GBUF - 19 Dec 2021

 

Hello all, good day!

Here is the weekly roundup of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened.

#GBUF #sriGINthoughts

CYA: Views are mine.

 

#Good 💚

• Connectivity and communication are key to modern day life. Bharatiyar, a great visionary Tamil poet whose 139^th birthday was celebrated last week dreamt of such things in his poems (joining rivers, telecoms, global trade and knowledge transfer – India PM Modi referred to his lines last week, again!) Along that line, we have the new Portugal-Singapore longest train journey – 21 days it shall take to cover the 18750 km route changing trains in Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Bangkok and a few others. Well, if only omicron isn’t there… #TrainToOrient

• There is something about those initials, I think. Maybe he was named after the great man. Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew has booked his place in the BWF World Championships final, where he will meet India’s Kidambi Srikanth later today. In the form of his life, Loh has beaten higher seeded players consistently and is on the threshold of creating history, again. Good luck, young man! #LKYftw

#Bad 💔

• KL is flooded. Philippines is typhooned. Kentucky is tornadoed. Australia is being LaNinoed. Yet, Indonesia’s coal lobby is up against the government’s COP26 green commitment. It keeps happening. Are we listening at all? #BurnAndDrown

• In the recent British movie, Boiling Point, Stephen Graham, a chef at a popular restaurant will be beleaguered by a host of problems. Well, his PM Boris Johnson is also in a similar situation. Breaking his own tough covid rules through parties at 10 Downing, having a close ally resign a sure-Tory seat after being disgraced etc., are causing more bad-hair days for Mr Johnson than England’s poor Ashes showing so far! #GritItOutBoris

 

 #Ugly 😡

• 30 years ago, logging what happens when the computer program executes was limited to a few messages on the screen. Now, logging – just like living your life on social media - is a separate industry in itself. Last week’s boiling over of #log4j security problem seems to be deadlier than the latest Greek alphabet variant of Covid. While a ‘security patch’ is available from Apache, vaccinating all the systems is not so easy and will take time. Just be careful with where you go on web. #logjam4j

• Putin has a pet project: Annex Ukraine. Crimea was done so in 2014. Now, he has gotten his troops near the Ukraine border. Experts say that there is a high chance of a war in Europe before Sankaranti. West is wringing its hands; pulling its hair; making threatening noises. Putin continues to call their bluff. Problem for west is that they are caught in a conundrum: Is Ukraine worth a fight when China is looming large in foreground? Is antgonising Russia good for their energy imports? #ZapadOffensive

#Fun 😆

• Two lions who were in transit at Changi airport decided to check on the duty-free shopping goodies. They seem to have gotten out of the container and one of them even was found atop the container. While NY Post sensationally called them to be ‘roaming around freely in the airport’, SIA managed to tranquilize them and even had the cheek to say that the lions’ ‘safety is key’. A worthy tagline for the Singapore Tourism Board to consider: Singapore – Where Lions Roam Without A Fine! #LionSinghs

• In what was a super-fun Sunday last week at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, the Dutchman Max Verstappen managed to pip Lewis Hamilton to claim F1 crown for the year. The race was full of drama and in a straight slap to those who crib about F1 races being driven just by machines, this year’s championship was dictated/decided by a human decision by the race director to make it a 1-1 race after the safety car was deployed. #MaxVroom

 

Sources: The Straits Times, Tamil Murasu, CNA, The Guardian, The Hindustan Times, NZ Herald, NY Post, Bloomberg, Top Gear

 

 

GBUF - 12 Dec 2021

Hello all, good day!

Here is the weekly roundup of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened.

#GBUF #sriGINthoughts

CYA: Views are mine.

         #Fun 😆

• They were lauded as the cutest by everyone. Social media was flooded with the smooth mammals jumping in and out of water; crossing roads; Otter Watching Groups were created; Singapore is called the #OtterCity. Life is good. Until a rowdy group attacked a man and caused 20 wounds, butt-bites included. Now, tables have turned. People want the population to be curbed. Soon we may call them as OT – #OtterTrash 😊

• For all those who swear by technology, the first Ashes test served up what it was like in the not-too-distant past. No snickometers, no automatic no-ball detection, no power in the stadium – so no DRS, no spider cameras tracking everything from captain’s nose-digging to early-balding batsmen to teaching kids the latest cuss words. It was the good old game where only the 15 pax on the field were involved. Lack of tech surely affected the umpires – 14 on-field no-ball calls were missed in a span of few overs. #TechAshes

        #Ugly 😡

• China’s Evergrande has defaulted. We knew that it would happen eventually. Apart from almost half-a-trillion debt mountain that is out there, the bigger issue is the contagion of bankruptcies that this will cause in small and medium enterprises who are still hoping that these failed/failing conglomerates would pay the bills for anything from supplying tiles, plumbing, electrical works, cleaning services… #WorseThanCovid

• India is doing great on several fronts – Covid management, better infrastructure etc. But the indoctrination also seems to be getting ‘better’. Ahmedabad court censured its municipal corporation for targeting non-vegetarian food carts only against encroachment (‘Don’t dictate what I can or cannot eat!’) & worse still, the CBSE 10th Standard English Reading passage attempted by 2+ million students yesterday seems to have set an appalling standard on gender stereotyping (‘emancipation of the wife destroyed parent’s authority over the children’/’male chauvinist pig’) #SlowGoebbels

#Bad 💔

• I thought that it is a season of giving. What is given is the giver’s prerogative. Well, you could give pink slips, for all you care. BCCI gave it to India’s most successful ODI captain (%), Virat Kohli who by switching off the phone expected that he would not hear it! 😉 And then Vishal Garg of Better.com did it for 15% of his employees over… a Zoom call – ‘If you are on this call, you belong to that unlucky group!’ #SameShitNewZoom

• Losing the head honcho of any organization is bad enough. Losing the Chief of Defence Staff in an accident is definitely worse. India lost her premier soldier and a host of others in a helicopter crash a few days back. What was galling was the way the media handled it – it was actually business-as-usual – in your face, laden with innuendos of conspiracies, sensationalizing every morsel of info. Where has the nuance vanished? #OneMinuteSilencePlease

#Good 💚

• Omicron seems to be a mild variant. Governments are opening up the vaccine regime to kids now. More VTLs happening now. Cheaper Antigen Rapid Test kits ($4.90 vs $10+ per kit) made available. Antibodies from Ostriches used to coat masks to detect Covid under UV light. One step at a time. One jab at a time. One test at a time. Slowly, but surely. #ConstantHope

• Watched Bunty Aur Bubli for the first time yesterday. Survived. No, that isn’t the good news. There is a dialogue which Bunty spouts: ‘What is the use of sending two reformed souls to prison?’ The Dutch seem to have taken it to heart. They have reduced their prison population to such a degree that they are now turning the prisons into other useful structures. Prison chapel becomes the school theatre. Cells turned to Hammam. #KajraRe

Sources: The Straits Times, Tamil Murasu, The Guardian, New Indian Express, Positive.News, TikTok

 

Maanadu - Delightful Loop

#Maanadu #sriGINthoughts #tamilmovies #reviews

Mild spoilers ahead. If you don’t want them to be revealed, just ‘Like/Love/Wow/Sad/Angry’ and move on 😊

8 reasons why I did not ‘like’ Maanadu… 💓

1. Probably for the first time ever in all these years of movie-watching, a villain does not want the hero to die. That was as tough to digest as an undercooked biriyani #BeAliveLoop

2. One finds the hero flying from Delhi to Coimbatore in ShivAir and GoAir alternately. The day might get repeated. But the flights don’t. I have heard of codeshare flights; but this one is…? Unless I missed a subtle message there... 😉 #AirlineLoop

3. STR has a grand total of four outfits – okay, five including the patient gown. And that is the highest among all actors. Advantages of a timeloop movie? No costume expenses. #SartorialLoop

4. Dhanushkodi meets KhaliQ for the first time, he asks for his name. When he gives his name albeit diffidently, Dhanushkodi lets out a judgmental, ‘Oh!’. The next shot is on Khaliq’s face, which depicts a tremendous mixture of resignation, insult, how-long-will-my-community-be-judged feelings. #ReligiousLoop

5. Just like people wondered about how old Kattappa in Baahubali was, people will be counting the number of times Simbu dies in this movie. #NumberLoop

6. Blood is thicker than water, they say. Yeah, right! Don’t let them mix. Else it will be a #BloodyLoop all over again!

7. There is more to SJ Suryah than that meets the eye. He probably exhorts YG Mahendra as ‘Thalaivarey!’ in more ways than the number of punishments described in Garuda Purana #LeaderLoop

8. Heard that they have stopped teaching the students Caesar’s veni, vidi, vici in schools. Instead it is, வந்தான்; சுட்டான்; செத்தான்; ரிபீட்டு! (He came. He shot. He died. Repeat!) #InfiniteLoop (yes, that pendant!) 💓

######

In software development lifecycle, we keep harping that the clearest of requirements gets the best software out – I mean there will be less bugs; a bug-free software is a myth anyway! Similarly, a good movie must have spent a lot of time on writing. Readers might remember my lament about Tamil movies’ writing or lack of and how Mollywood movies rock in that aspect. Venkat Prabhu has worked really hard to make a cogent movie with intelligent writing, that Ujjain BS notwithstanding. Creditable, indeed.

######

Maanadu – a successful conference of minds!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐

PS: I unlocked my phone only once during the movie; just to snap a picture of friend Baala (Great start, man!! Congrats & best wishes!) That, my friends, is an achievement in itself!

GBUF - 05 Dec 2021

         Hello all, good day!

After a month-long break, here is the weekly roundup of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened.

#GBUF #sriGINthoughts

CYA: Views are mine.

         #Fun 😆

• Two sports. Two records. On Friday night, it was the Memphis Grizzlies who won by the highest margin in NBA history – 73 points! Then the other teddy bear, Ajaz Patel picked all the ten wickets in one innings following Laker (1956) and Kumble (1999). We are in a #BearMarket alright!
• Xmas Spruces are everywhere. Norway even gifts one to Britain every year for her help to the Scandinavian nation during WWII. The gifted tree finds its way to Trafalgar Square and stands tall there through the festive season. Only problem this year is that the 24-metre tree seems to be lambasted for being ‘sparse’, ‘threadbare’, ‘ill’, ‘half dead’. All due to a few broken branches! Talk about the ‘thought that counts!’ & ‘look a gift horse in the mouth’! #GiftBranch

        #Ugly 😡

• Politicians prevaricate. Politicians mislead. Politicians lie. When they do all these one after another, the lose credibility. And when they do it in the Parliament, then it gets ugly. Raeesah Khan of Workers’ Party, Singapore did all this and her leaders – yeah, Pritam! - kinda threw her under the bus. In turn, she threw them under the MRT when she said that it was them who asked her to ‘take the lie to the grave’. #LiesDontWork

• He was the poster boy of Singapore’s opposition when he was jailed six years ago for wounding religious feelings. He sought asylum in the US citing persecution at home. Today Amos Yee is jailed in the US for 6 years for grooming and possessing child porn. We lost a young man somewhere. Parents? Teachers? Society? #AmosInfamous

#Bad 💔

• South Africa did a favour by identifying handful of variants. The whole world did the apartheid on them; named the variant as #omicron (can’t name it as the next Greek alphabet Xi, for obvious reasons); closed borders – pretty much played the COVID playbook perfectly. Typical situation everywhere. Experts say something and the talking heads take over. #ShootMessenger

• World #1 and #2 are still fighting. US says China’s Taiwan moves will have ‘terrible consequences’. China warns China-linked US businesses that they can’t make a fortune silently. Didi delists from NYSE. US-EU is looking to start Global Gateway as against China’s Belt Road Initiative. Competition is good – only if it is healthy! With COVID-induced imbalances, this is not looking healthy at all. #FightLikeKids

#Good 💚

• China (them again!) funded (almost 20% of Laos’ GDP) and built a 400+ km high-speed rail from Vientiane to the border town Boten and eventually to Kunming within China. There is of course a grander scheme to snake through Thailand, Malaysia and reach Singapore. How this will work with the HSR between Malaysia and Singapore – noises of revival can be heard now – is a moot point. But overall a good thing for the region’s connectivity! #LaneXang

• When #AdiPenne created by Singapore’s Suria Velan/Stephen Zechariah, made it to some of my Indian contacts’ Insta reels, I was feeling good. We do need some good news in these gloomy times, don’t we? Enter ‘Tank’s Good News’! Founder George Resch’s motto: “Making people think a little bit more positively, and making them laugh,” is something that we all can use, right? #GoodNewsSellsToo
  
  
  
  
  

Sources: The Straits Times, Tamil Murasu, Bloomberg, Forbes, Nikkei Review, The Guardian