Its time for Ciesta

After three days holiday everybody is back to work? Well not sure if they are really back to work, but at least to the working place. Actually not all people could make it to office today. There is some kind of strike with bus. Only option left then is personal vehicle or another route via train (RER) and then climbing the mountain.
So, those who possess cars are here and some others, like me who either were not aware of this strike or those used to climbing hill again like me (I fall in both categories) are here.
Its a sunny day.
Sun makes Europeans cheerful, it being a rare view here.
And if they have good food for lunch then they are very happy.
A good lunch and then a lazy walk to the nearby lake take up most of the working hours.
Now this sun has a charismatic effect.
It slowly starts making the screen in front of you go blur as you start reading a scientific article on it.
Very soon you realize that you are trying to read the same line for last fifteen minutes. Few minutes later even this sense starts fading out and you start struggling to concentrate on screen.
Its then more sensible to accept that you fall for ciesta and enjoy those few minutes of quick nap. And if at such a moment sunlight is directly falling at you, you are the luckiest person.
I did not realized when I fall for it and lost my conscious.
Then something strikes in mind and I felt not following the ethics of work place.
With too much efforts I come out of that charm.
My colleague sitting table next advices in his Frenchish English to continue it making me realize it is a holy act.
This was a very favorable situation and I did not tried to argue on the issue.
Both of us sink into the holy Ciesta.
20 minutes later, with a fresh mind and a cup of hot tea, now I am ready to post this on my many days untouched blog.
Enjoy the Sun when its cool.

Khichadi !!!!

So, we had a situation here today night. After a break of 2 days at weekend, everybody was lazy to cook and was looking at each other with ray of hope that somebody will take initiative. After many attempts of pushing ball in each others court, finally I guess Vijay lost the interest in the game and decided to make this memorable Khichadi. Now, if you are thinking that Khichadi was something out of the world and in next few lines I am going to give you tips on how to make this khichadi, then you are wrong. The khichadi was no doubt good, but a regular one of Vijay's one of specialties.
What made me write this post are the activities we had to take up after the khichadi was ready to eat.Because of our involvement in the game I discussed above, it was around 10.30 by the time Khichadi was ready. With our empty stomachs and empty plates we gathered around the pressure cooker and were awaiting the moment when it will be opened.But we were compelled to take an unexpected break when Vijay helplessly declared that the cooker is not opening. We all initially tried making fun of him saying empty stomach has made him crazy. But soon realized that he was right. We tried all simple tricks known to each of us but in vain. Then we tried different techniques which came in our scientific minds, but again with no result. Finally Vijay and Sreekanth seriously tried opening the lid the way you can see in this video.

I could record only one minute of their sincere efforts which in the end turn positive. Finally the lid opened and we had a glance at khichadi. That was I guess one of the moment memorable moment. Check for yourself.

Dawn Brancheau

Dawn Brancheau
Do you know this name? NO!!
Well till few minutes back, even I wasn't aware.
These two news piece introduced it to me, but I guess its very late. You may follow the links to know why.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Whale-kills-trainer-as-horrified-spectators-watch/articleshow/5614106.cms

and

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/02/25/2010-02-25_she_lived_her_dream_at_seaworld.html





Yes the story is very sad. But I want to point out one thing here. No matter what you do, you can never understand animal nature. You may be Dawn Brancheau or Steve Irwin, you can't get them. Do not try to mold them as per you wish and need. They are animals and that is how they live. Stay away, let them live and live yourself.

So, just stop interfering their lives under the name of animal love, study, science, care, protection and yes money and business. They don't need our any kind of help.
Let them live their life and let nature decide their fate. Doesn't matter if tigers vanish after few years but let nature decide it. Doesn't matter if Dolphins become a rare species. You don't kill it.

Buzz!!!

A quick post!!

I see the signs of hurricane coming our way!!

Its name is buzz!!

Think you heard about it. must be.
Now, you see a word buzz just below inbox in gmail.
That is some new addition to gmail.
I am not sure how useful it is.
Was trying to explore it with Dr. P.
Well, haven't come across any benefits yet except that it has given me a new way to advertise me.
I have started with my blog link.

Let me think of some more ways to make use of it, till then guys

Keep buzzing!!!

Update: Buzz would add lots and lots of emails to your inbox. I mean it updates Buzz, but it also sends you an email!!
If 20 people buzz you that adds 20 new mails to your inbox!!And most of them wouldn't be serious work. I might not like it. But I am also wondering if I will receive one mail sent for each comment for each buzz or only one mail for say one buzz irrespective of how many people commented for that one buzz!!!
Confusing you!!
Quite possible since even I am myself confused.
So, lets buzz and get confused!!

Paris Travelling

For a person, who comes from a city like Pune, any kind of public transportation is good, if not fantastic or superb. Pune, is a place where you do not see a bus if you wait less than one hour at bus stop, a place where you spend more on autorickshaw than on any intercity travel like Pune-Bombay, a place where shared rickshaw means trying to share a 4 person vehicle among minimum 10 if you are lucky, a place where you might faint if ought to spend half an hour on railway platform. Pune is a place where people prefer personal vehicle to travel from corner to corner of city and avoid public vehicles for above said reasons. It has the maximum number of vehicles 25 lakhs (including 2 and wheelers), not just in India but in whole of Asia, or may be in the world.
So, for a person, who come out after receiving such a rigorous training and has attained such expertise in travelling in adverse condition and carry lot of patience to wait to transportation, anything even slightly better is great. I have actually left using these public transports so many years back that if a situation arise where I am compelled to use it, I prefer to walk or start thinking of a friend’s home nearby whose vehicle I can borrow. If such a public transport phobic person arrives at a place like Paris which is known to have not good but very good public transportation, imagine his situation.
When I came to Paris, in not time I was introduced to public transportation. The Paris airport Charles de Gaulle is quite far from the Paris city. There are two ways to reach your destination from airport. First, if somebody comes to pick you up. This normally doesn’t happen. The people here are very smart. They very well know that airport is very far away and it makes one spend lot of Euros from their pocket. So they sophisticatedly plan to move out of city for just that one day and make you get introduced to public transport. Well, I don’t blame them because even I realised that it is a bit heavy burden on pocket as well as time. Just to share with you, I learnt this lesson quickly and in fact implemented on it when one of my friend Mr. V was arriving in Paris a month later. So, just a tip, don’t get surprised, if your host from Paris has to coincidentally move out of city the same day you arrive.
Anyway, coming back to the topic, I had to take train to reach the place where I stay. Although my host had given me all the instructions, still you get apprehensive when in a new land with no knowledge of language. But I must say, it went down rather smoothly with me taking right train to reach the destination without asking a single person a single question.



The trains which commute in the city and the outskirts are known as RER (Réseau Express Régional, meaning Regional Express Network).


Now, from my experience, do not try to ask about RER with your English pronunciation. R here is pronounced in way different manner and it might take as good as 5 minutes for a Frenchman to realise that you are asking about RER station. You might end up leaving 2 trains in the mean time. So, either learn French or search yourself. I use both the methods as per my calibre.




I found RER a rather convenient option because of its frequency and its coverage area. It offers you a good option to reach from one corner to another of Paris in least possible time. Most of time, it’s not crowded, and so you get good seat and chance to get quick nap. This makes you freshen up by the time you reach destination.

Moreover RER stations are very well connected to other transportation facilities that make commutation even better. Having praised RER so much, I must point out one negative aspect of it. To my surprise, I was introduced to strikes in different unions in RER within the first week of arrival. Yes, RER strikes are quite common and people here are very much used to it. But, Unlike Indian strikers, these people do care about passengers at the same time and in spite of strike you see RER running on rail. In such situations the frequency decreases, crowd increases and then it sometimes remind me the very old days I spent in Pune bus.



But thanks to these strikes, I was introduced to another powerful transportation medium that is bus. Bus transportation is equally good and help many people commute daily. The buses are well maintained with air conditioning facilities. The bus stops are normally small in size. One of the walls would have the daily timing for all the buses stopping there, the maps that these buses follow and a digital clock showing real time and the timing of next expected bus. I was surprised when I saw a bus arriving at the bus stop at sharp time. Till then, I had a feeling that following timing might be a case for trains, but for bus, impossible. I saw it happening here.



Other than this, Paris also has a web of metro trains which run with in the city. There is a very complex web including RERs and metro. One might get totally lost realizing its vastness, but thanks to the information available at every corner that even a newbie with no French language base can roam around easily.


I am not yet done because still one more mode of transport is left to talk about. They are the Trams. One must take Tram at least once in Paris. I found Trams as the most sophisticated mode of transport among all four talked about above. I do not want to compare this Tram with the one running in Kolkota. I can think of only similarity in two and that is the name “ Tram”.
Having said that all these transportation modes are very well interconnected, one questions arises, “how are the modes to use these modes are maintained?”. Even that is very smooth. You can either buy one ticket that you can use on all these modes, or on selected ones. Or you can buy a monthly Novigo pass to move around anywhere, anyway, any number of times. Just want to share, the protocol I was thinking about to exist Pune buses to reduce arguments between conductor and passengers on money matters, I actually see it here existing. So, I wasn’t thinking impossible.

With all these transportation facilities, I doubt anybody would think or need private taxis for their service. But just for information, they do exist here, but hardly seen running on the streets.


It’s getting too long, but I cannot end the post without the mention of TGV, Eurostar and the internal cycle system in Paris. To mention in one liner, TGV is intercity mode of transport that has engine running fastest in the world.

You can take Eurostar to travel to Belgium or to England via undersea Eurotunnel.



You can take bicycle parked on the streets with the help of Novigo pass and ride around for very cheap.
I am not writing much about them since I haven’t used them yet.
Now I am left in awe when I see people here sometimes complaining about the bad status of transportation and compare it with one in Germany. This on one side makes me anxious to visit Germany to experience one the best transportations in world but it also makes me nervous when I realise that I finally have to travel on the old roots of my hometown.

3 Idiots

I finally saw 3 Idiots. After reading so many reviews about the movie by some renowned reviewers and listening comments of close by friends, the movie had become an important issue and I was dying to watch this movie. So, the one chance I got to see the movie, I grabbed it.
So much has already been written the movie that it virtually leaves nothing to write. But among these, only one review was “jara hatke”. (http://shobhaade.blogspot.com/2010/01/so-who-is-idiot-huh.html). And I totally agree with the initial lines. “Okay. I saw it. And liked it. Liked. Not loved.”
Why?
I can give many reasons for that.
One foremost reason, may be, I had too high expectations. But of course one must keep high expectations with a movie that earns 300 crores in just 10 days!
Now I will point out what I didn’t liked and what I did.

The name itself is not correct. There were no 3 idiots. The movie was all about one idiot. Right from beginning to the end, there was only one, Aamir Khan.

The ragging session was bit absurd. Only one senior in charge and rarely any other senior in view! Looked like juniors were doing their own ragging sessions as if it was an assignment. Do you remember any senior fellow actually looking at the James bond act of Chatur. I guess nobody. I found it less of ragging session but more of mental asylum scene.



Making juniors remove all their cloth is I guess the favorite ragging method known to the Bollywood director. We saw the same in Munnabhai MBBS. And I know the director of 2 movies is the same person.

Giving shocking treatment to senior to avoid ragging was interesting to watch. But showing the use of same trick in the end was totally unnecessary and I guess it was boasting idea on kids and young guys.

Zip, unzip to define machine might be acceptable in case of a student, but if a faculty repeating the same act in front of whole class is not. I feel the faculty still is a respectable person in India and doesn't do such acts in class. At least I haven't seen it.

I am still looking for a college, institute where any student directly approaches the Dean, Director, Principal just to ask the date of convocation so that his father could book the tickets in time. He should have contacted the office. Poor guy would have lived few more days and completed his project.

Suicide definitely has become a center point of the movie. Talk about 3 suicides (if I haven't missed any else). I guess only Sharman Joshi's mental situation was understandable to take decision of attempting suicide. Rest two, I guess were unnecessary.

Instead of himself trying and giving surprise to “Joy” with his completed project, Rancho should have been shown helping the guy doing his project in some or the other way. If the guy had so much self respect that he committed suicide just because Virus said he won’t graduate and showed no interest in his project, then I guess he would have discouraged more knowing that a junior without much prior knowledge about project could easily finish his project which he failed. I guess he would then have committed suicide in a worse manner then what he did.



I wonder when these people will stop showing Professor, Principal as an eccentric guy.

I am yet to see a Principal who gives introductory lecture in hostel.

I wonder how Virus must be making use of time he spends in loo, when he tries to use the short span of seven and half minutes of nap for doing unnecessary work. Also, I am yet to come across a professor who shaves in his office. Aren't all these eccentric things shown unnecessarily?



The scene between Madhavan and Parikshit Sahani was a repeat of scene from Lage Raho Munnabhai between Jimmy Shergil and again Parikshit Sahani.

The runaway bride was again a copy of Dil Hai ki Manta Nahi. It did fit well there but definitely not here.



I was thinking what they tried to tell by making guys remove their pants every now and then, anywhere. I just hope I don't witness any such act in real life.

I didn't expected the effect of “All is Well” shown in Delivery scene in Aamir Khan's movie. That was the worst of all above points and brought the movie down to normal level from the perfectionist Aamir Khan's standard.

Ranchoddas Chanchad( Is it a right name), is a Gujrati (as Karina Kapoor mentioned) who has pushtaini jamin and haweli in Simla!!!

Is it possible to just drag computer and take it near the pingpong table without any wiring issue. Was it all wireless? I spend nearly an hour arranging the wiring if I wish to shift my computer from one corner to another in the same room.

I guess I can continue with some more points. But instead now I will put some (actually very few as compared to above list) points that make movie worth watching.

The movie has a better story as now a day’s seen in many movies.

The movie is well made and keeps you watching.

It doesn’t lose the grip.

No issues about acting skills. Although movie is all about Aamir Khan, still Sharman Joshi, Madhavan, Karina Kapoor and others have done well in their less important roles.

Most appealing part of the movie was the shooting in Ladakh. That was the welcome treat for the eyes and I tried to store every scene in my mind. Ladakh is beautiful.

Rancho teaching how to teach. A very good point made in a very short time.

I cannot think of any other point in support of the movie at the moment. It definitely is not a movie that should break all the records and earn so heavily as it is doing but it definitely is worth watching once. Moreover the message is very loud and clear if understood well:

Follow your Heart and pursue your dreams

Ann-Marie

I am staying in a flat that belongs to an old 76 years old lady Ann Marie. You had a glimpse of her in one of my earlier posts (http://drkaustubhjoshi.blogspot.com/2010/01/cocktail-party.html). Its some time now that I know the lady. Someone had arranged for my accommodation before I arrived in Paris, so I didn’t know till I met her. I was standing outside my present apartment with my friend waiting for a lady who comes originally from Vietnam, can’t speak English really and is 76 years old. I was not sure how she will come, in a bus, taxi or somebody would drive her to the house. To my surprise a lady came driving a BMW a very old one in a style, parked it close to us , came out and asked in a French, Vietnami mixed English if we are the one who arrived from India. My friend, who is here in paris for last 4 years is aware of general etiquettes needed to be followed while initiating conversation with French people, took initiative and tried making conversation with the lady. The lady considered him as the one who has rented the apartment and took him by hand and started dragging towards the entrance. I was just a viewer seeing my friend in a bit funny situation and taking first lessons analyzing the lady and thinking about what all I would be experiencing in coming days. Very soon she realized it is me who has taken the apartment and my friend was released from her grip being replaced by me.
That was the beginning. I had to meet her many times in coming days for some or the other reason. I started knowing her more and more in spite of the fact that our conversations always lost the desired directions thanks to the mixture of three languages.
I found out that she has many such places which she gives on rent. It was her major source of income. In her house she had given three rooms to 3 Indian guys who work for Infosys nearby. That brought to my notice that in such a big house she is the only one from her family. Her mother died when she was 30 years old. She also lost her father very soon. I could not understand much of the details, but her arrival in Paris had some links with the Vietnam War. Her husband who was a professor of mathematics died many years back. She used to work as an assistant under one of the doctors in a hospital.These are bits of pieces of her history
I found her a very kind and generous lady. As normally is the case, she is a family oriented lady who likes to have lots of family members around her. She has two sons. Younger one is studying in a university and stays elsewhere. The elder one....., married a French girl and stays very close but still very far away from her. Once, while telling her family story, she said, “I don’t know why French girls want their husband to be just theirs. They don’t want to share them”. She tried hard but couldn’t avoid her eyes getting wet. May be that’s why she tries to find a family in people staying with her as tenants. I do not stay in her house, but those who stay in her house experience grandmother’s love. Even I experience the affection. She do interact professionally! but with a tint of love and affection. I personally feel she tries to give much more than what the tenant deserves. In return I guess she expects some moments shared. I try to do that and listen to whatever she is telling, even if it does not interest me at times. I share a cup of tea with her which has no sugar, at times close to no tea, no milk but just boiling water. At times I manage to drink 2 to 3 cup of such a tea just because she feels I liked and keep pouring it as soon as my cup is empty.
I realised she makes a bond with every person who comes in contact with her. I saw that 2 Indians who stayed hardly for few days at her home, while leaving, presented her a nice gift.
I see that she has grown old. She spills half of the orange juice on floor, a bit on me while pouring it in glass to offer me. I see that she can’t write the rent receipts ending up telling me what I should be fill in which section of the printed receipts, just signing in the end. I see her taking efforts in getting up from floor, because she has broken her bones many a times, in absence of anybody around, trying to tell her pains in funny manner as possible.
I had no plans to write this post. But after her yesterdays visit I made my mind. She revealed another chapter of old life when she was kid or young. She comes from family having six kids. I guess she is the eldest one. The poor condition made the family divide into 3 parts with 4 out of 6 in a group of 2 each had to take shelter at their relatives place. She being elder one had to behave as responsible one. She used to Jovial and showing enjoying all the fun and being happy while people are around. But use to weep once in the bed. Just imagine a 76 years old lady telling you the entire story with all the actions to convey her real feelings. I could read it because I saw her eyes getting wet and she tried to hide it making funny faces. The struggle was not over even in later years when she had to work in 3 shifts at different places allowing her to sleep for hardly 1 hr a day and that too in a bathroom. I can’t imagine how difficult her life must have been and which way will it be going in coming years. With growing age definitely her life is not going to be better, but a bit bitter.
This is our Ann-Marie.