More than five point something

'Languaga is a virus', said junkie writer and post modern icon William S Burroughs.
In other words, he tried to say language - any language was too structured and could not
communicate the full range of emotions. And that you need to break
rules of word-building and grammar sometimes in order to drive a point home.

I suppose that's the only way to approach the new book "Five point someone"
by Chetan Bhagat. It's a semi-autobiographical tale of the writer's adventures with
his pals while studying at IIT-Delhi - one of India's elite institutions.
The writing is erratic, and there are large gaps or continuity jumps in the narrative.
But at no point are you fooled into believing it's not genuine. You can almost
hear Chetan Bhagat speaking - in that curious mix of insipid english and clever
phrases only an IIT-ian could have imbibed.

Bhagat also finds it difficult to resist the temptation to digress. At least at
two points in the book, he goes off at a tangent, and the resulting passage
does not take the narrative forwards.

But incredibly, pointing out its glaring pitfalls feels like nitpicking. The story itself is a
nice little snapshot of IIT, Delhi and people living in different strata of society. And it adds to a
still-small but growing body of Indian literature that isn't encumbered by the burden of history.
Definitely a step in the right direction.
Link - fivepointsomeone

overheard...

...in office. 5 conspiracy theories as to why the NDA govt lost the
elections:

1. All the IIM institutions pooled in their collective resources
to bribe the people to swing the other way.
2. Italian PM Silvio Berlesconi paid party workers of the Trinamool Congress,
AIADMK and the TDP to defect.
3. Nostradamus predicted the Roman empire would rule in South Asia by 2004, and
you can't beat that can you?
4. China did it and we don't know how, but the metereology dept suspects they
manipulated our atmosphere to create 3 years of drought in south india.
5. The BJP's grave was just another dastardly communist plot.

Go figure.

natural (s)election

The great dance of democracy ends tomorrow. Or does it actually
begin? One way to look at it is that elections are ending & the results
will be out. But what if it's a hung parliament? In that case we will
see a lot of politicians dancing to some other leader's tune.

Oh look, a purple tied anchor.

Olymicing

Office. 8:40 pm.
Election analysis is on in full swing. So our leetle
sports desk decided to play 'guess the olympic record'.
Here's what we realized -

1. Mark Spitz and Carl Lewis have 9 olympic golds each.
2. More than 10,000 athletes participated in Sydney.
3. There are 28 Summer Olympic disciplines.
5. The Javelin record is 80 odd metres.
(I said 200 m)

The Da Vinci Challenge

Two moons back, I finished reading The Da Vinci Code.
And a little later while browsing the web, I chanced upon the
Da Vinci Challenge, a web quest.

And today (I'm proud to say )my friend and I solved it!!!

It's simple. And that makes it a little bamboozling.
But it's DEFINITELY the most fun on the web.

Do check it out. It's a great ride.
Here's the link - Da Vinci challenge

Gastric conundrum

When you're working on the night shift, food is a big problem.
You have two choices usually.
1. Don't eat while working, have breakfast after work. Go home sleep for 4 hours.
Have lunch at lunch-time. Go back to sleep. Get up have dinner.
2. Have 'breakfast' after sleep in the evening. Have 'lunch' during work. Go home
in the morning, have 'dinner'. Sleep uninterrupted.

I've tried both ways. And now, I think I've stumbled on the third way.
Eat when you're hungry, otherwise don't. Works for me.
It just occured to me the call-centre types would have all whittled this little problem
down to a fine art.

(If that sentence doesn't make sense, blame the night-shift)

Norah Jones denied

I don't buy many CD's, but when I do, I expect them to work. No such
luck with Norah Jones' latest offering Feels Like Home though. The CD is
Copy Controlled, which means you cannot copy it or play it on some
systems such as car stereos, Apple computers and some DVD players.

Good, the music industry is doing something about piracy, but is this way
right? Some lawsuits have halted the flow of these CD's in the US, so what do these
companies do - they dump into India.

For those who want to know what this technology does and what it doesn't do, check this site out.

As for me, I'm going to see if I can rip this CD to play on my player. I paid for it, didn't I?