Loose Control!

Just when i was on a "auto-pilot' cruise mode, certain developments have ensured that i stop slacking and get back to business.
Interesting things have happened in the last few days...
Bangalore is out and BENGALOORU is in---I dont think it is a great idea to rechristen it, more than the name Bangalore is a brand and changing the brand name is akin to destroying all the hard work that went into building brand bangalore.
One thing the change of name shows is our way of going back in time instead of going forward. The city is deteriorating day by day and all it takes for the entire city to come to a standstill is a single drop of rain! So out goes bangalore the city dressed up like a village and in comes bengalooru the village trying to transform to a city.
One other exciting stuff and the one that is keeping me away from Blog is my travel to Sydney!!
Co-incidentally the English cricket team will also be travelling over for the ashes and i have a feeling its going to be one hell of a season!!

Indians Game enough?

K has a very interesting post on Gaming, Xbox and India. Incidentally, today i was at E-zone(the consumer appliances store by Pantaloons) and there was this demo of X-box out there. Having been a proud owner of the console whilst i was in Tokyo, i went ahead to check out if there were any differences in the "desi" version. So while i was checking out the NFS Most Wanted, i observed a bemused 30 something couple staring at me probably thinking "bacche ke park ka jhoola mein yeh kyon baita hai??!!" and had that "Kids-these-days-look-overgrown" look. Also sadly in the store apart from a few curious kids the demo setup hardly generated any interest. In contrast a Phillips home theater system had a more audience :-(
I wanted to know how much it had sold and Ezone, but couldnt get hold of the sales guy there(there was no one!)
In stark contrast, when the Xbox was released in Japan, it did generate tremendous interest and of course the console sales were disappointing but i remember seeing long queues in front of Game parlours and stores. When i did buy one, my Indian colleagues were offering ideas on what better products could one buy for 35,000 JPY and few japanese friends were like "Sugoi desu ne"!!!(Is it cool or what!!!).

Gaming in India, especially of the console type is still in a very nascent stage compared to US and Japan where it is a much more evolved and mature industry(around $35-50 billion dollars). We are still in the PC games era, even though console gaming is getting a good exposure thanks to places like Reliance Web world, it still is a question of affordability and more importantly acceptance!

Orkuttin' can get you a job!

Orkut is BIG and is a fast catching trend out here in India(and i suppose in Brazil too). More and more users are signing in to orkut every day, to network,connect with lost links, dating and also building communities.
However one interesting set of people are viewing this avenue as a tool to recruit people in thier organization-the talent scourers and the recruiters.
Off late, i seem to be getting more and more "scraps" from such recruiting firms and also direct companies.
Interesting, apart from being a free and huge database of prospective employees, it also gives a good insight into the person's interests, likes, attitude and yeah, links to other prospective employees.
So if you are looking for a job and have an Orkut account, you might want to refine your "about me" section and refrain from having stuff like "Corporate whore at day..." , "Insanity is my girl friend..." :-)
Web 2.o is ON and i need to scrap!

Okonomi Yaki!

Okonomi Yaki!
This sure is an interesting place! I havent tried a lot of japanese restaurents, but among the restuarents i have been, this one sure rocks!

Wiki says "Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き, Okonomiyaki^?) is a type of Japanese pan-fried batter cake with various ingredients".

The Uniqueness of this place is, they dont serve you hot food here, you got to cook it for yourself! Yeah thats right..every table has a stove and huge pan.We get the vegetables,shrimps, meat and chizu(Cheese!) all raw..and then well what are you waiting for..get cooking!

Apart from the stove , the table had a few other interesting useful stuffs, like oil, Pepper, salt,typical japanese soya sauce, but by far the coolest thing was a small Hour glass! yeah each turn is for 3 minutes...why 3 mins? Coz thats the time it takes for the okonomi yaki to fry nicely!
You can never complain about the food coz hey..you cooked it!!

Wondering if this kind of concept will work in India,because back home we go out to break the monotonous routine of cooking..the last thing you would want to do is cook your food at the restaurent too!

Another interesting thing..i asked my Sensei(Japanese teacher) whether she cooks at home..prompt came the reply "eh...I dont have a kitchen"!! That sure was a hard thing to digest!

More information of okanomiyaki here reminds of DOSA...Ssslurp!

Cheers
Karth!