In other News

Sony electronic book reader is out here. Been waiting for a long while for a product like this. While nothing to me, beats the plain old fashioned books, having a heavy tome on the tummy while reading in bed can get uncomfortable very soon. Laptops again are out for the same reason.
While this baby from Sony, being Sony- will be I'm sure expensive.
The whole ebook, e-ink thing has been so long in the making. I remember discussion about this in pre-2000 days. Sadly no worthy product did hit the shelves. I am skeptical about the whole availability of the ebooks at an affordable price. If the books are like $20/- + to begin with, affordability will ensure that the product stays just a gadget love rather than a real useful way to read books.
The real utility of an ebook for me is if its very light. Then keeping one around for late night reading, short travels where the weight of packing books is an issue. Why pack? because eg Hindi books are not all that available elsewhere. Publishers may do well to pack in a ebook edition along with the paperback for a small additional consideration.
So hopefully I soon shall not have to worry about hunting for the right reading material on those trips abroad.

Return of the Monk

It feels good to be back where I belong. After a hectic trip, it is fun to eat Indian food, sleep a weekend away, meet old friends.
It always happen like this. Abroad I miss India, inland it often exasperate me!

Achingly beautiful Life!

Exhilaration, pain
Moments of desperation,
Intense joys
wrenching agony
sunny smiles
Misty breath
I feel so alive!

Media

Addy bhai as usual makes a very eloquent point about 'Hindi Heartland Journalism'. To confess, I was impressed by AajTak in the begining. Heck I even bought TV Today shares convinced that these guys have their fundas right. Notice the to the Bihar accent as opposed to the more neutral UP accent. This is a channel that screamed its Hindi Heartland roots. Their political commentary was involved. The other topics that they covered time to time were still done well.
This was the time when we just had NDTV and AajTak as the two noteworthy channels and NDTV with its more Stephanian mannerisms (was AajTak more Hindu college leaning? someone from DU please comment) almost demanded a more 'desi' response. Journalism was probably still not in the rat race of TV ratings. Along came the channel explosion.
Now I turn on AajTak, its either cricket or some crime story. Its almost pathetic. One outcome was that I sold my TV Today shares. Other was that I am almost bored of all news channels. Its the same story everywhere. No real news, just cricket and crime stories delivered in extremely melodramatic ways. Small incidents blown out of proportions, sometimes a non-incident created into an incident just to get that exclusive. A typical line might be - "Aap ja jawan ladka mar gaya. An aapko kaisa lag raha hai?". What do you expect to hear- "I am dancing with joy"?. Its insensitive, its inhuman at times.
There is a silver lining though. With so many channels trying to create news, there are sometime issues/incidents that gets highlighted in TV forcing officials to take some action. That can only be good. Besides it brings the power of democracy to fore. Once people realize that media can force issues, we may see some citizen action. You can already see that in say the Jessica case. It was only the widespread outrage fuelled by media that forced the process of correcting a travesty.
There is still hope.

Hong Kong Travails

My apologies for suddenly vanishing from the scene. As it happens, I somehow found myself landing on Hong Kong a fine Sunday morning. Some client of us needed some urgent attention on one of their systems and so here I am finally experiencing the joys of our neighbour's hospitality.
Hong Kong is a fun place. Small, very efficient public transport, lots of people, high rise and generally bustling energy. Yesterday I managed to check out on of those shopping districts too. As such I am staying and working in the heart of their financial district, so evening it gets somewhat quiet. But Tsim Shats Tsui, where I went yesterday was throbbing with people at 11. And to confess, I love civilization, the glitzy eating places, people hanging out having fun.
Life has been busy this week, primarily in meeting people, so I have not been able to explore the city much. My first impression being that people here are polite and infrastructure very well managed. Somehow I did not find too many Indians here, a rarity these days. But TST had quite a few and well yes that the part where many expats live and work.
11 pm I rushed back to catch the ferry to Central HKG, being in a mood for a boat ride and then along with a couple of friends, got into the Lang Kwai Fong or some such sounding place. This is the pub and eating area in Central, a steeply rising network of a few streets on a hill, that has pubs all over and people swinging beers on roads, on roofs, on stairs. Life is spiced when some theme party gets over and folks come out to drink more :).
For a place where I did not see too many non Chinese, the street packs an amazing number of foriegners. I guess this is where they end up all night. While not quite the Vegas, still its places like these that makes travellers feel at home :).