Thursday, July 28, 2005

Bed-time Story

Like any other upper middle class 8-year old, my son is becoming a TV, Computer addict. I’m having a tough time making him pick up reading habits and I’m getting nowhere.

He wanted a Harry Potter video game and not the more popular book. I checked the price and was about to buy it for him, but thought of setting him some goals in reading before he gets his hands on the CD. The conversation went as follows.

Me: I’ll order the CD after you finish reading the comic book.
Son : (No answer)
Me: You got to read more that will help in your imagination.
Son: (No answer)
[I badly wanted him to accept a goal, any goal for reading.]
Me: I don’t get time to read books now. You got plenty of time, don’t waste it in TV and computer games. This is the time to read books and learn more.
Me: I tell you bed-time stories. From where do you think I got them all? I read books.
Son: (No response)
Me: Don’t you want to tell stories to your kid when you grow up. (He shows remarkable responsibility in caring for his future wife and child. So, I tried it.)
Me: How would you feel if I tell the same old Crow and the fox story everyday? Will you not be bored?
Son: (No response)
[I get irritated.]
Me: What do you get when I tell a story?
Son: I hear your voice when I start sleeping.

Now, I had nothing else to say.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Income Tax Calculation Software from Govt. of India

The Income Tax Department, Govt. of India has been kind enough to come up with a free software for tax computation. My expectations aren't high; I am not expecting a TaxCut type of product.I downloaded and installed 36M installable on my work computer and started the application. The first message I got was
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Tax Computation 2005
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This software requires the system date format as 'dd/MM/yyyy' for correct execution.
Press 'OK' if you want the date format to change to 'dd/MM/yyyy' for ever
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OK Cancel
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What do you expect if you hit Cancel? Not sure. I tried and the application just terminated. How clever!!

In the next run, I hit OK. This one is equally brilliant functioning.
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Tax Computation 2005
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System need to be Restart to implement the new date format.
Press 'Yes' to Restart now and 'No' to Restart later on.
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Yes No
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I wonder what kind of morons (other than the ones who frame the tax laws and man the counters) are employed by Income Tax Dept to write software.

Monday, July 18, 2005

One hour of roller-coaster

Recently I changed jobs. My 4 minute walk to office changed to at least half hour drive to office. In the 4 minute walk all I could see were, maniac students speeding on narrow streets in their CBZs and Pulsars. There were just a couple of non-fatal crashes, in all the 4 intersections in the last two years. The statistics isn't bad even for bullock carts infested village roads.
Everything changed with my new commute. I got to see a new dimension of maniac driving in the rush hour traffic in Anna Salai. I can't believe so many people are so desparately suicidal in Chennai.

I don't know how fast these people go as I watch them from a relatively slow moving auto-rickshaw that has a speedometer that I can't see and that stopped working long ago.

I have to think up new idioms and parallals to describe how scared I'm to be in a small vehicle in Anna Salai. Have you seen scared dogs during Diwali? I'm close. Everyone seems to be happy driving in such unsafe condition just as the kids playing with firecrackers.
I'm scared of roller-coasters and am not ashamed to say so. I can hardly manage a 30 second roller coaster without throwing up. My commute is now like an hour of roller coaster and I'm not enjoying it.

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