Osho

My opinion about this maverick has changed in the recent times. After listening to his talks on YouTube and reading his books, he comes across a fresh breath of philosophical air and very funny to boot. I can understand why he became so so popular among normal folks but so hated by the organized religious folks of the world. He does not mince words and he is logical and cohesive too. Hard to counter that kind of attack.

I am hoping to write more about Osho as I start learning his ideas.

Raining dogs and cats

North East Monsoon is in full swing. Chennai roads are inundated with water. This is a yearly recurring phenomenon that remains unsolved. If you are ever planning to visit Chennai, it is better not to do so between October and December.

Traffic In Chennai

I drove to Purasaiwalkam from Kottivakkam last evening and boy that was fun.

I am not sure why the twowheeler riders in Chennai are suicidal in nature especially commuting back to their homes after a hard day at office! They cleverly (!) weave in and out of lanes (!) and land up square in front of fourwheelers without any thought about their safety.

If one is not careful, it is easy to run over a twowheeler rider ending hopes and dreams of a family. When I started driving Chennai after emigrating  to India about two years ago, this was the foremost thought that kept coming up in my mind. Two wheeler riders do run great risks with their own driving habits and from rash fourwheelers around them.

It will be great if someone famous such as cine stars etc. do a spot on TV about this menace. Repeated broadcasting of that spot on TV should convince some at least to drive safely.

I think if I start complaining about traffic in Chennai, there is plenty to go with for a full year. Some quick ones for your reading pleasure:

• Driving in the opposite direction of the traffic. Everyone does it including big lorries.
• Merging into a road from left side without a wee bit bothering about oncoming traffic. The drivers that see this are expected to suddenly break and allow this "merger" to go through.
• Turning right without a signal (mainly two wheelers) but constantly turning their faces halfway to the right indicating biologically that they are turning right. The extreme version of this is to not even turn their heads but still turn right leaving one to mindread the moves by the rider in front of you. Believe, this skill comes to one after a few months of driving in Chennai.

Go Chargers!

Not the ones in San Diego. But the ones from Hyderabad. Deccan chargers clinched IPL 2009 finals overpowering a "spirited" Royal Challengers. I think Chargers won primarily due to Gilchrist's excellent leadership and the powerful senior players like Symonds, Gibbs etc. It also won because of its never-give-up attitude till the Fat Lady sings.

Congratulations on a well-deserved win to the team.

Go Chargers!

Not the ones in San Diego. But the ones from Hyderabad. Deccan chargers clinched IPL 2009 finals overpowering a "spirited" Royal Challengers. I think Chargers won primarily due to Gilchrist's excellent leadership and the powerful senior players like Symonds, Gibbs etc. It also won because of its never-give-up attitude till the Fat Lady sings.

Congratulations on a well-deserved win to the team.

Chennai Chennai Loser Kings

It is very difficult to see a team so disorganized, dis-spirited and chaotic than Chennai SuperKings especially in the semi-final match. Whatever happened to Dhoni's vaunted "cool" captaincy? He looked distracted and the team lost horribly against a committed Royal Challengers. I guess whoever is more committed to a cause wins.

A bad day for Chennai. The owner of Chennai team should seriously talk to Dhoni and team about some consistency in their efforts and some fire in the belly. They look so haunted and distracted. Not sure why.

Very disappointing.

Ubuntu 9.04 rocks

I just finished installing ubuntu 9.04 64-bit on my Acer Ferrari 4005. Ubuntu has been making steady progress over the years and releases to be the best Linux distro out there.

Comes with GNOME 2.26.1 and the latest FOSS stack.

On top of the desktop edition, I installed the following to get it ready as my worktop:

• Sun JDK/JRE
• VPNC and the network-manager-vpnc plugin
• opie client
• ldap-utils
• flash plugin
  

Specific to the Acer Ferrari, I did the following:

• Enabled b43-fwcutter driver for the Broadcom 4318 wireless network interface. Upon enabling, Ubuntu simply downloaded b43-fwcutter and a few other supporting files and enabled the wireless interface. It was a breeze.

One issue I came across was that the vpnc via NetworkManager did not work immediately upon creating a profile. It kept throwing up a "VPN Secret not found error". I had to restart NetworkManager with "/etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart" and then vpnc started working.

I have been using Linux since the nerdy releases of 1996. Ubuntu takes the cake. It may not be the best performant distro but it is the best in ease of use, quality of the components and user support in forums etc. Any beginner or experience linuxer will love Ubuntu. It transformed Linux from a hobbyist's play OS to something that people would love to have now.

Go Ubuntu team. You deserve the best!

Best healers

Nature, Time and Patience are the best healers in this world. - Quote from a daily calendar