Random Thoughts

I had one of my normally decent, non-bothersome colleagues at work give me a dressing down for some things today that I didn't quite appreciate... and I figured I would make a point of it by writing. He took issue with the fact that I didn't know who Matt Damon was and how I didn't watch any of Matt Damon's 40 odd films and how that was a terrible thing for me. He took further issue with the fact that I didn't really know too much about Michael Jackson's thriller (apparently the most watched video on earth or some such poppycock). Right. I told him that where I grew up, Michael Jackson wasn't exactly the most popular thing. Apparently I was wrong. To support his claim he sent me two things. One was a youtube video. I refuse to embed it on my blog because it a pile of piping hot shite. But you can watch it here . The second was the website of the Indian Michael Jackson fan club. The terms 'Indian Michael Jackson fan club' somehow sound wrong in struc...

I love my TV. You may have read about my trials and tribulations with getting HD over the air in the past. Well, I am reaping the benefits of it. I have been watching the Republican convention in HD of late and I came to a profound realisation. HD can be bad for you. How? Well, you see now, we can not only see things in stupendous clarity (and I know some day this will be nothing compared to UHDV or whatever comes later on), we can also see them in jarring colour and detail. As I watched the Republicans cheer on their leadership and the cameras pan around looking in vain for the odd chap who is deemed a minority, the camera frequently lands and focuses on absolutely ugly people. They were just as ugly before HDTV, but now, thanks to the wonderful technologies that we have invented, you can see hairy women, people in dire need of good dental care and even people in need of a hair cut or simply something to absorb the sweat and oil they have all over their faces. This is distressing. We ...

For some of you, this might be a bit off. I trust that you will follow your instincts and learn something new today. I heard Bhishma speak today. There he lay, on a bed of arrows, asking for deliverance and some water. He was supposed to fight for the Kauravas, but we all knew, his heart lay on the side of the Pandavas. Only, in the modern day world, Bhishma happens to have a very famous New England surname, almost American regalness. Sure, he does not have a lion rampant or one that is passant or salient for that matter on his standard, but Bhishma was there in all his glory, renouncing everything, waiting for Hastinapur to go back into the hands of the righteous before he dies. He even made the pledge to not die until Hastinapur changes hands back to the Pandavas. Somewhere along the way, the children of Hastinapur get confusing. They mould swiftly from the Elephant and the Ass to Hillary and the one that is Arjuna. Not Ranatunga mind you, but the real deal. Arjuna who is the third ...

The last few days, some interesting things have been taking place. No, not the big thing in China. Everyone knows about the big event in China. I am talking about what's going on a little North and West of there. In a place called Georgia. Not the American state, I mean the former Soviet Republic of course. The world's other super power, perhaps just a shell of its past self is busy blowing stuff up in someone else's country once more. So what happened? I don't know for sure, but here's what it looks like from here. It looks like the Georgians decided to re-take their territory, you know territory in name, like Kosovo is Serbian in name. In Kosovo's case, the Serbs are out of luck. A lot of the world has recognised Kosovo as the world's newest country, ignoring Serbia and Russia's opposition to it. Now, when it comes to the Georgian territories, Russia is not having any of that. They seem to be hell bent on showing the rest of the world that Russia isn...

For those who don't know what I am writing about, let me give you some background. There is a Canadian family that is fairly well known in Canada (due to their views and relations with unsavoury characters). They have a few children. Born in Canada. Canadian citizens. One of the kids is accused of some fairly terrible acts. He is in a foreign prison. Canada has not worked on getting him home. Or help defend him for that matter. Maybe it isn't that big a deal. But maybe the details will make you wonder why I care about this. So, the details. The family name is Khadr. The father, he was close to one Osama bin Laden. He took his family to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He fought on behalf of those nuts in Afghanistan. Perhaps he was responsible for the deaths of soldiers and maybe even civilians (Afghan or otherwise). His kids were questionably involved in some of these activities. The family has, on more than one occassion expressed views that are not quite in line with what Canadians...

Sigh. I am back in DC with my vacation at an end. I can't believe that it is over already. Every day that I was in Vancouver, I had more fun than every month that I have been in DC. I know I was on vacation and so Vancouver has that tinge and all that, but really, I think there is more to it. No, I know there is more to it than just the fact that I am on vacation. Every time I return from Vancouver to DC, I have this sinking feeling. I hate this place. Not because it is particularly bad; no, it is more because I am away from Vancouver. I need to be home. Not sitting in DC thinking of home, looking over pictures, entertaining myself with the Firefox plugin PicLens, looking for pictures of Vancouver on flickr and google. Or maybe it is the music, that reminds me of Scotland... mind you the music was written by a Serbo-Croatian composer and sung by folks like The Chieftans. So why do I miss Vancouver so much? Most things that matter to me are in Vancouver. My friends are. I ran into ...

This is a bit of a rant. I have been meaning to write about it for a while but for various reasons, I have not. Well, no more. This is a political rant and one that touches many countries. I start of course with Canada, the country whose political landscape is most familiar to me. There has been this circus going on in Parliament of late which has bothered me enough to write now. Canada has a bicameral legislature with the House of Commons being the so called lower house and the Senate being the upper house. This is essentially the same as the British House of Commons and the House of Lords... except we have no hereditary peers or life peers. Now, there are usually at least 2 parties in the lower house. Her Majesty's Government and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. In Canada's case, the Opposition consists of the Liberal party, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois. The circus I alluded to earlier is this: The *minority* Conservative government led by Stephen Harper has been governing...

Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Canada, representing the people of Canada stood up in the House of Commons and said the following : Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools. The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history. This may look simple and feel like just an apology, but it is so much more. I am a Canadian. I would like to think that in many ways, I am a typical Canadian. But not in every way. I am a (somewhat) recent immigrant and I missed out on the controversy of the residential schools. Looking back on what was done in the name of the people of Canada with 19th century intentions (maybe 17th century intentions to tame the heathens?) makes most of us cringe. It is a very sad story of one set of people dominating and destroying the culture and language of a people and almost entirely wiping out a (forgive me) race of people, erasing their history and 'civilising'...

Summer's here. Or at least, I am hoping this is how bad Summer will be. I have a new found appreciation for cold water, air conditioning and empty office spaces. Well, I would gladly put up with the heat and have an office full of nice people (no geigers), but given that I don't have that option, I'll take the cool office. It has been bloody hot in DC of late. We almost hit 40 Celsius the other day. I am not sure if this is global warming or just plain old DC weather, but I am starting to get tired of it. Right now, it is a crisp 10 Celsius in Vancouver and raining, and I almost tempted to say that I would rather be there than here. But not, I do like the warm weather... just not the searing hot weather. Anyway, I thought I would post a note on the good old blog mentioning the hot weather in the hopes that people will write about their weather... or something like that.

I think today was the day the obesession that is the Democratic primary ended. It has been quite the journey I must say. As a Canadian, I have been accustomed to the prominence of the American political machine in Canada; through the media, through popular culture... but it is a whole other story in the United States. Sometimes you forget that there is actually another party out there competing... I mean, you see the elderly John McCain trying to match Barack Obama in whatever way he can, but he seems to be an afterthought. I don't think too many people seriously expect Senator McCain to win. Perhaps that is why the election battles between the old white woman and the younger half-black man (perhaps half-black is unfair, but really, he is half black and he seems to be all-black when it suits him) have caught the attention of the popular media, and as a result of the non-stop reporting, the public. This election is quite interesting. I see many parallels between this country and th...

When you were screwed over with Apartheid, the rest of us in the world did something about it. Not that we did it quickly or ' liberated ' you a-la-Iraq style. But we did something. Maybe diamonds slipped the embargos. Maybe it took 20 years longer than needed. But know this; we were there. We stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity. My passport had a stamp in it saying I could not enter South Africa. Stamped by my own government. Because we were serious about boycotting Apartheid-ridden South Africa. We did not play cricket with South Africa. Why? Because we wanted to make sure they were isolated. Guess what? After many, many years of your pain and suffering and even more of your sweat, blood and tears you gained your freedom. I remember that Sunday when some dude named Nelson Mandela was released from prison. I remember because they interrupted all TV programming on our ONE TV channel town to let us know he was released. I recalled asking my mum who he was that his freedom m...

I had my first set of visitors ever to my place in DC. My grandmother and my mother are visiting. I told them I would take them to NYC. And so I did. On a bus. But not the Chinatown buses. Don't get me wrong, I took one of those once and it wasn't bad. But it was not exactly what I expected. I had to wake up real early and sit on a bus with a dude who couldn't speak English... or whatever he was mumbling wasn't clear to me. I took boltbus this time. They have a $1 promotion from DC to NYC sometimes. At any rate, my tickets were not $1. They were the $15 and $20 variety. We were picked up at the Metro Centre metro station by the bus. The driver was pretty cool and we got loaded up quickly. The bus was clean, bright and spacious. I got a seat in the middle and settled in. The first big thing I noticed was the power outlet in the seat. I took out my laptop and plugged it in. Then I plugged in my iPod charger. Then I checked for wifi and viola there it was. I got connected...

I had a good conversation with my manager today. It started with him coming by and telling me that I didn't do something that I had already done. You see, he's super duper ultra hardcore crazy interested in communication. As a result, he makes us write blogs and comment on them and then copy those comments and email them and if there is a bug ticket for it, then paste it into there as well. All in 30 seconds, because you know, that all it takes to do all that load of shite. Terms like arse-biscuits come to mind when I think of the crap he makes us do. So anyway, senior director nutjob came by and said that I didn't do something that I oh most certainly did. I'd like to think that I have a fairly patient and understanding demeanour about me and I don't usually get that mad. But, this time, he had gone one step too far. Its one thing to ask me, hey did you do x, and if I didn't, say, well, why was it not done and a WHOLE other pile of shite to come by and tell m...

I posted a while back about how I have been to 2 weddings in like 10 or so years... well, I got invited to one in DC recently (though I wasn't around to go) and maybe another one next year! I must be growing old... friends are tying the knot. I IM'ed my friend and mentor and hero Chris who was stuck in Hong Kong heading home (he taught me a lot and is an inspiration) and his girlfriend apparently said yes. I wished him the best back then when he told me all that was going to happen. Anyway, I am invited to not one but two (well assuming he's serious) weddings next June! One Indian, One Canadian/Dutch/something else exotic. I can't wait to see him again. Hopefully, I'll run into him when I go back home in late June this year. Below is a picture of Chris and his fiancé which I took when I went home last March! It has been a while since I've been home. In other news, I am quite unhappy with my job and working at almost 4am... doing shit for people who don't ...

I installed Picasa on my Ubuntu box today. It uses wine! For those who don't know what wine is, 'wine is not a (windows) emulator' for Linux. I used to hate wine. I had tried to run Kazaa way back in the day to get things off the internet and believe me, I got it to work, but with many hours of painful configuration. Linux has come a LONG way since then. I ran a ps --forest and viola fatherted 8569 1 3 16:12 ? 00:00:11 /opt/picasa/wine/bin/../lib/../bin/wineserver fatherted 8721 1 0 16:12 ? 00:00:00 c:\windows\system32\explorer.exe /desktop fatherted 8959 1 0 16:12 ? 00:00:01 PicasaMediaDetector fatherted 9198 1 71 16:12 ? 00:03:18 c:\Program Files\Picasa2\Picasa2.exe It runs everything in wine. And I didn't have to d...

Friday, I went over to Jon's house in the middle of suburbia. Serious suburbia in Virginia somewhere by the way. A place where houses dote the landscape and there are no sidewalks and no way to get into or out of unless you own a car or like risking your life on a highway of some sort! Jon has this little critter called Luda at his place... its under 5 pounds in body mass but it sure puts on quite a show. I think I spent a few hours playing with that little critter and I absolutely envy every dog owner now. Jon mentioned that he wished he had a dog growing up. I guess a lot of people refuse to let their kids get dogs for various reasons. My family isn't like that thankfully. I was born into a house full of dogs. From German Shepards to Pomeranians to daschunds to 3 generations of English Springer Spaniels, dogs have been part of a good chunk of my life. Every day that I lived in India/Africa, there was a dog in the house. Literally, aside from the time spent in cars/buses, tr...

So, a couple of weeks or so ago, someone showed up in DC. He was an old man. They call him his holiness. Or the pope. He came to see his followers in the new world, to say hello and to create a buzz. Guess what? He did. The pope's visit out here seems to have been quite a successful venture for the Catholic church. He addressed probably the one big taboo that no one really thought he would... or perhaps he would brush it by or pretend it didn't exist or something else. But, refreshingly, he didn't do any of those. He took on the issue head on. He apologised for it. He prayed. He met with the victims of abuse. He apologised again. He told his flock to do better. I am impressed. While I am not sure if it was an elaborate ruse to put the sceptics off or not, whatever the case, he pulls it off without sounding smug or looking down on the rest of us. I fully would have expected those two options. But, he seemed genuine. And he reiterated it plenty of times. No, I am not about to...

It has been 7 months since I was last in Vancouver. It is quite hard to believe that I have been away from my beloved little city for so long. While it is true that I was not born there, nor did I really grow up there (well, I moved there when I was 15, so I guess I did a bit of growing up there) Vancouver is, for most intents and purposes, my home. The only other place that I would consider home is India... It is amazing how much I miss that place. I miss the rain terribly. I miss the greenery, the mountains, I miss the good food, my good friends, the transit system... the sensible design, the politics of Canada, the TV... the list goes on. To the casual reader, the obvious question that has no doubt crossed the mind is, well if you miss it so much, why the heck are you not there? I don't know how to answer that except to offer sub par excuses... like, I need money to go there. Well, don't you work? Sure I do. Well then, why not just take a week off and go home? I don't k...