Can I have some privacy pls

I got my ATM pin number a week after I got my ING Vysya Maestro Debit Card (salary account) which happens to be the norm. The pin came with a note which stated quite clearly that I keep the pin number to myself and not disclose it to anyone no matter who it is.. mother, girlfriend or he-must-not-be-named who decided to rob me for some weird reason known only to him.

And yes guard the PIN I did, until I came across a new bunch of people. Lets call them IDIOTS (why? Because they were.. duh!!). So what did they do to deserve my wrath.. Its a long tale so read on

Incident 1

Location: PVR Cinemas, Forum Mall

Me: Two tickets for XYZ movie pls

Idiot-1(from across the counter): Would you prefer aisle seats? Back row okay?

Me: Ya thats good. So how much would that be?

Idiot-1: Rs.$^% sir

Me: Okay.. You accept maestro?

Idiot-1:Ya sure.

(I hand over card and he swiped it..)

Idiot-1: What is your PIN sir?

(I give him a blank stare; no not the piercing one)

Me: Why do you want my PIN?

Idiot-1:To enter here sir (points at the swiping machine)

Me: Move the machine here I will enter. I can’t tell you the PIN. I don’t need to tell you either!

Idiot-1:If you don’t tell me I will have to cancel the transaction .. hmm you can pay by cash as well

Me: You are not getting the point. I can type the PIN but I can’t tell you. And I don’t have cash so if you move that machine here I will enter it myself

Idiot-1:The cable is short won’t stretch till there! You will have to tell me or I will have to cancel the transaction

Me: (reluctantly) Sigh Okay its ^*%&

Idiot-1:(Smiles.. that, I had it done my way kinda smile) Thank you sir

Incident 2

Location: Petrol pump

(I don’t have a vehicle, so I was pillion riding my roommates bike and he decided to fill petrol–ya meanwhile, lets call him mojo thats what he calls himself on his blog!)

Mojo: Petrol for 200

Pump guy(Idiot2): hmm

(fill fill fill)

(Mojo hands over debit card — maestro again)

Idiot2 swipes the card enters the money and stares at Mojo, confusion prevails for a few moments until Idiot2 decides he needs to break the news to us “dud-heads.”

Idiot2: saar pin number…

Mojo: eh.. ya give me the machine

He reluctantly hands over the machine I wanted to tell him that it’s nothing worth stealing! Mojo begins to enters the pin and the Idiot2’s eyes are fixed on the machine’s keypad trying to decipher the pin he is entering. mojo stops!

Mojo: What are you doing? Let me type no..

Idiot2: Nothing happens saar. You enter. (He continues to stare)

We didn’t have much option other than to enter the pin and leave the place

OBSERVATIONS

Banks certainly do a lot to teach their customers the value of their PIN numbers and how wrong it is to divulge them. Shouldn’t they be lecturing these shopkeepers/machine holders too to respect others privacy? The sign on the print out slip is not mandatory in Maestro card. So PIN is the sole security feature why should one have to divulge them? Isn’t there any alternative?

Now now… can we have some hybrids!

Imported cars are a rarity in India thanks to the more than 100 per cent tax that accompanies such products. They will continue to be a rarity if Indian Govt continues to impose such high taxes. But hey I don’t have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with Govt charging similar high tax on hybrid cars which have better mileage (by almost 40 per cent) compared to conventional petrol cars.

Honda Toyota launched hybrid version of Civic two days back and it was priced at Rs 21.5 lakh. If not for the taxes, the price would have been around Rs 11 lakh which makes it affordable for more number of people if not all. Isn’t it possible for Govt to reduce taxes for hybrids at least till the start producing such vehicles in India?

None of the automobile companies in India have started manufacturing hybrid vehicles as such; yet excise duty has been slashed to 14 per cent from 24 per cent. So isn’t it logical to allow imported hybrids at lower duty until production of hybrids domestically begins? Shouldn’t Indian Govt be offering incentives to people using hybrid cars? While world over Govts are taking serious steps towards energy conservation why is Indian Govt so lax about it? Why don’t they think about the amount of money they could save if more and more people start using such cars.

As of now the car is affordable only for the rich who, to be honest, won’t be as bothered by the hike as much as a normal Indian.

Just Disappointing

Expectations — they are such a bad thing no? One goes to a movie expecting great things and comes out disappointed, more often than not.. at least thats been the case with me. I went for two hyped movies among many others the last month and both failed to catch up with my expectations.

Sarkar Raj, the comeback movie of RGV was supposed to be as good as the original Sarkar. The acting was almost as good but direction wasn’t. I found it quite strange that a director who has made gems like Company and Sarkar could come out with a movie with so many jarring loop holes. Oh, may be he is still in hang-over of Aag.

Acting vice Big B and Small B do justice to their role while the new B in the block Aishwarya, shows how lousy she is when it comes to acting– she should stick to modeling.

The first half was catchy, fast and set the tone.. the audience could smell blood and all that RGV had to do was go for the kill. But instead he let the movie drag on and finished the movie with a ending which came out of the blue. The fault was not with the story but with the direction skills.

The slightly different variant of the sound score from the original Sarkar is used in Sarkar Raj. Only this time the govinda govinda chant is played every now and then. It is played so many times that you are overwhelmed by it towards the end.

The cinematography is beautiful and the tint looks beautiful in the beginning. However it tends to make you weary after a while, because you can sense FAKE written all over it.

I read somewhere that the movie was 2hrs 40min long initially. RGV then decided to cut it down to 2 hrs 5 mins. That was a very bold decision and that reflects in the first half where the bulk of the minutes were lost.

Overall I feel it was the expectation that let me down. It wasn’t a bad movie as such. But just like one expect children of great people to be equally great, it is but natural to expect a sequel to be as good as the prequel.

Rating 6.5/10

PS: A friend of mine reckons that the killer who is appointed to kill AB is RGV himself… (if you haven’t seen the movie, you won’t understand what I am trying to say here =) )

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Dasavathaaram

This movie is supposed to be master piece of Kamalahasan! Ya right! Whom are they kidding. Wearing different masks and running around doing multiple roles doesn’t make one great. At least I don’t think it does!

Kamal plays ten characters in the movie and the only factor uniting them is a Tsunami. The movie is worth watching for the beginning sequence, showcasing how Tanjavur might have been in 15th century. Quite stunning I say. From there on the movie slides down, crashing into a pool of stupidity.

It is just not possible to comment on Kamal’s acting as his face is visible for only two characters. In all other characters, all you get to see is the atta like face. The worst character in the movie is of Fletcher, a terminator kinda character who is also an ex-CIA agent. I have nothing much to say about the rest of the characters for they are all equally bad err defective. Like one of friends mentioned, most characters played by Kamal looked like characters out of The Simpsons. Asin plays the typical village lass as shown in almost al Tamil moves — silly, squeaky and comes under the category of pest. Also I think this is the first movie in which Mallika Sherawat has an item number and a decent role to play.

The soundtrack of the movie is okayish but the songs are forcefully included in the movie and they feel out of context. The story was so crappy that it would have been a bigger flop than Tashan if not for the hype.

I expected a lot from this movie and I expected to come out of the hall in awe, but that wasn’t to be. I came out frowning instead.

Rating – 2.5/10
DON’T WATCH IT. STAY AWAY FROM THIS ONE.

PS: On a lighter note; in case somebody gifts you a DVD of the movies (after it comes out that is) do understand that he considers you to be his no.1 enemy!

Blogging v/s traditional media

I have been listening to a lot of blogging v/s mainstream media debate at the Blogaloreans google groups community and to be frank I am fed up of it. Why do some think traditional media can be replaced by blogging/blogs? How practical is such a solution?
Can blogging sustain without traditional media?

Okay lets approach these questions one by one

Can traditional media be replaced completely replaced by blogs?
Absolutely not! As I see it… blogs are interesting take (heavily opinionated) of an incident which the blogger came across on television/newspaper. People can refer to blog posts to may be, understand certain issues better and people can write posts to make their opinion on certain issues clear. But they can never give what traditional media gives – unbiased news coverage or reporting. One field in which blogs do the news reporting is when it comes to technology/gaming and they already have more so.

How practical is it for blogs to replace traditional media?
Quite impractical! Lets say a blogger gets to know a tit-bit of information from some source on twitter (or any other source). He/she doesn’t have contacts of officials nor contacts of other victims/witnesses. It is impossible for a person in such a position to write a wholistic report… all that can be written is a description of events which might not be enough from a reader point of view. Now lets take the same case with a newspaper. They generally have access to officials in the city/nation and can afford to send people to report the event (they get paid to do it unlike a blogger)

So can blogging sustain without traditional media?

Are you kidding me? No ways.. Traditional media give you the heads up. How much

ever you deny it is still trustworthy enough why else do so bloggers link back to stories which appeared in traditional media! May be media industry has sold its soul to the devil (advertising) that too mainly because no paper can afford to transfer is printing and staff expenses on to the reader. We are in the age of Re 1 (all-colour) papers and if such a paper is brought out without ads it would cost Rs 25 at least!

Does traditional media want bloggers dead?
Of course not! Newspapers have started relying on contents from blog for example Bangalore Mirror has a daily column featuring a Bangalore blog and Indian Express’s Zeitgeist supplement is almost fully made of blogs. And yes some prefer to ‘steal’ content as well.

What is required?
Peace. Yes the word is peace. The blood lust has to end and we need to understand that one medium cannot do without the other. No medium is perfect as each has its own shortcomings, some medium however may look more cool or glamorous thats all. Blogging is the ‘in-thing’ right now and hopefully will remain to be. It will grow much like traditional media did over the ages and hopefully will become a traditional media form in the future but never even dream of replacing the existing ones!

Its over.. finally!

A Pakistani bowler playing for a team captain by an Australian pulls an Indian bowler from a team captained by the Indian T20 captain and DLF IPL league has its winners — finally.

What a ride it has been! This whole tournament it captured our imagination (so much that I stopped blogging.. hmm okay it wasn’t just because of IPL!)

Now getting back to my ‘actual’ blog

My bet (an actual bet for Rs 300) was on the Rajasthan Royals, underdogs for most part of the tournament except the finals may be. No particular reason but a ‘logic’ which all my friends refuse to call logic. It goes as follows. No one expected India to win the T20 world cup because we were a team of nobody. No big players, no expectations, for respect for the format, nothing! Next thing you know Indians are T20 champions. I found a similarity here. Rajasthan a team with hardly any ‘popular’ players save the charismatic Shane, the most underestimated team of he tournament. Laughing stock of all bloggers and most offline friends of mine and well they return to haunt other teams and laugh at all those who laughed at them. Warne must be enjoying it for sure!

On a lighter note, Bangalore was the only team that lived up to its expectations. They were criticized to be a test team and stuck to the name through out!

Deccan who seemed to be the strongest turned out to be the worst. Mumbai too had a similar story to say but they have the absence of Bhajji and Sachin during various stages to blame their defeat. Kolkatta started with a bang and finished with a kaboom (self-destruct one). Mohali hmm they tried and tried but never looked good enough. They were in news more because of a cry-baby Sreesanth and ‘huggable’ Preity. Chennai would been the champions if not for the Aussie exodus and yes Rajasthan who were expected to lose all matches won almost all. Not fair I say.

Everyones happy not even Dhoni looked sad. The only person crying at the end of the day (apart from Sreesanth that is) is Kapil Dev. Remember him? The guy who led India to their first world cup victory in ‘83? The guy who played PR for ICL–what did you say? What’s ICL? Hmm let me think.. Indian Crisis League? Am not sure I don’t remember actually!

PS: In case you didn’t notice Bangalore did have a presence at the finals. The match referee was none other than Javagal Srinath. Saving the face of Bengaluru I guess!

PPS: I heard Mallya is watching only F1 these days to get over the highs lows of IPL. He is also thinking of changing his team’s name to something that doesn’t resemble any of his other brands. At least their brand value won’t be affected!

PPPS: Apparently players are requesting Shah Rukh to send one of these sweet messages he used to send to his team through out the tournament, on a daily basis. Apparently they feel they (the messages) will motivate them to win next year.

PPPPS: The previous two were cooked up by me. If you wanna sue me I will declare bankruptcy. The joke will be on you then! =P

PPPPPS: Yes I copied this funda of PS, PPS, PPPS, PPPPS, PPPPPS from a letter Gandalf writes in Lord of the Rings! Tolkien’s not alive so he can’t sue me! =D

PPPPPPS: Now that reminds me. Remember the Rs 300 I mentioned at the beginning of the post. What do you reckon I do with it? Suggestions pls!

Pic credit: GULF NEWS and iclinfo.wordpress.com