News Channels

ISRO launched a commercial satellite for an Italian company, with this we enter an elite club of Russia, US, China, France, japan. Doesnt it look like super power club either economic or miltary. The news channels headlines are still passport scam, UP election. Come on we need to be more positive about ourselves, we need to get out this business of looking at negative or trivial things. Not that we ignore those.
But once in a while we get good things why not hype it up. Is there analysis of the potential it has what it means to India's standing. No the media would rather analyse how much was spent in the big
wedding. Another question, if one is interested in watching wedding progress why the
hell should he/she watch news. Is regular news watcher interested in the wedding
progress. OK there is a big wedding fine, but damm give me something better than that, I dont watch it news for that.
I need a descent Indian english movie channel. CNN started like one, looks like it is not different from others.

Parents expectation on Children

Teenager commits suicide unable to score enough marks. I used to think why children have become like this and used to tell myself that I will never have expectations from my children. I will leave them to enjoy their lives. Bulls shit, even I have such high expectation from my little ones and was terribly disappointed when they dint perform. I have now once again promised myself that I will not have too much of expectation, let me see if I can live up my own promise.

Today was the last day of pre-nursery school for my 2 yrs 8 months kids. There was a fancy dress organized. Yesterday we had a rehearsal at home. They were wonderful. Today I went to the school taking leave. My son refused to remove his shirt and stuck to us. My daughter simply refused to wear the dhoti. When one of the kids was dancing both of them promptly went on to the stage to dance. I, my wife and my mom were terribly disappointed that they did not go to the stage and perform. Almost all the kids dressed up and went onto the stage except for one other kid. Rest of the time my children were normal playing around with their friends.

I was angry with my kids almost scolding them. Now I wonder what would be going through their minds, first of all they were so embarrassed or probably dint like the dress we wanted them to wear on top of it they must be wondering why the parents are angry with them.

Now I think I realize how much pressure the children must be going through when they commit suicide. If I have so much expectation from almost babies and being aware that I should not apply pressure, I can imagine how much pressure the parents will be applying on adolescents and teenagers without the realization....

FM radio Bangalore

I normally listen to FM on my way to and back from office. Suddenly I was surprised to hear mostly Kannada songs on Mirchi. Trying to understand why the he sudden change, I concluded that this is what will be differentiating then from others.

Analyzing further one can differentiate the channels as ones with a USP (Unique selling proposition) and other without. Ones in first category include Radio City, Fever and now Mirchi. Earlier they had this combination of Hindi and some Kannada with Kannada speaking RJs which is similar Radio one, Big and S FM with proportions of Kannada and Hindi varying, but you could not really differentiate between them.

City is clear they play mostly Hindi, some English and Kannada and rarely mix them up.
Fever no RJ only Hindi and English mostly songs, don’t know how long will they do that without too much of advertising, its matter of time before ads catch up.

S FM started out as Kannada only with some lousy RJing. But they changed both RJ and mixture. I think they just lost the market to Mirchi. You can’t really differentiate between ONE, BIG and S.

Then there are Rainbow and Vividha barathi, some how it seems they are in their own world, Rainbow was popular when only city was there, now not sure how many will relly listen except for old faithful.

Vegetarian's adventure in China

China is so different from in India though we have been neighbors and have few thousands of years civilization. It has been parallel development. Food is a prime example of it. Before going there a few years back I had heard it was tough for Indian non veggies and tougher for veggies. My company with Customer Company had arranged for Chinese cooks for cooking Indian food. I will reserve my writing on that food now. Well my adventure in hotels was great.

I am basically a vegetarian by choice for 23 years. But I like eggs.

The very first day, I was taken by my colleagues to Mac Donald’s. They had warned me that the Chinese will feed us anything and everything. Being an egg eater, I ordered egg burger. The first Mac burger was good but something was not alright at after first few chews. I thought it was a
different taste in China and my colleagues scare. With next bite I was pretty sure that there was some meat in it. I opened it and found a thin layer of meat. We went back and asked what it was, luckily the manager knew English and he told me it was Cow's meat. For me it dint matter
which animal I just did not want to eat any of them. My new colleagues were outraged that an Hindu was made to eat beef. One of them starting fighting saying why was it mentioned as egg burger when it had beef in it. Manager said by default burger came with beef and egg was he
additional thing. The manager took it back and offered only eggs burger. I said no thanks and made it only "Vegetables" burger.

Next morning I went to the English speaking secretary asked her to write vegetarian. But I discovered that there was not equivalent word for Vegetarian in Chinese. So she wrote "only vegetables" on chit of paper, which I carried for rest of my china trip.

One of the English speaking Chinese cooks told me that they eat anything
that moves on land, air and in water except humans. Amazing guys.

My next adventure was in a zoo. We went to restaurant in the zoo. We chose Singapore noodles for lunch, with help of a friendly English speaking engineer we told the waiter we waiter noodles without cow, lamb, fish, chicken, etc. We got the noodles which was quite tasty it had salt, some
spice and lots of carrots. After a tiring walk around the zoo we relished the noodles initially after some time someday mentioned the carrots were stale. Then we realized it was somehow not OK. So we asked the English speaking Chinese to ask the waiter what it was. The answer was pig's meat. Oh shit we were outraged. We the guy why this was put in spite of telling him not put those things. Waiter told the English Chinese that we had not mentioned to him about pork, so he had not put only pork and not any other meat. We did not know how to explain we did not eat any meat.

One more time was when after explaining to English speaking Pizza hut waiter I wanted vegetarian pizza, he still brought me a pizza with chicken topping. This time I ate one slice and then sent it back through manager for veg one. Pizza hut used to be a regular haunt.

Late in my stay after 3 1/2 months we discovered that there was a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in Shenzhen. The concept of vegetarian was there after all. Either it was forgotten or not at all popular or they did not know humans could exist eating vegetables.

Looking back probably was the only time in life I could are will taste beef and pork. It was an experience to remember.