The worst disaster in recent history. There are pictures and informative graphics at this link at the NY Times site. Before this tragedy, I didn't even know the Andaman Islands were part of India. The scale of destruction is unbelievable, especially at the human level where a third of the victims are said to be children. A second "tsunami" of sorts comes as the parents, relatives and friends of all the victims come to find out about the demise of their loved ones. We all have much to be thankful for if we weren't directly affected.

As bad as things get, we have to remind ourselves that:

• things can always be worse
• this, too, shall pass

Thanks-Wagh-Giving came and went. Last year, we had a tofurkey and some other vegetarian stuff. For those of you visualizing a giant bird made of tofu, very firm tofu it would have to be, I'm sorry to disappoint you. It's actually more like a softball sized mound of tofu that looks like .... ummm a softball, and it's filled with stuffing. While my wife might claim she thought it tasted like a softball too and didn't partake of it much (despite the whole thing being her idea), I actually liked the thing and had leftovers for a few more days -- which is also a Thanks-Wagh-Giving tradition.

Schools are out throughout the land and Waghmas is fast approaching. I had a long rant to make about incompetent employees, especially those involved with customer service, but in the spirit of the holidays, I think I'll keep the comments to myself.

What's on your wish list? Are you preparing resolutions for the new year?

Happy Birthday to Me! It's a day to celebrate, commemorate, honor and appreciate all that's Wagh. With Waghmas coming up in a few months, and Thanks-Wagh-Giving coming up in just about a month, today is the day to take a break and ponder over how Wagh has benefitted you and the world.

A friend emailed me good birthday wishes and included a phrase that's common amongst Indians and probably lots o' people from former British colonies: "Many Happy Returns of the Day."

I've heard that over the years, and always wondered what it means. "Many happy returns."

Are there unhappy returns? What are the returns? In sales, businesses hope that there are no returns. If you have a receipt, I guess that can make your return a little happier. But sometimes you just get a store credit, and that's ok if it's the kind of store that you'd shop at, but what if it's a store that you don't go to often, and in your few visits, you never found anything you liked much anyway? Like the thing you're returning, for example.

Some people like to have fun with their cats, and I don't know if this video is funny or mean or both. The funny part is watching how the cat reacts, and I think the meanest part comes when it's time to remove the tape. I hope they're gentle...

The music and colors in this game are soothing, but play for a while and see how long you remain calm.

Especially if you have a very long name, consider getting an email account from this place and, then give it out to people you don't really want to hear from, such as creditors and strange people you meet. Of course, you may have difficulty yourself trying to check the account.

I would love to see one of these works of art in real life at some point. I've been seeing this guy's work over the last few months in pictures all over the internet. Do you have any additional information on the artist?

Judge not lest ye be judged

Time for something less serious than my last posting. Interestingly enough, I'm posting this during the other major holiday weekend of summer in the USA, Labor Day.

Remember the "Play the guitar on the MTV...Money for nothin' and the chicks for free" song? Well, take a listen to Enrique Iglesias "secretly" taped from his microphone at a lip-synched concert performance. It doesn't sound much different than if I was to sing the same song, although I hope I might do a little better. To be fair, lip-synch is often required when a performance includes a lot of choreography. To dance and sing at the same time, might cause the singer to run out of breath and compromise both the singing and the dancing.

And also consider this picture... The performer has to interact with the audience when crazy fans run up on stage.

So, you see, there's often much more going on underneath the surface than what we might think at first glance.

My father passed away, and I had to leave for India suddenly. I think he really wanted to go and allowed himself to slip away. I can be happy for him that he's liberated from whatever ailed him on the physical and emotional planes. I think he was physically robust enough to fight it, but that was really his personal choice to make. He got what he had seem to want, but maybe not in the happiest way to achieve it.

I'm at the airport in Singapore, waiting to get on my connecting flight to Bangalore. Once I get there, I head straight off to the cremation. This is a little different than for western folks. In the Hindu tradition, me, the oldest (and only) son has to actually light the fire.

I'm also a little uneasy at the travel arrangements. We are supposed to drive in an ambulance with his body. The road trip to the Chitravathi river is about 4 hours. It'll probably be ok. It'll be my last few hours with that physical form, and I'll probably look back on it.

So, for the lighter side of things...

They have free internet terminals here in the Singapore Changi airport. I just landed about half an hour ago.

I was more apprehensive leaving LAX, and I'm feeling more comfortable right now as I'm at Singapore.

I'm going to see about taking a shower and relaxing for a little while. The problem is that it's 1am here, and most stuff is probably closed.

Singapore Airlines has personal on-demand movies to watch. 60 of them. I saw "Anita and Me" which is a good "Bend It Like Beckham" type of story about indians in britain, though a totally different age group.

"50 First Dates" was a sweet movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. I can't describe it or I'll give away part of the reason why it's called that. You find out in the first 15 minutes anyway.

"Win a Date With Tad Hunter" was also a cute kind of movie. More predictable, not particularly outstanding.

"Starsky and Hutch" was hilarious. I'd say it was sort of like "Undercover Brother," but without the racially based humor. "UB" wasn't racist, but the humor in that movie was largely a satire of 70's african-american culture. "S&H" was a parody of the TV series, and it did a great job of poking fun at the late 70's. Lots of thumbs up for this one. I think this movie is part of the reason my mood shifted towards a more positive place on this whole trip.

I finally got to see the remaining two-thirds of "Pay it Forward," which at least gives me closure on how that movie progresses. It was a nice movie and all, but I think I got enough out of the first third. Interestingly enough, the little boy in this movie is also the star of the next movie...

I fell asleep during "AI," the Spielberg movie about robots and emotions. I think it was a little creepy -- in the end there are Aliens talking about the human spirit 2000 years after the story initially started (and when I dozed off). Kinda reminds me of the "Land Before Time" story where UFOs and aliens play in, versus the standard conflict between dinos and their environment.

I learned only at the end of my Singapore flight how to use the on-demand feature. I was not able to restart the movies, so I just flipped through and joined movies that seemed interesting.

I'll write again when I'm in India.

See it to believe it!

Optical Camouflage is what they call it. You truly have to see this to believe it. It consists of projecting an image onto reflective material. It took me a while to figure out, but it's for real.

Late for April Fool's?
I don't know if this is a late April Fool's Joke or if it's for real, but as an Indian person as well as a Spiderman fan, I'm very intrigued.

Transformers! Robots in disguise...

It's here! The latest installment from YetiSports. This time, the Yeti is in Australia, and the game is definitely a lot less, how shall I say it...splatter free.

Conan O'Brien's Commencement Speech to the Harvard Class of 2000 is funny!

Turns out that Conan is a Harvard graduate. I don't know if that makes those of you who are attending, or who graduated from "lesser" institutions feel better about your choice of school or not. His speech concludes with these words of wisdom to the graduates, encouraging them to keep going on even in the face of failure:


But let me leave you with one last thought: If you can laugh at yourself loud and hard every time you fall



people will think you're drunk.

The saying is that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

An interesting way to make music from this site in the Netherlands. There are actually quite a few interesting sites in the .nl world.

Looks can be deceiving... These look like pictures of something, but it's not what you think. Go there, and then scroll to the top, or see how quickly you can figure it out on your own.

What can I say? I've been extremely busy! When I was in college, I'd wonder why "adults" took so long to get some rather simple things done. Now that I'm one of them, I have to wonder no more. This just goes to reinforce the "Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged" teaching.

I have found lots of interesting web links over the last few weeks, and in lieu of an official update to the blog, I might just add those links. This way, I don't have to clutter up my own bookmarks and I can also have a way to share them more easily.

Here are a couple of the things that have kept me amused recently:

Jerry Seinfeld's new "webisodes" for American Express, starring himself and Superman.

Yetisports is fun! It's a series of Flash games based on a Yeti and some penguins that get whacked. Subsequently, I found a bunch of ripoffs of these, but nothing beats the original. When you to the site, just click on the play online link.

I'll leave you to be amused with those items for now. Check in later and there just might be more for you to distract yourself with.

Happy Palm Sunday!

I spent a few hours figuring out where to host my website. It seems like everybody has a site of their own nowadays, and when you go looking for web hosts, you find out that every other person offers hosting. It's the kind of thing that people would probalby spam you about: BEST WEB HOSTING ON THE NET!!!

But they'd probably get in trouble because they'd be using their own mail servers, thus being the spammer, and thus liable to scorn, litigation, etc.

The thing I don't get is why do we go after the spam agents, when we could just go after the companies who choose to use spam as a marketing tool? Doesn't it make sense that the buck really stops at the people who are selling the physical enhancement, financial relief, free software, lower mortgage rates, and other products?

The current enforcement menality is like punishing the hired assassin, but not the one who did the hiring. They try to make spamming illegal, but it's not illegal to pay somebody to do it for you.

Or am I missing something?

Maybe you know the answer, but since I don't provide an email link to contact me (because I don't want my email address publicized and getting on some spam list, I guess I'll never know.

Happy New Year!