Tittle-Tattle

A tip is a payment to certain service sector workers beyond the advertised bill or fee. It was a sad day yesterday. One of my relatives passed away. The family decided to take him to the native place Lucknow. The air travel required the body to be embalmed and casketed. There is an agency in Bangalore which does this. So we went to this mortuary where this was to be done. The guy over there could speak in Hindi and he very clearly explained us everything. He was very forthcoming in giving all the information and he assured us that everything will be done on time. While all this was happening, the youngest son went to a corner and was crying. We went to console him. And suddenly this guy walked over to us and asked for a tip . Apparently he was going to bring dinner and he was asking for a tip to get the same. We were shocked. We gave the money but the shock stayed and probably this is one of those events which will reside in my mind for all my life. Later we discussed the same and we ...

Watching formula1 is dangerously infectious, it gets into your driving immediately! I have watched two Alonso won races (KL and Monaco) till now and he must be really thankful to Hamilton for blocking the Ferraries for him all the way till the end. Such consistency! When LH starts getting the pole position... Monaco race track is crazy, you start from Residency road - St. Joseph School Crossing, take right at Bangalore Central, take right again on the Richmond Road at Lifestyle crossing, go straight, climb up the famous dissected flyover of Richmond/Residency road, take a U-turn on the flyover itself towards Residency road... That's Bangalore Formula1 race track for you. If you want, you go from under the flyover, that will give you the tunnel like feeling. ;-) ~mks

Sunil Gavaskar came to our office campus today for some promotion. And we got a chance to hear him. Me and Veetrag went together to see him. We didn't bring our cameras and we didn't have anything appropriate to take autograph on (and not even a pen). Luckily, people arranged for some notebooks and pens in the audi and Veetrag's w700i worked as our camera. Since Gavaskar retired some 20 years ago so the junta which turned up on time was mostly from that era when he played. But later on the hall was full with people from all ages. The Gavaskar I saw right there speaking in front of me was a little different. When I looked up at the screen behind him, the Gavaskar in that looked familiar. I am so much used to his on screen presence I must say. Some very candid discussion on all aspects of (mostly Indian) cricket happened. He fielded all the questions very coolly and I felt good seeing and listening him. I asked a question (why no triple hundreds from Indians (only one ...

After buying the car , I gave my bike to my cousin. He visits me often, and today was one such day. When he left, my son got curious and this happened - Son - Papa tum car kisko doge? (Whom will you give the car to?) Me - Nahi beta, car hamaare paas rahegi. (No dear, car will be with us) Son - Main chalaunga. (I will drive) Me - Haan, jab tum bade ho jaoge to car chalaoge. (Yes, when you grow up, you will drive the car). Son - Tum peeche baithoge? (You will sit on the backseat?) :-) ~mks

Microsoft agrees to buy aQuantive for $6 billion, compare this with google's acquisition of Double Click for $3.1 billion. Other such acquisitions I heard of - Yahoo Inc. buying online ad exchange Right Media Inc. ($680 million), and WPP Group PLC buying ad firm 24/7 Real Media Inc ($649 million). Baba re! kitna paisa hai advertisement mein!! (Gosh! there's so much money in advertising business). This one is from GigaOm - Alltel, one of the smaller mobile carriers has decided to go private in a deal that values the company at $27.5 billion ($71.50 a share in cash), a 23% premium over Alltel’s closing price on December 29, 2006. The company is being acquired by two private equity players, TPG (Texas Pacific Group) and GS Capital Partners (private equity arm of Goldman Sachs). Baba re! Mobile business mein aur jyada paisa hai (Gosh! Mobile business involves even more money). Vinnie Mirchandani discusses salaries and billing rates of Indian Offshoring companies in his blog po...

Can you believe somebody would lie down on the rail track to take a video of a running train? No? Confused? Watch it yourself - ~mks

I met this friend of friend of mine today. He is son of Oriya Tam Bram father and Bengali Tam Bram mother. He can understand Tamil but cannot speak. His paternal ancestors settled as Raj Purohits of some Kingdom in Orisa and maternal ones settled doing same for some Bengali Raja. He himself has married a Marathi Brahmin settled in Andhra. Really interesting lineage! ~mks

GigaOm reports that HP has to release information about its second quarter earnings one week earlier due to some internal mess-up. It was better than market expectations anyway but what caught my attention was these statements - H-P’s announcement rolled across Business Wire’s feed at 8:45 a.m., EST ...snip... By 8:46, the stock had shot up 2.7% to $44.92 a share. That’s not a huge percentage gain per se, but for a stock as large as H-P’s, it meant $3.2 billion injected into its market cap in one minute. Lets read it as - Three point two billion per minute!! Very interesting indeed. I now understand what they mean by "eyes popped out!" ~mks