Why One Should Never Visit a 5 Star Hotel

Question: What would you like to have. . .Fruit juice, Soda, Tea, Chocolate, Milo, or Coffee?
Answer: Tea please.
Question: Ceylon tea, Herbal tea, Bush tea, Honey bush tea, Ice tea, or green tea ?
Answer: Ceylon tea.
Question: How would you like it ? Black or white?
Answer: White.
Question: Milk, Whitener, or Condensed milk.
Answer: With milk.
Question: Goat milk, Camel milk or cow milk.
Answer: With cow milk please.
Question: Milk from Freeze land cow or Afrikaner cow?
Answer: Um, I'll take it black.
Question: Would you like it with sweetener, sugar or honey?
Answer: With sugar.
Question: Beet sugar or cane sugar?
Answer: Cane sugar.
Question: White, brown, or yellow sugar?
Answer: Forget about tea just give me a glass of water instead.
Question: Mineral water or still water?
Answer: Mineral water.
Question: Flavored or non-flavored?
Answer: I'll rather die of thirst.
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Received this as an email forward. If anyone has any copyright information about this, please let me know.

First Ever Solar Sail-powered Spacecraft to be Launched

Over 24 hours, Cosmos 1 will reach a speed of just 100 miles an hour. But while fuel-powered spacecraft accelerate quickly before cruising at a constant speed, a solar sail would continue to gather momentum, eventually reaching a speed far in excess of anything achieved by conventional spacecraft.

After three years a solar sail would be traveling at more than 100,000 miles an hour -- a speed that would enable it to reach Pluto, the solar system's most outlying planet, in just five years.

Cosmos 1, the first ever solar sail-powered spacecraft will be launched on June 21, testing a technology that many believe will power missions into deep space in the future.

The Player who Dies With the Most Toys Wins

If you are reading this, you are probably a blogger. You might have the ambition to be a top 100 blogger (I am assuming that you aren’t already a top 100 blogger because why would you be wasting your time reading this?) There are millions of blogs, and only 100 top 100 blogs. You can do the math. Your chances of achieving this goal are tiny. But why would you want to make that your goal? Why wouldn’t you rather blog for the fun of blogging and get enjoyment out of having a few hundred interested people come by and read and comment on your blog? Isn’t that success enough?

Because, as Michael Higgins puts it, happiness is a zero-sum game?

Cricket Lovers Rejoice

Prem Panicker has started blogging: Fourth Umpire.

Some more good writing!

Thanks are due to Amit Varma for bringing it to everyone's notice.

Unchanging Cities

Last week, we were talking about one of our colleagues who has been posted in London for the last six months. She hates the place, thinks it is unfriendly, and wants to come back to Mumbai. One of us concurred with her sentiments saying that London is exactly as our colleague said it was. New York, she said, is way better (Of course, Mumbai, is the best). A few others agreed too.

I am presently reading Psmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse [from the omnibus: The world of Psmith] and I came across this passage:

It [London] took no notice of him. It did not care whether he was glad to be there or sorry, and there was no means of making it care. That is the peculiarity of Londin. There is a sort of cold unfriendliness about it. A city like New York make the new arrival feel at home in half an hour; but London is a specialist in what Psmith in his letter had called the distant stare. You have to buy London's good-will.

Psmith in the City was first published in 1910.

It is amazing how the character of a city stays the same over such a long time. For example, there are so many people (ancient, old, and young) from Pune who talk about its unique "puneri" character.

Is it the same with our own Mumbai? Was Mumbai always the same?

What is it that decides a city's character? People? Institutions? And do, over a period of time, new people coming into the city buy in into the city's "known" persona? Does a city's character gradually become something similar to a "self fulfilling prophecy?"

Ink Scrawl Aphorism 2

. . . only in their dreams can man be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be.

From the Dead Poets Society. One of my favorite movies. I started (re-) reading the script yesterday, hence the abundance of aphorisms and nuggets from the movie.

Why Blog?

Instead of my small spiral notebook, I have my blog.

Any other reasons? Click Here.

A Husband She Can't Bed. . .

Husband She Can't Bed. . .
Lover She Can't Wed.

Tagline of the movie Mastaani.

Make of it what you will.

Ink Scrawl Nugget 1

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman: "O me, o life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, o me, o life? Answer: that you are here. That life exists, and identity. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

What will your verse be?

------------------------------------------------From the Dead Poets Society. "An idealistic teacher stirs up the conformed waters of a 1959 prep school, inspiring his students to "suck the marrow out of life". A wonderfully acted and beautifully told story of the quest to maintain your individual identity and follow your dreams."

Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay (Tom Schulman).

Amitav Ghosh Interview

Christopher Lydon of Open Source is interviewing Amitav Ghosh and will be talking with him about "empires old and new (including the US) as well as Ghosh's take on India" (7th June, 4.30 AM. IST).

More details here.

Amardeep Singh and Dilip D'Souza are participating in the show.

An mp3 file of the show will be posted on the Open Source site afterwards.

Link via Locana.

New Historicism: Interpreting Contexts

. . .In an older historicism, you adduced a context in order to secure the meaning of a work of art. We wanted to say that what was being described as the context, was itself open to interpretation. It was not the stable background. We wanted to have the interpretive struggle shared by what used to be called the background.

Stephen Jay Greenblatt talks about New Historicism, its genesis and future and his current concerns in Cultural Studies.

Indian Writings in English: Merely Gimmicky or Really New?

. . .How is newness to come into the world? In India, didn't all those who found fault with the innovations of, say, Salman Rushdie, or Arundhati Roy, or Raj Kamal Jha — didn't those readers and critics show similar impatience with what was new by finding it gimmicky or overwrought or incoherent? How were the detractors able to separate what is merely show-offish and self-indulgent from that which is unanticipated and truly brilliant?

How do we distinguish the merely gimmicky from the really new? asks Amitava Kumar

Competition Makes Strange Bedfellows

Rediff reports (a Business Standard report) that rivals The Times of India and Hindustan Times have come together in Mumbai to take on DNA.

About Nuggets and Aphorisms. . . and Ink Scrawl Aphorism 1

He has gone and done it yet again. The bloke already has 3 blogs (including one on cricket), one (still in planning) on cows and a sub-blog on his Tsunami Posts.

Now Amit Varma (inspired by Michael Higgins) announces a new sub-blog (Way to go, Amit!): Nuggets and Aphorisms -- to archive all the nuggets and aphorisms that he has collected and posted on his other blogs.

If I can count right, Amit now has five active blogs plus one in the offing.

Why all this introduction? What is the point that I am striving to get at?

Inspired by Amit Varma (and Michael Higgins) I am starting a series of nuggets and aphorisms on my blog (No, I am not starting a new blog, I hardly manage to post to one blog regularly.) These will come primarily from my trawling of the web and my reading, occasionally from the films I watch, sometimes from music. And yes, from signature files in emails.

Thank you Amit, and I hope you all find the series of some value (Considering that Michael and Amit started this, it is going to be one hard act to follow).

Here's the first one, trawled from the web a few days back. And particularly apt, considering the genesis of this series:

One would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from: Quotation and Originality, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Volume VIII - Letters and Social Aims (1876).

The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien

I came across this excellent resource on J. R. R. Tolkien and his works while I was exploring The Guardian website.

Well, go ahead. Test your knowledge of Middle Earth, read up on the books in brief, and take a look at the Tolkien timeline.