Several days without net and phone access, refreshing in so many ways. Those ways even have labels: pied kingfisher, rhinoceros, village market, Bengal florican, paddy field, porcupine, border crossing ...
I'll have some more reactions and thoughts anon, I'm sure.
Getting there, we flew Kingfisher Red. To my horror, their inflight magazine is Cine Blitz. I mean, I can understand saving on the production of yet another glossy magazine, of tying up with an existing one. But this one?
Of course I pored over it. Had a feature on someone by name Kangana Ranaut. Naturally I wondered if she has a cousin or some such by name Kangana Hitwicket. Or Kangana Lbw. Or Kangana Outhandledtheball.
Or suppose she plays the game, and is walking out to bat. Pavilion announcer announces, "And now, we have ... Kangana Ranaut!" Does Kangana turn around and return to the pavilion, dismayed at being declared out?
The possibilities, you see, are endless.
March 31, 2009
March 18, 2009
Mysteries from another time
The March 2009 issue of India Today Travel Plus carries this article I wrote, which I called "Mysteries from Another Time". It's about visiting two intriguing towns in the US: Marfa in Texas, and Bombay Beach in California.
Your comments welcome.
***
There are some mysterious lights you're supposed to be able to see in Marfa, Texas. Alien spacecraft? Scuttling elves? Who knows. But as I drive into town, there's a sight more irresistible by far than unexplained lights. From a bridge on the highway, I see to my right a young couple at a table in the open next to a building. In the brilliant mid-afternoon sun, they sit as if in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, wine bottle and two glasses between them. What on earth?
Irresistible. Outside the building is a huge blue sign saying, simply, "Cu". I turn past it, around the building to the back. The couple looks at me, bewildered, as I drive up. I was passing, I say, saw you guys sitting like this and I had to come ask what this is about. Mind if I take a picture?
Big smiles, now. Her name is Rebecca, his is Kent and they don't mind me taking a picture. Come on in, she says, take a look around, have a glass of wine with us while you're about it! The red stuff is from a local winery I had passed a few miles outside town. Not bad, as far as this not-quite-wine-expert can judge, though one glass is ample thank you. Just inside the doorway, rock music blares from an extremely stylish portable CD player, all art-deco curves and pastel shades. Why do I never find equipment like this?
Rebecca walks me through the building. It's a property that's been in her family for a while. Her uncle used to run some kind of restaurant here, but closed it down years ago. Now she has moved here from Key West, Florida, to see if she can succeed where her uncle failed. She is remodelling the place and will set up an eatery. Coffee, tea, soups, sandwiches.
Really? Here in Marfa? Will she get enough of a clientele from among people who come in search of odd lights?
Kent, who's from nearby Alpine, answers that one. Oh yeah, he says. This town's about more than the lights. It has become a sort of art destination now. There's the Chinati Foundation Museum that's quite well known, but also lots of smaller galleries and studios.
Really? Here in Marfa? Why? One of those imponderables, I suppose. Warmth, desert climate, blue skies, maybe those are reasons enough. Rebecca, she wants to cater to those arty visitors.
And while she's showing me around, she points to several copper etchings by another uncle that she will mount on the walls, and this room will be the Copper Kitchen, and that one the Copper Portico, and that other one over there the Copper Something Else ... I interrupt to tell her of Bombay's well-known "Copper Chimney" restaurants. She smiles and points behind me. Her own chimney. We got that one covered, she says.
And that's when the (copper) penny drops. The blue sign outside. "Cu", meaning copper. My hard-learned school chemistry lessons, finally of some use.
Outside LA a few days later, I have reason to remember those lessons again. As in, how does salt react with various unidentifiable materials?
I'm over two hundred feet below sea level here. No diving apparatus, I'm not even wearing a swimsuit. What's a man to do? Me, I stop and watch the birds -- seagulls, lapwings, swifts. Write two postcards to people in Bombay, which I just had to do. Take a photograph of a young couple and their pitbull, she leaning her head against his shoulder. Wander through a Dali-like landscape of long-abandoned structures, yes those artifacts I mentioned.
All of which you can do too, if you make your way to Bombay Beach, California, outside LA. (Now you know why I had to write to Bombay). Sunbaked town on the shore of the Salton Sea, a large inland salt lake in southern California, 200-something feet below sea level. I mean, I saw this name on the map and I knew I had to visit.
And while there, I ask person after person, why the name? Only the girl with the pitbull offers any kind of answer: "It was bombed in the war."
Really? Which war?
"You know, the World War. The Air Force used to bomb this place. Bomb, get it? So it's Bombay."
I look around incredulously. Bombed? The town looks like it has seen better days and probably will never see them again, but it was bombed? And why? I turn back to her, but with an elegant toss of her long blond hair, she, boyfriend and dog have resumed their stroll.
Frank at the community center, 81 years old with a stud in his left ear, is happy to talk about the town. It was developed by a real estate man early last century, as a fishing resort. He laid out the street grid, built a marina and the first few houses, and sold them. "Was a nice place to grow up", says Frank wistfully, "I learned to waterski out there."
In the mid-70s, a series of tropical storms caused the Salton Sea to rise and flood an entire section of town. Those residents had to leave. Later, those who stayed on built a dike to protect their homes. In the years since, the Sea level has fallen, and the town is trying to recover. "But it's too late for us", says Frank, wistful still. Salton Sea is polluted and does not attract watersport and fishing enthusiasts as it used to. Though the town is considering various measures to clean it up, its population of a few hundred is no kind of base to raise the funds to do something that massive.
Outside, beyond the dike, it gets surreal. Beams and tyres and assorted other junk are stuck in seriously salt-encrusted mud. (My chemistry, my chemistry). There's an abandoned trailer, I think that's what it is, and inside it a rusting, crumbling oven. Hanging from the beam of another once-edifice is the shell of some unidentifiable electronic device, wires and chips dangling in the breeze.
And with this as a backdrop, a young couple and their pitbull.
Bombay Beach, mystifying and oddly sad. Yes, I had to visit.
But speaking of mystifying, what about those Marfa lights? Well, nearing sunset that same day I shared wine with Rebecca and Kent, I drive out of town to see for myself. At the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Platform (yes), there are four or five people already waiting. Immediately, I can see a red light blinking steadily at the base of a distant low hill. It blinks like that for the two-and-a-half hours I spend getting slowly frozen there. A warning light on a pole, clearly. Above it, along the crest of the hill and the adjoining ridge, there's an occasional white light that appears and spends about ten minutes moving to the right and gradually lower, until it disappears. Car headlights, along the highway that I myself drove earlier today, to get to Marfa.
Apart from those, the fingernail moon and the emerging stars, there are no unexplained lights.
When it's completely dark, I can no longer see the hill outlined against a lighter sky. That's when a troop of completely drunk men stagger onto the Platform, asking through fumes of beer, "Where's the lights? Huh?" I haven't seen them yet, I say, but that's clearly not a good enough answer for them. Pointing in turn at the blinking red light, a slowly moving headlight and a bright star, they ask: "What about those, dude?" Those are not the lights, I say. They shake their heads in disgust and shuffle off.
They ask the same questions of a couple to my left. In a fruity English accent, the man says: "See that blinking red light? It's been moving up, down, left, right, every which way. Those white lights above it? I don't know, but they move pretty weirdly too!" The woman backs him. "Yes, and look them now," she shouts enthusiastically. "The red one is drifting upward, look, look! This is brilliant!"
I realize what's happening. Because the skyline is no longer visible, you see these lights in relation to each other against the darkness, and it's easy to let the motion of the white ones fool you into believing that the stationary red one is moving. Feebly, I try to explain this, but it's no use. All these people are sure they're looking at THE Marfa lights, and who am I to sway that faith?
But that English accent? It registers, eventually, with one of the drunks. He asks the man, I swear I am not making this up, "So which part of Texas are you guys from? Australia?"
The man from England shoots back: "Devon, England."
Surreal, for sure. A while later and chilled to my bones, I depart the Platform, disappointed that I haven't seen the Marfa lights. Still on the Platform are several others, exultant that they have.
That's the mystery of Marfa.
Your comments welcome.
There are some mysterious lights you're supposed to be able to see in Marfa, Texas. Alien spacecraft? Scuttling elves? Who knows. But as I drive into town, there's a sight more irresistible by far than unexplained lights. From a bridge on the highway, I see to my right a young couple at a table in the open next to a building. In the brilliant mid-afternoon sun, they sit as if in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, wine bottle and two glasses between them. What on earth?
Irresistible. Outside the building is a huge blue sign saying, simply, "Cu". I turn past it, around the building to the back. The couple looks at me, bewildered, as I drive up. I was passing, I say, saw you guys sitting like this and I had to come ask what this is about. Mind if I take a picture?
Big smiles, now. Her name is Rebecca, his is Kent and they don't mind me taking a picture. Come on in, she says, take a look around, have a glass of wine with us while you're about it! The red stuff is from a local winery I had passed a few miles outside town. Not bad, as far as this not-quite-wine-expert can judge, though one glass is ample thank you. Just inside the doorway, rock music blares from an extremely stylish portable CD player, all art-deco curves and pastel shades. Why do I never find equipment like this?
Rebecca walks me through the building. It's a property that's been in her family for a while. Her uncle used to run some kind of restaurant here, but closed it down years ago. Now she has moved here from Key West, Florida, to see if she can succeed where her uncle failed. She is remodelling the place and will set up an eatery. Coffee, tea, soups, sandwiches.
Really? Here in Marfa? Will she get enough of a clientele from among people who come in search of odd lights?
Kent, who's from nearby Alpine, answers that one. Oh yeah, he says. This town's about more than the lights. It has become a sort of art destination now. There's the Chinati Foundation Museum that's quite well known, but also lots of smaller galleries and studios.
Really? Here in Marfa? Why? One of those imponderables, I suppose. Warmth, desert climate, blue skies, maybe those are reasons enough. Rebecca, she wants to cater to those arty visitors.
And while she's showing me around, she points to several copper etchings by another uncle that she will mount on the walls, and this room will be the Copper Kitchen, and that one the Copper Portico, and that other one over there the Copper Something Else ... I interrupt to tell her of Bombay's well-known "Copper Chimney" restaurants. She smiles and points behind me. Her own chimney. We got that one covered, she says.
And that's when the (copper) penny drops. The blue sign outside. "Cu", meaning copper. My hard-learned school chemistry lessons, finally of some use.
Outside LA a few days later, I have reason to remember those lessons again. As in, how does salt react with various unidentifiable materials?
I'm over two hundred feet below sea level here. No diving apparatus, I'm not even wearing a swimsuit. What's a man to do? Me, I stop and watch the birds -- seagulls, lapwings, swifts. Write two postcards to people in Bombay, which I just had to do. Take a photograph of a young couple and their pitbull, she leaning her head against his shoulder. Wander through a Dali-like landscape of long-abandoned structures, yes those artifacts I mentioned.
All of which you can do too, if you make your way to Bombay Beach, California, outside LA. (Now you know why I had to write to Bombay). Sunbaked town on the shore of the Salton Sea, a large inland salt lake in southern California, 200-something feet below sea level. I mean, I saw this name on the map and I knew I had to visit.
And while there, I ask person after person, why the name? Only the girl with the pitbull offers any kind of answer: "It was bombed in the war."
Really? Which war?
"You know, the World War. The Air Force used to bomb this place. Bomb, get it? So it's Bombay."
I look around incredulously. Bombed? The town looks like it has seen better days and probably will never see them again, but it was bombed? And why? I turn back to her, but with an elegant toss of her long blond hair, she, boyfriend and dog have resumed their stroll.
Frank at the community center, 81 years old with a stud in his left ear, is happy to talk about the town. It was developed by a real estate man early last century, as a fishing resort. He laid out the street grid, built a marina and the first few houses, and sold them. "Was a nice place to grow up", says Frank wistfully, "I learned to waterski out there."
In the mid-70s, a series of tropical storms caused the Salton Sea to rise and flood an entire section of town. Those residents had to leave. Later, those who stayed on built a dike to protect their homes. In the years since, the Sea level has fallen, and the town is trying to recover. "But it's too late for us", says Frank, wistful still. Salton Sea is polluted and does not attract watersport and fishing enthusiasts as it used to. Though the town is considering various measures to clean it up, its population of a few hundred is no kind of base to raise the funds to do something that massive.
Outside, beyond the dike, it gets surreal. Beams and tyres and assorted other junk are stuck in seriously salt-encrusted mud. (My chemistry, my chemistry). There's an abandoned trailer, I think that's what it is, and inside it a rusting, crumbling oven. Hanging from the beam of another once-edifice is the shell of some unidentifiable electronic device, wires and chips dangling in the breeze.
And with this as a backdrop, a young couple and their pitbull.
Bombay Beach, mystifying and oddly sad. Yes, I had to visit.
But speaking of mystifying, what about those Marfa lights? Well, nearing sunset that same day I shared wine with Rebecca and Kent, I drive out of town to see for myself. At the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Platform (yes), there are four or five people already waiting. Immediately, I can see a red light blinking steadily at the base of a distant low hill. It blinks like that for the two-and-a-half hours I spend getting slowly frozen there. A warning light on a pole, clearly. Above it, along the crest of the hill and the adjoining ridge, there's an occasional white light that appears and spends about ten minutes moving to the right and gradually lower, until it disappears. Car headlights, along the highway that I myself drove earlier today, to get to Marfa.
Apart from those, the fingernail moon and the emerging stars, there are no unexplained lights.
When it's completely dark, I can no longer see the hill outlined against a lighter sky. That's when a troop of completely drunk men stagger onto the Platform, asking through fumes of beer, "Where's the lights? Huh?" I haven't seen them yet, I say, but that's clearly not a good enough answer for them. Pointing in turn at the blinking red light, a slowly moving headlight and a bright star, they ask: "What about those, dude?" Those are not the lights, I say. They shake their heads in disgust and shuffle off.
They ask the same questions of a couple to my left. In a fruity English accent, the man says: "See that blinking red light? It's been moving up, down, left, right, every which way. Those white lights above it? I don't know, but they move pretty weirdly too!" The woman backs him. "Yes, and look them now," she shouts enthusiastically. "The red one is drifting upward, look, look! This is brilliant!"
I realize what's happening. Because the skyline is no longer visible, you see these lights in relation to each other against the darkness, and it's easy to let the motion of the white ones fool you into believing that the stationary red one is moving. Feebly, I try to explain this, but it's no use. All these people are sure they're looking at THE Marfa lights, and who am I to sway that faith?
But that English accent? It registers, eventually, with one of the drunks. He asks the man, I swear I am not making this up, "So which part of Texas are you guys from? Australia?"
The man from England shoots back: "Devon, England."
Surreal, for sure. A while later and chilled to my bones, I depart the Platform, disappointed that I haven't seen the Marfa lights. Still on the Platform are several others, exultant that they have.
That's the mystery of Marfa.
March 14, 2009
Fifty-four and more
A little over a year ago, I posted here an article I wrote for the Washington Post, House in a Slum? You Can't Afford It.
In it, I had this sentence: "Because housing is so expensive, about two-thirds of Mumbai's population live in slums or on the streets."
As you will see, several comments on that post questioned this assertion. In turn, to support it, I quoted various figures I had access to.
The World Bank has just published its World Development Report 2009. While releasing the report, Indermit Gill, an economist at the Bank, said: "Estimates indicate that 54 per cent of Mumbai's 16 million people now live in slums, and another quarter in degraded apartments."
That's something like three of every four, or about 12 million altogether, of the city's residents.
This raises plenty of questions, of which I will ask here just one. Given this reality, given the severe shortage of housing implicit in this, why demolish slum housing?
Your thoughts welcome.
In it, I had this sentence: "Because housing is so expensive, about two-thirds of Mumbai's population live in slums or on the streets."
As you will see, several comments on that post questioned this assertion. In turn, to support it, I quoted various figures I had access to.
The World Bank has just published its World Development Report 2009. While releasing the report, Indermit Gill, an economist at the Bank, said: "Estimates indicate that 54 per cent of Mumbai's 16 million people now live in slums, and another quarter in degraded apartments."
That's something like three of every four, or about 12 million altogether, of the city's residents.
This raises plenty of questions, of which I will ask here just one. Given this reality, given the severe shortage of housing implicit in this, why demolish slum housing?
Your thoughts welcome.
March 10, 2009
Take the road
Something for the times we find ourselves in?
"Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to _______."
Question 1: Who said this? When?
Question 2: Fill in the blank.
Usual: No Google, no Dogpile, no Cuil, no Wikipedia, etc.
(Thanks for the reminder, RP).
"Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to _______."
Question 1: Who said this? When?
Question 2: Fill in the blank.
Usual: No Google, no Dogpile, no Cuil, no Wikipedia, etc.
(Thanks for the reminder, RP).
March 08, 2009
Clambering on shoulders
To go with this interview of a certain Pramod Mutalik (don't miss the enthralling comments), MidDay asked me to write a counterpoint essay. I can't find it on their site, but it appeared in print yesterday (Mar 7 2009), and you'll find it below.
Comments welcome.
***
Clambering on Shoulders
My favourite title, and it's a hard choice from among several classics, is Andheri Raat Mein Diya Tere Haath Mein. If you're not chuckling, you don't know Hindi. The play is on the word diya, which can mean both "lamp" and "gave it to you." That is, this film title can mean both "On a dark night there's a lamp in your hand" and "On a dark night I gave it to you in your hand." And of course, the late Dada Kondke knew which of those two he wanted to plant in your mind.
Kondke was an immensely popular, successful film-maker. He is something of a legend in Maharashtra, but certainly in the rest of the country too. Millions went to his films and laughed at the ribald jokes, the naughty word play. Given all that, who would suggest that Dada Kondke was a menace to our culture? Nobody ever has. Which is exactly as it should be. Far from threatening Indian culture, Kondke's films are a living expression of it.
This is the point to make and think about, whenever we hear people rising up to apparently defend Indian culture. In particular, when Pramod Muthalik and his Sri Ram Sene attack women emerging from a Mangalore pub, when they assault lovers celebrating Valentine's Day, when they announce that they will put their (the lovers') images up for public consumption on a website -- when they do these things and wrap them in the cloak of a defence of Indian culture, the right response is to say to Muthalik and friends: please don't presume to defend something you know nothing about.
For here's a truth about culture: It is not some remote ideal that's set in stone, forever immutable, forever virtuous. Culture is what's happening all around us today. It's joyous, dismaying, uplifting. It defies every definition, every straitjacket. It is Indian warmth and hospitality as much as it is Indian suspicion of the "outsider". It's sublime, it's vulgar, it's ordinary, it throbs.
If Indian culture encompasses films by Dada Kondke as much as those by Ram Gopal Verma and Zoya Akhtar -- and who would disagree? -- it certainly has space for women who go to bars. Space also, in fact, for those who dispatch pink chaddis by courier.
All of which is precisely why it is so vibrant, so alive. All of which is why it's capturing the world's imagination as you read this.
Pramod Muthalik has no monopoly on what makes up Indian culture, and certainly no right to "defend" some twisted idea of it. His threats, assaults and antics amount only to what Alexander Cockburn wrote in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky episode a decade ago: "What we're seeing here is one of the most disgusting of all spectacles: Puritans wringing their hands while clambering on one another's shoulders to peep in the bedroom window."
So understand this, Shri Muthalik, as you roam about looking for more young women to hammer: The only attack on Indian culture evident in Mangalore is yours.
Comments welcome.
Clambering on Shoulders
My favourite title, and it's a hard choice from among several classics, is Andheri Raat Mein Diya Tere Haath Mein. If you're not chuckling, you don't know Hindi. The play is on the word diya, which can mean both "lamp" and "gave it to you." That is, this film title can mean both "On a dark night there's a lamp in your hand" and "On a dark night I gave it to you in your hand." And of course, the late Dada Kondke knew which of those two he wanted to plant in your mind.
Kondke was an immensely popular, successful film-maker. He is something of a legend in Maharashtra, but certainly in the rest of the country too. Millions went to his films and laughed at the ribald jokes, the naughty word play. Given all that, who would suggest that Dada Kondke was a menace to our culture? Nobody ever has. Which is exactly as it should be. Far from threatening Indian culture, Kondke's films are a living expression of it.
This is the point to make and think about, whenever we hear people rising up to apparently defend Indian culture. In particular, when Pramod Muthalik and his Sri Ram Sene attack women emerging from a Mangalore pub, when they assault lovers celebrating Valentine's Day, when they announce that they will put their (the lovers') images up for public consumption on a website -- when they do these things and wrap them in the cloak of a defence of Indian culture, the right response is to say to Muthalik and friends: please don't presume to defend something you know nothing about.
For here's a truth about culture: It is not some remote ideal that's set in stone, forever immutable, forever virtuous. Culture is what's happening all around us today. It's joyous, dismaying, uplifting. It defies every definition, every straitjacket. It is Indian warmth and hospitality as much as it is Indian suspicion of the "outsider". It's sublime, it's vulgar, it's ordinary, it throbs.
If Indian culture encompasses films by Dada Kondke as much as those by Ram Gopal Verma and Zoya Akhtar -- and who would disagree? -- it certainly has space for women who go to bars. Space also, in fact, for those who dispatch pink chaddis by courier.
All of which is precisely why it is so vibrant, so alive. All of which is why it's capturing the world's imagination as you read this.
Pramod Muthalik has no monopoly on what makes up Indian culture, and certainly no right to "defend" some twisted idea of it. His threats, assaults and antics amount only to what Alexander Cockburn wrote in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky episode a decade ago: "What we're seeing here is one of the most disgusting of all spectacles: Puritans wringing their hands while clambering on one another's shoulders to peep in the bedroom window."
So understand this, Shri Muthalik, as you roam about looking for more young women to hammer: The only attack on Indian culture evident in Mangalore is yours.
March 04, 2009
Form of birth right
But, India, the nation it is, its very hard to compare with countries like Pak, SriLanka, Nepal, Burma etc. and even for that matter China. We are different. Moral Values, Patriotism, Democracy, are the things that we get as a form of birth right. So, Its hard to imagine the same thing happening here in India.
A reader who styles himself "aflatoons", commenting on this page (eighth from the bottom). This is a reaction to news about NZ players expressing concerns about playing in the IPL in India.
What do you think? Do you agree with aflatoons?
A reader who styles himself "aflatoons", commenting on this page (eighth from the bottom). This is a reaction to news about NZ players expressing concerns about playing in the IPL in India.
What do you think? Do you agree with aflatoons?
March 03, 2009
Used to waiting
And now it's the fridge.
Our previous one broke down irretrievably just over a month ago, after 15 years of trouble-free service. We bought a new one on January 21. This morning, that new one is dead as a dodo. I sit around waiting for the company technician to turn up, a wait I'm getting sort of used to. When he does come, he tells me a fuse on its "circuit" has blown, and instead of replacing just the fuse, the whole "circuit" has to be replaced. Two days that will take.
I tell him that this never happened with the previous fridge. "But that one didn't have a circuit", he tells me as if speaking to a child, as if the presence of this "circuit" is somehow a benefit to me.
An earlier wait, only a few weeks ago, was for the washing machine company technician. Our decade-plus-old washing machine had also finally broken down irretrievably. Impressed with its years of hassle-free service, we bought the same brand. The second wash load we bunged into it -- the second load -- caused the machine to vibrate so much it bopped all over the room and woke up the neighbours with its racket. The technician came and made some adjustments. On its fifth wash load -- the fifth -- after that, it stopped in the middle of the wash cycle and would not be persuaded to go on. The technician came and blamed, you guessed it, the "circuit". Luckily, he was cynical enough not to pretend that the presence of this "circuit" was somehow beneficial to me.
Anyway, he recommended that we tell the company to replace this 7-wash-load-old machine. It took them three weeks -- weeks filled with more bopping and inexplicable halts -- but they did replace it.
Meanwhile, an electrical switch and socket in our bathroom suddenly started emitting smoke a few days ago. I had replaced them from a previous such episode only about six months ago, and I did it again now, once more stunned at the cost of these devices that last only months. Meanwhile, two other switches elsewhere in the house stopped working. This is a continuing saga with our switches. For nearly thirty years since this flat was built, not one switch needed to be replaced. But in the four years since a few failed and we replaced them, we've had to replace those replacements, and those replacements, etc, again and again. I'd say at least two dozen replacements in four years.
You with long memories will remember that I wrote on this theme here, a little over a year ago. I mentioned switches, my washing machine, and a shaving brush. Note especially what the washing machine technician had to say then about new machines from his company.
When I wrote that article, I got an email message from a reader, quoted below verbatim:
"Whats'the matter with you, have you heard or not heard of SURVIVOR BIAS with regard to machinery? You are only remembering the machinery which is lasting from the past? What about that which failed from the past? Look at Great Wall in China, how it has survived? Dos it mean ancient wall-building technologies was better than now? Or does it mean all faulty walls are falling down and we have forgotten those? This is called SURVIVOR Bias. You are idiot if you think past was better than present becos of your stoopid washing machine and switches."
The man may be right, who knows. But Survivor Bias or not, I am getting used to waiting.
Our previous one broke down irretrievably just over a month ago, after 15 years of trouble-free service. We bought a new one on January 21. This morning, that new one is dead as a dodo. I sit around waiting for the company technician to turn up, a wait I'm getting sort of used to. When he does come, he tells me a fuse on its "circuit" has blown, and instead of replacing just the fuse, the whole "circuit" has to be replaced. Two days that will take.
I tell him that this never happened with the previous fridge. "But that one didn't have a circuit", he tells me as if speaking to a child, as if the presence of this "circuit" is somehow a benefit to me.
An earlier wait, only a few weeks ago, was for the washing machine company technician. Our decade-plus-old washing machine had also finally broken down irretrievably. Impressed with its years of hassle-free service, we bought the same brand. The second wash load we bunged into it -- the second load -- caused the machine to vibrate so much it bopped all over the room and woke up the neighbours with its racket. The technician came and made some adjustments. On its fifth wash load -- the fifth -- after that, it stopped in the middle of the wash cycle and would not be persuaded to go on. The technician came and blamed, you guessed it, the "circuit". Luckily, he was cynical enough not to pretend that the presence of this "circuit" was somehow beneficial to me.
Anyway, he recommended that we tell the company to replace this 7-wash-load-old machine. It took them three weeks -- weeks filled with more bopping and inexplicable halts -- but they did replace it.
Meanwhile, an electrical switch and socket in our bathroom suddenly started emitting smoke a few days ago. I had replaced them from a previous such episode only about six months ago, and I did it again now, once more stunned at the cost of these devices that last only months. Meanwhile, two other switches elsewhere in the house stopped working. This is a continuing saga with our switches. For nearly thirty years since this flat was built, not one switch needed to be replaced. But in the four years since a few failed and we replaced them, we've had to replace those replacements, and those replacements, etc, again and again. I'd say at least two dozen replacements in four years.
You with long memories will remember that I wrote on this theme here, a little over a year ago. I mentioned switches, my washing machine, and a shaving brush. Note especially what the washing machine technician had to say then about new machines from his company.
When I wrote that article, I got an email message from a reader, quoted below verbatim:
"Whats'the matter with you, have you heard or not heard of SURVIVOR BIAS with regard to machinery? You are only remembering the machinery which is lasting from the past? What about that which failed from the past? Look at Great Wall in China, how it has survived? Dos it mean ancient wall-building technologies was better than now? Or does it mean all faulty walls are falling down and we have forgotten those? This is called SURVIVOR Bias. You are idiot if you think past was better than present becos of your stoopid washing machine and switches."
The man may be right, who knows. But Survivor Bias or not, I am getting used to waiting.
No longer simple
In the past ten days or so, we fans of Test cricket have followed:
* A triple century and a near-triple century.
* A century by a little slip of a wicketkeeper who has never so far fulfilled his batting potential; yet when he got to the mark, he pulled from his pocket a sheet of paper that had the names of those who stood by him, meaning he had been confident from the start of getting there.
* A down-to-the-wire draw in Antigua that confirmed the unique capacity of this form of the game to produce twists and turns and bitten-off nails. On Cricinfo, Andrew McGlashan called it "the most nerve-jangling of results"; his colleague Andrew Miller said it "was the game at its very, very best."
* A superb Australian win in South Africa, over a South African team that had dominated them in Australia. And this win was engineered by a bowling attack made up of two men on debut, a man playing his second Test, a man playing his fifth and a man playing his 19th. Vital batting heroics came from two of the men on debut too.
We followed all that because it's Test cricket, not one-day or T20, in which you'll find these themes in full flower.
And then gunmen attack Sri Lanka's Test cricketers in Lahore, killing their security policemen and injuring a few players. I follow this sickening news just as closely as I followed those earlier joys of Test cricket.
Those simple joys of Test cricket.
* A triple century and a near-triple century.
* A century by a little slip of a wicketkeeper who has never so far fulfilled his batting potential; yet when he got to the mark, he pulled from his pocket a sheet of paper that had the names of those who stood by him, meaning he had been confident from the start of getting there.
* A down-to-the-wire draw in Antigua that confirmed the unique capacity of this form of the game to produce twists and turns and bitten-off nails. On Cricinfo, Andrew McGlashan called it "the most nerve-jangling of results"; his colleague Andrew Miller said it "was the game at its very, very best."
* A superb Australian win in South Africa, over a South African team that had dominated them in Australia. And this win was engineered by a bowling attack made up of two men on debut, a man playing his second Test, a man playing his fifth and a man playing his 19th. Vital batting heroics came from two of the men on debut too.
We followed all that because it's Test cricket, not one-day or T20, in which you'll find these themes in full flower.
And then gunmen attack Sri Lanka's Test cricketers in Lahore, killing their security policemen and injuring a few players. I follow this sickening news just as closely as I followed those earlier joys of Test cricket.
Those simple joys of Test cricket.
March 02, 2009
Hands on deck
What do I say ... this guy Kamlesh just effing blew me away. In all kinds of ways, with mixed emotions too.
Tell me what you think.
(A previous time I got similarly blown away was courtesy of Paul here).
Tell me what you think.
(A previous time I got similarly blown away was courtesy of Paul here).
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