Sachin Tendulkar

After that rather.... depressing.. post, and the rather longish hiatus.. its me back again with more of my stuff.

Lots have been happening, like, Sehwag scoring a triple ton, his mom saying that his fiancee is responsible for it. But whatever, whoever says.... Sehwag is Sehwag... apna Veeru ....and may he entertain non-cricket purists and cricket purists alike for years to come.

What fortunately dint materialise since yesterday's proceedings was Dee war between the Wall Fans and Sachin fans. Team interests and all fine, but it would take a really brave heart to declare when Sachin was just 6 runs away from a silent and overshadowed double century. I, for one, was really surprised to see it. Team India etc fine, but c'mon man... for the great man's sake, keeping in mind his immense contribution to the game, and also considering the fact that he was at worst a coupla overs from the 200 they shoulda played on. Wonder what went on behind the scenes between the acting captain, captain and the coach.

Which brings me to a relevant point.... Are we seeing the beginning of the decline of Sachin Tendulkar? Is there enough signs to prove so? Does he actually not contribute in crunch games?

Lemme try answering these qs one-by-one.
1) No, Sachin is not declining. In my opinion, he is undergoing the transition from being the mainstay to being one more contributor. Team India has progressed to a stage, where he is one more world class batsman in the team, and his failure will not affect the general performance. It does probably take sometime to adapt to a less pressure role from a high pressure role. Imagine an armyman who has come home after being relieved of duties on the field during war. He will take sometime to adapt to the society. I think thats precisely what is happening to Sachin.

2) Well, look at the world Cup, the Aus-NZ triseries and the early stages of the VB series, and look at his test record of 2004 and that is sufficient to prove that there are no signs to prove that he is declining. He is adjusting to his new role wonderfully well, and I am sure he is gonna serve us effectively for at least 4 more years. He had a rotten test performance in 2003, and mebbe in 2002 too(by his usual standards) agreed, and I am sure he has decided to compensate for both the years this year! We have series against Aussies and South Africans later this year, and I am sure he will shine and remove any doubts in any skeptics mind.

3) This is perhaps the biggest bullshit. Unfortunately, statistics seem to support this statement. But, as Sidhu says, statistics are like miniskirts, they hide more than they reveal. :) In international cricket, every game is a crunch game. And when Sachin gets out, it becomes crunchier, and tends to stay in the memory for long. In a multi-nation tournament(like the World cup), every game is a must-win game, if you have to reach the finals. Unfortunately, when he gets out in finals, the fact that we are in the finals because of this great man is immediately forgotten. If the skeptics are ok with him failing in other games and playing well only in finals, then he wont hv any games left to play well, coz usually, he is single handedly responsible for getting the team into the finals. Why do people forget this? What harm has he done to all these skeptics?

So ppl wake up, and acknowledge the contributions of this great guy towards the game of cricket and towards the Indian team's fortunes. Please dont wait with brickbats everytime he returns to the pavilion. May he bring more accolades to the Indian team and may India shine!! :)

--Avi

Depression se ladaai

Turning on the funny bone when the mind is depressed is very difficult. But humour is a great medicine to cure depression, and above all its free too. But, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The catch is, the humour cannot come from within the self. So you would have to go looking for that person, who can come with some witty humour. But when u r all lonely and stuff, when you dont know, when and where from you are gonna see the next human, it is difficult not to stay depressed. Pretty complicated huh??

Well, I guess I would explore the depths of my mind to come up with something which can remove my depression. It shouldn't be too difficult for a guy like me, who has humour overflowing from within(according to ppl). But then, Mr Depression has a rather curious and somewhat effective way of suppressing non-serious emotions, and I would try my best to fight him with the will to remain unconquered.

Usually, if I am depressed, ppl who are near and dear to me get affected too... I guess depression is contagious, spreads through wired and wireless mediums. That could be a cool technological breakthrough, or mebbe a technological catastrophe. Viruses only affect the computer, but a disease that can affect the user, is something terrible. Scientists could well take note of this phenomenon and move into overdrive to find a remedy. But wrking overdrive is probably a chief cause for depression, so here we would hv a classic situation where a researcher falls prey to the exact disease he is trying to cure. Becomes very filmi..... but then, films are after a portrayal of reality, right?

So, it is best to find the remedy for this from within the self. One very good way, something that I follow, is that I hv a folder in my mail client labelled jokes. I started browsing through it (I hv jokes accumulated for the past 2 years, at the rate of at least 15-20 jokes a day) from bottom up. Trust me, it works wonderfully. Somewhere after reading 15-20 jokes, I forgot what I was depressed about. Another 10 jokes, I started laughing and another 5 jokes i was ROTFL(Rolling On The Floor Laughing, for the ignorant). When you are in this kinda mood, you are reminded of the reason for depression, and more often than not, u end up questioning if that reason really deserved the onset of Mr Depression. The moment a question like this pops out, you are cured!!

Of course, sometimes the reason can be a bit more profound, and the question may not pop out. Even the jokes folder wont help. Then I would suggest that you break the loneliness, and go find some engaging company, someone whose presence/voice is really soothing to the senses. Or listen to some good music or better, watch a cricket match!!! :) A cricket match like the Karachi one will give rise to so many other emotions that Mr Depression has no choice but to wait for another opportunity to invade. Watch a re-run and see the effects! :)

All people who read this and adopt some of these methods to fight depression, do let me know if it is effective. Maybe its time I consider a career change!! ;)

--Avi

P.S: If u thought I was depressed, forget it. There is nothing in life that can drive me to so much despair that I hv to follow these steps. :). This is just an attempt to write a somewhat serious blog!!

Bhai ka commentary

Ae shahne.... kya jhakkas victory tha re baap.... Apun ki tho life ban gayi re mamu... chal aa tereko mein jaadu ki chappi deta hoon!!!

India kya kheli re baap... Laxman tho, by God, kaisa kachumbar banaaya Shoaib Akhtar ka... Koi tainshun nahi.... bas idhar ek chakka tho udhar ek chauka... Aur ye Balaji... saala Tirupati se direct Pakistan pahunch gayelaa hai asisaeech lagta hai... kaisa god ke maafik batting.. god bole tho.. apun ka Sachin... Oye tendlya kya catch pakdaa re... apun tho fidaa ho gayelaa hai tere catch pe.... tu tho sachchi apun sab ka God hai..

Aur woh Irfan.... ae baap.. kya bowler hai... kya inswing karta hai re mamu... apun ka tho dil aa gayelaa uske oopar.... agar aisaeech bowling karegaa tho woh tho saala uska record phod daalega... bole tho... waseem Akram... haan.. Waseem Akram ka record phod dalegaa...

Apun ke team ka woh fighting spirit hai na... arrey woheech... sab ek saath milke shoulder pe haath rakhkhe jump maarta hai na.... haan huddal......bilkul jhakkas hai baap.. aisaeech unity apun ke country mein hone ko maangta... phir koi terrorist werrorist apun ke country mein kuch karne ko nahi sakta... apun jaise bhai to kuch bhi nahi hai re baap!!

Chal bhidu, sunday se apun test match dekhegaa... kya? test match.. arrey woheech yaar.. jo paanch din mein safeed kapde pehen ke khelte hain.... chal tab tak thoda hafta collect kar be shahnee.. kharcha paani chahiye ki nahi!!!

--Avi

Maggi Preparation: A Scientific Art

If there were a Nobel Prize for the food industry, I am sure Maggi Noodles would have won it pants down. It is perhaps the world's most underrated product. Underrated because, people take it for granted. Women tend to think that it is nothing more than heating water, but they fail to understand the nuances of Maggi-making(but then, girls are dumb anywayz, so they could be excused for not understanding). So, for all those women, here is a detailed process:

1) Fill the exact amount of water. Too little would lead to undercooking, too much will make it soggy.. so it is necessary to get the right amt of water... it should be precise Precisement as M.Hercule Poirot would say.

2) Set the burner to slightly higher than medium: This makes sure that cooking happens and at the same time, the underside doest get burnt, in case you are late to switch it off.

3) Put the masala in just when the water starts bubbling: Too early, it would get settled at the bottom. Too late, it may deposit on the walls of the vessel. Either way, you cannot utilize 100% of the masala. So it has to be introduced exactly at the right time.

4) Break the Maggi block into small pieces: Putting the whole block invariably leads to under cooking and wastage of gas. So when the water is boiling and it attains the color of the masala, put these pieces in.

5) Put it off at the correct time: I prefer my Maggi to be a bit wet, not altogether dry, so I would switch it off a few seconds before all the water is drained out. But for dry Maggi loving ppl, be careful, u need to turn off the burner before the bottom starts getting charred!!!

Somewhere around step (3) , try putting some oregano seasoning(that comes with Pizza), it tastes really great! And for the Gult ppl, add the chilli flakes too, a combination of chilli flakes entered in step(3) and a little butter(to be entered between steps (4) and (5)) is absolute heaven.

So for all people taking Maggi making for granted, are u willing to change your minds now????

--Avi

Rabri or Jalebi

The whole weekend went in attending a series of GD sessions and general info on B-schools of India. Of course it had the perfect finish, when Kaif hit the ball to covers to complete the coolest victory for India in this series!!

Talking about GD's, I ralised that there are so many kinds of them. Some are the topical ones, some are case studies. There is one more category called the abstract GD. Topics like, women are dumber managers than men; Money is sweeter than honey, etc etc!!! These topics are fun to discuss, and are usually used to find out how in how many ways can 1 person interpret and discuss this topic.

One such topic I got was "Rabri or Jalebi". Me being me, could find about an infinite useless and thoroughly entertaining ways of discusing this topic, and freaked out. Below is an outline of what I made the group discuss:

-- If required to start a business, what would be more profitable? Rabri or Jalebi? Rightfully, this should hv been the primary topic discussed, and I started off this discussion, but sadly, the group had started indulging in a totally MBAish discussion of this angle, and I decided this topic is too juicy for a dull MBAish discussion, so started throwing in random ideas!

-- Make a movie called Rabri or Jalebi, about Bihar's chief minister and her husband's illegitimate daughter. Who will be the next Chief minister??!!!

-- Start a multinational brand XYZ Juicy Jalebi's, or ABC Milky Rabris.. and to cater to the international market, keeping calorie conscious customers in mind, start selling diet Jalebis, low calorie rabri, fatless jalebis... etc etc!!!

-- With elections round the corner, we could start 2 new parties in Bihar, with one of them, named Rabri, having Jalebi as the election symbol. The other, named Jalebi, having the rabri as the election symbol. Campaign slogan for these 2 parties, the sweetest parties in town!

-- There is a saying in Hindi, rather a phrase for crooked people, which goes "Jalebi jaisa seedha". So there was a consensus in the group that the great Rabri Devi is being controlled by an unnamed guy who is as Seedha as a Jalebi.!!

As you could guess, all these ideas together reduced the GD to a Jammish atmosphere, and the moderator had to jump in and shout out the most often repeated/cliched dialogue in Hindi movies. often said with a hammer in the speaker's hands "Order, Order" ( I almost asked him if he wished to order Jalebi or Rabri, but decided against it!! ;) )

--Avi

Hum Runs De Chuke Sanam

The state of Indian cricket nowadays is really sad. No bowling of any substance. They can as well pack 11 batsman and make the opposition chase 400 everytime.
Nevertheless, while watching Zaheer and Co bowling at Yasser Hameed and Inzy today, the KK song from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam came into my head from nowhere. With modified lyrics, I present the song, which could probably be a song that plays in a bowlers mind everytime

Tadap tadap ke is haath se
Gendh nikalti rahi
Mujhko sazaa di loose ball ki
Aisa kya gunaah kiya
ke pit gaye, haan pit gaye
Ke pit gaye hum wicket lene ki koshish mein

Ajab hai cricket yaara aaaa aaaaaa...
pal do pal ki khushiyan aaan aan aan....
Physique mujhe deke bowler ka
talentless kyon banaaya

Kabhi no-ball, kabhi chakke, phir no ball, aur chouke, mujhe naani yaad aaye
mujhe naani yaad aaye, phir batsman six maare, mera man ghabraaye
mera man ghabraaye, phir naani yaad aaye, kabhi chakke kabhi chouke

machal machal ke is haath se
ball nikalti rahi
mujhko sazaa di loose ball ki...............

and so on....

There would be an equivalent song for the opposition batting too.,.,.. but that is for another day!! :)

--Avi

Karachi One Dayer

The 13th of March 2004 would well go down in history as probably one of those great days in the Wisden's cricketing calendar. I have seen all sorts of adjectives describing the Indo-Pak clash: humdinger, nailbiting, amazing, waddagame etc etc.,
Today, I decided to put myself in the shoes of some certain popular people, and see how they woulda reacted to the game.

1) Atalji Behariji Vajpayee: Aaj ke        is Bharat Pakistan ke           cricket pratiyogita mein              jo Bharath          ka pradarshan raha hai          woh ati prashansa yogya hai        Bharat       ke      is      prashansaneeya jeet      se humein zaroor umeed hai      ki BAJPA        ko      aur      seetein      milengi.

2) Soniaji Gandhiji: Si Signor, My son, daughter and son-in-law, cheered so effectively, that Nehra sent a wonderful last over!! Infact Nehra is related to me (Nehru, Nehra)!! I will send my son and daughter to India games so that they keep winning. mamma mia!!!

3) Ravi Shastri and Wasim Akram: Ladies and gentleman, I am Shaz and he is Waz. We have with us here, the glorious, beautiful Kristine Ahuja, who is going to analyze her statistics.... er... her version of the statistics of this match. Hi Kristine.
KA: Hi Shaz, Hi waz, may I tell you that that u guys are awesome. I find Imran Nazir very cute. Pity he dint score too much. I find Laxman great too... and loved his innings.
Waz: Er.. Kristine... they dint play the game... but u r right.. they played great!
KA: Waz, have you taken more wickets than that awesomely cute Irfan Khan, what a last over he bowled today!!!!..............

4) Navjot Singh Sidhu: Well my dear friends.. we had a thriller of a match. My nails are as small as the cheek cells we see in biology lab slides. India hit the Pakis like salman Khan hit Shakti Kapoor in Andaaz Apna Apna. The Pakistanis, led by their captain, like Osama Bin Laden leading the Al Qaeda, put up a brave fight, like Duryodhana fighting Bheema, but despite the Lord Miandad giving them tips, could not deliver the final killing blow like the tired blacksmith who is ust one blow away from finishing the smelting. The Pakistanis would have felt like the woman who is about to orgasm, but then sees that her partner has already orgasmed! ;)

5) K. Srikkanth: Shoaib AKhtar is only a paper tiger. Arre mein bolta hai.. Miandad haath hilane ko kaafi hai.... aur Inzamam-Haq.. achcha batsman tho hai par har match pe khelne ko nahi sakta. Let me tell you one thing Charu, India har match mein 350 maarega... aur all matches mein closely jeetega....

6) Chris McDonald (TEN Sports CEO): I won't give Doordarshan any rights to cover the match unless they give me $100 mn, and put the TEN Sports Logo and show our ads! We paid millions of dollars to the PCB and we want to earn back every cent of it, whatever gives. Was it a great game? In what sense? I dint watch it!!

7) K S Sarma (Prasar Bharati chief executive) I won a moral victory in the court. I am going to show the Karachi ODI, the Rawalpindi ODI etc without paying a paisa. I am pleased with my devotion to the nation. Maybe Vajpayee or Soniaji might let me fight the elections. Great Game? Which one? India beat Pakistan.. that is too good yaar!!!

Blogging and its advantages

A number of people have asked me why I should have a blog. Well, after much thought, I decided to go ahead and list the top 10 reasons here.

Why have a blog Reason no 10 : It improves your typing speed. I am sure in the last 2 weeks or so I have been blogging, my typing speed has gone up from 45 characters per minute to 45 and a half characters per minute

Why have a blog Reason no 9 : It improves your familiarity with your keyboard. The best example is this sentence, which I have written with my eyes closed ;)

Why have a blog Reason no 8 : It helps you have an interesting conversation with your mind. Lotsa times it becomes difficult for me to decide what to write about. At that point I ping my mind and start having interesting conversations with him. Usually what you see here is a transcript of that conversation!! :)

Why have a blog Reason no 7 : It helps you have interesting conversations over the lunch table. Well, I dont really need to say more about this. My somewhat frivolous and often sensible posts are topics people love to discuss about!! ;)

Why have a blog Reason no 6 : It helps turn on the creativity in the bloggers mind. All you need to do is look at my blog which talks about Guinea Pigs from sub tropical forests, and you know what I am talking about. :)

Why have a blog Reason no 5 : It helps you with usage of wonderful and hitherto unknown words of the English language. Check my post on 29th of Feb for more details :)

Why have a blog Reason no 4 : It helps you get a better perspective of goings on. Although I have never done it before, there are viewpoints/opinions I have of events/ppl and when i feel like boring you, I will start analysing them out here!!

Why have a blog Reason no 3 : It gives you a fan club. I dont have one yet, or maybe I do have a club consisting of one member at least, but the more my mind turns itself on, the more fans I am likely to get :)

Why have a blog Reason no 2 : It gives you discipline. I have blogged every night... and though I forgot to blog in office today, I have come home to do it. Ok.. fine, I came online for other reasons, but well, I am blogging!! :)

Why have a blog Reason no 1 : It is a perfect way to pain juntaa... ask them to read some of my blogs.. and you will know what I am talking about!! :D

Wel, I hope this convinces the rest of you to start a blog and pain me as much I pain you!! :D

--Avi

Communication

Today, information travels as fast as physics allows it to. So jets are out, optic fibres and thin air(for wireless communication) are in. So a very logical question follows: Is fastest means of communication the most convenient means of communication?

Today, if your boss is onsite, he sends an e-mail saying this is the problem, rectify it ASAP, and to make sure u read that mail calls up your mobile for good measure. So even if it 3a.m in the night, if you got orders, you have to rush to office to rectify it "ASAP".

Imagine the scenario some 15 years ago. Boss discovers problems onsite, writes a letter and sends it through FedEx addressed to you. U dont hv a mobile, so he has no way of reaching you. Meanwhile the letter arrives the 3 days later, and that too during office hours coz Fedex doesn't deliver after office hours, and you can then tackle the issue aaram se, and send a letter to your boss ,giving the status. Then wait till he receives it and responds. Man, life woulda been so easy!!

So is speeding up of communication really desirable?

--Avi

Quizzes and connections

When in IIT, the most amusing event used to be the main quiz. It was not too different from a class, where only the front benchers (the participants) seemed to know what the quiz master was talking about. Audience were usually as ignorant as my friend Somu is ignorant about the basic facts of errr... life!! :)

The questions that used to fascinate me most were the Connects. Connect the Incas of Machu Pichu with John Abraham's left nostril, connect Govinda's attire in Bhikhari no 1 with Bill Gate's secretary's hair color. These used to be the kinda connects that we came across. The answers used to be equally vague, for example, the answer for the first one could be that John Abraham pierced his left nostril with the same instrument that was used by a priest of Xichualand to shave is hair, and he probably would hv smuggled this instrument from his travels to the mountains of Peru where the Incas lived!!! Huh!!!!!

These kinda Q/A's used to set me thinking about possible connect questions:

Connect the Wizard of Oz to Manisha Koirala!!
In the story Wizard of Oz Dorothy gets blown away to Oz when Kansas city is enveloped in a huge twister--> Twister is a movie by Jan de Bont-> who also directed the movie Speed-> Speed stares Keanu Reeves-> Who stars in Matrix-> Matrix in Math reminds us of Kramer's rule for solving equations->Kramer, of course, reminds us of a famous movie called Kramer v/s Kramer->which was remade in Hindi with the name Akele Hum Akele Tum-> which stars Manisha Koirala in a lead role. Connection completed!!! :D

Connect Pamela Anderson to the James Watt:
This connection gives the listener a major shock->shocks are usually caused by electricity and is measured in Volts-> when the product of voltage and current is taken, power is obtained whose unit is Watt :) One more circuit... oops.... connection completed!! :)

--Avi

Today is Women's Day. Why we have such a day when there is no simlar day for men is an unanswered question!

Its a big irony that, the world talks about woman upliftment, but its the men who are always at a disadvantage. Have we ever seen a bus which has a men's seat? A lady is allowed to sit anywhere in a bus, while a guy has committed nothing short of sacrilege my invading into the precious privacy of a lady's seat in a bus. Similarly, have we seen a men's queue? a men's compartment?

The loo is the only place where men can claim that they have something of their own!

When women have so many great privileges, than pray tell me, why we still talk about women upliftment? George Orwell, in his book, the Animal Farm, quoted, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than the others". Maybe womenfolk, who are baying for equality of the sexes, should go through this comment and realize that they have(through hook or by crook) become more equal than us menfolk, and should concentrate more on other things that they are good at and good for!!!

--Avi

P.S: These views are mostly mine, some borrowed from frustrated people in a ticket counter having a separate ladies queue, some borrowed from perpetually pained passengers Blue Line Buses of Delhi/Pallava Transport of Madras.. etc etc...

In Hindi movies, there is this very very oft repeated and cliched line...
Mein Zindagi bhar Intezaar karoonga....

What exactly does this mean? That the guy/gal is prepared to wait a lifetime for something/somebody. If you look at it in chronological/logical manner, it just doesnt make any sense.

At the end of this "Zindagi Bhar period", the guy/gal is gonna die. One he/she dies, then he/she doesnt exist and well, whats there to wait for? So is there any point in waiting? U might as well ditch waiting and be happy and look at newer frontiers, other than wasting your life for somebody who, at the worst case, will come only after u die!!!!

Another oft repeated and cliched line not just in movies, but in real life too, is an elders aashirvaad to a married woman. Now what I say here is gonna be a bit controversial so steel yourself.
"Sada Suhaagan Raho"
There are 2 cases where a married woman can be Sada Suhaagan
1) She dies before her husband. So does this mean the aashirvaad is actually a way of wishing for a shorter lifespan for the woman?
2) The husband dies, but the lady is no longer married to him. In this case is the aashirvaad is actually a clever guise for a wish to destroy the marriage?

There is a third case too.... which epitomizes the the 3rd very cliched line in Hindi movies "Jeeyenge saath saath aur marenge saath saath". But the probability that the blesser is actually wishing for this is a poor .33333 as compred to .666667 for the other 2 cases put together. Think about it!!!!

Well, I guess the last 2 posts had an overdose of humour, so to compensate I have wrapped this post with an overdose of seriousness!! People, who are scandalized by this post, phorgive me, and other who are willing to debate are most welcome to leave their /* */'s !!!

--Avi

Unexpectedly, I had to take a break yesterday. There were 2 reasons for it:
1) I had a little bit too much work to sit and write a blog
2) I decided to give people time to assimilate and understand my previous blog before I go ahead and write a new one! :)

I am a JAM enthusiast, and have participated in many a JAM competition. U wont find too many trophies in my cabinet saying 1st Prize JAM blah blah competition, but my previous blog should be proof enough of how much an enthusiast I am.

To further prove that, I am gonna analyze some JAM topics for the next few days.

Let me start with the Amma of all JAM topics. It goes something like this:
"She offered me her honor, I honored her offer
So all night, I was off her and on her"

Considering the level of decency that I have promised to maintain here, I wont venture too deep into this topic, lest I find myself in a hole!!! Also, the pen is faster than the keyboard, and all i need is a few strokes of the pen on paper, to write a lot on this topic, but with the tool that I use, it becomes very hard to ejaculate the substance from my mind. Therefore I leave the interpretation to the reader's mind! ;)

--Avi

Since I seem to have lots of time in life today, let me get to talking gibberish!
Dictionary.com defines gibberish as
gib·ber·ish (jbr-sh) n.
1) Unintelligible or nonsensical talk or writing.
2) Highly technical or esoteric language.
3) Unnecessarily pretentious or vague language.

Therefore, sentences like "Avinash Iyer is a terrible bore" or "I am trying to work around the problem by introducing a fifth dimension resonating quantum wave into the interference pattern caused by the cylindro-conical movements of the bowel due to a sixth degree laxative addition in the digestive system of a guinea pig found in the sub-tropical forests of Xichualand." are good examples of gibberish.
These 2 sentences are an example of the first meaning given above.

For examples of gibberish of the second kind..... click here or here . These links would lead to literature that are too technical, and also unintelligible (double gibberish???).

Talking about gibberish in the technical sense, an IT professional likes me earns his bread by visiting and trying in vain to understand links like the ones above. So much that, he becomes an expert gibberer ("she"s are born gibberers). Take a sample statement that I would typically encounter in a day, "Hey dude, all you have to do is introduce a design pattern by imbibing a top-down waterfall approach. code this procedure using the above appraoch and when you are midway coming down from the top, change tack and use facade pattern and start the bottom-up approach". Woah!!!!! For some techies that might make sense.... but for me (incidentally ppl like me are classified under the category techie-from-far-but-far-from-techie) it makes as much sense as laxatives on a sub-tropical guinea pig from Xichualand!!

The third kind of gibberish, is the kinda thing you would hear on a space ship without your Babel Fish. Example of this could be "Wufawufawufawa wafuwafuwafuwafuwu hijeshiheshijeshijeshas". This actually means, "I am trying to work around the problem by introducing a fifth dimension resonating quantum wave into the interference pattern caused by the cylindro-conical movements of the bowel due to a sixth degree laxative addition in the digestive system of a guinea pig found in the sub-tropical forests of Xichualand." in a vague language spoken by ancient Incas of Machu Pichu!

But, this kinda gibberish is relative. What maybe gibberish for one, may not be gibberish for another. My friend Ramkumar understands and converses using phrases like "Tugawuga tagapiga tiggubiggu makkashakka". An entire continent (Australia)also converses using the same kinda gibberish and try telling the world that "Fowr Gawssake, I aym speykin English maite".. yeah right!!!!!

Shakku pilla disufgas akhopakhthor, dilloyuwetert pashtijanitos.
That means "Thats enough gibberish for the day, see you with more tomorrow!!" in a vague dialect of Tulu :)

--Avi

One person in a public forum once raised a very interesting question. It went something like this:

I want to make ice cream.
I followed one manual.
The manual is not easily understandable.
so i am not able to follow it after half away.
then i looked for another .. it too have the same problem.
then i followed many.

Finally i decided not to make ice creams at all ..


now where is the problem ..

1. ICE CREAM
2. MANUALS
3. My inability to understand manuals.

This is a classic query which anyone writing documentation will one day encounter. It is valid in almost all industries. Being in this co for close to 2 years now, and watching and following plenty of correspondence from my CTO and others, it was practically impossible for me not to comment on this problem.

The query has pointed out 3 different components which could have gone wrong.

1) The Ice Cream: They can never be a problem unless the reader is suffering from diabetes or cold... so we can rule them out.. unless, of course, manual is written in Zambeki where the word Ice Cream actually means Freshly Fried Fish Liver or something!!! and the reader gave up because the Ice Cream tasted fishy!

2) Manual: A recipe book (or manual as it is referred here) is not too different from a user guide that we software blokes package with every product.Now a user guide has to be written keeping the reader in mind. What it means is that a person from Mars who knows English (or Zambeki for that matter), but has no idea what an ice cream is, should be able to make Ice cream successfully after reading this manual. So a lot of research has to go into the targeted audience of this product, in our case, the ice cream maker. Therefore any user guide, that a user does not understand fully, is not good enough, and the manufacturers (authors, publisher, proofreader etc etc.,) haven't done their job properly.

3) User's inability to understand the document: Well, if a user guide is well written this situation should not arise. But there is a possibility that the Martian may not know English, or he has mugged up the whole dictionary without mugging Wren and Martin. In this situation, the manufacturer cannot do anything.... well he can do something.. While advertising the guide, he can put in fine print that the user is assumed to hv mugged the whole dictionary AND Wren and Martin to understand the whole book, seeing which, the Martian knows that the book is not for him, or he will realise that he has to mug Wren and Martin too.

Therefore the problem is invariably the manual. If the user is unable to understand, either the writer of the manual has forgotten to point out that its not for him/her, or its not written well enough.

MY friend KNS has written a cool piece on perpetual motion engines. The gist of it is that if a cat always lands on its feet, and a buttered bread always lands with the buttered face down, what would happen if u tie a buttered bread to a cat?
Reasoning is that the body comprising of the bread and cat would keep rotating unable to decide whether the feet lands first or the butter.

There is a simpler analogy though, what if u apply butter to both the faces of a slice of bread?
theoretically, you can see perpetual motion! In the first case, the cat is a living being, and may decide that it doesn't want to land on its feet at all and hence our engine goes for a toss. But the bread was a living thing when it was growing in some fields of Punjab in the form of wheat. Since then it has died many deaths and ceased to have a mind of its own. Therefore I am sure you can see a perpetual engine by just applying butter to both the faces.

Physicists studying thermodynamics, who have spent ages trying to prove that a thing called perpetual engine doesn't exist, please look at this and KNS's blog and change your way of thinking!!