The Good Lei

Tibet

2008-03-16T15:04:00.002-10:00

So, once again India covered itself in disgrace with police beating up Tibetan demonstrators. The first disgrace was in 1950 when Nehru turned a blind eye to the invasion. Interesting question - where are our lefties now? The eloquent Ms. Roy and co.? Cat got their tongue...? Its OK for the big communist brother to do these things apparently.

On this note it's worth mentioning that the home of the brave and free, the US that is, had little to say.

Vive, le hypocrisie...

Lost in translation, again...

2007-10-19T20:58:00.000-10:00

So, I ended up watching "lost in translation" once again, rather by chance. Was pleasantly surprised to see different depths to the movie that I didn't notice the first time. Though a bit unkind to the Japanese, the film ends up saying a lot of things about life through expressions and silences rather than words.

It seems that a bit of cultural disconnect, wrapped up in a sushi roll, or travelling with you as a silent companion on the metro, means something in a space by itself. Its about going outside your comfort zone and discovering something about yourself and the world that you never could have imagined before.

Spice (New York, E 75th and 3rd ave)

2007-10-14T04:08:00.000-10:00

5/10. O.K. so what's up with this place? Granted, the darkness and dinginess could be a legitimate part of "atmosphere", but did they really have to have the non-chandelier with 20 bulbs hanging from the ceiling connected by black wires to a central location? It looks faintly threatening - like a gigantic spider waiting to pounce on the customers.

The spider does go well with the pseudo-gangster like visages of the waiting staff. One might feel part of an Asian B-movie here. There also seems to be lot of activity inside the kitchen with hardy men carrying massive sacks of jasmine rice (?) back and forth. Being observant, I noticed they were taking the sacks out of the kitchen rather than into the kitchen. The food took an eternity to arrive. I was left wondering if the cook was caught embezzling gang monies and Boss Yamamoto was suggesting he be carved up. Those sacks...

Waiter-in-chief didnt like me at all. He consistently looked suspiciously in my direction and my notebook. Was I going to join the cook on the chopping block?? Thankfully part of the food arrived after forty minutes - shrimp fritters. They were OK, not spectacular but not bad either. The massaman curry did not arrive until an hour had passed, all told. That did make me wonder - shouldn't they have gobs of this stuff ready for serving at any given time? Its about the most standard dish you can order at a South East Asian restaurant, rather like a burger at MacD.

The good thing was that the massaman curry was very good. I asked for spicy and I got spicy. Not burn-a-hole-in-your-stomach spicy but allow-me-to-lightly-spank-you spicy. So that is the silver lining in the spice cloud.

Equinox

2007-09-24T09:44:00.000-10:00

There are two types of energies in the world that impact us: the natural i.e. physics, and the human energies. It is interesting how there are two contrasting ideas prevailing on this - that the two energies have nothing to do with each other, or, are in fact interchangeable. The truth however is that natural energy is the source of human energy, like a river from which we merely draw a small tributary. However, when its fluid passes through us, something happens. It becomes good or bad energy, acquiring a quality it did not have before. Nature is, after all, amoral.

Yesterday, when I left hawaii I had the privilege of experiencing good and bad human energies in equal amounts. Quite fitting as it was the day of the autumnal equinox. Until now the idea that some people carry "ill energy" was one that I just played around with in my mind. Now I realize the importance of trusting my instincts on this and avoiding such individuals. I suppose if I was enlightened, like the Buddha, I could cure such energy or neutralize it. However, at this point my system finally rebelled against it uncontrollably, a lot like throwing up in public. I'm glad I did throw up though, with the consequent feeling of relief in the stomach and the onset of a low fever that should hopefully lead to a cure.

Well, bully for me. Moving on, it is nice to be in LA as the old smells, images and memories come flooding back. Yesterday, on the way to G's house, the supershuttle drove through Caltech and for the first time I realized that Caltech had a unique smell. Not a bad smell - one of old books, wood and mist rolled into one. It reminded me of times when there was a small group of techers that secretly dreamt of being young Feynmans and yet felt inadequate because blondes didnt seem to care much for young quantum physicists. It was saddening because, after all, Feynman used to get girls didn't he? It said so in his book. But he also won the Nobel Prize and invented Quantum Electrodynamics.

We were no Feynmans. Between reality and its perceived version too can lie a deep gulf. Like night and day...

Well, the Equinox is over and nights are getting longer than days by the minute. We will see what happens next.

La Danse Macabre

2007-08-22T20:39:00.000-10:00

I was writing about my China trip. But this came to my attention first: "US officials rethink hopes for Iraqi democracy".

So, after $600 billion spent, 3700 American deaths and God knows how many tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the US is finally of the view that only a dictator can run Iraq. Talk about ironies...

And trivialities. In what seems a lifetime ago, in the same country, another president was impeached for lying about sex.

Probability and God

2007-06-29T14:57:00.000-10:00

Working hard as usual, I could not help following a long conversation on the contradictions of religion that took place in a neighboring office.

Basically all the contradictions of religion arise from the supposed relationship between human beings and God. God is thought to be omnipotent, omniscient, merciful and benevolent. However, inspite of His mercy and benevolence He does maintain a fiery Hell in which He occasionally throws a wayward soul to be poked by demons. The purpose of the Hell and the publicity surrounding its existence is to ensure that we "do the right thing".

That leads to the problem at hand here - since God wants to teach us to do the right thing, then that implies we have a choice.

What is a choice? There are two kinds of choices, the fake kind and the real thing. Imagine a couple, Alice and John, sitting around a table staring at a coin. They decide that he will buy her new shoes if she correctly calls the result of the coin toss. If she doesn't they will try something more creative tonight.

Now, from Alice and John's point of view, the outcome, heads or tails, is a random event. But if only they had exact information on the force Alice applies to the coin, the exact point of application of the force and the weight and other dimensions of the coin, they could in principle calculate the outcome precisely.

The point here is that the outcome of the coin toss is in principle predictable, though in fact neither John nor Alice have enough information, or maybe even the capability to do so. Therefore it is not really a random event, though it might appear to be so in the vast majority of situations.

There is something not quite right about couples deciding the nitty-gritty of their lives on the basis of coin tosses. However, I think they would be reasonable enough to agree that the coin toss is in fact predictable.

Religion is not so reasonable. Its proponents would like us to accept that we have free choice to decide between right and wrong and yet God is omniscient, that is, capable of predicting exactly what we would decide. It is as if we know exactly where the coin will land, but still insist on calling it random!

The religious coin is predictable and unpredictable at the same time.

Another issue. Platitudes circulate in the world about how there is "no conflict" between science and religion. It is said the two things can co-exist peacefully like ham and eggs because they "deal with different issues". Such ideas are generally advanced by scientists or liberals to calm down the mullahs.

Unfortunately this is so much bullshit and the mullah-brigade knows it.

Physics and the concept of God (as expounded by most religions) is directly in conflict. One body of thought is logical while the other contradictory. How can they co-exist? Only if we just sweep the contradictions under the rug.

This brings me to real choice, i.e. real probability. If the toss of a coin is not really random, then what is? Is there anything truly random in this universe? As it turns out, there is:

The outcomes of quantum experiments are truly random.

Let me describe a quantum experiment with electrons (which make up electricity) that strangely enough spend their entire existence spinning like tops. The spin is either clockwise or counter-clockwise, which we will call "up" and "down" respectively. In other words, whenever we observe the spin of an electron we will find it to be either "up" or "down". Now, as it turns out, quantum physics makes it possible to prepare an electron in a state that is both "up" and "down" before the direction of its spin is actually observed. Once observed, such an electron turns out to be "up" 50% of the time and "down" 50% of the time.

So far this seems just like a coin toss with heads or tails replaced by "up" or "down". But the difference is that there is no way even in principle to predict whether the electron will turn out to be "up" or "down"!

One might say that maybe we cannot predict this, but somebody much smarter than us could figure out a way. Somebody like God perhaps? That is where the stronger assertion comes in. It is possible to test whether any other way of predicting the outcomes could even exist. Such tests have been carried out and the answer is negative. There can be no way of predicting these outcomes, even a way that we are just too stupid to figure out! If there was a way, any way, the outcome of the tests would have been materially different.

How exactly these tests are devised is technical and comes under the topic of Bell's Inequalities. Brave readers may click on it and figure it out :-)

So where does that leave us with the omniscience of God? If He is truly omniscient, He must have a way to figure out whether the electron will turn out to be "up" or "down". But if there was a way, then the above tests could not have turned out the way they did.

Essentially quantum physics rules out the existence of an omniscient entity by proving that there exist truly random events in the universe. If that ain't a conflict with the concept of God, then what is?

Maybe this is why physicists drink a lot.

Electrically Charged...

2007-06-05T13:05:00.001-10:00

Well, I have been a flake and haven't posted on this blog for eons. But a conversation yesterday touched on something that brings me back over here. The issue is electricity, or more to the point, the lack of it back in the motherland. The issue also is, numbers.

At this moment in the 21st century, there are 600 million Indians who live without electric supply. Yeah, 600 million - the NYT had an article about it earlier. These people have no bulbs, fans, fridges, ACs, whatever. Edison, anyone??

Several thoughts come to mind:

(a) Who is to blame?
(b) What is needed to change the situation?
(c) How much will it cost and who will pay for it?
(d) How long will it take?

Question (a) is very interesting while the rest are merely depressing. The fun begins by blaming the British colonials because they are such nice, fat targets - rather like the dodos of Mauritius. And it ends with the gung-ho breeding habits of Indian couples.

Essentially Britain needed India's mineral and agricultural resources, it's sea ports and a captive market for British goods. To this end they established a very good Railway system, a strong central administrative service, courts and the Indian Army, all of which survive today as powerful entities. What they did not need was electric supply for the millions under their rule, medical care or an adequate food supply. (Hence the reprimands for White Western kids who are naughty enough to leave their vegetables on the table while "all those Indians are starving"). So India inherited a massive electricity, health care and food problem. All of these too, survive to this day.

Initially, Indian rulers started fairly well in the sense that they actually gave a shit about the country i.e. people like Nehru. Since food was the most pressing problem in the early independence years, that is where Nehru spent most of his energies, resulting in the green revolution and India's self-sufficiency in food production. By the late 70s, the famines were over.

Unfortunately, Nehru also had the silly notion that India should be socialist which resulted in the creation of the most fucked up bureaucracy possible. Over time this socialism, government controls over the economy and the bureaucracy would spell doom for those very people it was meant to help. As enterprise, business and investment came to a standstill, tax revenues came to a standstill too. There was soon no money for elementary education, health care or infrastructure such as roads and electricity. The only thing that prospered was the government bureaucracy which invented a new system of permits, licenses and quotas everyday. It grew fat on paperwork...the true successor to the British Raj. The only way business could function was by breaking the rules and so began the culture of corruption and bribery in politics - the second largest growth industry after the bureaucracy. It was all downhill from there on, India the lumbering Asian elephant, the "Hindu rate of growth", leave-the-country-if-you-can, brain-drain, no opportunity...

However, this did not stop us, as a country, from having a whole lot of sex. Corruption in the public polity was matched only by the ejaculatory enthusiasm of the masses, undiminished by condoms, birth control pills or any other barrier between the happy sperm and the eager egg. The Indian female's fertility rate climbed as the per capita income went down.

Well, now India has 600 million people living without electricity, fully 55% of its population. Let's sober up and look at some numbers.

600 million people imply about 120 million households using an average Indian family size of 5. Let us give each household about o.5 KW (kilowatt) of peak usage. Mind you, this is hardly an excessive number. It would not run a single AC - just enough for a few bulbs and ceiling fans. The average American household uses about four times more electricity at the peak with an average household size of only 3 !

So, we need 120 million x 0.5 KW = 60 million KW of electric generating capacity. We are not talking about what is needed to improve the power situation in cities like New Delhi where there are 5-10 powercuts everyday. We are not talking about all those industries that would be needed to employ these 600 million dirt-poor people and or the power needed to irrigate their farms. Just subsistence-level electricity for the masses without any at all at present.

Ahhh...money, money, money. So if India went...

* Nuclear, it would need about 60 mammoth sized nuclear plants to be built. At a cost of about $100 billion.
* Coal-based, it would need 30-60 large-sized coal plants. Cost: $60-100 billion.
* Wind-based, it would need 12,000 - 60,000 windmills. Cost: $120 billion or so,

What about hydroelectric? It depends if the project can even get off the ground. The Narmada Valley project is currently stalled because of agitation over some tribal lands being submerged. Even if it was completed, it would produce less than 3% of what is needed.

Would a project even as gigantic as China's Three Gorges solve the problem? Nope. Three Gorges is projected to produce about 20 million KW. One would need three Three Gorges to solve India's problem.

But this does help us understand something. The number of people displaced by these hydroelectric projects is far smaller than the number of people they help. Suppose the Three Gorges project was in India. Suppose also, that it displaces about 1 million people (same as in China). But it would produce enough electricity for 200 million people who don't have any!

Anyway, where will the money come from to solve this problem? The total expenditure of the Indian Government, based on tax revenues, is about $130 billion per year. A look at the figures tells us that at the very maximum, no more than $10 billion per year is available for electricity.

Given that power plants take 5-10 years to be built to the point of operation...well, it would be about 20 years in the best of circumstances before all these millions of people could turn on a bulb. This is not counting all the protesters who would gather at short notice whenever a new power project begins construction. The Narmada project has been delayed by ten years because of this.

Well. These big power projects have environmental issues. They displace people and it sucks if you happen to live in the wrong place. But they also provide benefits to many many more people than they displace. And we are not talking about luxury, just basic electricity needs.

If one doesn't like it, what is the alternative? Does a source of power exist that would disrupt no one's life and yet be affordable? Or do we just condemn the 600 million people to live in the dark...

From India - Conversations

2007-01-03T09:31:00.000-10:00

So as my faithful and not-so-faithful blog readers all know, I am currently in India, in a suburb of Delhi called Gurgaon. Thanks to Uncle Sam and his visa shenanigans, I won't be back before 24th Jan in the morning.

I had plans to write a regular diary of happenings in India but that didn't really work out. Laziness was stronger than the flesh and the spirit. So this is my lame effort to write at least one of a few posts...a conversation with some construction labourers near my house.

So...this afternoon I was hanging around a small market near my place, taking in the winter sun. Since there is no internal heating in Delhi, temperatures of 45 degrees or so are really, really cold because you have to spend the whole day in them. You really need to thaw out your bones in the sun once in a while.

Well, this is a usual Indian style local bazaar - highly congested with cycles, motorcycles, tractors and toyota camry's all mixed together. Amazing variety in the tiny shops....everything from American fast foods to desi stuff like aloo tikkis, gol gappas etc.

There is much construction going on near the market...mostly bungalows for people moving out of congested New Delhi into Gurgaon.

I was watching one such house being built...the labourers milling around, their kids and wives sitting around cooking in the distance. One of the guys passes close and says...

"Bhaiya-ji..." (hey mister - polite form, literally "brother")

Me: "Haan?" (yes?)

"Aap yahan ke hain?" (are you from here?)

Me: I'm confused how to respond..."Hmmm...haan...lekin bahar rehte hain" (yes...but i live abroad)

"Kahan?" (where?)

Me: "America"

A few other labourers gather around, looking curious. but not too much...desis staying abroad are frequently found in this area...

They are all smoking beedis (tobacco wrapped in betel leaves, no filter)

They sit down...village style squatting position, I try to do the same but it's too hard. I sit on some random bricks.

"Padte hain?" (are you studying?)

Me: "Nahin. Padte the. Ab kaam karte hain." (no. used to study, now i'm working)

"Kitni tak padhe?" (until which class did u study?)

Me: "Ph.D."

More guys gather. Murmurs of interest...no one knows what a phd is.

"Woh kya hai??" (what is that?)

I'm again confused. how do u explain phd to guys who have never been to primary school?

Me: "College ke kai saal baad bhi jab padte rehte hain...usko kehte hain" (when you keep studying way after college, then that is a phd)

"Arre baap re! Kya baat hai!" (good grief! that's amazing!)

"Kya padhe itna?" (what is it that you have studied so much?)

Now I'm really confused. How remote is particle physics from this place...

Me: "Vigyan. Jaise ki...har cheez kiski bani hui hai...dharti kahan se aai..yehi sab" (science. for example what everything is made of, where the world came from, things like that)

General laughter. These guys are thoroughly enjoying themselves now. Random kid runs into the group and starts laughing too...

"Matlab mitti-vitti...cement...eentein" (you mean dirt, like cement, bricks...)

Me: "Sab cheezen" (everything)

Another labourer enters the conversation:

"Bhaiya-ji...wahan sab gori hoti hain na?" (there are all these white girls there right?)

Me: "Kaphi hoti hain. Lekin sirf wohi nahin...cheeni, desi sab hoti hain. Pakistani bhi." (quite a few. but not just them...there are chinese, indian girls too. even pakistanis.)

"Mera beta gori ke saath shaadi karna chahta hai." (my son wants to marry a white woman)

Everyone starts grinning. I don't get it. How on earth did this guy's son meet her out here??

Me: "Kitna bara hai?" (how old is he?)

"Cheh saal" (six years)

Me: "Kaphi jaldi baat ban gayi..." (the matter has been settled rather early)

Everyone bursts into laughter. The random kid too...apparently he is the romeo...

"Usey cunnaut place mein ek gori ney chocolate di thi. Tabse dil mein yeh ichcha hai." (some white woman gave him a chocolate in connaught place [delhi's main marketplace, also tourist spot]. since then he has this desire.)

"Pata hai...samne waley bungley ke malik ki biwi gori hai. Swaydun se laya hai usey." (you know, the owner of the bungalow in front...his wife is white. he has brought her from sweden.)

I didn't realize the group of their wives nearby were overhearing the whole conversation. One woman - the kid's mother - sounding very pissed off says:

"Haan...jaroor gori ke saath shaadi karega! Saali maan uski sari zindagi roti pakati rahegi naa!! us gori ki saas...sara din gali deti hai usko. hindi mein." (yeah right, he is going to marry a white woman! then his fucking mother will have to cook rotis [for them] her whole life!! that white woman who stays there...her mother-in-law abuses her the whole day. in hindi though.)

Labourer is enjoying his wife's irritation. He says:

"Muskarati achcha hai wo..." (she [swedish girl] smiles very nicely...)

Wife: "Sara din bak bak..." (you just keep talking nonsense the whole day)

She is getting really pissed off. Starts standing up. Labourer is getting more than he bargained for. I ask for a beedi. Damn thing is really strong, but lights up my system.

Labourer wants to pacify his wife. But he is nervous and ends up asking me: "Bhaiya-ji...lekin desi ladki kaa maza to gori ke saath ho hi nahin sakta naa?" (but, the extra fun of having an indian girl...you can never have with a white woman right??) --- here "fun" is not innocent fun. Everyone laughs very loudly.

I decide to be neutral.

Me: "Maza to kahin bhi aa sakta hai..." (fun can be had with anyone...)

People laugh more. It's too much...all work has stopped. His wife is outraged by the conversation, comes and grabs the kid, drags him away by the hand.

She is muttering to herself: "Kumpooter sikhana hai enu. Gadhe kahin ke..." (we have to teach him computers. these men are donkeys...)

After that things kind of dispersed. I went home too after they showed some things about how they mix cement etc.

Borat (2006)

2006-11-11T01:24:00.000-10:00

1/10. Utter bullshit, composed entirely of toilet humor. The few good things about this movie are the insights into middle-america bigotry against jews, homosexuals and foreigners, as found at rodeo shows and frat parties. Perhaps the weirdness of some christian sects too.

But poor Kazakhstan...they never did anything to deserve this. It is hard to understand why Cohen used the name of a real country if all he wanted to do was a critique of America. Most of the film is not a critique of America in fact, it is just mudslinging at a less-well-known nation for no reason at all.

I was just amazed at the stupidity on screen and the rest of the audience that was enjoying every minute of it. The Tomatometer is at 90% too...unbelievable.

C&C's Italian Restaurant

2006-10-16T22:57:00.000-10:00

8/10. This is a great place for Italian food located on Waialae avenue - same block as Coffee Talk.

The place has a nice cosy feel to it with wicker chairs and white tablecloths. For some reason they have about 20 bread baskets suspended from the ceiling, which is a bit weird. Very twilight zone. Since the place is small, it is useful to make reservations. The waiter-in-chief is this effeminate french guy who like other Honolulu waiters focuses exclusively on the women in the party. He even dropped some french words like "merci", "voila" etc. But wait...isn't this an Italian restaurant?? Yep. That's the other weird thing about the place.

However the food is excellent. I've been here on two separate occasions and everything was just superb. The italian bread for starters is somewhat unusual, but quite tasty. I have had several dishes here such as the veal pasta, pork chops, shrimp fettucine, linguine with clams, bruschetta, seafood risotto (with great fluffy prawns and scallops) and the parmigiana gelato. The pork chops and the clam linguine are my favorites. Among appetizers, both bruschetta (three types) and the gelato were good, but the gelato was really good!

Good wine is essential with this food and the place is BYOB. But be prepared for the $5 glass charge. Overall this is an expensive place with dishes varying between $15 and $25 or so. Expect to pay between $20-25 for a full meal. No possibility of regrets though...!

Cosmic Girl

2006-10-09T15:00:00.000-10:00

- Jamiroquai, Cosmic girl

(Farewell. Even I can't bridge those light years.)

I must've died and gone to heaven
Cos it was a quarter past eleven
On a Saturday in 1999
Right across from where I'm standing
On the dance floor she was landing
It was clear that she was from another time
Like some baby Barbarella
With the stars as her umbrella
She asked me if I'd like to magnetise
Do I have to go star-trekking
Cos it's you I should be checking
So she lazer beamed me with her cosmic eyes

She's just a cosmic girl
From another galaxy
My heart's at zero gravity
She's from a cosmic world
Putting me in ecstasy
Transmitting on my frequency
She's cosmic

I'm scanning all my radars
Well she said she's from a quasar
Forty thousand million light years away
It's a distant solar system
I tried to phone but they don't list 'em
So I asked her for a number all the same
She said, step in my transporter
So I can teleport ya
All around my heavenly body
This could be a close encounter
I should take care not to flounder
Sends me into hyperspace, when I see her pretty face

She's just a cosmic girl
From another galaxy
My heart's at zero gravity
She's from a cosmic world
Putting me in ecstasy
Transmitting on my frequency
She's cosmic
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face
Sends me into hyperspace when I see her pretty face

She's just a cosmic girl
From another galaxy
Transmitting on my frequency yeah cosmic, oh
Can't you be my cosmic woman?
I need you, I want you to be my cosmic girl
For the rest of time (Fade)

Little Miss Sunshine

2006-10-02T12:23:00.000-10:00

8/10. O.K. I'm happy to say that I have finally seen something worthwhile at the theater. A welcome relief from all the third-rate stuff that we were plagued with for the whole summer.

The story is about a cute little kid ("Olive" / Abigail Breslin) who is being prepped for a child beauty contest known as "Little Miss Sunshine". Her family is a quirky bunch, with a dirty old man for a grandfather, an "achievement counselor" father and a brother who is immersed in dark German classics (Nietzsche...!) due to which he hasn't talked for a year. Finally there is an uncle who recently tried to commit suicide after being spurned by his male graduate student in favor of a rival colleague in academia. Quite a mouthful eh? The mother (Toni Collette) appears to be the most sane member of the family. Yay, mothers.

The family finds that it must set off together on a road-trip across state lines to deliver Olive to the beauty contest. And so they depart in their rickety old van with their journey resulting in more crazy situations than can be imagined. For the sake of secrecy I will not disclose them...but a corpse is involved at one point. The movie somehow manages to tackle some social issues too, but in a very non-threatening way. For example, the brother represents all those teenage dudes that are cutoff from peers and descend into nihilistic weirdness (columbine??). However he worships Nietzsche and not Manson. The other issue is child beauty contests. The movie doesn't say so explicitly but as the show goes on, it becomes pretty clear that they should be banned. I'm not quite sure what the homosexual professor-jilted lover-uncle signifies - perhaps he is just there for fun. But the achievement counselor father is definitely a caricature of the various "ten-point" or "fifteen-point" programs for success that are peddled by some low-lifes in this country. The drone armies of Amway and Quikstar automatically come to mind. Interestingly, since I left Texas I haven't been assaulted by them...perhaps Hawaii is an oasis of peace in this war. Well, one more reason to go the aloha way!

The movie is really funny and has a great finale, which I shouldn't reveal either. It's not terribly deep...just lighthearted entertainment with trademark quirky americanisms. Worth $8 at the theater.

Coffee Talk

2006-09-17T15:17:00.000-10:00

7.5/10. This is the coffee shop on Waialae and 12th avenue. I spend quite a bit of my time there with a laptop or a good book.

It is reasonably spacious but with enough tables such that you can find a seat even on crowded days. The clientele is the usual college crowd taking refuge from dreary dorms while trying to get some work done. Their best asset is free wireless internet which I have not seen anywhere else in Honolulu. That includes Cafe 2000 on University Ave, all the Starbuckses and Borders/Barnes &Nobles coffee shops.

The coffee itself is decent but not spectacular. However large degrees of customization (such as extra syrup in mochas) are possible due to the friendliness of the female staff. Male staff members are somewhat rare and not-so-friendly. If they are present it is mostly behind-the-scenes while the female takes care of customer interaction. Perhaps the management understands that high male quality is not being employed.

From the food point of view, the situation is not so rosy. The sandwiches and burgers are mediocre and best avoided. I recall a hot melt with such poor qualiy pastrami that one would need a crocodile's jaws to break off a piece. The cookies are quite good though, especially the peanut butter ones.

The decor is allright overall speaking, but perhaps also a bit cheerless. It feels unfinished...like they started with some kind of retro ambitions but lost heart midway. Tables are small and circular which makes it challenging to manoeuvre both a sandwich plate and a laptop. Some bigger tables are available outside. There is no sofa section which means that there are no bums and most clients are awake. There is an outdoor section which is frequently populated by hard core smokers who are also at times serious-looking chicks in very dark clothes, some body art, rings etc. They tend to give me a coolness-deficit complex. I have never sat there, but that is mostly because insides are less warm. Speaking of that, I'm not sure if they have an AC for the interior. Sometimes it is a bit cool but mostly rather warm, particularly in the afternoons.

Concerning ambient music, there seems to be a heavy bias towards very emotional romantic songs of the "love me tender, love me true" variety. Lots of Air Supply too. This can make me a bit nervous after a while, but I suppose that depends on taste.

So, as coffee houses go, this is probably the best in Honolulu. But, if there is another place out there with decent coffee and free wireless internet, I would like to know about it!

Tsotsi

2006-09-09T21:47:00.000-10:00

6/10. O.K. this is a good movie belonging to the induce-depression-win-award genre. As one would expect, the background is Africa - Johannesburg to be exact.

Essentially it's about a teenage dude who has had a hell of a life. His mother died of AIDS (presumably) and the alcoholic father broke the family dog's back which resulted in the boy's running away from home to live in spare sewage pipes. Henceforth he grows up to be a small-time hood. Then, one fateful day, he shoots a rich woman and decamps with her car only to realise that her baby is in the backseat.

Well, you guessed it. A babyful life causes our man to reflect, improve, redeem and even fall in love with a girl who is initially forced to breast-feed the baby at gunpoint. Unfortunately though, when he has almost become a nice guy and sets off to return the baby to the parents, he is apprehended by the cops in a dramatic moment outside the baby's home. And so ends the movie with our friend's hands up in the air.

Call me a cynic, but haven't we seen this before somewhere? Actually we haven't. The deja vu comes from the chunks of acclaimed cinema that have been put together to create a "new" art production. A little African poverty, some AIDS placement, a hood's inner goodness, some innocent-baby factor...that's about it. This is as close to an art movie formula that you can ever get. The acting is very good though which I suppose is the movie's redemption. Note: It has since come to my notice that Tsotsi is based on a novel. In that case my view is that the movie was made too late i.e. at a point where all important features of the story have already been shown in other movies or documentaries.

To be a good cynic I have to offer solutions, not just rant and rave. How would I make the movie given the chance? Well, the baby would certainly not be returned. He would instead grow up to be a mafia don in support of his surrogate father - sort of like Amitabh Bachchan's double role in "The Great Gambler". Or not. Anyway, he would get into South African politics, defeat Nelson Mandela, and be confronted by his real father in a final showdown. His weeping real mother would then show up and have a war of words with the fake mother. But their motherly war will turn into sisterly affection due to the shared male bond. (Note: I know this will work as this is what makes polygamy possible). The emotional cup will run over at this point and it will be assumed that the female energy will force everyone to live happily ever after. Enter: the South African police. They will show up to enforce law and order but sadly will have no clue as to what they should do. Hence they will end up shooting the fake father in a shocking gunbattle culminating in a spray of "Kill Bill" style blood. The movie will end there and all the girls in the audience will emerge weeping while the guys will feel vague desires to be "dons".

Oh well. The world is far from ideal.

Road Rage

2006-09-09T12:48:00.000-10:00

So I dropped by the subway on kapahulu that advertises "Open 9am till 12 midnight!" for a snack at 11pm today. It was closed. There is something so hawaiian about that...sorry, cannot kokua, not so late...

Changing gears, the purpose of this blog entry is solely to vent on the work visa situation. It seems h1s in academic positions such as postdocs cannot simply transfer to industry jobs. This is unlike the taxi driver on an h1 who can flit from one employer to another, or be wholly illegal pending citizenship by default or amnesty or whatever. Academic h1s have to again go through the annual cap and start work in October. Nor can they use any unused OPT lest by chance the sysem work too fairly. Since this year's visas are finished, nothing can be done until next year. Catch-22.

I've been trying to rationalize that this is nothing. There is a whole world out there caught in the same vortex of American stupidity, but in much worse ways. There are tiny bin ladens squirming out of vaginas across the world, fully formed with vengeful beards because of this stupidity. People are getting their asses blown off in Lebanon and British Pakistanis are one step away from hiding nitroglycerin in their bladders, ready to explode in a shower of urine inside American aircraft. My problems are nothing. And here I am sitting in Hawaii complaining I cannot accept offers to work on wall street. It's so trivial. Yeah right...

So, why does everything that touches American politics have to be so stupid and self-defeating? Hard to believe how much misinformation people here are willing to put up with. Speaking of that, random surfing brought Mr. Kim Berry and his "Programmer's Guild" to my attention. He is leading a jihad to send people like me home. Never mind that top science and engineering graduate programs nowadays have about 70% foreigners, if not more.He has a little propaganda item on his website which says that h1 computer programmers on average earn several tens of thousand dollars less than the median wage among all American programmers. However, h1 visas are valid for a maximum of 6 years which means that the pool of such workers in the survey has an experience level bounded between 0-6 years. Also, government statistics are only published for new h1 holders who have even less experience. The median for Americans does not place any bounds on experience. So, big surprise that one group seems to earn less.

Besides, every h1 from India is not an IIT-ian and neither is every Chinese from Tsinghua or every Korean from whatever is the hot university in Korea. Quite a few are from some mid-level college somewhere with poor english to boot and there is no reason why they should get paid as much as a graduate from a US university.

I suppose Berry will put on his thinking cap and ask, where is the need to hire such "poor quality" programmers then? Well, the answer is that a good fraction of programming jobs are now commoditised, which means that anyone who has taken a single advanced programming course can do them. You don't need a BS in computer science from a good school in such jobs. What people need to do is get their graduate degrees if they really want to differentiate themselves. It doesn't even cost anything - teaching / research assistantships are a dime a dozen.

The Guild in effect says that Americans love math and are dying to get their Masters and PhDs but are "discouraged" by the h1 shenanigans of the likes of microsoft. Sorry, but I have taught in UT's classrooms for six years. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of American undergraduates believe that ignorance is a virtue, especially when it comes to anything scientific. And then, the poor dears have to feel entertained in their courses, you know. This concept of omnipresent entertainment is not unique to the classroom. I was told recently that an a fellow postdoc's wife watches Fox news simply because "they make the news so much more entertaining"(!) . Not so surprising, given that Bush has converted ignorance into public policy. At least I can understand why Berry got fired - I wouldn't hire someone who cannot follow simple statistics.

Anyways, I'm not going anywhere, so ya'll are just stuck with me. And I'm not even a programmer. Ha...

Mini-me

2006-08-18T19:20:00.000-10:00

O.K. so I seriously wish I lived in a time where I could read the news without coming across any middle eastern events. Come to think of it, I've been forced to read this stuff for almost my entire adult life.

The latest seems to be that the Israelis have experienced their first real defeat in a war with Arabs. They seem rather surprised that the Arabs are finally learning. My view in any case was that these guys were being suckered into a trap by the Hizbs and the Iranians. After all, Israelis have become too predictable. When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems begin to look like nails. Hence the only solution Israelis have to any problem is to bomb as F-16s are their only tools. Unfortunately, with this kind of predictability comes weakness even if one is the biggest gorilla on the block.

Clearly the US is suffering from the same problem. Based on this common inability to reason, I recommend that Israel be declared the 51st state of America. Think about it. Israel is worth zilch in terms of oil, natural resources or industry, nor is it a huge market for US goods. Even so, it is an article of faith in the US that Israel must be supported even when actively sabotaging US interests. Now, such illogical attachment is only observed when countries are talking about their own territory. For example, the US would certainly be better off without Alabama, Mississippi or any of the Dakotas but woe betide any foreign power that tries to occupy these states. So, annex Israel and be done with it. Give regular Americans also the opportunity to shoot up a few Palestinians.

On that note, I sometimes wish someone would take Uttar Pradesh and Bihar off India's hands. But China refuses to invade and the Pakistanis unfortunately do not share a border with the good people of Patna and Dhanbad. Maybe...just maybe...if we can convince the US that there are some WMDs there...

Pipe dreams.

The Interpreter (Sean Penn, Nicole Kidman)

2006-07-30T23:16:00.000-10:00

6/10. This is not a bad movie, but more of the pass-time type. Nice shots of the UN and some mild US-bashing which is always a good thing.

The movie's name comes from Nicole Kidman's job as a language interpreter at the UN building in New York. Her life gets into high gear when she overhears plans for the killing of the leader of an African nation ("Matobu"), who is about to visit NYC to address the UN. She has been born and brought up in Matobu herself and apparently has a murky past, having been involved in the civil war raging there for years. She manages to pull off a sort of mysterious "white girl brought up in Africa" air with a funky accent which is kinda nice. Anyway, her report on the conversation sparks an FBI investigation with Sean Penn leading the team.

Normally I consider Penn to be a good actor but in this movie he is rather weepy. His story is that he had an adulterous wife who died just two weeks ago in a road accident while scooting around with her latest fling. Penn becomes Nicole's protector, "Bodyguard" style, because the shadowy African conspirators have figured out that they have been overheard. The intense situation that the couple is thrown in generates emotional heat punctuated by lots of weeping because Nicole too suffers a huge loss. As it turns out, both her brother and her former boyfriend have been shot to death in an ambush by Government forces in Matobu. Much to the audience's disappointment, this sort of cools the budding romance and it begins to seem like Penn won't get the yoyo. Further developments occur which I will keep secret in order to be less of a spoiler.

The movie is reasonably slick, but falters a bit near the end. Watch it at the dollar theater.

Who is the bad boy?

2006-07-25T15:49:00.000-10:00

Saw a newsclip on CNN, featuring an irate Israeli housewife telling the world they would react in exactly the same manner if rockets were falling on Connecticut or Massachusetts. Frankly I wouldn't take it for granted that Bush would react to an attack on Mass. It's probably devil country for him.

However, I fell to thinking that it is important to dissect carefully how the world got to this point. So, assuming there exists an objective reality (OR) as far as events in the human world are concerned, I began a conversation with it.

Here are the results, (also for the benefit of Mr. and Mrs. X and Ms. Y who were at odds yesterday :-). Do comment.

RM: Why is Hezbollah firing so many rockets at Israel?

OR: Rocket firing commenced after Israel began bombing Lebanon in response to Hezbollah's cross-border raid in which two Israeli soldiers were taken hostage. Hezbollah's claim is the rockets are in retaliation for Israeli targeting of civilian infrastructure such as roads, buildings and power plants which has resulted in massive civilian casualties. Whether or not that was the real reason, it is a fact that Hezbollah's attacks began after the Israeli bombardment.

RM: So why did Hezbollah take the Israelis hostage in the first place?

OR: Well, their stated reason is to win release of their people already held in prisons by Israelis, and also several Palestinians including Hamas representatives elected to the Palestinian legislature. The Hamas representative capture by Israel is in fact a very recent development, almost immediately preceding the current crisis. However, the US and Israel do not comment on this linkage. They say it is a strategic move on the part of Syria and/or Iran, which are known to fund and arm Hezbollah.

RM: O.K., so why is Israel holding these Palestinian reps as prisoner?

OR: That began when one Israeli soldier was taken hostage in Gaza by Hamas. After that Israel commenced a military attack on Gaza and the West Bank. This included bombing of a Palestinian parliament building, aerial strikes on alleged militant strongholds in civilian areas (current death toll is about 100, mostly civilian), and capture of Hamas lawmakers.

RM: I want to ask why this Israeli soldier was taken hostage. But postponing that, since it is said that civilian casualties are Hamas' fault because it operates in civilian areas, I would like to know why it doesn't go someplace else.

OR: Hamas belongs to the class of political movements that are described by themselves and the general population as "national resistance against foreign occupation". It is qualitatively similar to any other such movement that has existed in the past or present. Therefore Hamas members are civilians, and they live in civilian areas. Resistance movements have never been known to create targetable barracks and installations. If they did, they would be lost immediately because they don't have much conventional firepower beyond small arms. Further, both Gaza and WB are densely populated areas. Unlike Afghanistan, this terrain cannot hide guerillas by itself. The same can be said for Hezbollah. Therefore, to sum up, if it is required that Hamas and Hezbollah not operate in civilian areas, that is equivalent to requiring they do not exist at all.

RM: So why do they exist?

OR: Hamas and Hezbollah were formed in response to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and West Bank, and southern Lebanon (1982 - 2000) respectively.

RM: Shit. I know I'm going to regret asking this, but why did Israel occupy southern Lebanon?

OR: During those times, the Palestinian Authority didn't exist in Gaza and WB - they were controlled directly by the Israeli military. Instead the Palestinian resistance functioned remotely in the form of Yasser Arafat's PLO and Lebanon was their main base. Hence the Israeli occupation, to defeat the PLO.

RM: O.K. then why is Gaza and WB occupied?

OR: As a result of Israel's victory in the 1967 war with Arabs. The stated aim of holding on to this territory by Israel is that it offers security in the form of a "buffer zone". However religious/far-right parties in Israel routinely refer to a "God-given" right of the Jews to these lands. These parties are not fringe groups, but hold considerable representation in the Israeli Knesset and also the central government.

RM: Has security been achieved? It has been nearly 40 years.

OR: That depends on how one defines security. If it is defined as security of the average Israeli citizen in daily life, then greater failures are hard to imagine. Israel is perhaps the most fortified country in the world and it's citizens live on hair-trigger terror alert. Everyday activities such as travelling on buses or visiting supermarkets and nightclubs can result in death from a suicide attack originating directly from the "buffer zone". If security is defined as strategic depth to battle invading Arab armies, that is not yet tested. It is also said that the strategic depth has a deterrence effect on Arabs. However, that is a matter of subjective reality, and not objective. For example, the counterpoint would go as follows: Israel is the pre-eminent military power in the region as a result of massive American aid. It is also known to possess nuclear weapons, unlike it's Arab neighbours. Therefore, if deterrence is happening, then it could just as well be due to possession of nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them without fear of similar retaliation.

RM: O.K. let's get back to the original issue: why was the Israeli soldier taken hostage in Gaza?

OR: It is not clear. In the past such hostage taking has been done to win release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. It is also worthy of note that in the period about a month prior to this hostage taking, Israel was conducting military operations in the occupied territories resulting in killing of some Hamas members, resistance committee members, policemen and a few civilians. Hamas responded with some Qassam rocket fire at Israel which failed to cause any damage. This led to a well publicised incident where a Palestinian family picniccing on the beach was killed by Israeli artillery shells. Israel claimed it was trying to suppress the Qassam fire. The sole survivor was a 10 year old girl. In another incident that immediately followed, Israeli rockets killed 9 Palestinians and injured 30. Hamas responded by announcing the end of it's 16 month ceasefire with Israel and fired a few more Qassam rockets. More Israeli attacks took place in Gaza shortly thereafter, resulting in the death of several civilians. Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire with Israel, which was declined. However, aside from the routine violence, another important issue was that Israel had refused to repay tax arrears after Hamas won the Palestinian elections and took over the government. This effectively crippled Hamas's capacity to govern.

RM: I see, what exactly is this tax money? Why does Israel have it?

OR: Israel collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. It also supplies utilities such as electricity, water and gas. The utility costs are subtracted from the taxes and the remainder is given to the Palestinian government. Israel cited it's view of Hamas as a terrorist organisation as reason to refuse transfer of the taxes it had collected from Palestinians in 2005. However, Israel continued to demand payment for utilities, failing which it would cut off electricity and water to the Palestinian areas. This resulted in a crisis that ultimately had to be resolved through European aid, else there might have been a prolonged blackout in Palestine which would include emergency services such as hospitals. The utilities were paid but the problem remained that the tax money was still withheld and Hamas had no money to govern.

RM: Why did the Palestinians elect Hamas then?

OR: Ahhhhh...now that's the crux isn't it? He he. Why did the US elect Bush? After all, the rest of the world hardly approves of it. As for the Palestinian's Hamas, it might be banned by several governments, but public opinion in most of the world outside the US and Israel considers it a resistance movement. Let it go, young Paedowan.

RM: You are becoming positively cool, OR.

OR: Thank you. What would you do without me?

RM: Probably be tending goats somewhere in Ladakh.

I let it go...

Big Shoku

2006-06-19T00:50:00.000-10:00

As part of my ongoing series of in-depth articles on international affairs (see "So, what's up with Iran?" below) , it's time to tackle the latest North Korean missile crisis.

It seems the koreans are getting ready to test a long range missile which can potentially hit the US. Actually it's not this particular missile which is so bad, because it has only two boosters versus the three needed to get from NK to the US. But if they can have two, why not three, so goes the logic. Of course this is very scary for Americans because they have only a few hundred ICBMs as well as only a few scores of nuclear submarines carrying some piddly megaton class hydrogen bombs that can only destroy this planet a few times over. Hopelessly unmanned and outgunned in this fashion, the US is desperately trying to get the world to pressure north korea and curb their aggressive behavior. I am also angry, why is North Korea being such a big bully?

I was able to find time to research this North Korean missile and discover interesting facts about it. This is of course surprising given that I am currently in the midst of some difficult career decisions, but some things are too important to ignore. A man's gotta rise above himself.

The NK missile goes by the name of "Taepodong" which means "Big Cannon" in Korean. However, strangely enough Taepodong is what the Americans call it, not the North Koreans. Somehow that fact hasn't been made clear by the media. In NK they call it Kwangmyongsong meaning "bright star" which is quite a pleasant name for a missile. NK has another rocket called the "Nodong" which might or might not also be an American name. I suppose it means "No Canon" or "Small Canon". This one was exported to Pakistan in exchange for a nuclear bomb design and is now proudly referred to as "our indigenous scientific achievement" by the Pakistani Government. Coming back to Taepodong, an earlier version was tested by NK a few years ago by firing it right over Japan. This was so shocking for ordinary Japanese that the incident has ever since been referred to as "Taepodong Shoku". "Shoku" of course means "shock" in Japanese.

Hurt and unhappy over this whole mess, one of Bush's men said, "For our part, we will not be derailed by their temper tantrums, nor have any of our own." This is clearly an onset of maturity as the US has decided it will not have any more tantrums like it used to. I can almost see the UN member countries shedding tears and looking fondly at Bush. Ahh...those growing up pains! It's good to leave them behind.

Perhaps this new Taepodong will finally persuade the Japanese to make nuclear bombs of their own. After that they will be forced by their constitution to impose sanctions on themselves, which means Japanese goods will be forbidden from being sold in Japan itself. Imagine the consequences - the whole world will be swamped with dirt-cheap Japanese exports from cameras to talking bathrooms, sending the global economy into orbit.

The NK leader Kim Jong Il, also known as the "peerlessly great man", seems to have anticipated this because he says the taepodong project is only aimed at peaceful development of space technology in order to send satellites into orbit. The great leader is probably right because after all his country is so vast - nearly two hundred miles wide at some places - that satellites are the only way they can map things out and know where they really are.

Too cool to be true?

2006-06-17T23:53:00.000-10:00

Unknown to me, in the far, misty corners of the internet there exists a website which rates the top 50 coolest desis in the world today. This fact came to my attention this evening and not being ranked among them made me feel sad, angered and finally relieved. I am wondering whether or not I should post the link on this page because it is clearly some kind of propaganda to make us all want to be like Kal Penn. O.K., for the sake of completeness, click here.

Definitions...! To the uninitiated, "desi" is the Indian word for Indian. It can also mean "made in India" or just "local dude" in which case Americans are desis too, as long as they are referring to each other. Of course, this makes them American desis which are none other than Indian Americans who are not sure if they are really desis. There is a moral in there somewhere that escapes me. Oh, one more thing - the word is not pronounced "daisy", more like "they-see".

India Cafe, India House and Maharani

2006-05-03T02:27:00.000-10:00

Well, it's been a long time since I blogged. Too many life un-changing events have been going on lately to leave space for serious reviewing.

I know of four Indian restaurants in Honolulu, of which three are in the title of this post and the fourth is Zaffron which I haven't been to. However, recently I attended an event catered by Zaffron, and the dishes consisted of mutton curry, chicken curry and some veggies. It was all well below average, and the mutton was bad enough that as far as I am concerned, the zaffron story endeth here. Update 9/18/06: Been to Zaffron. It is buffet-only with average dishes and $20 for that. Pointless.

I'll admit right away that in my opinion Maharani is the best of the three. Then comes India House and regrettably India Cafe brings up the rear. Update 10/1/06: with the addition of the on-campus take-out place, and further visits, I say now that India Cafe is better than India House.

I was rather impressed with India Cafe the first time I went there. They have a very interesting menu of a Malay (?) and/or other south-east asian fusion with Indian food, which I have never seen on the mainland. It's not everyday that you get served dosas with chicken or lamb curry! However, two visits later things began to go downhill. I ordered a fish curry which was basically an under-cooked ahi soaked in creamy mallu-style coconut gravy. The damned thing was downright unhappy floating in there, and gave off an offensive odor. It led to stomach upheavals the next morning that are best not written about. A fellow diner of japanese-hawaiian descent (but with south-asian leanings) wasn't too happy with her fish serving either. Worse, the next time I went there, the lamb curry had also touched rock-bottom. Very chunky, undercooked, and you could chew it halfway to the moon. I'd say the only remaining bright star on their menu is the eggplant masala which is very spicy and very good. In closing, I have to say that I'm not very enthusiastic about their service: Me or fellow diners have had to go up to their little ordering window way too many times for minor things like water or dessert.

Moving on to Maharani, I'd say in the grand scheme of things it is merely an average Indian restaurant. But they do maintain standards and have some pretty elaborate dishes. Also, the abyss of inconsistency at India Cafe makes the star of Maharani appear even more luminous. The word Maharani means "Queen" btw.

I've been most impressed by the Shrimp DoPiaza and the Malai Kofta. The shrimp is particularly impressive because it's not an easy thing to make in the Indian way. The Koftas are served in a creamy gravy which is really flavorful. You can enjoy these with some stunning naans or parathas such as kabuli naan which comes stuffed with raisins and nuts. There is another sort of naan (whose name I forget) which is thin, crisp and huge in size. Ask them to tell you about it using this description. Besides these I have had Shrimp Karahi (agreeable), Chicken Masala (good), Saag Paneer (very good) and other things I have forgotten in my post-gluttonous stupor. Oh, and it's BYOB so bring the wine and the corkscrew else they'll charge you $5 for it. Expect to pay about $15-20 per person for the meal.

Update 8/13/06: Had the tandoori chicken at Maharani. It was a bit too red, but tasted quite good! The price is reasonable too - one plate costing $16 consists of two enormous leg quarters, two naans and raita. Luckily there is some spice level, which sets this apart from the usual bland tandoori chicken at Indian restaurants in the US. Oh, one more thing. It seems these guys aren't Afghans, but Bangladeshis.

India House is a bit of a mystery. It's highly unpretentious, tucked in front of puck's alley. The service there is very good - the guy in charge really makes an effort to bring you your water and other stuff on time. Lest the reader wonder, water is critical for me at Indian restaurants because my stomach is no longer the bullet-proof machine it was. The years of bland american food have taken their toll. (Just call me Mr. Pink...)

I have had only two dishes at IH, butter chicken and paneer pakora. The former is the delight of North India. You cannot throw a rock in Delhi without hitting a big ass Punjabi wolfing down this preparation with shouts of "Oye mundu ek aur plate la na jaldi!!". This one doesn't quite have the tandoori bbq flavor it's supposed to have but it is still quite good. The naans here are different, more rough and ready. Not the processed exquisiteness of Maharani, but perhaps more real. Paneer Pakoras were absolutely delicious both times I went there. So, IH is the underdog in this group and might dethrone Maharani if lots of work is put in.

Update 6/17/06: India House is going down the tube as well. Apparently for the non-butter chicken curries they use Japanese curry powder which really sucks in Indian food. Besides this I ordered chicken biryani from them recently and it was really weird. The rice wasn't even basmati, some kind of mexican sticky rice if there is such a thing.

Verdict: Honolulu isn't the place to come for Indian food but if you are here, there is one decent option viz. Maharani on King Street.

As Crude As It Gets

2006-03-13T23:58:00.000-10:00

Well, lately I have been obsessed with all things oil-related. People have also asked me whether my rants against taxes in general and gas taxes in particular imply that I have some other solution to the energy problem up my sleeve. Or perhaps it is just that the constant rain on Oahu is making my brain go soft. Well...the rain is a problem...but let's see what I can come up with.

First of all, every problem doesn't necessarily have a solution regardless of what homely wisdom says. Sometimes the choice is between things that make the problem worse and things that delay the inevitable.

The simple truth is that given the world's population and level of industrialization, there is no solution to the energy question that can preserve both. In the long run, that is. Oil has to run out some day, and there is no known source of energy which is so abundant and delivers quite the same punch. We will have to go back to a less-mechanized era one day and the world's population will have to fall accordingly. So...do we let it fall due to famine and disease or by gradually declining birth rates? How does one soften the blow?

I cannot think of anything other than more fuel efficiency really - but not via higher taxes. My route would be regulation norms on fuel efficiency, that increase yearly upto some sort of limit close-ish to the Carnot cycle (100% is theoretically impossible by the second law of thermodynamics). Coupled with naturally increasing oil prices due to free market trading, this should be enough to delay the inevitable by several decades.

There is a small problem with all this though: the US auto industry as represented by GM and Ford is in no shape to comply with fuel efficiency norms. Both corporations presently enjoy junk bond status on the fixed income markets, which basically means that you should be even more wary about lending them money than to the government of Guatemala. These guys just do not have the technical or managerial capacity to make such a big turnaround in their standards. However, together they employ about 300,000 people in the US alone, plus several hundred thousand contract employees (hourly wage etc). No politician in this country is going to do anything that might put these guys out of business.

How did these companies get into this mess? The short answer is "MBAs". They ignored their technical workers, engineers, designers et al and brought in freshly minted line management with no understanding of how a car is made. Then they proceeded to insulate top management from the rank and file of the company. And now they are worth so much crap...

So, what happens next? Well, the rest of the world should go ahead with better fuel efficiency standards. This will allow the Toyotas and Volkswagens to really shoot for across the board mileage improvements (not just the Hybrid - all of them) and the rising price of oil will naturally cause US consumers to shift to those cars. Instead of a timeline to death, GM and Ford will just wither away gradually.

What if none of this works? Then maybe there is no solution after all. I already have my plan - gonna be a glow-worm farmer when the lights go out...heh...

On Gas Taxes

2006-03-05T01:53:00.000-10:00

O.K. so it's late night on Saturday, it's been a good day and I am writing about...gas taxes?? Well, inspiration can hit you at strange times.

Lately I have been hearing from many quarters that we should support extra taxes on gasoline to encourage efficient use of this (supposedly) fast depleting resource. But will this have the desired result? I don't believe so. First of all any sales tax creates a disproportionate burden on people with lower incomes. Worse, it is likely that low income people on average own older vehicles with lower gas efficiency, but don't have the money to invest in a new vehicle. Among newer vehicles too we have gas guzzlers like hummers, big-ass SUVs/trucks and so on, but from what I have seen these are driven by the richer set for whom money isn't much of an issue. Will they quail before a gas tax? Probably not. My guess is such a tax will just make life more difficult for people who have to drive long distances in fucked-up vehicles just to hold down a job. Will it spur a lifestyle change in favor of shorter commutes? I don't know about that. People tend to stay far from work because it costs less. If a good fraction can afford it and decide to move closer, increasing demand will drive up prices immediately as the demand curve for real estate is rather elastic. It isn't well understood that there is just no free lunch in economics...

There is also the rhetoric that money from the tax can be used to fund all sorts of alternate fuel research, light rail and so on. My innate prejudice is that sounds fine in theory but in practise governments just end up wasting the cash. Every politician has some axe or the other to grind which could use money. For some it's a useless construction project to create "jobs", and for the more ambitious it could be a pointless war somewhere in the world. Does one really wish to put more good money in the hands of these idiots? Also, while the money budgeted for basic sciences and alternate energy development is pathetic, that is not because of a shortage of money in government treasuries. It's because the politicians who spend the money and the public at large which elects them are both just too dumb to think about investing in the future. Of course, it goes without saying that both houses of congress are happy to spend billions on a missile shield, while knowing that there isn't a fool alive who would fire off a nuclear missile at the biggest ICBM power on the planet. I pose the question again - do we want to give these guys more money to play around with? I can bet that if such a gas tax comes to pass, a few years down the line there will be acrimonious debates along the lines of where-did-that-money-go, who-is-to-blame-now and how-many-drinks-make-rosie-sexy. Ugh. That's way too nasty...even for me...

Joint Security Area (Korean)

2006-03-03T21:42:00.000-10:00

8/10. This is an excellent movie, seen at one of those Hale Manoa movie screenings. I suppose this is a reminder that living at the East-West center has the good side-effect of exposure to East Asian cultures about which I know little.

The title refers to the most forward posts of the UN command and North Korean forces that meet in an area known as the "Joint Security Zone" on the North-South border. It is also known as Panmunjom or the "truce village". The boundary runs right through this zone, and the armies are so close it has been the scene of some bloody skirmishes even after the 1953 ceasefire. As one would expect, it still remains at hyper-alert.

Nominally, the story is a murder mystery: a skirmish appears to have taken place one night at one of the border posts resulting in two North Korean soldiers killed and one wounded each among the two forces. However during a neutral Swiss investigation, an extra bullet is found at the scene which could not have come from any of the four soldiers. The question is who is the unknown party in the incident.

The investigator is unusually enough a Swiss-born Korean girl whose father served in the Northern army during the Korean war, but left for Switzerland after the ceasefire. What she unexpectedly discovers is a secret fellowship between opposing soldiers on the frontline, similar to that shown in movies like "No man's land", "All quiet on the western front" etc. As it turns out, this began with a South Korean soldier who accidentally got stuck on top of a landmine which would explode if he moves. He was saved by a couple of North Koreans who happened to be patrolling the same area. Of course they speak the same language, have the same ethos and are the same people which underscores the absurdity of the dividing line. Thereafter, the South Korean and a friend of his secretly begin crossing the dividing line regularly to visit the two Northerners and they become fast friends. They share pictures of girlfriends, play Korean dice games with bullets and offer quality cigarettes/cakes to the Northerners deprived by their communist regime. The dialogue is really funny, but you can feel the impending doom. Things are just too good to last given the military precipice on which these guys are sitting. Sure enough, one day they are discovered by a senior Northern officer and the little world implodes in suspicion and gunshots. I won't give the whole game away here, because people should see this movie. However I will say there is no happy ending here, which is as it should be in the non-hollywood world.

I guess the main point of the film is the naivette of young soldiers who are pushed into ideological wars, when what they really want is to make friends and hang out - very simply put. Worth remembering when the next dumb fuck begins talking about the honor in dying for a cause.

All the actors give awesome performances in this movie. The investigator girl came off a bit weaker than others though but I think it's the scriptwriter's fault. I don't know much about Korean cinema so I have no idea of the actor's names or past performances, but I will be watching out for them...

The Constant Gardener

2006-02-06T20:56:00.000-10:00

7.5/10. This is Fernando Meirelles latest movie based on the novel by John Le Carre. It is essentially a romantic thriller mixed with a message of neo-colonial exploitation of africa - this time by a global pharmaceutical company.

Normally I am a bit jaded about watching movies of this type, being stupefied into inaction by the enormity of africa's problems. In any case, I have few illusions about large corporations ever changing their behavior. (In fact it is probably impossible just from a game theory/survival point of view). Anyways, the overall good demands that the message be conveyed effectively in the West and so it is upto the film-maker to lead the way.

At first glance, a Le Carre novel is an unlikely solution as this author is better known for his spy fiction set in the Cold War. However, in those works Le Carre was able to use his neutral tones to demystify the world of spies and show the drudgery and politics of their daily existence. They stood revealed as no different from the tired suburban masses who leave home every morning to serve corporate america. Another feature of his novels is the amoral/abstract endings which tell you something about the futility of ideologies. I'm guessing (without evidence) that the director's thinking here is that instead of shocking viewers with brutal images, it is better to be matter-of-fact and let them reflect on the issues later.

The story is as follows: John Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is a simple-minded British diplomat posted in Kenya. He doesn't have a terribly stressful job and manages to spend most of his time gardening. Being so preoccupied, he more or less neglects his wife's professional career as a human-rights activist. The wife's role is played by Rachel Weisz, who is a pretty good actress in my view but hasn't been cast in that many challenging roles e.g. she was the good girl in the "Mummy" series of movies. Anyhow, over here she discovers that a large pharma corporation is testing an anti-TB drug on local africans while knowing that it can be lethal. Obviously, by European standards the drug is not ready for human trials. The bodies of africans who die from this are disposed off in a mass grave, which isn't greatly remarked upon in this part of the world. Eventually she learns enough to be a threat to the corporation which has few scruples in having her raped and murdered by contract killers. John struggles to make sense of this event, initially suspecting that his wife was killed by her black assistant whilst the two were having an affair. However, through her writings and by talking with her friends, he pieces together her life's work and discovers the shenanigans of the corporation as well as those of the British government, which is unsurprisingly concerned only with protecting the "system". In this way John emerges as the typical Le Carre hero with limited capabilities and even more limited effectiveness.

The romance between John and his wife is shown through flashbacks and is quite well done. It is of the realistic type though, and fans of movies like "The English Patient" will miss the hot and sweaty action in exotic locales. That by the way was a good call on the director's part given the nature of the novel. John's detective work is done mostly in Kenya and the Sudan where one gets to see colorful images of tribal life. The political corruption and ethnic violence are displayed quite impersonally and that is part of the overall effect. The UN's lack of effectiveness is clear as it airdrops food supplies that are almost immediately captured by lawless militias. It is likely that one of the militia's shown in the movie is the so-called Janjaweed (Arab) which has become infamous through their actions in Darfur. But the movie doesn't mention them by name which it should have - that kind of placement is too subtle for most audiences. Getting back to evil corporations, the film notes in passing the joke enacted in the name of Western medical supplies: the pills delivered are all beyond expiry with the purpose of providing a tax-break for pharma companies in their home countries. "This is how the world fucks Africa" says one character, and rightly so.

The director captures the basics of Le Carre's writing well enough that if you like his books you will like the movie. So, to sum up, this is a good movie for those who want to see something realistic about the goings-on in africa but don't necessarily want two hours filled with machetes and gore.

So, what's up with Iran?

2006-01-31T22:02:00.000-10:00

Well, I am located in a part of the world where I have no right to even be thinking about this. I should just be surfing and chasing wimmen. But despite my efforts at avoiding anything remotely connected to the real world, it has come to my attention that there is lot of Iran-related crap buzzing around. It seems that all of a sudden the Iranians have gone berserk.

Think about it: there are crazy Iran-haters in charge of the US and the usual nutcases leading Israel. In this situation one would think Iran would exercise basic common sense, and just lie low for a while. I mean...if I was the Iranian president, this is how I picture my mental processes: "O.K. so I'm a mullah-type leading a government of mullahs. By definition, I'm already a bit nuts. Out there is a crazy berserk superpower which has serious problems with me. I have a shitty army compared to them or the Israelis who will always be happy to bomb my ass into the middle of next week. I also have a funny little nuclear program which hasn't given me a fire-cracker after years of fuckin' around. Hmmm...should I start denying the holocaust? Ooops...where did that thought come from?? Hey, let's get into a nuclear confrontation with the EU who are my last hope as the only people who don't always toe the American line. Fuck. Did I really think that? Sheeeaaatt...! I'm really out of control today...where's my valium?? O.K. O.K. gotta chill out. Breathe deeply...ahhh. Maybe I'm not getting enough lately. But, hey, I'm the president...I should be able to get chicks, shouldn't I? (Calling harem...ring ring..."tell Tabitha to get her lovely ass here"). Ahhh...Tabitha...sweetheart, I've been all fuck'd up lately. Just need to chill out and relax. We won't do missionary today, I haven't been a good mullah anyway. Tabitha: "of course baby. In fact I'll have Salma come over afterwards." Me: heh he. (1 hr interlude, ta da, ta da, ta da...). Aaight!! That's much better. What the fuck was I thinkin'? I have a great life, now let's go sell some gas. Someone get the Indians on the phone...".

And that's how it should be. So, if someone can explain why everything is not well in mullah-land, do tell. Let's be serious here.

On buying a laptop

2006-01-27T01:17:00.000-10:00

O.K. this was supposed to be a blog of reviews, nightlife, all that in Honolulu. Well, it still is. But the great part about having a blog is that you are lord of your own little universe. I hereby choose to break the rules and so they are broken...ha!

Well, so far the only laptop I have owned is a very old Dell Inspiron 5000e provided by my UT advisor. The damn thing is practically an antique with a 5GB hard disk, PIII 800MHz processor, 192MB Ram and no WiFi. Getting it to do anything useful is like taking a brontosaurus on a hike. To make matters worse, it is an 8lb behemoth in the usual Dell tradition.

Nowadays Dell has some lighter and better looking laptops, but they still exude the stodgy corporate vibe which rules them out in my wishlist. Therefore, in my pursuit of sexiness I first decided on a Sony Vaio S580 with a 13.3 in widescreen display and ultra-sleek looks. Everything looked fine when it arrived except for a rattling battery and a WiFi switch that appeared to be stapled on. The x-brite screen just blew me away with it's bright colors...seriously no one makes screens like Sony. However, the joy was shortlived and in two days WinXP displayed a blue screen that said something terrible had happened to the registry and the laptop immediately shut itself down. After this it never booted up again, displaying the error "Hard drive not found". Hard drive not found?! I mean, what the fuck?? It's like you have no idea there's a brick stuffed up your ass! Needless to say I sent it back to Sony for a refund (btw guess who had to pay shipping?). Their customer support informed me the refund would take 8 weeks, but I was annoying enough and wouldn't go away, so it only took 3 weeks.

At this point I decided to switch 180 degrees and go for ultimate no-nonsense reliability i.e. the IBM Thinkpad (model # Z60t, widescreen). Well, I ordered and waited. And waited. After four weeks it still hadn't shipped. The sales reps at IBM/Lenovo said "we are having some problems maintaining inventory". But didn't the website say it was in stock? Apparently, in IBM corporate-speak that is the height of naivette. In-stock only means that there existed a point in time before the order when the item happened to be in-stock. Ahhhh...

I did some further snooping around on thinkpad forums and found some poor souls writing horror stories of a two month+ wait time. Being certain that another week on the Dell will drive me nuts, I cancelled the IBM and bought a Fujitsu S2110 for only $1049. It's already here in 3 days and so far the customer support has been fabulous. I was near tears when my sales rep actually returned my call in her sexy-next-door-girl voice. A 512MB USB flash drive came free too...

So far the laptop seems to be running fine. I have some issues with the build quality as there is lot of flex on the keyboard and some flex on the screen too. On the plus side, it weighs only 4lb with a battery life of 4 hrs - hence full marks on the portability side. It also runs on an AMD Turion MT-30 which pleases me in a perverse way. I'm not that much of the counter-culture type, but yeah, fuck that intel inside shit...heh...

Down to Earth Market

2006-01-21T21:11:00.000-10:00

6/10. This is near the corner of University and King, opposite Star Market. It doubles as an organic foods market plus deli. The deli part has sandwiches, vegetarian entrees, salad bar, cookies and some desserts on its menu.

At first sight the place reminded me of wheatsville co-op in Austin which basically caters to the same crowd. However, strangely, I have structural issues with this place. The layout seems to lack openness starting with the narrow and badly-lit entrance. That appears to go against the overall organic worldview or at least how I have understood it. Perhaps there is no such thing. The upstairs seating area is kind of nice though with good lighting, wooden tables and a cozy atmosphere. On to the food.

On my first visit I consumed teriyaki tofu, eggplant parmigiana, some string beans thing and a potato casserole from the entrees section and a brazilian nut cookie as dessert. You have to pay for the entrees by weight and the charges are steep. My total for this was about $10 even though I ate much less than a full meal. All the entrees were great, with the small gripe that the tofu was a bit harder than normal. The brazil cookie blew away the part of my mind that deals with cookie appreciation. The other people I went with also seemed pleased with their meals. They were so joyful that one of them initiated a football game on the pavement outside, to which the others responded heartily. (Note: this friend claims to double as a cia agent and then re-doubles as a double agent. I guess that makes her a quadruple agent of sorts).

My second visit took place yesterday and I was happy to note that the entrees section had all sorts of different dishes such as thai green curry and what-not. This shows that they rotate their menu which goes to their credit. Also, something worth mentioning is that there was an irate lady hovering around, demanding her money back because the sweet-and-sour tofu was only sour and not sweet. She was bounced around between underlings and managers until she gave up and left in a huff. I was myself very satisfied with my garden burger which had a veggie patty, sprouts, cheese, tomato, lettuce and some kind of sauce which was really good. I could not resist having another brazil cookie. Cost: $8.

The market section of this place is the usual sort of organic foods place. It looked pricey even by Honolulu standards and so I didn't do any shopping. This is the norm though in the US, one has to pay to be naturally healthy. But I have real problems with their deli prices because one has to consume greater quantities of veggie food to fill up and deli type stuff is generally cheap. After all it is self-service, they are not incurring any costs there. I will have to think twice before eating there. Verdict: 6/10 - go there at least once even if it bites the wallet.

"Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler

2006-01-11T00:42:00.000-10:00

8/10. This is Koestler's most famous novel. It explores with clinical detail the step-by-step deconstruction of ideology inside the mind of a KGB man condemned by the very system he upholds.

The author is someone who knows his communism. Born Hungarian, he became a card-carrying (German) communist in the 1930s until his ardor began to wane after Stalin began the notorious "great purge" in 1938. This period was the moment of truth for many leftists and of great upheaval in the Soviet Union. Stalin's paranoia so gripped him that he executed or sent to the gulag a full quarter of his own security apparatus consisting of the KGB, communist party members and army officers. The era also included the high-profile Moscow trials which ended with the execution of the remaining old guard of the communist party from Lenin's days. It has been said that these purges so weakened the Soviet state that it became powerless against the German invasion that came almost immediately after.

Anyhow, Koestler knows a thing or two about worshipping a false ideology, and several of his novels are based on that theme. Possibly the effects on him were permanent as he had an unstable life and is rumored to have been involved in some pretty dark deeds. He died sometime in the 80s in a suicide pact with his last wife.

The story in "Darkness..." is strange in a sense because few individuals would respond to their coming end with logical analysis right upto the last moment. In that sense this work belongs to the "1984" genre depicting the reductio ad absurdum of totalitarian ideologies. The main character is Rubashov, a commissar formerly in charge of rounding up political prisoners, extracting confessions and sentencing them. Come Stalin's purges Rubashov is also arrested for treachery against the state. Rubashov expected this and had dreamt about the moment when the chekisti would come knocking. He was the last of Lenin's people and had already lost faith in the Soviet system. However, while in prison he looks for a logical reason why he should be punished...why everyone gets punished. Under interrogation he comes to understand that the system cannot bring itself to execute him without first extracting a signed confession, however fraudulent it might be. Not only that, the system will not give up until it convinces him through coercion that he is guilty as charged. During his last moments Rubashov wonders at the hand that raises the gun to shoot him, "in whose name is this hand raised?". There is no answer. The ideology itself contains the seeds of destruction of everyone that is part of it.

This is a powerful novel...very difficult to put down. It should be required reading for anyone who feels that he is in possession of some book or ideology containing all the answers. There are many such utopian "truths" floating around such as capitalism, communism, socialism and various brands of religion. Well...maybe this novel is too complex for such personalities. After all if one is a full-grown adult and still cannot recognize the BS that is sold under one name or another then there is little hope anyway.

Magoo's Pizza Bar

2006-01-08T00:43:00.000-10:00

Unrateable. Located near the corner of University ave and King street.

Jesus...what a place. How does one even begin to describe something like Magoo's? I'm hardly someone shocked easily, having earned my spurs on the bars in Texas...but Magoo's is definitely not for the squeamish. Metaphorically speaking, Magoo's is like a girl with a great vagina but a terrible figure. It won't turn you on but you can't ignore it either. And if you get very drunk you can have a really good time.

They have about 100+ varieties of beer and a lot of them on tap. They sell pints of decent stuff like Killian's red for less than $1 at times and whole pitchers can be as low as $3-4. So, boy, can you drink here...! Even cocktails like long island are only $2. I have no idea how they manage to keep prices so low...but generally they have only one inebriated bartender on duty so perhaps thats how it works. I must mention that there have been times when I (and others) have felt that the beer was diluted. A friend even ordered Guinness and said it was like water. Now Guinness cannot be like water even for the most hardened of men, and this guy is far from being hardened. So...I have no idea what is going on in those taps.

There is no decor. Chairs and tables suck. The place has an "outdoors" and also an indoors which is outdoors. There is no method to the music madness, it blares where it will and could be any genre any time with wild swings. You are solely at the mercy of the jukebox. There are no planned TV acoustics with movies, football, basketball and what-have-you forming a combined sporting noise to which patrons respond reflexively once drunk. You can barely carry on a conversation there until you are very drunk and begin to go apeshit. A good point is that since UH is right there, the place is usually crowded in the evenings including several good-looking women. A memorably bizzare sight I have witnessed at Magoo's was a chartered school-busload of about thirty people who suddenly showed up from nowhere with the sole intent of visiting this bar. Once arrived they immediately began a bout of energetic partying. The fun part is they brought several six-packs of their own crappy beer to perhaps the cheapest beer pub in the US. They and the bus disappeared in 20 minutes. They had seen Honolulu.

Pizza: it's O.K. but inconsistent in quality. I was once served a ham and cheese pizza which looked just a hair's breadth from the pig and the cow i.e. very fresh. Fries are average. There is also an oddly placed asian sushi-style shop inside Magoo's with bewildered looking cooks. They serve good Ahi fish poke, but it won't fill you up.

So, Magoo's is not a place where you bring your date for the first time. Not for the second or third time either. What you should do is show up with those loud, red-necked and red-butted chicks you just met a few hours ago, get very drunk and then go back for wild group sex. I have spoken.

Memoirs of a Geisha

2006-01-07T19:48:00.000-10:00

6/10. I saw this movie at Ward Center 16 theaters. This new complex is very modern with widescreen visuals and great digital sound - overall a much better experience than Kahala Mall where I saw the last Harry Potter flick.

This movie has not received great ratings from the usual critics, with an abysmal 31% at rottentomatoes. The story is based on Arthur Golden's novel which is a narrative in the words of a young Japanese girl (Chiyo) sold into geisha-hood by her father to make ends meet. After a difficult upbringing in this sophisticated version of the flesh-trade, she ends up as a successful geisha by the name of Nitta Sayuri.

Some critics have problems with this movie for the following reasons: (a) mostly chinese actors play japanese parts and (b) the detail of the novel is missing in the movie. Now, I have my own issues with the movie but they are different. A good set of actors can bring a story from an unfamiliar culture to life if they are good enough. Also, pardon my cultural insensitivity, but it isn't that big a leap from China to Japan! Secondly why should the movie be a faithful reproduction of the novel? Cinema is its own medium and must interpret the novel in its own eyes - rather like how different artists would paint the same model in different ways. So the real issue should be how well the actors fitted into their roles. And here, the movie is lacking.

The action begins promisingly enough with a great performance by the child actress Suzuka Ohgo as Chiyo. The sale of Chiyo and her sister as children with their subsequent separation is very effectively portrayed. The director manages to achieve the dark atmosphere of a hidden but heinous crime in a very Macbeth-ian manner. On arrival at the geisha-house, Chiyo is soon confronted by an older rival - an established geisha by the name of Hatsumomo played by Gong Li. Expectedly Gong Li's performance is the most creditable of the movie. After all she is widely acknowledged as the reigning queen of quality Chinese cinema with award winning performances in tragic dramas such as "Farewell My Concubine", "The Story of Qiu Ju" etc. She brings intensity to Hatsumomo's flawed character that is riven with anger and jealousy but desperately seeks passion. These are geishas after all...given their past you can hardly expect them to be well-adjusted. In some sense you already know Hatsumomo is going to have a tragic downfall because that has been the fate of every Gong Li character so far!

The problems begin when Chiyo grows up and turns into Zhang Ziyi, another Chinese actress of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" fame and more recently cast in "Hero". Now I have always been of the view that Ziyi looks much better than she can act. Well, the chips really fall out of place in this movie. She is wholly passionless and seems to struggle to get any words out of her mouth. Supposedly she nurses a secret love for a wealthy client by the name of "The Chairman" but she might as well be sleep-walking through the movie. The Chairman played by Ken Watanabe is another disaster. They are just made for each other. Koji Yakusho as Nobu, a gentlemanly admirer of Ziyi, is somewhat better but no more than a cartoon of a Sumo-loving tough-but-good-guy type - some kind of frat-boy with a heart.

The story contains another geisha by the name of Mameha (Michelle Yeoh) who takes Chiyo under her wing and is supposed to be Hatsumomo's opposite - kinder but even more beautiful. Unfortunately Yeoh just looks old and tired - sort of like a retired geisha. Now why couldn't they have found someone with more energy for this role?

Mameha happens to be the steady mistress of a big shot called "The Baron" (Tagawa) who is the only man that delivers a good performance in this movie. Its not a large role but he does it well. Incidentally the only moment in which Ziyi becomes human and shows real passion is when the Baron forcibly disrobes her in a fit of lust! I don't want to guess what really turns Ziyi on, but it sure isn't cuddly love! The Chairman should have tried spanking her.

The best thing about this movie is the effective recreation of a secretive part of old Japan which presumably does not exist anymore. The methods of procurement and training of geishas as kids feel rather authentic. Whether they are really authentic or not I cannot say, but the director does manage to convey that feel. The movie also has one or two philosophical moments which might make you reflect a bit. Verdict: worth seeing once if you are not too familiar with Japanese culture.

O's Lounge

2005-12-23T13:25:00.000-10:00

O.K. this is based on only one visit but that is sufficient for this place. Given the cover of $10, the variety of beer and other drinks was mediocre at best. But what bothered me most was the music which lacked any flair whatsoever. Just some usual DJ'd party dance numbers and white smoke flowing out of a hosepipe. The dancefloor looks rather makeshift too. Nothing lounge-like, no hope for intimacy...reminds me of the sort of parties very young college kids have. You really have to get drunk to enjoy this place.

The clientele is nothing much to write home about either. There were a bunch of Army guys doing the persistent-grope thing with some girls in our group. Now that could be an aberration, but I believe nightclubs are sort of like geishas - they attract a certain type which become fixtures.

Only 4/10.

"The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri

2005-12-22T23:34:00.000-10:00

I got this book for $6.99 from Rainbow Records on University Ave - which is a cool store btw with quality used books as opposed to the riff-raff generally found at used book stores. I already had a favorable impression of Lahiri's previous and first work "The Interpreter of Maladies" which also won the Pulitzer, but this one is even better. This is the one that really showcases her talent.

JL is a Bengali-American and her works, though universal, are set in the ethos of Bengalis from India who leave home forever in search of a better life in America. "The Namesake" is about two such generations. The first belongs to Ashoke who leaves Calcutta for Boston in the 1960s to fulfill a compelling urge to see the world after a near-death experience in a railway accident. He is very much the Bengali intellectual, steeped in literature classics, quiet, unassuming but with a certain joie de vivre. His upbringing has left a taste for the hallowed pantheon of depressed Russian authors with the most tortured soul of them all, Nicolay Gogol, occupying pride of place. Culturally Ashoke is a conservative and imports via arranged marriage a Bengali girl who has never before stepped outside her hometown. Her character is brilliantly brought out including the slow beginnings of confidence as she adjusts to the alien sights of Boston. Their son is named "Gogol" in memory of Ashoke's favorite author whose book once saved his life in the accident (there are many more twists to this - you have to read the book to find out). Gogol grows up as a somewhat typical second-generation Indian-American, unsure about his roots, trying to bridge the chasm between his parents ideals and the diametrically opposite reality of America. However as he grows he finds himself revolted by his name which is neither Indian nor American - a Russian surname to boot. Perhaps adding another variable to his unsure existence is too much for him. While Gogol's parents follow the trajectory of spiritual loss and material gain - also known as the "American Dream" - he himself goes through some difficult love affairs. The one with Maxine, the daughter of a somewhat aristocratic NYC couple, really brings out his sense of disbelonging between the two worlds. Gogol commits a classic mistake here - while Maxine welcomes him into her own world, he does not do the same for her as he is unsure about his roots. Therefore she is unable to empathise with his loss later in the story. In another relationship JL shows clearly the slow death that overcomes affairs which begin as a convenient solution to loneliness. The "relationship gone stale" theme does seem to be something JL is in love with as I noticed in her previous book. Maybe she has been reading too many Russians herself. Maybe I have.

JL's prose flows like a river and she throws detail at the reader. But the details hit you like water which you can soak up as fast as it comes. There is one point where Gogol's life is forced to intersect his parent's due to a wrenching loss which shows JL's penmanship at its best.

I suppose anyone who has grown up in both India and America will notice a few bits and pieces they share with Ashoke and Gogol. I give this book 8.5/10. I'm planning to reserve 10/10 for something that so blows me away that I become religious or do something even more drastic.