Questions for Dalai Lama

What is your first memory of Lhamo Döndrub or His Holiness, the Dalai Lama? I don't remember what mine was - would certainly like to hear yours! He has certainly had a strong impact on me in recent past, as has most things Buddhist.

I have seen 3 movies related to the Dalai Lama - 7 years in Tibet (may have been my first acquaintance with the Dalai Lama), Kundun and now 10 questions for the Dalai Lama. The last one was a documentary, a short one. It dealt with the same issues I have heard before; happiness, compassion, tolerance etc; subjects I have read before in "Art of Happiness" by Howard C. Cutler. So why should you consider this movie in your viewing list?

This is the first time I have heard his voice, and seen him in a talk. I have heard Bill Clinton talk - he has charisma, and made you listen. I heard George W. Bush talk, and you could hear the passion (now, I am not talking politics - just personality). The Dalai Lama has both, charisma and passion - no malice. You listen, you believe, and you laugh (reminds of you of your childhood friend who simply made you laugh!)

He spoke about conflict resolution. In a conflict, as he put it "you destroy your enemy, then you destroy yourself" - so he proposes conciliation as the way forward, not one of threats and economic sanction - something the leadership around the world should consider. There was also a mention to a concept similar to Nash's equilibrium - a way to reach a compromise. Or alternatively, during a conflict, just party since that reduces any existing "negative emotion" - where's the beer?

Not a collector's items, but worth watching - if you want to see the Dalai Lama in action.

Not one to read too many articles but...

This particular author catches my eye. I have read a handful of articles from him, and I have found it to be well thought out and more importantly, appeals to my sensibilities. I guess that explains why I like the articles.

What makes the articles very interesting is the author is French and the articles are about the subcontinent, India, Tibet, Burma etc.

Without further ado, here are two links on Francois Gautier's pages, his homepage and his page in rediff.

A word that starts with I

A little lesson about me... In my high school days, while I consistently aced the Sciences and Math subjects, I was abysmal in the languages - English, French and Arabic.

So my mom thought of a remedy, her friend, who was my English teacher in elementary school. She was enlisted to teach me the nuances of English so that I may pass (yes! I failed my first - and only - English exam at high school).

This was a conversation on one occassion:

Teacher: "You are like your father. Both of you are very smart, technically very brilliant in science. However both of you lack something. The word starts with I" (PS: I am being liberal in the use of "very brilliant" - It's my blog, my prerogative)

Me: "You mean inventive?"

Teacher: "No..."

Me: "Intelligent? Ingenuity??"

Teacher: "No... No..."

I try a few more... which was good... since I actually came up with words in English. Finally all exasperated by my incompetence in English, I say:

Me: "What is it - I give up!!!"

Teacher: "Imagination"

Me: "Ahhh... yes - I lack imagination"

Hence the brevity and lack of creativity of my blogs...

More on this later

Traveling heavy

Several of you know my opinion on traveling heavy... well this post is not about that, but more about a recent trip I took. On this trip, I had a rather long leg where I had a window seat. More recently, I have taken an aversion to sitting on the aisle rather than a window. In no event, do I want to be the 'Kebab mein haddi' and sit in the middle, unless it is in between two cute co-eds.

Anyways, on this trip, I had the misfortune of having someone rather huge (through no fault of theirs, I am sure) sitting in the middle seat. I have always prided myself being tall, heavy (not wide) and hard to push, but in this case I was slammed against the window and any attempts to center myself in my seat meant an elbow to my ribs.

What do you do in this case? Endure, I guess... and try to get some shut eye... and hope the flight leaves on time, so you don't have to endure for too long... and get some shut eye - did I say that already?

Hope you have better luck than I do on your travels...

Firefox sucks

Yes - you are reading the title correctly. I have been a proponent of free software, because

• you shouldn't have to use anything microsoft butchers (i already break that principle by my use of winxp - itunes is great)
• free software is FREE!!! and you should not have to pay for anything - that's what the tax they deduct from my paycheck is for!
• free software is maintained by the community, so it should be better, because people who do something for free really care about what they are working on, and are open to suggestions and critiques.

The third point is where firefox fails. Initially, it took everything that IE was and Netscape could be, and made it better. I liked it - it was the version of Opera that was free and without ads. It had these cool add ons.

I guess at some point the programmers got excited, and sloppy. Or maybe the programmers were not of the best quality... whatever it was, it was not good. I have only yahoo mail open (and that too, the original mail version - not the Beta). The memory image was a whopping 160M for nothing... Lotsa memory leaks, code bloat etc. I could not send an email, click on links etc.

Mozilla foundation, stop spending time on changing your logo, forcing debian to change names and fix your software - till then I will continue to use... Firefox! I know - I am loyal loser.

Cattle class

Air India has been known for several thing - poor service, crappy equipment, awful food (yes, British and Lufthansa have better food) among other things... they have added one more thing - a new meaning to the word "cattle class".

100 people missed their connections in Bombay (or is it Mumbai?!?). After being stuck in Bombay for 36 hours, Air India stuffs them on the flight next day - that is 25% of a normal passenger load on a 747. How do you do that? If you were an Air India staff, you take those passengers and stuff them at the crew stations for the period of the flight (Bombay to London). What???!? Shocking...

I guess cattle on the road, cattle in the farm and cattle in the sky... life as an Indian.

First thoughts...

On my trip to India, I realized there were several things I could jot down... a sort of history of my views - something that will help me realize how naive I was back in the days!!!

Read on