Recent fav ads

Indian TV ads are getting one or more of: quite naughty, innovative, bold, youth-centric, and cute. These are the recent ads that would fall in such categories:
Her expressions and reactions are funny. The bg song is good too.


Got glued to it, from the first time I saw it. Nice catchy music.


A very romantic ad. Ideal-looking couple.


Another ad that targets rich and young. Very symbolic for the present generation.


As Jessie says to Anu in VTV its for "Always on facebook" ppl. Nice, simple and innovative stage concept.

India just Gantt do it !

Today, the nightmarish England tour is coming to an end for this humiliated Indian team. Not a single international win yet in over 2 months of the tour! Several postmortems have already been carried out, both in the mainstream media and on the internet. IPL has been blamed as the main reason by most people. Here, let me share my thoughts of the last ~ 5 months:

* First of all, starting a cricket extravaganza within a week of a long World Cup is utter crap. Probably the organizers of IPL didn't expect India to go all the way into the finals, and win it too. While plannnig, it was imperative to give atleast 2 weeks time for both the fans and the players to recuperate.

* The IPL was one week too long. With 10 teams playing, it would have been very easy to squeeze in 2 games in nearly all the days, except Mondays. The ad revenues would have suffered due to less eyeballs, but that is no excuse.

* The current injury-list of Indian team mostly has players who were either over-worked or under-prepared. Both required good body-management skills. I believe that India certainly has 20 players who can play in any of the 3 formats. The key is to identify those 20 and nurture them well throughout the year. They have to be given a strict training schedule, so that we dont see bloated cricketers on match day. I think Indian team management badly failed to do that.

* BCCI's calendar-management is utterly crazy, to put it mildly. Just a cursory look at all the teams' calendar for the next 9 years will tell you that Indian team's schedule is the tightest. You would hardly see empty spaces in them, and even if they are, they are in Indian summer, meaning the highly gruelling IPL is gonna fill all those spaces.

* I have made my own FTP for Indian team for the duration 2011-2015 and put it along with the current FTP from ICC's website. Mine covers India's series with every team, both home and away (except a  tour to Pak, which I have no idea when will happen). Look at it in the form of Gantt chart below. The top ones are ICC's FTP and the bottom ones are mine.

* A glance at the top and bottom would reveal more white spaces at the bottom than the top. In addition, other striking differences are: (1) Mine has space even for Bangladesh's maider tour to India; (2) I have a slot for the quadrennial Asia cup; (3) No two events are spaced less than a week apart (there are, on average, 4 such events per year in the present calendar of ICC's ftp).

* Yearwise comparisons are:
Year                                       ICC's FTP                                                       My FTP
                          # free weeks                # engagements               # free weeks              # engagements
2011                             4                                  9                                  18                                  7
2012                             7                                  8                                  11                                  7
2013                            10                                 9                                  16                                  7
2014                             4                                  9                                  12                                  8
2015                             6                                  8                                  12                                  7

* Our cricketers need atleast 10 weeks of cricket-free week to have life of their own, and also to take care of themselves, to be physically strong and mentally fresh to play for India. If only BCCI allows them that huge luxury instead of killing the golden geese..

New faces

I've been reasonably active in fb only for the past year or so. As usual, I have added quite a few people who were my acquintances in the past 15+ years. I had formed a certain views about their personality, based on the limited time I had interacted with them. But, some of their fb activities have been quite a revelation to me. It is like, they are quite different people with interests that I had never associated with them before. It reminded me that, just like time, fb is also a learning facilitator. Never judge a cover by the book, never make opinions abt a person without digging deep :)
On that note, some interesting research articles: Here and here.

Name check

Just a quick and random search in facebook revealed the presence of dozens of people with these names:

Duryodhan
Dushasan
Brutus
Ravanan
Shaguni & Shakuni (Most are women !!)
Judas Iscariot
Kumbakarna
Mogambo

Just saying ! :-)

Pristine !!

A beautiful person doesn't need any jewels.

A beautiful voice doesn't need any music.
A beautiful art doesn't need any explanation.

Overrated post

I heard from one of my senior colleagues "Hair is overrated". Most of u can guess the obvious reason why he said that. I have heard/read a few others:
"Facebook is overrated", "iPhone is overrated"I guess one can prepare to hear similar ones like
"Height is overrated"
"Leanness is overrated"
"Figure is overrated"
"Talent is overrated"
"Hard work is overrated"
"Cricket is overrated"
"Love is overrated"

Any overrated remark you have heard?

Tea break

During my PhD and postdoc days, tea breaks meant taking a fresh air (literally) out of the chemicals-filled labs to go to tea kiosks which were 5-10 mins away. I wasnt a tea or coffee drinker, so I just used to go for a company (and tea(m) spirit). Some profs wernt big fans of that idea, as tea kiosk became secondary residentials for some students. It was also a hot gossip-mongering spot. While some thought it to be detrimental to the group dynamics, some exactly wanted that, i.e., groupism, and some others thought it would help in better group harmony by allowing people space and time to vent out their -ve feelings about other group members to their friends and get a relief.

In my company, tea and coffee are served right at the workstations, obviously because the company doesnt want man-hours to be lost in the whole process. Their funda: u want tea, u will get tea. In fact, I (and my PhD supervisor) suggested this idea in IISc itself. Some opine that the whole purpose of tea is to take a break from the workstations and so, by bringing the tea to the desk, the use of the tea is gone.

Now, I wonder what made Ian Bell get himself run out y'day. Was it his quest for tea, or the break?

Unique days

Recently I read that July 22 (22/7) and March 14 (3.14, American-style of writing a day) are 'pi-lovers' day. Interesting! As a sequel to my recent post on days and mathematical rarities,and the old one on numbing numbers, some other unique days:
October 1 & January 10: (01.10 & 10.01) Shortest palindrome.
December 21: (21.12 or 12.21). Only non-zero palindrome
July 24: 24/7. Workaholics' day
01:12:35 AM on 8/13/21 (Aug 13, 2021, again American-style) For Fibonacci fans.
01/12: (Either Dec 1 or Jan 12), an off-shoot of the date above.
Aug 24: Can also be written as Au 24 (not A 24, as April also starts with 'A'). Day for 'ultra-pure' (like unadulterated gold) people. [Au is the symbol for Gold]

If you find any other day uniquely interesting (not like september 2011, the whole month being 9/11), pl do comment.

Meet Flexy Stu

whose name deserved to be floating on the water (I call it "தண்ணீரில் ஓர் கவிதை" - thaNNeeril Or kavithai). Flexy Stu is the choreographer of VTV's songs. The salient part of his dance movements was that, it was stylish and simple (or looked simple, thanks to the dancers) while appearing new for Tamil cinema. Especially for Hosanna and Omana Penney, it was simply brilliant! Hats off to you, Stu !! Wish to see more of your contribution in Tamil movies.

Rare months? NOT!

(Pic Courtesy: walyou.com)
From being amusing and funny, it has gone down to downright irritating to read and receive via e-mail and SMS, news that a particular month is rarely unique. An example is this month itself - July 2011 having an once-in-823-years-occurrence of 5 each Fri, Sat & Sundays. How more absurd can it get? A little application of school maths would have prevented the gossip mongers from making a fool of themselves.

There are 7 months in a year that have 31 days. After subtracting 4x7=28 days, u get 3 days which get repeated for the 5th time. Now, for any combination of Fri, Sat & Sun or Sat, Sun & Mon, the first day in the sequence also has to be the first day of the month. The probability that any of the 7 days of the week is the first day of any month is 1/7. Usually, one particular date on the next year falls on the next day. That is bcos, every 'normal' year has 365 days, which is 52 weeks PLUS one day. Some of you would have noticed that if your birthday was on Sat this year, it would be on Sun the next year, if there is no 'Feb 29' in between. In that case, it is 52 weeks + 2 days.

So, for any particular month, one can say that, usually once in 7 years, most of the Sun-Sat w'd be the first days of the month. But not all days, because of the leap year problem. Whenever that month appears for the first time after any Feb 29, the days get pushed by 2. In any case, here are the facts: Of the 7 months having 31 days, only 2 will have the same day pattern from 1st to 31st: Jan & Oct in a normal year, and Jan & July in a leap year. It means that there are 6 different patterns out of the possible 7. It also implies that, the occurrences of 3 Fri, Sat & Sun or Sat, Sun & Mon are very common. Also, leap year or not, every one of these 7 months w'd have gone through a particular Sun-Sat pattern atleast once in a decade.

On the other hand, 11th of Nov this year will be a unique occurrence, which happens once in 100 years. 11-11-11 wont be possible until 2111.