Zeni's

Some kick-ass Ethiopian food. This is a very small (hole in the wall like) restaurant in a not too goog looking strip mall but with some good ethnic decor and awesome food. We went there last evening to try this place. Some real good food...Anyways hogged like I had never seen food for quite a while. They also have another restaurant named Gojo @ W San Carlos on the S.Bay

Top mgmt burned out by Vista:)

Read this

Notable mention:
Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows, struggled to even get his home printer working with Vista.

The "Jon" referred to is Microsoft board member and its former chief operating officer Jon Shirley, who experienced compatibility problems with his Epson printer and scanner and his Nikon film scanner. He could not even get some of Microsoft's own MSN software products to work on Vista and refused to upgrade his other computer to the operating system.

Watch Letterman's tribute to top it all

TIbet?

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to "Free Tibet" Orkut campaign. I thought a little about it and then accepted the invite eventually. So going back and pondering a little more, I was like, "Why did I hesitate the first time?" Do not all people deserve the right to live a happy, peaceful life, in their own land. Particularly given the Tibetans have one of the most docile, peaceful culture that can ever exist in the civilized world. I thought for a second, wouldn't this be double standards on my part for the Kashmir issue. But thinking further, this is the fact, what is happening at Kashmir is sheer terrorism. There is no curbs put on the common man from practicing what he/she wants. Frankly, India is a democracy (the Largest Democracy to brag) and nothing would prevent it from going the other way. The People will have every right to practice what they want sans jihad. But with Tibet, it is a totally different story. Given that India has been the home to more than half the Tibetan expatriates for a better term (than Refugees), I feel we should take a driving force to provide the Tibetans what they need- to get back their homeland, which they so deserve.

Frankly, Chinese Communism sucks and I can only say the United States, whatever the F they have been doing in promoting democracy around the World, have no balls to go in and put a strong foot in there.

Tamizh subtitles

I was watching ChakDe last night and playing around with the subtitle menu and voila, when I found, tamizh as an option. I was wondering if this was to reach to the tamizh masses in South East Asia or to reach to the hindi-illiterate denizens of TamilNadu. Anyways, looking back at history , I guess the thamizh nationalism might have hurt us more than it could have helped. After all, I doubt if pride can hardly cross any path with practicality. I doubt it, with full earnest.

BTW, I am for the freedom of expression of language and I do understand that forcing someone to learn a language is completely wrong. I do not condone it by any means. But let us think past this point and realize the practical aspects of it. I understand and realize it helps a lot more to learn a language and blend in with the larger population rather than staying aloof based on pride and sucking up to the fact that we are in a way delineated from the society at large.

I am opposed to fundamentalism - irrespective of whether it is hindi or tamizh. And I would show my fingers to all those supporters of EVR and Anna and any one else who advocate thamizh pride as well as to those who come and tell me, I need to speak Hindi just for the plain fact that it is the National Language. Well, ....!

Inglés teacher

I do not want to sound like a teacher here. But there have been few conversations I have had with people that really Grrrrred me out. Not to sound pedagogical, I do like to speak English properly as much as I could. In this process, I am learning to undo a lot of bad things we have done with Indian English. Okay, for all you accusers who think I am presumptuous, I am not. I just want to be good at what I do, and it is my personal ** opinion. Sorry for being rude and defensive:)

First of all, there is no word called prepone. There is advance which is the opposite of postpone. However I do understand that new words are formed as time goes by. Words like guru, karma (I hate the way Americans pronounce karma, Iran and Iraq. To be polite, it makes me throw up.), curry, etc have been added in the recent past; and so are new words like google(a verb) etc...

I believe in learning a language and its correctness as one speaks and I have no idea what the difference is between an adverb, a conjuction, etc... is? Still, an argument could be made that the local dialect commands the language, and blah blah blah, but still, I would like to sound at my best and avoid any superfluous information. So what grrrrred me?

1. I read this today morning.

I might have said, I read it this morning. I might be wrong here, though. If some one knows , please let me know. But what I do know is, the next one is def. wrong

2. What time do you leave?

Wouldn't the correct usage be, "When do (or would) you leave?". I think this is probably an effect of a direct translation from our native language. Suggestions are welcome here!

Another common one I have heard is, "I did it yesterday night".. Wouldn't, "I did it last night" make more sense! Duh!!

Desi drivers and cars

Disclaimer: This is an offending post to a lot of desis. So beware!!

I am not sure if this is a Bay Area thingy, but I have increasingly been seeing this phenomenon. My guess is its prevalemt more than 75% among desi drivers (families mostly in contrary to happy single desis who are watching their time clock dwindle away in eating at Saravana Bhavans, Chaat house, etc... and horridly thinking about being matched with someone they haven't even seen in their lives within the next couple of years). Anyways, the thing is, have you guys come across license plates that read like "ILUVPRY", "RKHIluvsSMIR", "WEluvPNKY", the luv replaced by the symbol, etc... You get the idea!

The things is if you drive a Honda or aToyota , there is a 80% chance that you are a desi. However, there are certain cues that point to the demographic - say, single , married, married with a kid, etc... (I am not venturing into any more permutations)

For example,

• When it says something ilke "VCKYRCKS" ...you know this is an egotistical single desi.
• If it says smthing like "ILUVPRY", "LVLYRKHI", it is a newly married guy who hasn't still experienced the sweet times of the marriage:) (yeah, I am sarcastic, if you did not get it!). Even should it be true, do we really need to know what he feels?
• And, if it says smthing like, "WeluvPNKY", it is definitely a daughter. First of all, I have no idea how someone could name their daughter based on a finger( or pinkie, ). What's next, chubby, mandu,etc... I wonder if these daughters will have a real identity issue when they grow up? Duh!
• As an anamoly, if it says smthing like "CHICinPNK", you can be rest assured it is a blondy:)
  

I have been so horrified seeing these license plates, I think someone better dare up and ban them all together! If you sync with me, please spread this awareness. I do not want to be driving around watching these horrific license plates. And, if you ever goto IMC6 or NAZ8, please just go blindfolded:)

postscriptnotes: My hundred thousand thanks to helloji for rewakening my spirit and inspiring me to write a post like this.

The Genius has finally ** realised

As much as I chastise about India, I doubt if I can ever hate my country. Though I am embarrassed by a lot of things we desis do and sometimes other desis do :), I have realized at least we have a dummy head of state than a dumb head of state. Oh Gosh!, Intelligence has finally dawned upon him, Bush: It's clear our economy has slowed

I wonder what the IQ level in a red state is?

Globalisation - really! Then why move cubes?

We are gonna be involved with a new exercise at work. Relocation. Not as in relocation that I am gonna be closer to work, rather, it is intraoffice relocation, and if I am correct, I would have to travel, 20ft more everyday. As Dilbert might put it, I am being moved around within the corporate zoo. So you would ask, why I make noise around it? For those who might not know, every animal in a zoo, marks his/her own territory. I do not want to go into further details about this:) Similarly, once assigned a cube, I think of it as my home. We personalize it, We adore it. Now imagine, the landlord coming over and asking us to move for reasons I do not necessarily comprehend and understand. I was told, the reorg is to make the team better and give it a sense of working together. My dumb mind, really asks the question, don't we work across timezones? So does it really matter where we sit? Is it really gonna make any difference ? Shouldn't we be concentrating more on non-direct, non-face-to-face communication, like working on phone conversations and email in the currently globalised techie world. Then why, why? My simple mind does not agree necessarily, but nor do I have the clout to disagree. So, I fold under pressure and vent through my blog:)

IIT.

Great read ... Hilarious if you are not from IIT:)

Pet Peeve - Which is more annoying?

As a techie in a caged office, a.k.a. cubicle, which do you think is more annoying?

1. You get to listen to all of your neighbors cell phone's ring tones. IMO, the most popular one seems to be the Nokia one!
Or,
2. The annoying , irritating, "tring tring" tone of an instant messenger. The winner seems to be Yahoo here.

Vetti pechu! a.k.a Asinine questions

I have observed this lately:
When we are sad, we become thoughtful and come up with very meaningful questions. (I am talking about a normal human here; so exceptions please ignore this post :) ). Isn't this because of an innate nature of us 'humans' to fight adversity ? (which could be said is heavily borrowed as a result of evolution. So we say ,... "as we evolve")

So does it mean that when we are happy we do not think? Which means, if we do not think to counter issues, we cannot evolve? So doesn't that mean that challenges are very important in our life? So wouldn't this mean we should not be happy all the time, Duh!

This is insane because it brings us to the point - we fight adversity to be happy:) !!!


"My friends"( like McCain, with Arms wide open), I have been thinking too much lately which is a direct indication of my discernible grey hairs now! Should I be happy that I am thinking or should I be sad that I am aging? :)

Sad day. ASK me why?

Just read this article. ASK was one search engine I believed were innovating and thinking different and had the potential, though very tough, to give Google a real good run for the money. It's sad to see them change their strategy and go the other way. They were the only ones, IMO, who were trying to innovate rather than imitate like Yahoo and Live.

Googling and wikiing.

I was in a discussion today about how wiki has become a verb to me recently, just like google is synonymous with search.. It goes like,
you don't know about this, then wiki for this "blah blah blah"....
or just google it, silly!

So I came up with this wonderful Q&A:
Q: How can Live search return Google like results? (We know MS in its infinite wisdom, Duh!, is investing heavily on its Live Search)

A: Use the Google WebService APIs, ofcourse:)

Punjabi style Burrrrrritos!

Just got back from this restaurant at Sausalito - Avatar's. Man, it kicked some ass, real ass. Awesome food I have tasted lately. A small dungy style restaurant with a home cooked flavor. Ashok, the owner, invited us and on knowing that this is the first time ever for us, he decided to take it upon himself to "surprise us" with his specials. For the appetizer, we had some sweet potato stuffed samosas(yum!) with some tangy tamarind sauce, mango slices and yoghurt, and some pappadums too. Following it was the main course, with stir fry-like dish with vegetables and basmati rice, and some pumpkin-gravy currie-style stuffed enchiladas, topped with yoghurt and tamarind sauce. In two words- Kicked ass! The best fusion dish I have ever tasted.

If you are ever in the vicinity , drop in and have some, currie flavored mexicano food.