Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

In keeping with the spirit of the ‘10 interesting things’ meme currently going around, here’s my list. These aren’t things I’ve done, since there’s barely any worth mentioning, but simply significant points in my life.

1. At age 8, learnt a new word in English class: ‘vow’. The chapter was on Sarojini Naidu taking a vow in the years leading to India’s independence. Fascinated, decided to test drive one. Vowed against cruelty to animals, where the definition of ‘animal’ extended to anything living and not a plant. Spent several years rescuing ants from the toilet bowl before realising that perfect compliance was impossible. Have never squashed a cockroach.

2. Also at age 8, contemplated suicide. Didn’t have the gall to pull it off. Decided instead to live to 90+. I suspect there were a few years between these two, but memory fails.

3. Somewhere in the middle of a lonely childhood, one Diwali, on the terrace, some kids remarked that it would be funny if a sparkler fell on the kid below, and I promptly threw mine. I missed, but the horror lasted years and imprinted a permanent fear of losing emotional control. It’s one of the reasons I stay off alcohol.

Read on...

Here comes the flood. How long before we tire of her face, before we
dismiss her brands as companies that care more for celebrity
endorsement than identifying with their real customers, the same way we
disregard the 200-odd brands that Amitabh Bachchan endorses?

There’s a chap inside and no footwear outside. Perhaps this notice is
only meant to inconvenience people careless enough to stop and read.

Every busy street deserves a pavement this wide. To have people actually walking on the pavement instead of the road, my estimate is it should be at least as wide as the road itself, not counting the width taken up by obstacles like trees and pavement vendors. Sadly, we have no culture of building pavements in this country.

Andy and I accompanied Chandita and Feroz to the Colaba fish market yesterday. I took a picture of a fisherwoman cutting prawns, at which Chandita—who is a filmmaker—remarked that there was no action in my frame. She asked the woman to cut another one so I could click when her scythe came down.

So that’s a new thing to mull over. Action in the frame. Never thought of that. It’s always been about framing things so they balance well, checking the metering, and that’s it.

Speaking of metering, I think the F70’s vari-program matrix meter is goofy. Presented with 8:30 PM street light, it suggested 5 seconds at F8. The D70 would have gone for about F2.

I’m shooting slides (thanks, thaths!) and will know what they look like in a couple of weeks.

You know you are getting accustomed to frequent travel when:

1. You’re comfortable using the toilet facilities anywhere. There was a time when I couldn’t go anywhere but at home.

2. You can fall asleep on a bed anywhere, and catch up on sleep in public transport.

3. You’ve figured out how to pack your bags so you’re only carrying the bare minimum—and you never fall short.

4. Friends are so used to you staying over, they tell you to go ahead and use their homes even when they’re not around (thanks, shekhark and freegeek).

5. And not to be forgotten, you’ve long since figured out your portable Internet access, including fallbacks.

Have anything to add?

No refrigerators in the fridge lift. And don’t you dare lean on that leg! You’re taking up valuable space that another person could fit into.

It’s been five years since my last veg handi biryani at Balwas’, and it tastes just as good. Best biryani ever!

Only in Bombay?

Tom and Jeery. Tom Furry. But what is Pakya?

I joined the gym one floor up from Partecs earlier this week. gnurpreet thought the event was worth a picture. My instructor Sucheta is doing a wonderful job of easing it in.

Now you know what goes into your food.

Happy! Happy! Happy!

A couple of colleagues are heading to the Italian embassy in Bombay tonight and were wondering where in the city Dr G. Deshmukh Road is. Some Googling later, we arrive at this site that happily informs us the embassy is simultaneously on Deshmukh Road and Peddar Road. The site also mentions a Kemps Corner Overbridge in the neighbourhood, so we figure it must be the corner of two roads. We decide they should get off the bus at Dadar, take a cab to Peddar Road, and ask someone there for directions to Deshmukh Road.

More Googling later, it turns out Deshmukh Road is Peddar Road. I wish someone would apply a cluebat to whoever thought renaming for national pride was a brilliant idea.

I’m trying. Really. jacemobile is overflowing with posts
about bad spelling. I tell myself I’m not going to bother anymore. And
then specimens like this turn up. What to do?

Bye bye, Thunderbird. I won’t miss you.

Somebody’s left a basket full of biscuits and chips by the first row in the bus. Are these complementary for the passengers? Are these for sale? Can I help myself to one?

A much delayed post. The two most important things I learnt in nine days at Asia Source:

1. You will inevitably detest others for the qualities you detest in yourself, and

2. The USB thumbdrive is the new floppy disk. Practically everyone had one and used them to transfer files between laptops, despite being connected over a wireless network. The thumbdrive has occupied the void left by dysfunctional server-less file sharing (Windows networking aka SMB being the most popular -- and troublesome -- implementation).

And this is neat. An open air urinal with ceramic among plants. Good light, fresh air, no odour. Can’t be used in the monsoon, but a joy the rest of the year.

brainz and I tried out this weight checking machine at the bus stop. These machines are the Indian take on the Chinese fortune cookie. brainz‘s card said “You should cultivate the friendship of the influential persons you are about to meet.” Mine said “The person you marry will provide all the romantic outlets your passionate nature requires.” Uncle Giri got “Your next phase of life will be great with responsibility and worldly contacts.” BTW, we weigh 52, 81 and 86.

My cousin Swetha married Ramana this 18th. They played the usual marriage games.

Meanwhile, outside.

Two positives make a positive, and this chap took it to heart. But new and famous?

Spent the last hour battling with the Rio Carbon iTunes plug-in. It refused to install, citing an unnamed error that I should look up in the installation log, with no hint of where said installation log was. Finally tracked it down to a missing write permission on /Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins. For some reason, the installer failed to authenticate as root like regular installers do.

The Rio Carbon works as a regular mass storage device, but I needed the iTunes plug-in to transfer content from Audible. Given the frequent travel, it’s a good time to try this out. :-)

The plug-in works nicely, but iTunes freezes for several minutes while it reads ID3 tags over a slow USB 1.1 link. I need USB 2.0.

Five men in a room. One Rio Carbon. Three sets of earphones. Solution? Pile up splitters!