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