Gotcha !

What do you call a person who is completely laid back; for whom nothing is sacred, nobody too big? You might use a 17 letter tongue-twister or you might use a simpler and more accurate word - 'Aussie'.

Have a listen to this Gotcha call for some first hand proof. Some background information, before you go though...

Dr. John So is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne city. The man I have heard is probably the most famous of Mayors Melbourne has ever had, and was named World Mayor in 2006.

My first memory of him is from the closing ceremony of 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne. On stage in company with the then Victorian premier Steve Bracks and the Australian Prime Minister, John So beat both of them hands down in the appreciation showed by the Melbourne crowd. At every mention of his name, the applause kept increasing, and after the completion of the games, there were even some John So for PM t-shirts seen around the city. So, you might say he is one of the most influential men in the country.

Gotcha call is a rather famous section in the breakfast show of Fox FM in Melbourne. It is the equivalent of candid camera, for radio. People give information about their friends, usually some queer thing about them, and Matt Tilley, the co-host of the show, calls them up and torments them with the information, usually impersonating as someone else. What keeps the show interesting is Matt's quick wit and the many variety of voices he can impersonate (He does a great Indian accent, the character Ajeeb he does has achieved near cult status).

Last friday Matt decides to call up the Lord Mayor's office impersonating, president of a local football team, who was going to run for Mayor, but withdrew at the last minute because of his commitment to the Hawthorn football team. The poor unsuspecting Mayor is in for some shock!

Warning: There is some coarse language. It can be noticed that John So, being of Chinese origin is not fluent with his english. So, go have a listen. Look for the one titled Gotch Call - Matt gets Melbourne's Lord Mayor John So singing. Here, the link again.

Only in Australia! If it had happened in India, the radio station would have been history by now!

The thousand other things

Action is highly overrated.  

A scientist is highly active with her work.  So is a doctor, a software engineer or a writer.  But, so is a gambler or a couch potato.  She chooses all the wrong things to act upon.  So, the challenge is not action, it is the choice - What do I act on now?

Every day, every moment, we have this choice to make.  But this choice is rarely as easy as choosing between something important vs something frivolous.  

Do you spend your free time learning more about the programming language you are working on or about the brand new programming platform that looks like the next big thing?

You have chosen what you are doing right now over a thousand other things you could be doing.  You could be out learning a new skill.  You could be spending quality time with a family member or a loved one.  

Does the thing you are doing at any point of time deserve the precedence over all the things that you could be doing?  If no, make a different choice now.  If yes, are you putting in the kind of effort such a thing deserves ?

Just the start

I found this nice little video recently. Sachin, barely 16 giving the interview before his international debut.

He hasn't developed much interviewing skills or tact in answering questions then. What confidence, though !

My favorite part is when he is asked if he is tired of all the people asking him a lot of questions and he answers in a matter-of-factly tone, I think it's just the start.

What a legend!

The 20 Rupee Misadventure

Do you have a friend who you can show the photograph of, if someone asks what a smart-ass means?

Symptoms of such a person might include

• getting himself (and you) into situations where you are inches away from getting your ass kicked - on a fairly regular basis,
• asking questions non-stop to the lecturer who is taking her first class ever, causing her to seriously consider other career options

among other things.  My guess is, you did. I did too - unfortunately, a few of these. But nobody comes close to perfection at this smart-ass thing as this friend of mine, lets just call him S.

This once, I remember the details only vaguely, but I think we were looking to have a good lunch having cut the classes to go to a movie or something. This was in Coimbatore when we were in college, me and S had already been going to school and college together for about 6 years then. I drive into a petrol station to fill up my motor bike. The guy finishes filling the tank, I pay and we are ready to go.

There was this salesman selling something to the guy in the next pump. He just finished up his sale, saw an opportunity to make another quick sale, and came to us before we would leave. For those who are not familiar with this situation, it is nothing new, it happens all the time in India. We have salespeople selling stuff everywhere. We don't get annoyed at this, in fact we get rather offended if the guy doesn't come over to us, because they only do that when they think you can't afford to buy their stuff.

Now, this guy is the super-exuberant salesman kind. I hated this kind. It is most difficult to decline a sale from one of these people. They are very convincing with whatever they are selling, and I end up buying something that I don't need or can't afford (there weren't really many things that we could afford then). I am sure he has used this technique many times before and he had the confidence of someone who knew it works.  But he had no idea how lucky he had been to be in the same city as S and to never sell him anything...

The salesperson starts by quickly explaining what he was selling, God-send for every biker, a cloth that is a cleaning cloth as well as a polishing cloth, at the same time.  Apparently it can be stored away very easily behind the vizor of the bike until you need it next time and so on...  

I am engrossed in the live demo of this amazing product, when S rudely interrupts by asking how much?  The salesman hadn't really been focussing on S, but replies just 20 rupees sir! and tries to continue with his presentation.  Now, 20 rupees is not a lot of money.  But we hadn't had our lunch yet, and we didn't have much more money than what we needed for that, and S knew that too.  When I was all set to excuse ourselves, and drive away, S says to the salesman, what? 20 rupees for a piece of cloth?  Thats far too much, I will take it if you give it to me for 10 rupees.  

Now it is normal to bargain with salespeople like this.  But to offer a price half of what he is selling for is a bit of stretch, even for S.  The salesman is happy that we are already discussing price, and says, its a very good cleaning material, very durable etc, and will sell it for the final price of 15 rupees.  S stays his ground.  Not a paisa more than 10 rupees, he says.  The salesman tries some more explaining, some more polishing of my bike and reduces the price to 12 rupees, saying that is his cost price, he can't reduce any more than that.  No deal, says S.  

After going back and forth for another 5 minutes, the salesman comes down at last to 10 rupees.  Ok sir, you have bargained for so long.  For you, I will give it for 10 rupees, he extends a fresh piece of cloth to him.  Now, S goes, but you said 12 rupees was your cost price.  Are you making a loss??  I was pretty sure, we would get into trouble if we stayed much longer, I want to leave, but S continues..  I am pretty sure you are making profit even out of 10 rupees, and you wanted to sell this piece of cloth for 20 rupees!  All I can think is, 'dude, seriously,  all this philosophy for 20 rupees ??'  

Now, the salesman is getting annoyed.  Not only are we not going to buy his product, we have also wasted about 10 minutes of his time, when he could have sold a couple of these things.  He grumbled something and turned around and started walking towards a new customer at the next pump.  As I am starting my bike, S calls the guy at the next pump and says pointing at the salesman, 'excuse me! he would try to sell that cloth for 20 rupees, but he just offered it to me for 10 rupees.  Don't get it for anything more!'.  

I wouldn't know if the guy would have tried to hit us, because I was driving as fast as I can out of the petrol station.  

The Muralidharan Case

In my experience, one of the first things you notice about Aussies is how nice they are. They cheerfully wish the bus driver, the operator at the super market counter and apologize to you even when you bump into them with your trolley. I guess an average Aussie uses the sorry-thank you combo at least 50 times in a day. I don't mean to generalize, but in my experience, they are great people to be around.

And then the cricket season starts. The politeness and niceness seems to evaporate in the heat of summer. A special breed of Aussies, answering to the name 'cricketers' become the torch bearers of this apparently great tradition of cricket, called sledging. In fact, there are talks of issuing R rating for all future interviews featuring Mathew Hayden.

To be fair, it is not all of these cricketers, there are still the likes of Adam Gilchrist and Brett Lee who stay away from these behaviors. One only has to look at the footage of Sachin Tendulkar walking into the ground, to see the respect Aussie crowd has for overseas cricketers.

I would like to talk about one particular overseas cricketer, who has been a target of the unanimous animosity of Australian cricketers, crowd and media - Muttiah Muralidharan. Since the day, Darrel Hair called Murali for throwing in 1995, his career has been marked with controversy and more often than not, Australia has been involved.

Most recently, on the day Muralidharan clasped the wicket of Paul Collingwood to overtake Warne as the highest wicket-taker in test cricket, this is what an Australian newspaper had to say - "He doesn't deserve it". It doesn't get any blunter than that, and that was the headline of the article announcing Murali's record to fellow Aussies. This to me was the tragic climax to the decade long struggle.

Now that the race is at last over, here is hoping we take the lessons and move on.

You are playing it too hard when your loss is not graceful, and you are not playing it fair when a casual blogger has to remind you of it ! ;)

The ad that could have been

So, the first of Microsoft ads featuring Bill Gates and Seinfeld is out.  The campaign is expected to cost some $300 million.  Microsoft has been rather vocal about this campaign in the last few weeks, and frankly, I thought there was hope. Microsoft has not had much going lately. The list of its woes are growing long as are its emerging competitors, who seem to be able to innovate and release new products at a much faster rate. And the Yahoo deal isn't helping.

I thought this could be a good first step. It was proof that Microsoft was not being defensive, and have decided to do something about these problems. On some level, it is in fact the first acknowledgement of a problem, and that is a very important thing.  

  

But even if these commercials are really good and are able to change public perception of Microsoft, they need to back it up with some really good products.  There doesn't seem to be anything that MS can offer in the recent times, that excites people.  Every new release seems to simply change the user interface and the novelty wears off in the first couple of hours.  

All I can say after watching this first commercial is, well, the rest better be really good!   If it is funny, I do not get it. There is one advantage to this ad though - they have brought the expectations to a bare minimum on the future ads, and that probably was the strategy ?

Google Chrome - What it means to us

We knew it was coming. And from previous experience we can guess it is going to be a big deal. It is just that when an announcement of this magnitude is around, there is usually a lot of rumors going around. Even Apple, famed (notorious ?) for its secrecy could not stop the iPhone rumors. But, here we are.. with a simple comic book description of Chrome, released as a blog entry. So, what does it really mean to us ?

Expect some paradigms to go out of the window
Ever used google spreadsheets? The small chat window inside GMail right in the browser? They are great examples of truly dynamic web applications. You no longer need to press the submit button every time you want a single line of text. The server connectivity is done behind the scene, as you type away. I mean, this what Google does best. They take a simple idea, throw all existing precedents away and build something completely new, in the process changing the way the industry works.

It is here to stay
You might as well download it now, as sooner or later you will. If there is any company that has the developer support to pull this off, it is Google. It might start slow, but it is in for a long run.

What we see is just the tip
The blog entry that introduces Chrome says it elegantly - launch early and iterate. Iterate they will. This is one of the greatest advantages of building new technology from scratch. You can build the technology that suits your vision instead of building a vision that the technology can accommodate. There is a whole barrage of innovation waiting to happen and Chrome might just be the launch pad.

The Landscape is set to change
I had never seen in-browser chat windows before GMail. Few months since it appeared though, nearly all major e-mail providers have them. The competition is getting fiercer and that means a browser needs to be better in more ways in order to hold a user. IE might still hold the advantage of being the default browser in the most popular operating system. With number of firefox downloads increasing, it looks like the advantage is only going to get weaker.