Which means the have nots have effectively a quarter.  Of whatever it is. Which leads to the haves getting three quarters.  See four quarters make it whole.  No wonder there is disparity and a whole bunch of tension around having. But when it comes to have and to hold there is no guarant...

To sell out crowds.  LOL.  Not quite.  In fact the opposite.  Cold hard truth.  In bay area aka Silicon Valley the pressure is apparent and present.  How to get in to an elite Univ or College without fail when you have straight As.  But wait -- what if I do have a stellar academic profile.  That is not enough. Today we sat in on a session (myself in full disclosure to get material to write another blog) hosted by an Asian entrepreneur that talked about his and his team's unique value add offering to a child in school.  As in anywhere between middle school and high.  We are talking kids as young as 12 who literally had all their permanent teeth come in a few days ago.  Thus begins the new age of grooming.  Used to be brides (some in their teens) were prepared and still are in many parts of the developing world to find a suitor and get them wed.  From diet to beauty it is all a choreographed sequence with hopes to ensu...

To an Indian ia lifestyle choice is to broadcast unsolicited advice to others.  No matter what the venue or the occasion the average Indian whether from the north or south will unabashedly dole out his perspective, recommendations and critique regardless of decorum. What decorum? This advice takes the form of hilarious to foul language or yelling from roof tops or streets to putting up signs to admonish any random reader of said signs. One such appears in a local Shiva Vishnu temple of the bay area.  The attendees (aka devotees if you asked them what they would prefer to be called), at said site which is a sprawling campus by the way, tend to park their vehicles and wander in with shoes which are left in myriad locations around the perimeter of the temple.  Since the Indian tradition advises removal of dirty footwear outside God's home these accouterments get left behind like a trail of bread crumbs from the parking lot all the way to the very threshold of the l...

Is there truth in advertising? This is the modern day yoda question.  I just finished watching a docu/mocumentary about advertising paid for by a bunch of advertisers.  It was titled - POM Wonderful presents - the Greatest Movie ever sold. Created and directed by Morgan Spurlock who is a comic, film producer and director.  This movie was fun to watch.  When I was in my MBA program I had to decide a subject to major in and I chose not to pick Marketing.  Why?  Some innate idea that prevented me from pitching in to help others pitch.  What I do not know but just this wonky notion of why should anyone pitch anything to anyone? Well I guess to that extent I am a sell out.  Only a little.  You see I started an experiment recently that my loyal readership will have noticed and that is the annoying ads scrolling on the right banner and the bottom of this blog. I did not have any ad space prior to a month ago for the many years I had this b...

Despite some wild fires burning north of us and the wind gusts blowing south I decided I was going to go and complete a hike I had been planning to do for months. The result of the wildfire was that the entire surrounding area in the east bay hills was lit up in a dull orange haze as if the light was filtered from a stained glass.  The air quality left much to be desired but the wind kept the air cooler. I set out after lunch from the parking and passed some old growth Oaks, among other native species.  As long as I kept in the shade of the larger trees I was actually comfortable and cool.  Some had lived a full life and since given up and gone flat.. I startled some deer in the open meadow when I walked down one of the trails that was not in the shade. A creek that runs through the hill was bone dry except where the omnipresent shade did not let the surface water dry out.  Cows could be seen slaking their thirst on the dribs of moisture left in...

As time passes you find new authors to read.  But there are some who leave an impression in your mind.  One such from yesteryear was a Scotsman called Alistair Maclean, who wrote the book titled 'The Guns of Navarone' about a heroic attempt by a ragtag team of Englishmen, Greek and who knows what to blow up strategic guns operated by the Nazis on a fictitious island off the coast of Turkey.  The book was written circa 1960 and a film was made by Columbia Pictures shortly after. Starred Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn among other stalwarts of the era.  I watched it on DVD after some four decades of having watched it as a kid in a theater in India.  Now I paid close attention to lot of things including the fact that all the maps used in the film were created by a Cartoon production company in the UK. The dialog is engaging without being glib.  A line from one of the chief's to his butler is "men can do great things during times of war with courage and ing...

The kid had a race to run.  As aging parents we decided we would go walk.  So dropped the kid then went and found a quite neighborhood to take it slow.  Take pictures along the way.  People watch.  Have a chai. Crisp weather with a slight breeze.  On the peninsula amidst lush manicured landscapes.  Sun playing with clouds.  People walking dogs.  Some attempting Chinese meditation techniques while some exercising out in the open. Before long time to go get the kid back and see if lunch was on the agenda.  It was.  Back down the hill to a Thai place.  Delicious red curry with some fried shrimp and other accompaniments with lots of chilli and basil and other tropical spices. In the city named after the Foster family.  Who invested here and put down land fill and mud to create something out of muck and marsh of the bay.   Seriously expensive real estate.  If you can call it real.  It is for so...

Human endurance.  An X factor.  No one can accurately describe what it is.  It is somewhere between genetic code and willpower.  Some have it in spades.  And then some.  There were three that did.  They are all mountaineers. Meru is a documentary directed by one of the climbers of this dizzying peak in the Indian portion of the Himalayas.  It is a fascinating picture showcasing the human ability to surmount odds and pursue a passion where it becomes a matter of life and death.  We watched this film today and were blown away by not just the expedition but the art of film making in what can only be described as arduous circumstances. Meru is approx 22,000 feet altitude which makes it about 75% of the height of Mt. Everest, the tallest peak in the world.  But the challenge to summit it for a human is not the mere height, which is still staggering - just around where jet planes fly - but the sharp final ascent on a granite wall that ca...