Shaken and Stirred

All of you must be familiar Google's AdSense - an advertisement application. The Wikipedia article says: AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the advertisements are less intrusive* than most banners. I beg to differ. In a recent correspondence I had with a friend over Gmail, I was shocked to notice that the first sponsored link on the right was Dumped? Instant relief to break-up pain and fastest plan to get your ex back GetYourExBackNow.com Now, I think, I must confess that the 'friend' was a one-time (and a long-time) crush of mine. Nothing more, unfortunately. But how the hell did Google know that ? Nothing in the mail itself suggests anything on those lines. Unless the mere presence of words like - 'arrogance, incompetence.... dick.... bitch' - imply a broken-up relationship. Even though the mail was not exaclty from an ex of mine, but i wonder what kind of key words sparks the AdWords program to show a link to GetY

Going ahead with my penchant for adapting management principles in life outside the corporate world, my next source of inspiration are feedback forms. To the uninitiated, they are a medium for gauging and improving standards in any organization. Actually, it’s a questionnaire that one has to fill after attending each training session with child-like questions. After filling as many as I have, you run out of new and innovative adjectives to describe the dull and dreary set of questions. Imagine their utility in relationships. A sample form might go like this : Relationship evaluation form Name of participant: Type of relationship: Length of relationship: For those currently in a relationship: What aspects of the relationship do you find most useful? What aspects of the relationship are least helpful to you and why? (if any) What were your objectives when beginning the relationship? To what extent have they been fulfilled? Suggestions/ideas for improvement For those e

I was reading Jack Welch's book Winning , Welch is ex-CEO with General Electric and has 40 plus years of experience in managing people. I have always thought management principles could be applied to real life as well. So from his chapter on 'Hiring the right people' , I conceived and adapted my own guidelines to 'Finding the right girl': Test for Integrity People with integrity tell the truth. They keep their word. They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes and give their best to fix them. Now there is no fool-proof way of testing integrity and hence your gut instinct is very important. More on instinct later. Look for  Intelligence Intelligence need not mean her educational qualifications. She should be able to hold your attention with her words, with an uncanny ability to surprise you and force you to alter your previous judgments about her. Education is just part of the pie, not the whole. Does she show  Maturity? As Welch says, "Mature peop

3rd May 2008 Saturday 2130 hrs I am running a temperature of 101F degrees. My brother says he's got a 100.5 himself. Of course he's lying. There is no way he could still be that active. Though come to think of it, I had fever on and off throughout the day and I hardly took any rest. Fever always has this weird way of giving an illusion of recovery before it returns with redoubled vigour. Its been a while since I had such a 'high' fever. Whenever I felt feverish, nothing I did would convince the thermometer to go beyond a 100. So today I looked at it with dull self-congratulation as the mercury rose to a 100.9. I'm calling it a 101, I don't care. I always aimed high as a kid. When my mother would put the stick in my mouth I would pray that the temperature be above 105. At least. All the other kids had had malaria and hay fever. Compared to them, my health chart seemed to be bereft of any excitement. Clearly, I was fiercely competitive as well. Now with time, and

Since I am a native of Andhra Pradesh, I know a bit of Telugu. Having stayed in Delhi all my life, I come across people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds: Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Malayali, etc. When I was in primary school, it was a fun passtime of some of us to learn words of the other's native language. Keshav was a particularly keen one. He had not only learnt counting to ten in Tamil, but also in French and used to flaunt his superior knowledge to all the rest of us jealous beings. There were many Hindi speaking friends of mine who wanted to learn how to say 'Hi' or 'Thank You' in Telugu. Nighi (Punjabi) – who was my neighbor new the Telugu word for 'water' when she was 3. But that was when all of us were little. Now everyone wants to know how to swear in a language foriegn to theirs. Though I get a lot of requests to learn curses in Telugu, I can do little to help out. As I learnt all my Telugu from my parents, I had little to

The following is an email sent to Ms. X by Mr. Y. Y is an ex of Ms. X and she moved to a different city soon after breaking up. They haven't been touch for years till a couple of days back X and Y chat on Gtalk. Then X gets this mail: Hey Sexy ! Hey X watsaa ! hows life ? how are u yaar , long time naa ! so where are u , someplace naa ? hows da place , i hope its nice ! im missing u alot yaar ( as a friend not more ) . just so you knoe ive broken up with my girlfriend . a long time backactually , sometime in september . so how are you , wen are u comin back to india? You have any new boyfriend or sumin , i mean i gues u shud by now ! a chick like u can easily get a rockstar . i know no1 can match me and after me uve got high expectations but its okay , you ve gotta give oder guys a chance u knoe . im so sure dere are tonnes of guys who are dying to talk to you and have a crush on you ! So temme , do u miss me or have u just forgotten me ? you shudnt have left and gone to delhi ya

Once upon a time, there lived Handsome Prince who left The Capital to go to The Far Far South. Though his friends laughed at his prospects there, he did not lose hope. He was duly rewarded for his optimism and confidence in the form of Beautiful Maiden who fell in 'like' with him. It was the calmest of nights. Prince and Maiden were walking alone when he (being a daring fellow) thought it will be really adventurous to check out a damp and abandoned shed , whose thatched roof had caved in. Once inside the two shared deep personal feelings (the ambience brought it out) and comforted each other. Maiden, quite overcome, put her head on Prince's lap. Prince was immediately struck by a strong feeling of deja vu. He recalled another intimate incident when Hot Maiden had put her head on his shoulder. Being quite young at the time and having a rather reserved upbringing, he had no clue what was to be done and all that resulted for Prince was a backache. That was the one high point

Now that the ICC has acquisced to the Indian team's demand of replacing Bucknor and the procedure for the appeal against Harbhajan is underway, it is time for Cricket to come to the forefront again. The emotional outbursts against the Australian team's behavior while understandable should be transient. Lets recapitulate what all they have done to so upset us and unite the whole nation behind the team: Ricky Ponting, the Aussie captain, after entering into a gentleman's agreement with Anil Kumble chose to use it as and when it suited his advantage Ponting, Symonds, Clarke, Hussey were guilty of not walking when clearly out Gilchrist appealed for a catch that he must have known to be non-existent Excessive appealing and harassing the umpires Celebrating like a group of 15 year olds and not giving credit to the deserving opposition Accusing Harbhajan Singh of racial abuse after deliberately taunting and provoking him It is quite clear that to make an issue out of 2, 3, 5 and w

The Indian cricket team suffered at the hands of an establishment which has repeatedly shown itself to have a separate set of standards for non-white teams. Here are some of them that immediately spring to mind: The preposterous decision to just fine Mark Waugh and Shane Warne after their self-confessed encounters with bookmakers while banning Ajay Jadeja for a similar crime The Mike Denness shocker , who incidentally shares his first name with Mike Proctor (the match referee for the Sydney test), where Indians players including Sachin and Sourav were fined and banned for 'ball tampering' and 'excessive appealing' without any complaints from the umpires themselves Darryl Hair 's accusing Pakistan of ball tampering and consequently calling off the test match when the offended Pak team walked off the ground Muralitharan's elbow flex was deemed to be way over the prescribed 5 degrees and censure was imminent before the ICC found that many bowlers including Brett L

It is not because I have nothing to write that I pick my pen up so sparingly. It is because I have so much to write. Not events. My life remains as devoid of them as ever. But thoughts. And there is an unlimited amount of these for an idle mind like mine... Its funny how right upto opening the diary and writing the few opening lines, I will have incredible ideas and remarkable remarks. But now there is nothing. Its like that incredible pulp of amassed thoughts is trying to makes its way through an orifice as big as this pen's nib has. * from my journal, dated 2nd January 2007. The situation is not very different a year on.