Ladies and gentlemen, I like receiving mail by post.
However, this does not mean that I dislike receiving e-mail.

Postal mail just makes one feel better.
Especially today, when its easier to send an e-mail than a postal mail, receiving a mail by post makes you feel really good

The tentativeness while tearing open an envelope is not really present in double clicking an e-mail, half of whose contents are already shown in your preview pane.
The excitement of finding a new postal stamp on your envelope cannot match with finding some new funky smileys or signatures in an electronic mail.

In addition to performing the intended function, a mail sent by post also provides support to the postal service.
Now, has the volume of postal mails reduced considerably since the advent of e-mail?
Has it adversely impacted the employees of the postal service?
I would like to see the statistics.

Ladies and gentlemen, post this post, let us all wait to receive a mail by post.

Just got home after watching Mangal Pandey – The Rising.

There have been innumerable reviews criticising the movie.
I agree with them.
I must confess that I have absolutely no knowledge about the life of Mangal Pandey, nor do I have any knowledge about the Sepoy Mutinee except for the fact that it occurred in 1857.

However, seeing this movie as a movie, I find it lacking in zing and well, in almost all other aspects.

Firstly, the movie seems very amateurishly made.
I thought, and still believe, that Ketan Mehta is one of the better directors of this country.
Probably this was a one-off failure.

Secondly, there are quite a few parallel characters who have no bearing on the story.
These parallel characters, in addition to stretching the movie duration, end up adding a lot of cleavage on screen.
You ought to watch Mangal Pandey for this specific reason, its got oodles of oomph for reasons better known to the director.
I didn’t complain.

Thirdly, the theatrics of all the extras seem out of place and cliched.
The firangis talking in anglicised Hindi makes one run for the nearest Rapidex Hindi speaking course book.
Toby Stephens and Amir stood out with their brilliant performances.
A. R. Rahman’s music was not quite upto the mark, except for the title track, which is awesome.
Kiron Kher and Rani Mukherjee did their jobs “amply”, if you know what I mean.

All said and done, towards the end when Mangal Pandey is hanged to death, the crowd breaks apart and attacks the English soldiers.
This was a moving moment.
It made me realise that I was able to sit in a reclining chair of a Gold Class section of a multiplex and sip on Pepsi (large) because of the fact that my country got its independence.
I owed it to Mangal Pandey for starting that spark.
I owed it to all the other freedom fighters of my country for giving me the opportunity to criticise a movie on them, all the while sipping on an American beverage.
Was I being fair? I don’t know, I was busy admiring the shapes of my popcorn kernels.

But yes, the movie left an impact on me.
It made me realise that a lot went into giving me this freedom.
I do salute Mangal Pandey, but definitely not Mangal Pandey – The Rising.

Now, if India were to play against England, would I support England?
After watching this movie, I am not sure.

I am happy to announce that the first milestone was achieved quite succesfully.
In fact, I am quite pleased with myself.
And this feeling has come after a very long time.

For those readers who do not know what I am talking about, I apologise profusely.
I shall continue to remain cryptic about this until the final milestone is achieved

England won the match!!!!! I don’t care how close the match was.
I don’t care how close the Aussies got to winning it.
All I care is that England won it.
In an India vs. England match, I think I would support England.
Cricket in the subcontinent sucks.

I had gone off to bed early last night, resisting the temptation of watching the final few overs of the day.
However, when I woke up in the morning, a message on my cell read “The Pommies won”.

That was a great start to a day that just kept getting better.

Back.
One more day to go before I hit my first milestone.
More tomorrow.

Apart from that, England is playing some really beautiful cricket.

My task is cut out for the next couple of weeks.
If I want to carve out my immediate future, I need to put in a lot of effort in the coming weeks.
I intend to do just that.

After a very long time I have been able to chalk out a goal for my self.
Ladies and gentlemen, it feels good to be specific about your wants and needs.

What I have noticed is that in the past few posts, I have been writing all mixed up and jumbled up sentences.
I hate writing like this, but well, I can’t help it.
I am probably all mixed up and jumbled up myself.

The perfect story:
Dhi Only One gets the perfect things in his life.

The imperfect story:
Dhi Only One gets the perfect things in his life.

The latter is imperfect since its not likely to happen.

The former, if it happens, would be the most perfect thing to happen.
Something’s not perfect in this reasoning.

Too much focus and you get hypnotised and ultimately disillusioned.
Too little focus and you don’t get any work done.
The right amount of focus is not thrilling enough.

I need to focus on what kind of focus I want to focus on.

Yesterday I watched a play called Weeds at the Alliance.
I liked it.

One line that stood out: “Probably he never met any people in life, he just met characters”.

Driving back home after watching the play, after a very long time I was able to get a clear view of the moon.
It was crescent shaped, but the light around the moon was strong enough to make its usually darker regions slightly more visible.

It reminded me of a picture I had recently seen of the earth as viewed from the moon.
The view in front of my eyes looked very much like that, except that here I was viewing the moon from the earth.

The thought that the universe is just a moon’s throw away is quite intriguing.

We are so caught up with our lives on earth that we decline to see the magnificence which lies beyond the boundaries of this planet.

If you don’t call earth earth, and instead call it a planet, it suddenly gets raised to a different pedestal.

When we want to deal with or talk about earthly matters in a micro sense, we call it earth.
When we want to talk about the big picture or cause abstraction, we call it planet.

While I was viewing the moon, the song playing in my car was Fix You by Coldplay.
The music didn’t really blend in with the picture in front of my eyes.
In fact, it wouldn’t really have mattered what music was playing since that view was so majestic that everything else would have failed to have an effect on me.

Ofcourse it was a shortlived picture and I was pretty soon occupied by traffic signals and beaming headlights.
The honeymoon was over before it started.

I believe that most of the technology related companies currently work in a reactive mode.
What this means is that when a defect is reported on our product, we react and work towards fixing it.

The current chain of events involves adopting a software engineering model and completing all its phases before delivering the product.
Once the product is deployed, customers use it and report defects/issues.
We then respond to these issues and try and fix them if applicable.

However, this is an old school of thought.
What should be done is that while you are developing the product, you ought to have a defect prevention mechanism in place.
What I mean by this is that we need to have all major customer usage scenarios thought of well in advance.
The product should then be developed keeping in mind all these scenarios.
This definitely helps in decreasing the issues that might get reported post-delivery.

Additionally, since the percentage of defects decreases at a later stage, the cost savings are enormous for the company.
I think this philosophy need not be restricted to technology companies alone, it can be extended to almost any enterprise.