Die Hard... Oops, Never Die

For some reason I decided to watch movies that are released as a series. Killing time at home had to be done in three ways - one, go online, browse and participate the discussions in my favourite automotive site, Gearheads.in, two, read, three, watch a movie. #1 requires a decent internet connection, my GPRS isn't up to the mark, so it's frustrating. #2 requires light and late at night I'll be inviting cold stares and maybe coldblooded punches too, from my roomie. That leaves me with one option - watch movies. No, I'm not a movie buff. Ah, I've digressed from where I began. Movie series, yes, they make such movies to either build upon the acclaim the first one received, or, when they can't think of another set of characters, another set of actors, and most important of all, another name.

So there I was, with the four Die Hard movies. Though I'd watched them all long long ago, thanks to HBO and Star Movies, I forgot the plot. Started with Die Hard and ended up with a fast forwarded viewing of Die Hard 4. Bruce Willis is The Man. He's just a cop, just a cop - a cop who has every quality that we see in the cops of Bangalore City - the kind of cops that flag you down if you have a non-Karnataka registration plate, and charge some felony like "Attempt to murder", "Rash speeding" when all you were doing would've been inching in the packed-like-sardines traffic and the noteworthy point being, telling you 'swalpa adjust madi settle madi' and pocket a hundred rupees note or two and let you go without a challan/ticket. Just a cop who asks another cop to do him a favour by turning a blind eye to the No Parking sign.

John McClaine, the epitome of stamina, can endure any kind of blow. Even gunshots. He even fires through his own shoulder to kill a villain. Still, he lives. He kicks ass, literally. No matter how much ever he gets hit, his face would remain fresh. Not a scar, not a spot. Did I say gunshot? Oh yeah, I did. John McClaine can run across a full company of gunmen firing at him with sophisticated automatic sub-machine guns, yet go unscathed. While running, he can shoot and take down each and every single gunman with his automatic pistol. And he has an unlimited supply of bullets. If he gets hit, he simply groans and then he hits back. If he hits a thug, the thug falls down without making a sound. If he shoots at a thug, the thug drops dead instantaneously. If a thug shoots at him, it misses.

So much about gunfire and blows. John McClaine can say anything to anyone. Doesn't matter if it's another cop, a civilian, a villain or a hijacker. John McClain can drive through red lights, footpaths, parks, malls, anywhere he can fit a car - just like the bikers and 3-wheeled contraptions found in Indian cities - give them an inch of space and you find a dozen of them over there. John McClaine must've been brought up in Bangalore of Chennai for sure. John McClaine can run after air planes and get on board. He can take any car from anyone by just showing his LAPD badge.

Thinking about driving, another movie worth mentioning is 2012. It's made by the great total annihilation specialist, Roland Emmerich. Salute him to have come up with so many novel ideas of complete destruction that leaves just a few Americans on the planet. The protagonist is driving a luxury sedan while everything around them is shaking violently because of the quake. He just drives along a straight line and everything that falls down, does it behind the car, or waits for the car to pass. Even without mobile towers, he can speak to people over mobile phones.

To control my laughter as i write all this, I've decided to list out some random things that Hollywood and Bollywood movies have taught us (Statements about Rajinikanth not included as I want to live for a few more years)

• The hero's car never gets damaged to the point that it ceases to run. However, the bad guys' cars will be rendered useless by just grazing on something
• While shooting, the hero never misses and the villains almost always miss the target
• On a vehicle chase, nobody bothers to shoot at the other car's tyres but try to pulverize the windshields
• A loaded truck, if driven by the hero, can go faster than Michael Schumacher
• Aliens always attack the USA, and it's almost always Area 51 that they target
• If it's a war movie, the American soldiers are always young and handsome. Russians and East Asians will invariably be middle-aged and ugly. 
• A plain-jane Nokia 3310 can be used to hack into the FBI servers
• Cracking passwords and firewalls is a piece of cake for spies
• James Bond, Ethan Hunt, John McClaine etc can run over an open area in full view of a hundred gunmen shooting at them and still shoot all of them down with just a handgun. The same is true for their Indian counterparts too.
• All American schools teach only baseball, basket ball and rugby. And sometimes they have rock bands and dance clubs too. No subject classes
• If it's an Indian movie, the police would arrive at the climax of a violent stunt and pick up all the bad guys and congratulate the hero. Doesn't matter who called the police
• Villains would always try to kill the hero after telling them the full stories of deception and crimes, and they find ingenious ways to kill them, which, fail nevertheless
• Karan Johar's families are always settled in Europe and the US.
• Mammootty and Mohanlal though in their fifties (or is it sixties?) in real life, can romance with girls in their twenties and below.
• Time bombs are very aesthetic and ergonomic. They have time readouts and a button to stop the timer
• If a car's brakes happen to fail, the car would pick up unimaginable speeds and the hero who is otherwise an expert driver won't be able to control the car or its speed
• Lights would flicker for no reason if there's a villain inside the building.

The list can go on, but I've had my quota of laughter, and have to stop, or else I'll die of suffocation!!!

How Not To Travel from Palakkad to Bangalore

I had to visit home. Checked availability online, and rang up a few operators on thursday. No luck with comfortable timings for friday and sunday. Found out one empty seat in a KSRTC (Kerala) Super Deluxe Airbus service to Kottarakkara. Booked pronto.

Ticket fare Rs.354. There's no fare stage at Palakkad for this bus, so I had to book a ticket to Thrissur. Friday evening. I hopped in at 18:30hrs (the bus was late by over 45min) from Madiwala St. Johns Hospital Junction. Passed Electronics City at 19:15hrs. Stopped for dinner at a place before Salem

Journey was comfortable. Harita push-back seats, with lot of leg room, nice cushioning, comfortable backrest. Reading lamp (common for both the passengers on one side). It was a 2x2 configuration, with 38 seats. There were two drivers, both of them were very good, law abiding, safe yet fast drivers. The first one drove till Salem, and then other one took over. From Palakkad the first one got back in the driver seat. Reached home at 03:30hrs on Sat morning.

For the return trip, I found just one service with seats available - A KSRTC SDLX Airbus from Thrissur via Sultan Bathery, Gundlupet, Mysore. Left with no other option, I booked that one. Fare was Rs.404. The only grouse that I found was that I'll have to travel to Thrissur to board the bus, since it won't touch Palakkad. Yeah, a longer route, but I thought it should be okay. According to the website, the timings said the bus would reach Mysore at 02:05hrs, and Bangalore Satellite bus station at 05:20hrs. Little did I think about the practicality of that claim.

Sunday evening 20:00hrs, I reached Palakkad depot. The next bus to Thrissur was a Super Express that goes to Kottayam, at 20:20hrs. Good enough. I have factored the delay that may be caused by a traffic holdup in the Kuthiran ghat section. As I stood there waiting, watching other buses come and go, up came the Super Express Air Bus. Typical KSRTC Green and white livery, seats were done by KSRTC's Central Workshop, with nice cushioning but no push-back. Leg space was ok. Recline angle was perfect for me. Ride was harsh compared to the SDLX. The undulations on the tarmac was easily transmitted to the body. Ticket fare, Rs.46

Reached Thrissur depot at 22:20hrs. Two hours in that rains and not-so-thin traffic at night is ok. Come 22:35hrs, and my ride was brought to the platform. This bus looked a lot battered, from the outside. Battered meant, lot of scratches, dents on the bumper, edges of body panels, etc. All lights were functional though. Got in, and was a bit surprised to see that the interiors were very neat and well maintained unlike the exterior.

The bus started on the dot at 23:00hrs. It was doing good speeds, and the GPS in my phone showed ~80kmph constantly. I thought, at this rate I would reach Bangalore before the scheduled time of arrival, and I would end up waiting for a bus to take me to Majestic and then to Madiwala; having no clue about what was in store.

Sometime after the bus passed Vazhikkadavu, i remember waking up when the bus came to a halt at a checkpost. It must've been somewhere around 02:00hrs. It didn't strike me, nor anyone at home that the road through the wildlife reserve is closed till morning. So, there I was, stuck, till 06:00hrs. Finally reached Mysore at 08:00hrs. The bus started immediately after dropping the passengers. Stopped at a hotel for breakfast at around 08:45hrs, and resumed journey at 09:00hrs. The monday morning traffic was getting thicker and thicker, and the frequent speed breakers on Mysore road prevented the bus from picking up good speeds.

Reached the Satellite Bus Station on Mysore road at 11:20hrs. A BMTC mini-bus took me to Majestic at 11:50hrs. A BMTC Volvo took me to Madiwala, by 13:00hrs. End of the journey. Half a day wasted. I made the mistake of booking that bus from Thrissur, else I would've happily reached Bangalore on time. Next time, this route will surely be given a miss.

Bytes for Thought

I logged in to Gmail this morning, and I noticed a guy's status message. It was a link to The Hindu Open Page. The blog is on what the majority of the population thinks about people working in Information Technology (the famed acronym, "IT") companies - commonly, and often mistakenly called "Software Engineers". Why mistakenly? Because I used to work for an IT company and was labelled a software engineer, though I never wrote a line of code (I am a hardware engineer). The gist of the write-up in The Hindu is, IT guys are considered far too different and affluent than the rest of the common public but reality is different.

Some of the myths hover around the fact that we are paid handsomely, we work in air conditioned, smart looking offices, and in most cases, on sleek computers and laptops. Yes, we are paid handsomely but that doesn't mean that we are rich. We work in airconditioned offices, which is true again, but the machines that we work on, need it for their reliable operation in the long run. We dress up neatly, again because our employers demand that we do.

When I said we are paid handsomely, I must also add that we are taxed handsomely by the government too. The people in the lower income strata do not have to pay tax, and the people in the higher income groups (read, the actual rich guys) will not feel the pinch as much as we do. Any change in the tax structure affects us a lot. We spend a lot too, thanks to the daylight robbery done by hotels, service providers (cab, auto, etc), exorbitant rents charged by house owners, high prices for bus tickets for going home for festivals, the list goes on.

On a trip to Chennai after attending a friend's wedding, a fellow passenger in the train struck a conversation with me and my friend. He thought we were college guys, and started telling a lot of things about how IT guys are the reason for the increased prices for bus tickets. To some extent it's true - we are ready to pay, since we are desperate to make it home for that vacation after working tirelessly. It was only after he realized that we were also IT guys that he gave a sheepish grin and stopped the mudslinging on IT guys as such. The only thing that he knew about the IT industry is that it pays, and nothing more

For various reasons, we end up taking loans, and hence most part of the "fat" pay packet that we get will vanish in thin air. Then, living in a metro is an expensive affair. These things are not seen by the income tax department. Any change in the interest rates of any loan will have an effect on our budget. Nobody comes to know this side of the coin.

So much for the finances. What about social life? We work over time, sometimes over weekends, just to meet the targets set by our superiors. This affects the time spent with our loved ones. The unmarried lot happen to do it more often, leaving us very less time for recreation compared to the so called "common man". For people with children, they get to spend less time with their children.

Raising up kids in cities is a lot more expensive, stressful for them, and they end up seeing just concrete jungles and malls and nothing more. I believe, kids should be brought up in a way that they learn to appreciate and care for the nature. It makes a lot of difference living up in a quiet country side compared to the polluted metro cities. Clean air, greenery, mingling with people of different strata, are all missing in a city.

For those who believe that life's good for us, well, it certainly is. But it's just as good as a common man's, and
nothing beyond, if not less. We, most of the IT guys are also common men/women.

There's always a First time, again

I started blogging, rather, started a blog long long back. That was my first time. I even forgot what I named it. But didn't care to write much after that. Fast forward, 2010. Seeing so many blogs, I decided to rekindle that idea, and start a blog. This is my yet another first post :-)