Expired Milk!

There is this news item which says people are upset that a McDonald's employee used expired milk to make milk shakes. It is causing a furore. 

Idiots. 

The milk has already expired even before it was put into the packet. 

You create separate cow species, like Jersey or Holstein, "optimised" for milk production. 

You house the whole lot in cattle farms, in close disease-inducing proximity. 

You feed the cows food mash, not grass and other naturally growing food,  laced with antibiotics. You inject the cows with oxytocin to increase contractions that increase milk production. 

The milk is transported over long distances to the factory. To prevent the milk from  curdling on the way, people in India add urea to it ( yes urea the fertiliser), don't know what they do in the US. 

Then the milk is pasteurised, which please note, is not the same as boiling the milk that we do at home. Pasteurisation is supposed to kill all the bad germs. Unfortunately, it kills all the germs, including the good ones. 

Then the milk is homogenised, an innocuous sounding word, but what it does is to change the molecular structure of the milk itself. 

Then, and this is more so in the US, the milk is converted into a few hundred variants, no fat, ten percent fat, lactose free ( quite possible , I am sure this exists), diet milk, colored milk, flavoured milk, goo, poo... The list can extend indefinitely. 

And we the people buy that crap from the supermarket shelves. 

What we are buying  looks like milk, it tastes like milk, but is not milk. 

And then we worry about someone giving us milk that is past its expiry date! 

I feel like telling them: 

The milk, my friend, expired long long ago. You are making much ado about nothing!

If I write a book on Arjuna

If I write a book on Arjuna for today's youngsters, this is the way my introductory chapter would flow...

This Arjuna dude, he was a real macho dude who could kick ass big-time. Maan oh Maan, what a dude! 

And then they get cheated of their kingdom, you know how it is. Greedy cousins, evil king and all. 

They had a common wife, noe check that out! And they had several individual wives, at least  Arjuna did. He used to bed women wherever he went! Crazy shit, right!  Even divine damsels used to fall for him, and he refused one of them! Can you imagine that? No shit maan, I am telling it to you like it is! 

And then he fights this great war. Arrows flying all over the place, and dudes like Arjuna, there were a few others also, they were called Maharathis meaning Real Kick-ass Dudes, knew some divine weapon stuff, the stuff that goes ka boom when you chant a mantra! You know, mantras are real potent Maan, I mean they could bring the gods down and make them do stuff for you. In fact, Arjuna was born with the help of one such mantra. His dad was king of the gods, ruler of heaven. Dig that maan, it's crazy stuff right?!

Diamonds are forever... A scam!

See this article in TOI today about diamond prices going down: 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/timesofindia.indiatimes.com/times-special/losing-shine-india-sitting-on-a-huge-diamond-stock/amp_articleshow/112092241.cms

This was anticipated. Diamonds have never been a great investment for a variety of reasons.

 Arriving at their value is a highly subjective exercise, involving Color, Clarity, Cut and Carat, all of them subjective parameters including the last one. 

They have been valued since ancient times, but the demand and price uptick came when De Beers, the largest diamond producer in the world, embarked on a campaign to make it popular. Diamonds as an emblem of getting engaged to be married was not the norm before that. 

To complicate matters further, "lab grown" diamonds, which even experts find impossible to distinguish from real ones, have become increasingly common. 

If all you want is a piece of jewelry, buy the lab grown diamonds. They are anyway indistinguishable from the real ones. 

If you are considering buying diamonds for investment, don't. Buy Gold, Silver or Copper instead. Or go on a vacation, at least you would have put the money to good use!

If you have diamond earrings that have been handed down to you from your grandmother, sell them. 

Diamonds are good neither as investment nor as adornment. 

Musings of a retiree

I retired from corporate life in 2013. The past eleven years has been a good ride. 

The usual advantages are of course there. Not having up get up at 6, get ready by 8, and rush to meet your doom is the obvious one. When I go past the slaughter house in Cox Town, I see goats led by  their goat herders, rushing inside, since there is some grass enticingly kept there. 

Whenever I step into a glass building, the likes of which despoil the whole of Bangalore, I close my eyes and mutter a silent prayer to my guardian angel, " but for the grace of God, here would have been I, thank you God". 

Many of my friends who could have retired earlier than me, did not. They stuck around for as long as they could. Some of them lasted till 60, but most left some time in their fifties. One columnist coined a good term for it, he called it "forced entrepreneurship". 

What are you doing after retirement? I am thinking of starting a startup. I have started a startup. I am consulting with a startup. Now, that seems very much like getting back into the rat race, but if that is what they want, so be it. They really like doing that stuff, I cannot for the life of me figure out why. In any case, the start up bug does not last for long, it is just a brief foray, a transition period to get adjusted to the idea that you have retired, somewhat akin to the interim job that the prisoner gets when finally released after twenty years in jail, which helps him to slowly ease  himself into the demands of the world outside. 

Quite a few of my friends have taken up "stock trading" after their retirement. I know only one who actually makes money on it. The rest are in it for a bunch of different reasons, none of them to do with stocks. Reason 1: have to get out of the house, spouse eating brain. This is from the friend who went to his broker friend's office every day to do stock trading. Reason 2: have intellectual horsepower and nowhere to deploy it, and am used to doing a lot of activity for very little output - stock trading is the right fit. Reason 3: No one can really make out how much I am working and how much money I am  making when I do stock trading, and it is impossible to judge. If I take up baking for example, every day I will be told that my cakes taste like mud! 

I, on the other hand, chose a different path. I took the path that appeals to a few retired people, that is that of giving Gyan. I became a part time teacher in an MBA college. Now this comes with a load of advantages. Adv. 1: The spouse is happy that you are busy, all spouses need to see you busy, otherwise they get mighty upset. Adv.2: There is a captive audience willing to listen to you, or at least pretend to be listening to you. I have reached the stage in life where no one listens to me at home. Adv.3: I get a lot of respect, the same respect that my Direct Reports used to give me when I was in the company. The students laugh at all my jokes and keep telling me how great I am in different small ways. The fact that I am the sole arbiter of their marks has nothing to do with it of course. Adv. 4: I have some place to go to,  that is very important. 

One thing I have noticed about retired people. They are immensely courteous to each other. Whenever my retired friends call me, they always say, "Dinesh, I hope I am not disturbing you in the middle of something important?". Now,  they know and I know that I am not likely to be doing anything important, but the pretence has to be maintained. I return the same courtesy when I call them and , as if on cue they reply, " oh I was in the middle of something, but for you, Dinesh, I will make the time!", which is of course exactly what I want to hear. 

Meanwhile I get more time to write, more time to travel, and more time to do nothing in particular. And I am always busy - there is something about work, it expands to fill the time available. The last three days, for example, I was busy on my Tax Returns. When I was working full time this would have taken me three hours at most. 

I am glad I retired when I did. Every day in the last eleven years has been a picnic. 

To my friends out there who are still working, I would like to say this: 

Retire boss, retire, it's a good life!

My impressions of Chennai

I stayed for a couple of weeks in Chennai when my mom was there. That whole city puts me off.

The autowallahs are nasty of course. The vegetable vendor starts screaming at you ( saavu giraaki is the opening salvo) if you touch the vegetables. 

There is no concept of customer service, or quality. Or even doing a basic job well. And everyone is kind of closed in their mind for anything new. 

The average Darshini in Bangalore serves better food than the popular names in Chennai. Murugan Idli may be an exception but the likes of Veena Stores or Brahmin's cafe will beat even Murugan Idli by miles. 

Had a chai at the airport, kiosk outside saying "Tea something". 100 rupees. One sip and I spat it out. I am not exaggerating when I say that even a beggar in Bombay will refuse to have that tea. 

Construction quality, very poor. Plumber, electrician, they don't even come for days. The concept of dry toilets does not exist. My mom's landlord had not even installed a washbasin, she did it at her own expense. 

I am a tamilian by upbringing and I was totally put off. 

Imagine the plight of a North Indian who doesn't know Tamil landing there.

Post match media interaction

These post match reminiscences are so boring. 

Oh, I am so excited to be out here today ( once the Americans came on the scene this word has lost all its meaning. Being excited all the time and nothing else merely indicates a poor vocabulary) 

The boys really played well ( always give credit to the boys. This cricketer was so used to this phrase that he said that when someone congratulated him on his child being born) 

I thought let's bat and put some runs on the board, that was the need of the hour ( ya sure, that's what you do in cricket) 

The first ten overs were crucial. So were the last ten. And the middle 30  overs were very critical ( I am waiting for the day when someone says these ten overs were not critical) 

The dew being what it is, and with the lights coming on, it could aid swing... 

The pitch was firm though without grass, and we thought it would start crumbling towards the end and aid our spinners.. 

( All this is pure mumbo jumbo designed to keep the non serious follower out of the conversation. Don't worry even they don't know what they are talking about) 

And the newbie...   I am grateful to Rohit Sharma for encouraging me, he is a great mentor ( smart chap, he knows whom to butter up ) 

I just went out there and played my game ( well obviously you nitwit, whatever you do you have to play your game) 

And so on and so on. 

Post match interviews are definitely not grist for the intellectual mill, and they tend to be boring, repetitive, full of stock phrases, in short they sound like a bunch of teenagers talking. 

Which is to be expected. We selected our cricketers because they are good at playing cricket, not for their intellect, vocabulary and general knowledge. 

What I don't understand is, why then do we insist on repeatedly asking for their insights and waste our time listening to them or reading their Gyan.

About blood thinners and their ilk

Link to an article in today's  TOI : 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/breakthrough-common-blood-thinner-can-be-affordable-antidote-for-cobra-venom/amp_articleshow/111817389.cms

👆"repurposing existing drug" for a hitherto unknown use. 

Sounds great. And it is. 

But think about it slightly differently. Blood thinners are prescribed like chocolates nowadays. Anyone and everyone you know is having blood thinners. 

They are effective as anti venom also, as it was just discovered, "they act as a decoy antidote, binding and neutralising the toxins" 

The question to ask is.. all those  lifestyle drugs that  you are you taking, from the pill box that you carry around.. how many of them act as decoys to bind to what all and create what all havoc in the body? 

And remember that  it all started when you went for that "preventive" medical check up, which is basically a trap for enticing the gullible into the medical system's welcoming arms.

100 tests, at sixty percent discount! 

When you test for 100 parameters, there is a close to 100 percent chance that some parameter is "not normal". How is normal defined? Anything, say five percent to the right or five percent to the left of the normal distribution consisting of the population. 100 parameters like that, and the chance of getting a clean report is close to infinitesimal, do the math yourself. 

So your LDL was low and HDL was high, or Vitamin D3 was inadequate, and you landed at the local corporate hospital ( the discounted tests are decoys, they are actually marketing agents for the corporate hospitals, the front line goons for the medical mafia).

And before you know it, you are on statins, blood thinners, cholesterol lowering drugs..  

In roughly around five years from that point you are carrying around a pill box with compartments with dates and times filled with pills of various colours. And you are saying things like "I need to eat every two hours or I will die", "I cannot sit on a two wheeler, God forbid, my back will dislocate itself", "I am gluten, lactose and peanut intolerant"... We are all familiar with the list, except that in the last few years the list is growing. 

Meanwhile the neighbour, who is a trader  in  Chikpet, and  seventy five years old, continues to travel all around the city on his Kinetic Honda, eat 

anything, go anywhere, life weights, spend ten hours at his shop, and is mentally and physically active. 

What is the secret to his  good health? 

His ignorance. No one told him about medical tests.

The Circus comes to town

The teams are equally matched, 

The margins of victory slender; 

The game veers this way and that, 

And then goes one way or the other! 

But yet we pin our hopes too much, 

On slender momentary wins; 

The fights and wins we lack in our lives, 

We seek vicariously in them! 

Too much elation on victory, 

End of the world on a defeat; 

This too shall pass; and once again, 

One turn into the other! 

Our self esteem has been outsourced,

To fickle momentary events; 

To gladiators in a Circus,

Paid to fight and die for us! 

So much of me has been invested,

On someone, somewhere, outside control; 

Like those rides in a carnival, 

I am screaming, passive, and belted! 

And then I totter to the next; 

One draining ride after another; 

One day wonder where all the days went, 

I'm spent, with nothing to show for them! 

Generative AI

This is extremely scary. 

Computers exploded on the scene after the 90's. That's well within our adult lifetime, thirty years back. Mobile phones, internet, high speed computing, connectivity, ditto.

Coders were in high demand, they still are presumably. 

But now the computer is going to write all the code, generate all the music, write all the articles, suggest all the remedies, and pretty much do everything that we humans prided ourselves in doing. It's called generative AI. 

What is the skill required in this new era from those who operate the computers? Prompt engineering! Like "delivery partners", a fancy term to glamorise a humdrum occupation. 

Prompt engineering is the skill of how to ask questions to the computer. The computer knows all the answers, the computer is God, the computer will answer you properly provided you ask nicely. Presumably, prostrating or kneeling down in front of it with hands folded while asking the question. 

Meanwhile, they will develop another computer, or Generative AI engine, to ask the right questions. 

Then this computer will talk to that computer. And together, between them, they will have all the questions and all the answers. 

We will be on our knees in front of the  computer, begging it to tell us the answers. 

The future awaits.

Review of Kalki

Watched Kalki today on IMAX 2D. 

Indian mythology meets dystopian world meets Marvel Superheroes meets Star Wars meets Mad Max meets VFX. 

After Bahubali and RRR, you thought these Telugu guys have already reached the top in over the top entertainers but no, this one is beyond those two. When I say over the top I mean it in a complimentary way. After this fare, you will find other films insipid. 

Kamalahasan as Supreme Yaskin the villain, Amitabh as Aswatthama, Prabhas as Karna reborn with multiple shades to his character, Deepika as the heroine in whose womb the Lord ( Krishna of course) will be reborn as Kalki, who will come to save the world. And Amitabh as always, steals the show, I just don't know what it is that gives him that screen presence! 

The movie, a full three hours long, only manages to build this alternate universe , in preparation for the sequels to come. 

As the Telugus will say to those Marvel folks "meeru yovvaru ra, superhero movie Ela ceyalo memu meeku chuputhamu! ... Jeragandi , maa samayam vacchindi!!"

( Subtitle: who are you guys? We will show you how to make superhero movies! Move aside! Our time has come!!) 

It's difficult to make out where the live shots end and the VFX takes over, the entire experience is one big extravaganza. 

Made with a budget of 600 crores, not even a week has passed since release, I  believe it has already recovered most of the money. 

On a Monday afternoon there were hardly any seats empty. We will get to see this film become a mega hit in India and outside. 

Watch it in Telugu ( there are English subtitles), over the top plots somehow go well with Telugu, on the big screen, preferably on IMAX 2D.