Sunday, September 25, 2005
National Public Radio
Hirak once mentioned something about National Public Radio in a comment on this blog. Unfortunately, I forgot to check up on NPR stations in Madison at the time. Yesterday though I started listening to KQED San Francisco and I just can't take my ears off it.
Seems to me like television caters for the masses and the public radio caters to the smart people. I couldn't have imagined so many wonderful shows existed on NPR. "All things considered" give you very high quality news. Last night at 11, they also had this quiz based on events from last week called "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". The guests included Moa Rocca, Ebert and Roper's Roper and some third lady I didn't know. But I loved the idea of a quiz show based on current events. In the morning and evening today I listened to these shows with word games, anagrams and poetry. If you are more of a literary person, you would have liked this program with short stories.
NPR seems to have all the entertainment I ever wanted. Plaudits on such fine programming.
Hirak once mentioned something about National Public Radio in a comment on this blog. Unfortunately, I forgot to check up on NPR stations in Madison at the time. Yesterday though I started listening to KQED San Francisco and I just can't take my ears off it.
Seems to me like television caters for the masses and the public radio caters to the smart people. I couldn't have imagined so many wonderful shows existed on NPR. "All things considered" give you very high quality news. Last night at 11, they also had this quiz based on events from last week called "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". The guests included Moa Rocca, Ebert and Roper's Roper and some third lady I didn't know. But I loved the idea of a quiz show based on current events. In the morning and evening today I listened to these shows with word games, anagrams and poetry. If you are more of a literary person, you would have liked this program with short stories.
NPR seems to have all the entertainment I ever wanted. Plaudits on such fine programming.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Badgers Beat Wolverines!!!
UW beat UM today. Happiest day of my life! :)
Go Badgers!!!
UW beat UM today. Happiest day of my life! :)
Go Badgers!!!
Monday, September 19, 2005
An Irish Airman Foresees his Death by W B Yeats
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Wonderful Long Weekend
I had a fun-filled long Labor Day weekend. I headed with some friends, to South Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. It's been a big change from the drudgery of work. Sometimes the work week does take it's toll. Thankfully weekends such as these are like knights in shining armors coming to the rescue.
The most fun part of the weekend was white-water rafting. (For some reason I keep typing the anagram "farting" each time I try to type "rafting".) My first such encounter. We headed to the Truckee river rapids upstream from Reno. The rafting was very uneventful in the beginning. Jake, our guide, was a stock market trader. So much to the dismay of the rest of the occupants of my raft, we got talking about stocks... NVDA ATYT Jim Kramer's Mad Money, Roth IRAs. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and we crossed many level 1 and 2 rapids without any untoward incidents. The higlight of the ride on the raft was our fall into the level 3 rapids. The boat toppled over me, and another person then fell on top of me as well. I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. I surfaced moments later headed for some rocks, but managed to swerve past them and finally climbed onto another boat. That was a scary minute and the people from the other boat were rather enthralled by our little debacle.
Saturday afternoon was spent on these short hikes around the lake. On Saturday night I went to the casinos on the Nevada side of the border. Caesar's was probably the only famous name that I visited. I bet 2 dollars at the slot machines and promptly lost it all, without having more than what I invested at any given point. Gurpreet, a friend who came along put in 3 dollars and turned that into 13 dollars at one point. However his winnings dwindled to 5 dollars and he decided to bail out. I had no fun gambling because I just didn't win. Divine intervention I guess... God doesn't want me to get addicted to gambling.("Rum Rama and Rummy" as they say in Marathi, the three vices ;-).. Wine Women and Gambling, I can't recall the exact English analog to that.)
Sunday evening we were aboard the Dixie 2 on a two-hour long cruise on Lake Tahoe. Learnt a few pieces of interesting trivia related to Lake Tahoe. Apparently it is about 1600 feet deep at some points. That's a scary piece of information to give on a cruise.
Pictures from the trip are located at http://community.webshots.com/user/saketjamkar
I had a fun-filled long Labor Day weekend. I headed with some friends, to South Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. It's been a big change from the drudgery of work. Sometimes the work week does take it's toll. Thankfully weekends such as these are like knights in shining armors coming to the rescue.
The most fun part of the weekend was white-water rafting. (For some reason I keep typing the anagram "farting" each time I try to type "rafting".) My first such encounter. We headed to the Truckee river rapids upstream from Reno. The rafting was very uneventful in the beginning. Jake, our guide, was a stock market trader. So much to the dismay of the rest of the occupants of my raft, we got talking about stocks... NVDA ATYT Jim Kramer's Mad Money, Roth IRAs. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and we crossed many level 1 and 2 rapids without any untoward incidents. The higlight of the ride on the raft was our fall into the level 3 rapids. The boat toppled over me, and another person then fell on top of me as well. I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. I surfaced moments later headed for some rocks, but managed to swerve past them and finally climbed onto another boat. That was a scary minute and the people from the other boat were rather enthralled by our little debacle.
Saturday afternoon was spent on these short hikes around the lake. On Saturday night I went to the casinos on the Nevada side of the border. Caesar's was probably the only famous name that I visited. I bet 2 dollars at the slot machines and promptly lost it all, without having more than what I invested at any given point. Gurpreet, a friend who came along put in 3 dollars and turned that into 13 dollars at one point. However his winnings dwindled to 5 dollars and he decided to bail out. I had no fun gambling because I just didn't win. Divine intervention I guess... God doesn't want me to get addicted to gambling.("Rum Rama and Rummy" as they say in Marathi, the three vices ;-).. Wine Women and Gambling, I can't recall the exact English analog to that.)
Sunday evening we were aboard the Dixie 2 on a two-hour long cruise on Lake Tahoe. Learnt a few pieces of interesting trivia related to Lake Tahoe. Apparently it is about 1600 feet deep at some points. That's a scary piece of information to give on a cruise.
Pictures from the trip are located at http://community.webshots.com/user/saketjamkar
Friday, September 02, 2005
Katrina and the Waves
Hurricane Katrina is such an antithesis in itself. Such a pretty name and such a gruesome horror she left in her wake.
Just a few observations... I've been watching the news stories about Katrina on NBC, CNN and Fox. Is it just me or does it seem like only African-American people are stranded in New Orleans? I mean the rare white people you see there are old people who probably didn't watch the weather reports or tourists. It's not completely surprising either. Pardon my generalization (I probably don't know enough about Southern states), but poor people are more likely to be the African-Americans. The white Americans down South are well-off in part, because their ancestors employed the poor African-Americans as slave laborers at some point. I've heard that some blogs claim that the only reason why such a mess happened in Lousiana was because all the poor people who didn't have a car or couldnt afford a full tank of gas were black, that things might have been much better less chaotic had a calamity struck in the Midwest somewhere. I don't know how to argue with that. Natural disasters seem to be racially prejudiced in the South too. Katrina killed more poor people than rich.
Some tourists have had some tough luck. They landed in New Orleans and then their flights out of New Orleans got cancelled. The rental car agencies ran out of cars and the tourists decided to just sit bravely in their hotel rooms. My feeling is that nobody anticipated that Katrina would cause the levees in New Orleans to break.
Hindsight ofcourse, is 20-20. My prayers for the people enduring hard times in New Orleans. Most of us have had such priveleged lives that we can't imagine dealing with such things. It probably just takes a Richter 8 earthquake on the San-Andreas for me to be in a similar situation... and such seismic calamities can't even be predicted very accurately.
Hurricane Katrina is such an antithesis in itself. Such a pretty name and such a gruesome horror she left in her wake.
Just a few observations... I've been watching the news stories about Katrina on NBC, CNN and Fox. Is it just me or does it seem like only African-American people are stranded in New Orleans? I mean the rare white people you see there are old people who probably didn't watch the weather reports or tourists. It's not completely surprising either. Pardon my generalization (I probably don't know enough about Southern states), but poor people are more likely to be the African-Americans. The white Americans down South are well-off in part, because their ancestors employed the poor African-Americans as slave laborers at some point. I've heard that some blogs claim that the only reason why such a mess happened in Lousiana was because all the poor people who didn't have a car or couldnt afford a full tank of gas were black, that things might have been much better less chaotic had a calamity struck in the Midwest somewhere. I don't know how to argue with that. Natural disasters seem to be racially prejudiced in the South too. Katrina killed more poor people than rich.
Some tourists have had some tough luck. They landed in New Orleans and then their flights out of New Orleans got cancelled. The rental car agencies ran out of cars and the tourists decided to just sit bravely in their hotel rooms. My feeling is that nobody anticipated that Katrina would cause the levees in New Orleans to break.
Hindsight ofcourse, is 20-20. My prayers for the people enduring hard times in New Orleans. Most of us have had such priveleged lives that we can't imagine dealing with such things. It probably just takes a Richter 8 earthquake on the San-Andreas for me to be in a similar situation... and such seismic calamities can't even be predicted very accurately.
