First few days back in India. With memories of Japan tending to settle down and getting ready to go behind the layers of the latest of the monotony of life back home. I have to dust off and oil all the systems that make up my little solitary home at Mumbai.
The television offers a lot of nonsense : the intelligent people in media have long realized that nonsense is far more interesting than the reality.Movies are getting better, but I have no appetite to watch one in a theater. So I listen to some Dire Straits songs : frozen in time and as fresh as it was a few days back.My phone at home has died and mobile is lost. With everyone chatting away on a mobile in Mumbai, I find it a great luxury to talk to anyone anytime using that little brick called a mobile phone. Going back to mobile-less prehistoric age is not easy I guess.
After struggling with Japanese, its a great relief to find everyone talking in my language.. Hindi .. and officially in English. Its not a struggle anymore to communicate a word or two . The trouble is that I will have to (again) listen to people who communicate more than necessary. This is one thing I was spared of in Japan.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Back to India
The TV interview in Japan was telecasted as expected, and I got a footage of it recorded with the help of Lee - my Chinese friend in Japan. But inevitably, I am back to India, and am finding a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes with my blogs. Its time to reflect I guess.
Japan is a great country, with its people so disciplined and understated. 'Order' is the theme in that beautiful country. I land in Mumbai and the theme changes from 'order' to 'chaos' . But the chaos here is more familiar than the order in Japan. I wonder why do I like this chaos ? I hear a consistent chirpy voice of a newly married girl reading aloud all the boards in the airport to her mildly embarrassed but still doting husband- that is something I could find only here. Japanese women never talk like this , they are too silent and compliant. And i find American women too harsh on my ears. India is at the middle. As Budddha says, "Take the middle path", I guess its the middle path which makes India so unique. It falls right in the middle of wild west and mild east.
India has too many voices, too many peoples. Somebody grown up on India's diversified diet would find other places insipid. That's why you would find an Indian travelling to a foreign land almost always with a supply of a few days of Indian food.
There is simply too much to experience in India. "India is an assault on the senses" says a popular guide to India ."Sweet assault", I mutter as I load my baggage in a rag-tag taxi taking me back home.
Japan is a great country, with its people so disciplined and understated. 'Order' is the theme in that beautiful country. I land in Mumbai and the theme changes from 'order' to 'chaos' . But the chaos here is more familiar than the order in Japan. I wonder why do I like this chaos ? I hear a consistent chirpy voice of a newly married girl reading aloud all the boards in the airport to her mildly embarrassed but still doting husband- that is something I could find only here. Japanese women never talk like this , they are too silent and compliant. And i find American women too harsh on my ears. India is at the middle. As Budddha says, "Take the middle path", I guess its the middle path which makes India so unique. It falls right in the middle of wild west and mild east.
India has too many voices, too many peoples. Somebody grown up on India's diversified diet would find other places insipid. That's why you would find an Indian travelling to a foreign land almost always with a supply of a few days of Indian food.
There is simply too much to experience in India. "India is an assault on the senses" says a popular guide to India ."Sweet assault", I mutter as I load my baggage in a rag-tag taxi taking me back home.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
My First TV Interview for Japan TV
"I have been here for a 13 years and nobody noticed, you are here for last 3 weeks and you are going to be on Japan's national TV already?? I can't believe it !" That was the reaction when I told my American client in Japan that I was interviewed while coming to work by NHK (Japan's public broadcaster). The life is obviously unfair.
So I started for office early morning as usual from my Nishi-Kasai apartment . I dropped some garbage in 3 different trash cans as the Japanese do and pressed the iPod's 'play'. A few steps later I found a girl, a cameraman and a sound assistant with a microphone almost lurking behind some invisible hideout, crouching for a prey . They were silently waiting for something or somebody. I looked on curiously and then turned and started waiting for walk sign to cross the road. "Hello" I heard from behind, and found that the crouching tigers have found the hidden dragon, i.e. me!.
The girl started "We are making a program on the Indian proficiency in Mathematics... can we ask some questions?" . "So I am being interviewed", I thought, I felt exited with the prospect and at the same wondered what they would ask . I tried to summon all my forgotten Maths knowledge thinking that I might finally spoil India's name today . Will they ask me about the differential calculus or some Fourier transform ?? I wondered.
My thought train was halted by a microphone which was thrust towards me and a cameraman who seemed be already in the process of filming the events. But the girl reporter was the most merciful who showed me a cardboard with a problem and said "I will show you some problems, could you please answer them?", I was relieved when I looked at the cardboard, it was something like 4 *6.I answered it . Then another card with a similar easy problem, I answered it correctly too. Then she showed me 25 *25, it took no time to answer that it is 625 ( square of 25). Two more such questions were answered with increasing difficulty. I received each further question with some trepidation which I had almost forgotten since the school days. Then she showed me her most difficult question : 19*23. A few seconds later I could reply that it was 437. She seemed satisfied and then asked me to show how I arrived at the answer so quickly. The cameraman focused once on me and then on the card where I started revealing the secret of how I arrived at the answer. The calculation is : 23*19= (23*20)-23 = 437.
Then she asked me to hold the cardboard and look at the camera for 5 seconds, I stood with a smiling face . I was thinking all the things that could have gone wrong but didn't. I was smiling because I had just finished my life's first interview in Japan. The myth of Indian mathematical proficiency was alive for another day, and it was done by just showing that I could do some primary school multiplication.. very generous of the reporter.
This interview is hopefully going to be broadcasted tomorrow in one of the two channels of Japan's national TV. I am already a micro-nano celebrity :) .. in Japan.
So I started for office early morning as usual from my Nishi-Kasai apartment . I dropped some garbage in 3 different trash cans as the Japanese do and pressed the iPod's 'play'. A few steps later I found a girl, a cameraman and a sound assistant with a microphone almost lurking behind some invisible hideout, crouching for a prey . They were silently waiting for something or somebody. I looked on curiously and then turned and started waiting for walk sign to cross the road. "Hello" I heard from behind, and found that the crouching tigers have found the hidden dragon, i.e. me!.
The girl started "We are making a program on the Indian proficiency in Mathematics... can we ask some questions?" . "So I am being interviewed", I thought, I felt exited with the prospect and at the same wondered what they would ask . I tried to summon all my forgotten Maths knowledge thinking that I might finally spoil India's name today . Will they ask me about the differential calculus or some Fourier transform ?? I wondered.
My thought train was halted by a microphone which was thrust towards me and a cameraman who seemed be already in the process of filming the events. But the girl reporter was the most merciful who showed me a cardboard with a problem and said "I will show you some problems, could you please answer them?", I was relieved when I looked at the cardboard, it was something like 4 *6.I answered it . Then another card with a similar easy problem, I answered it correctly too. Then she showed me 25 *25, it took no time to answer that it is 625 ( square of 25). Two more such questions were answered with increasing difficulty. I received each further question with some trepidation which I had almost forgotten since the school days. Then she showed me her most difficult question : 19*23. A few seconds later I could reply that it was 437. She seemed satisfied and then asked me to show how I arrived at the answer so quickly. The cameraman focused once on me and then on the card where I started revealing the secret of how I arrived at the answer. The calculation is : 23*19= (23*20)-23 = 437.
Then she asked me to hold the cardboard and look at the camera for 5 seconds, I stood with a smiling face . I was thinking all the things that could have gone wrong but didn't. I was smiling because I had just finished my life's first interview in Japan. The myth of Indian mathematical proficiency was alive for another day, and it was done by just showing that I could do some primary school multiplication.. very generous of the reporter.
This interview is hopefully going to be broadcasted tomorrow in one of the two channels of Japan's national TV. I am already a micro-nano celebrity :) .. in Japan.
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