Bonobos

Bonobos:

Apparently, a very rare species of the ape family, this was thought to be a common chimpanzees untill 1982, when scientists found a difference in the genetic sequence. now there is a swing that these Bonobos are closer to humans than to Chimps.
I actually came across this on bbc's website that said there exist less than 10K of these. I was thinking, that an entire species exists, who's total strenght is less than the number of people working in one city in my office. like the dodo, if things are not done fast, the bonobo will become extinct.

so why is this ofprime importance to me? quite simple, i did chcek some pictures of these things, and i saw that these are so close to humans that they might be the missing link between chimps and humans. This is a matriarchial society, like the egyptians and some of the more advnaced societies in the world, the female bonobo makes decisions.
They breed once every 3 to 4 years, thereby giving the female time to recover and nurse the bonobo till its old enough. That is another line similar to humans ( well, i guess i am leaving out certain areas that have an annoying habit of getting "knocked" up "unknowingly" and not in terms of planning for families) that is why the number of bonobos are reducing as the frequency of births and number of offsprings are a far cry from some other species such as dogs and turtles.

Now come some more interesting facts, the bonobo infant, needs the love of a mother, else it just dies. thats very scary considering, the fact that we assumed the mammals to be of a "lesser" species. there does exist a sanctuary in DR Congo that has 'surrogate" mothers to take care of these infants.

The links that I thought i must talk about,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/africa_bonobos_under_threat/html/1.stm

and the sanctuary that take care of Bonobos:

http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/

NOTE: The above images are not mine. They have been taken from the website http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/

Information overload

Information overload:

As and when i type out, the keys that i press are transformed to ones and zero's and then its pushed to the computer, that displays the keys are they are "supposed" to appear. now, the word document that saves the words that are typed by me is again saved as ones and zeros. the now the whole world, has been converted to ones and zero's. this means that these one's and zero;s are growing faster than the fusion on the sun, and this information explosion is going to hit us so hard, we wont know what hit us?

to us what is a file that is being saved? 45KB that is saved on my 40Giga Byte harddrive. gone are the days that a 128Kbyte harddisk is top of the line, now a days, disk players are coming with more memory than that.

So where is this going?with one document after another being churned out every minuute, the frantic typing of keyboards shows that there is information going into the system to be stored. now this systems then gets put onto the internet, and displayed for the world to see. However, there is a physical aspect to the whole thing.

Where there is a physical dimension, there will be a limit, where there is a limit, there will be a cost.

So where is the information overload heading? Currently, there are the Terra bytes, and so on, and Apple's XSAN claims to be able to handle PetaBytes, thas the size of the GigaByte, raised to the power of five! So where does all this lead to? The cost of storage is skyroketing! with cost per GB gradually declining due to the technology cost time curve, the volume of the storage is increasing at rates of close to 100%. Now with social sites coming and people "connecting" there is a spurt of storage requirement. Take for example "you tube" or "flickr", a site that allows people to upload and share photos. There is a poitn where it costs the user nothing to share, but the company to provide the storage space, and as and when this stoage grows, the costs allocated to the company's storage also grows?

there needs to be a more streamlined thought process on Data & storage dynamics.People should be more concious on where what when how. there are always, multiple copies of files stored in multiple locations. Companies taking
backups are taking the backup of the same data.

There was a report that said 60% of the information on certain systems were accessed last about twelve months ago.

That leaves us with the picture that more than a couple of TB of data is lying blocked. It is not an asset now but a liability, and hence a white elephant.

People need to be taking an active role in making sure that the data that is stored is of use and not something that will not be seen after a while. if there are internet links that have interesting documents, the best thing to do is either save the links on files, or other bookmarking sites like www.del.icio.us can be made use of to save on stoage space by bookmarking the sites.

Product Sabotage & Market Cannibalization

Marketing is war! Be it within the organization or within the market segment or within the market on a generic level. There is a battle of the brands to get mindspace, shelf space, top of the mind recall, impulse purchase points and anything possible to make the consumer lift the product off the shelf and place it at a point of consumption in their personal lives. There are many ways that marketers achieve their desired results, be it in a legitimate way or sometimes borderline cases where the truth is bent so much that it makes any meandering river appear smooth as a well polished piece of wood.

Advertising has been the primary method for product promotion. Over the top advertising, online, offline be in a straight line, or not so straight line, products are advertised throughout the city, street or country. The popularity of the product and the places where all the products are advertised meets the eye at every nook and corner. Things right from pin to pianos are advertised in all media possible: electronic, print, radio television etc. This is the form that has the marketer standing and shouting from the roof tops about discounts and more discounts. Look at the strategy of any of the airlines. They shout and advertise about low airfares, and how these airfares are cheaper than the train fares, but what they don’t add is the fact that “other charges are extra”- namely a surcharge, tax and others. So what is so great about advertising, very specifically, it gives just the highlights of the product. However miniscule the “benefit”, that is built upon. Obviously, that is the logical explanation; you do not stand on rooftops and shout about the defects of the product.

It has been a trend of late, instead of moving from a product appeal to emotional appeal, thereby taking the consumers through the “advertising life cycle”, marketers are attempting to bypass the whole process by releasing emotionally appealing advertising first. This attempt, I feel, seems to be back firing big time, simply because, in advertising, like in kindergarten, consumers need to be hand held till they can stand on their own two feet and decide. There is a popular belief that the advent of the internet has made the process of purchase and the entire purchase cycle shorter, however, in a country like India, where the PC penetration is still a mere 14 per 1000 and the internet penetration being about 5 per 1000 [1] , so how does this contribute to the “increased” awareness? We still have 995 people out of every 1000 still basing their decisions on the advertisements they see on the various media, so I believe there needs to be a serious re-look at the advertising methods being adopted. When a brand connects with the customer on the emotional level, leaving out the first phase of “product enlightenment”, the customers are left vulnerable. Much like Abhimanyu’s attempt to breach the Chakravyuha. He was successful in breaking in, but unable to escape, breathed his last, in a vain attempt to free himself. Similarly, moving advertising onto the emotional level, by by-passing the first few levels, will leave the consumer highly susceptible to counterfeits and “pass-offs”, as the knowledge levels of the product are still in the infancy and the consumer has “bonded” with the product already, the window of opportunity to strike and dupe unsuspecting victims is evident at this stage.

Marketing is more than advertising, according to the marketing text-books, the product, price, promotion and place or the new mantra of creating value, communicating value and delivering value. So the value is created by the product team, this value is then communicated via the marketing team and finally the sales and distribution team delivers the value. However, sometimes value needs to be “destroyed” in order to build value. This means reducing the market share on one product in order to increase the market share of another product. Else, the introduction of flanker brands does just that. The market is captured by the fact that the main brand exists and the flanker brands, basically watered down versions of the main brand, work towards driving out competition. When car companies launch cars to compete in certain segments there is inevitably a spill over to another segment wherein there is competition with pre-existing models. Perfect examples will be high end models in one segment and low end models of the next higher segment.

There is another interesting phenomenon that seems to be getting noticed these days: Product sabotage [2] . Essentially, this means, pushing higher margin products, and keeping the lower margins off the “menu card” so to speak. Sabotaging the product, is also done in order to make the consumer upgrade to the next higher one. One example cited was the IBM printer example, in which IBM inserted chips into the printers in order to slow them down. Starbuck’s example of not featuring the cheaper ones on the menu, because the profitability on those are lower.

So what does all this translate to?

Consumers are becoming more aware that these things happen, more so, the ability of the consumer not to be taken for a ride is definitely reducing because of the internet. Developed nations such as Japan, the US, Europe and others where the PC penetration is high and the internet penetration is even higher, the ability to deliver information directly to the target audience is a growing challenge. This will be a constant battle in order to provide direct campaigns that ultimately resort to a higher convertibility in terms of sales.

[1] http://mungee.org/archives/2005/05/19/india-targets-pc-penetration-of-65-by-2008/
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5274352.stm

My mistaken identity as a Pimp!

Well, I am really pissed. the past few days, my life seems to be getting tormented by morons who dont seem to have the balls to go speak to women, or they just dont seem to have balls, full stop. I really dislike it when people use my name to get to knw others, without my consent. I dont mind it if i personally introduce them, however, when people take liberties such as this, it really ticks me off. today i got a call:
Caller: hey man, how you doing?
ME: good, wassup?

Caller: hey, this friend of ours was saying you know this girl.
Me: yeah, So.

Caller: Well, there is this friend of mine who wants to know which school she studied in.
me: What? (complete disbelief, considering im doing some really important work on news. bbc. co.uk)

Caller: Well, this friend of ours said that you know this girl, and I wanted to know if you can give me that information.
Me: Can i speak to this friend of ours?
Friend: these guys are mad.

Me: duh! huh! they work for SW cos, what DO you expect?

Caller: maan, can you help.
Me: No.
Friend: NO, good!
Me: Tell them if they wnat to know, let them Talk.
Caller: *click*

I mean, gwad! whats up wth the world today! Do I look like a pimp or something? i mean, AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!
two days in a row: something tells me, tomorrow IS NOT going to be different!

Brahadeshwara Temple!

One of the most famous landmarks of Southern India, The brahadeshwara temple is a quentisential display of Cholan Art form. Its sanctum sanctorium (the inner shrine) is built out of a single stone, thereby making it the largest monolithic structure in the world. It is also one of the first sites in southern india to come under the UNESCO banner as a heritage site. The unique structure of the sanctum sanctorium is such that the shadow of the top never falls on the ground. It is also the ONLY temple in the world where the Sanctum Sanctorium is taller than the entrrance. In traditional temple architecture, the entry gopuram is taller than the main gopuram, however, in this temple (and unique only to this temple) it is the other way. Also, this is one of the few temples dedicated to Shiva.

Lovely place. You should visit it if you have the time.

The future of the internet

There seems to be a serious amount of consolidation that appears to be happening over the internet. Initially, there was the client - server architecture that had the world blown with its advanced technology at the back end and "dummy" terminals at the front end. But then, gradually, as people became pressed for time, more and more applications started moving to the desktop, and there were more powerful and faster computers, and the transfer rates within the computer did not keep up with the rates of the network. That means, the network rates were much slower, and it reduced over distance. So the cost of transferring data over longer distances seemed to be increasing. However, the size of data also seems to be on the rise. So, what does one do?

Move everything online. That is on the server, yet running off the client. Perfect example Ajax. Heavy application running off the server and page gets dynamically updated without referring back to the server on the desktop unit itself. Now how’s that for technology.

I feel that IT is going through the same process that the manufacturing companies took. First the bigger is better, then bigger is not better, then better is bigger, and then better is better.

Big companies came in, the dot com boom, the dot com bust, the dot com rise. in processing, things are getting smaller, like manufacturing, batch sizes are decreasing, for optimization on the production line. more and more items are getting intergrated.

the VoIP wars seem to be heating up. VoIP of voice over IP, heralded in a new form of long distance communcation. with the internet speeds icnreasing very fast, packet sizes are becming smaller, and more packed. MPLS, now moves away from ATM and Frame Relay networks, offering high avaiability networks that can run voice and data and have QoS installed on it, now HOW cool is THAT! Skype's tryst with the internet seems to be taking beatings in all quaters. Voice quaility is good on skype, and the only downside was the free skype to skype calls. that means, unless skyps esits, its paid calls for a skype out connection. The gizmo project came out with something "better" you could call your contacts off-net numbers for free. but that is so cunning that it does not seem to work for me, even though I have fulfilled all the pre-requsit requirements. Very deceptive! well, the Behemoth of the internet google is slowly making inroads. I fear that soon, they will rule the internet, an if they decide to start charing for their service, god help the others!!! :)
anyways, skype's "unique" peer-to-peer protocol, which suspect was improved on from Kazaa days is not the usual SIP/SIMPLE protocol that is deployed by gizmo. It has its own propritary protocol that it is riding on. Now with google getting into the instant communcation space using jabber, i seriously think things are going to get heated up. the enterprise space seems to be dominated currently with microsofts, ibms and other large players. OpenSource seems to have taken a backseat, mainly due to support issues. Now, that I am sure will be something that is slowly growing out. The Ubuntu forum seems to be the a brillinat place to be able to get information, with the pool of knowledge of users giving rookies a fair taste of seemless intergration. Google's promotion of Jabber, a protocol used for presence and IM. i first used it on apple talk. found it so cool. if you log into you gmail, the same thing pops up and shows you if your contact is online or not. imagine now moving this to a mobile unit. if I look at my mobile phone, I can see if my friends are online, and send then an sms/ instant message.

I think the entire shift is towards mobility, information and speed. Wimax has been deployed, now with a wimax enabled phone, you can log into your phone, surf, and make calls, voip as well as via the cellular network.

wimax will have the ability to stream video and audio with bandwidths of Mbps as opposed to slower than 33.6 Kbps on a gprs.

the future is wide open!

and with time!

I was bored! well, not bored, just did not feel like processing work. so i decided to let my creativity take flight! and this is what i got. I must warn you, i have shite loads of work, but then sometimes, you just dont feel like doing squab! and this is what i felt before indulging in this. I do like the outcome.... someday i might just show you what the orignizal picture is. i saw some nice clouds from my desk, and clicked it with my phone. then transfered this to my desktop and edited. I wonder, five years ago, this would not have been possible. gwash! technology is here to stay!

Places I want to visit

1. Bhutan
2. Cairo - Egypt
3. Tulavu
4. Norfolk Islands
5. Timbuctoo
6. Maldives : Lhaviyani Atoll, Maldives : Bright white beaches, lush vegetation and high-end resorts conspire to make the Maldives, a cluster of remote islands in the Indian Ocean, one of the sexiest destinations in the world. Lhaviyani Atoll, known for its abundance of sea creatures, is also home to Kuredu Island Resort. On the northern reef of the atoll, Kuredo offers thatched-roof bungalows and private villas. Room rates start at $100 per night over the summer and include breakfast. http://www.kuredu.com/
7.Lofoten Islands, Norway, Ranked as the 2nd most beautiful island. http://www.lofoten.info/infoguide/en/

Marketing Practice

Marketing Practice

Random thoughts on IT

Every morning, I board a bus to come to work. the bus service is operated by the company i work for. I get picked up at an early hour, and its a good one hour ride to work. similarly, the return journey in the evening is a grand hour and a half long. towards my drop off point, i am one of the few people left.

the morning pickup, inevitably has me thinking about life. the pickup point is the local bus stop. The point where the public transport system and the private transpot system form a union. the Metropolitant transport buses come, people run about, the young the old, the frail the healthy, men, women children, grandchildren, all come to board the bus. the come, they stand, they see, they run, they smoke, they laugh. these emotions, carried on through the time, waiting and watching. Watching if its their bus that comes, talking on cell phones, talking to friends, just thinking. as their transport approaches, they run, desperate to get onto this one, else they have to wait longer. the thought of getting the next bus that might be even more crowded. does not appease the person waiting.

then comes the IT busses, they stop, people get on. more than sufficuent space to sit. people in the busses look down on the bus stop. looking down literally and figurativly, you wonder, what special thing did we do to deserve this treatment? are we, the ones in IT really all that great to look down on people? are we really helping the industry or are we increasing the CPI due to the extravegant spending.

An It employee with stock options gets so much money that he/she does not know what to do? where in this earth would you have thoght that at some point you would be sitting on stock thats worth in the million range! i mean, get a grip. so this is a classic case of big bigger biggest fish.

office politics!

There is a rather long series of articles on office politics on a news website. in each article the format is standard, a case, and then dissection by psychologits (shrinks). well, what do shrinks know? in a larger scale of things, i will give them credit to be able to see it from a macro level, but ground reality is simple. water does not flow the way you want it to flow. it has its own mind. human beings are just the same. theories of constipation, procastination and squalor will not apply to all in situations when there are lots at stake. at best, there could be a general direction hat human beings go to, but then this is a rather "technical" explanation. a depressed person might kill himself or mightnot kill himself. now hows that for an explanation? rather generic. well, yes. but as they say, there is still a lot that needs to be discoverd about the human mind, and typecasting a person is getting that no where.
office politics like with politics everywhere, on the playing field, in the classrooms, everywhere are the same. the protagonist is the boss, and the pawns are the helpless people being outdone. but, is it possible to be able to survive in a highly politically charged environment, and yet remain neutral? well, i belive it is so. staying out is harder. people prefer to take sides, and the side they take, can be either one sided or two sided.

practicing the art of staying out, should be spread as the gospel truth!

adsense - makes no sense!

in the midst of a rather serious article on office politics.... "Learn Buddhism - Help yourself and others be healthy in body mind & spirit. Distance ed - Ads by Google"

kinda added a rather humurous touch to the article! :)

are we trapped?

there are many times when i go into these "phases. i wonder many a times, as to what are we doing. here, there, everywhere. i wonder why i come to work, and what am i doing here. everyday after lunch, i stand at the canteen window, and from there it is an unristricted view of just open spaces.(my office is situated far outside the city). i do think it should be justified to make any call to my office a long distance call, its rather inhuman to travel so far to work. anywyas, when i see these large tracts of land i wonder, if we are doing all we can. i wonder i am doing what i can do best? am i doing what i like? what brings me here? its so wonderful to see open land, green, with vehicles in the distance, trawling up and down, like little ants. motorcycles, auto's, very few in number, jus floating through. traveliing at what seems to be its own pace. that coupled with a blue sky, washed fresh with a few clouds. aaaah.. you wonder... why, why am i standing behind this glass and looking out? why am i not out there? and why am I NOT creating a path where others can follow?

so, are we trapped? by the shackles of society. society that does not allow us to do what we want to do, a society where it is black and white, right and wrong, traditions followed blindly without question. questions that make one wonder where this is headnig or why it has to be done in a way. we take things and accept them as we are, but what we fail to see is the underlying reason or truth beind it.

look at advertsing. no one sells coffee anymore. everyone sells either the experience of drinking coffee or the emotion of drinking a coffee. so what abuot the good ol cup of caffeine? the much needed boost to push you through the day. marketeers push to differentiate the product from the competition. so, at the end of the day, the coffee in the cup that you drink is the same, but the way they sell it to you is different, else why would they try and "differentiate" their products to the customer? the customer, (me in this case) is intelligent enough to be able to know the differnence between the coffee. but no, the marketing person needs to "think up" a differentiator. why?

Microsoft, Nortel join on unified comms - Microsofts tryst with unified communications.

Microsofts tryst with unified communications. Unified communications is a platform on which all forms of commnication, voice, im etc etc are combined to a single "dashboard" where people find it easier to use. in the sense tht from a sort of "IM" screen, one can send out IM, phone calls, audio and video confrences- share files & Applications and on the whole, a host of other productivity enhancement tools right to the desktop. So how does this help?
this means that using a single screen, i can connct, disconnect and get work done in order to "improve" my productivity and ability to respond faster and quicker.
But whats MS got to do with it? well, in my opinion, almost everything. they heralded in the popluarity of the instant messaging platform with their msn messenger that was literly forced down everyones throat, in a way its a good thing. and in a way, its well, force feeding. i am sure people will say there have been instatn messaging solutions before msn popularized it across the internet, like ibm's lotus sametime and all, but the popularity of this has definitl surparsed.
MS now decided to foray into enterprise wide IM, and then said, "hey, i think i can start charging for this" casue after all, its my client. so they decide to charge for it. which in my mind is THE mos ridicilous step they can take as i would not want to pay for something that the whole world uses for free!
now they get wiser. in 2004 -2005 gartner showed MS getting its hiney kicked by Siemens, Nortel etc etc, so they decide to do what MS is best at, sink in tonnes of money and bring out a crappy product that serves no better purpose that what its already serving now, and i hve to pay more for it. gwahs, with MS you really need to rename them buggers to MonopolySoft and not Microsoft.

the state of affairs!

When you read the news today, where is all the happiness going? where are all the good things going? you see only violence, hatred, war? why is the world slipping into the dark ages, where its not becomming mroe than an eye for an eye, but more like a body for your eye, and outright war for my eye.

is it fair on what the state of the world is?

review: second in Command

Well, i was sitting down to watch the dvd of "16 Blocks" a bruce willis flick, which i found rather interesting, (will write about that laterz) and i saw the tralier of "Second in Command" a Jeane Claude Vandame flick. the trailer as usual made it look awesome. so in my ensuing search, i went forth and conquored. I got myself a copy of the movie. Man! that was simply the worst decision of my life!
the movie sucked to the core.
Vandame's movies have been going downhill, and continue to go down way beyond repair. the movie tends to glorify the millitary and the fact that its a low budget flick is evident from the poor sets, and bad CGI / SFX.
gwash, even te students of NYUFI could have done a better job!
well, the story is, ... hmm.. how do i put it, non existant. the usual, JCV comes, glorified entry, hype, sex, guns and more guns! here you have a tank shooting at a building and the marks are left on the wall like a 50MM AA gun. its rather sad.
The apache's and sikorskys in the film are shown to have a range of 6Hrs, WAHAT? three hours, hovering time, and a return journey.
its painful to see JCVs flicks go down like this. after movies like UniSol, kickboxer, the quest, and hard target, atleast they were genuine action flicks, wher JCV had some serious kick ass action scenes. His karate is rather good, and it needs to be showcsed, here there was nothing !!! phat!
still trying to recover fom it!

Review: Apocalpsye now!

I first read about the movie apocalpsye now when i was reading about the vietnam war in Wikipedia. Now, i figured i must get my hand on this movie and watch it.
I finally did manage to get my hands on this movie, and Am I glad i did that.
firstly with a stellar cast of Marlon brando, marting sheen and harrison ford, put together by cappola's screenplay and direction, there is nothing else on can ask for.

i guess i can say that it did spook me out a bit, cuase in the middle of the night i woke up seeing the faces of the tribals all over, thinking they have machine guns and are going to open fire once chef and i ride out in the boat.

the way the movie flows keeps you in your seat, along with the psychodelic music of the doors goes well with the abstract theme.

initially when you start the movie you wonder, whats going to be happening, the grim portrayal of the vietnam war, and like willard says, the more like home they try and make it, the more they miss it. mere teens on the boat, in the war everywhere.

sometimes it makes you wonder what is it that pushed them into going to war? i read somewhere that it was the fact that between germany and japan the allies had no base, and this would have been ideal for it was close to both countries.

the movie brutally portrays the determination of the us soldiers to stay alive, and the vietnamese to push them out by any means, the scene that captures the latter is the one at the school yard, where the little girl throws in the grenade into the huey. and the former is when they are making a surprise inspection of the boat. like willard says "first we cut them up with a machine gun, and then give them bandaid". rather true.

i foudn the film to portray a mans confusion in life, as he procedes with what he is supposed to be doing, and when you get there, you wonder if you should be doing what you came to do or do in your judgement what is right? but then, agian, what are you there to do in the first place? you are sent in to do someone elses dirty work, you do it no matter how dirty it is? does this prove your loyalty? or does it prove that you have no say in the matter. a similar thought stream eminated from X3, but will talk about that later.

Martin sheens charecterization is great, with a cold cruel killer. like he says, i went back, but i realised my mind was still here. will one ever be the same after a war?
Brandos portrayal of Kurtz is awesome. The buildup of the charecter, nd the final display when he cuts off "chefs" head. cold, cruel. but then when you hear him talking about the vietnamese who cut off their innoculated childrens arms, then you realise, Krutz will do anything to get the job done, and below the exterior, he is still human.

i guess its some of these questions that plague all of us through out our lives.

Review: Pasta Fresca Da Salvatore

In the search for good italian food, one apparently draws up to Pasta Fresca.
Recently opened up in Chennai, at 32 Thirumallai pillai road, (opposite vidyodaya school, TNagar), i was blown away with a lot of things there.

there were four of us, one chef, one self confessed pasta lover, and two foodies. We decided to embark and try out the new "Italian" joint.
There was a strong professional touch to the entire thing, the Head chef is Italian, and the restaurant chain is an international one headquartered in Singapore. Their website is http://www.pastafresca.com/

We had starters, a main course, dessert and expresso (apparently, it is a tradition to close dinner with an expresso). the bill worked out to about Rs 350 per head, which i felt was well worth it due to the wonderful food, excellent ambiance and brilliant service.

The starters was this bread with cheese on top, it had a very italian name, which for the life of me i cannot recollect, but it was brilliant, had authentic olive oil, and cheese. There was a bread basket with an assortment of nice hot bread that was on our table, and the water glass never became empty.

Ratings are on a scale of 1 - 10, where 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.

Ambiance : 9
the quaint interior had just the right lighting and the decor was adequate. There was however the irritating "pesto-flash" cracking away in the room, with a UV glow filling it. the kitchen was an open kitchen, yet it provided the privacy to it. The excellent cutlery and the plates were thoguht right thru.

Food: 10.
the freshest vegetables, most authentic food, and generous quantities would definitely tip the scale in favor of Pasta Fresca. I ordered a fried chicken of sorts, there was a pasta, a pizza and a non vegetarian platter that was ordered. These portions were generous, and the food tasted authentic. the pizza was flat, hand spun and brilliant. The meat was well cooked and fried just right. The pasta was delicious, they also have their own pasta making machine, that rolls and cuts it how ever they want it, as Spaghetti, Fusilli, Rotini etc. the desert was mind blowing, had souffle that was not made out of egg white but out of alomond milk. this apparently has the same properties of thickening as egg white.
The food was also very well presented, with care being given to the kind of vegetables being placed on the plate that go with the dish.

Price : 7 - 8
The price was a bit on the high side. there was the avg. price of the dish being in the range of 250-350, but this is a substantial dish and does not require anything else to go with it.

Overall: 9
with all the factors combined, i felt this was a rather authentic italian experience. the music, layout, and ambiance was nice. the restrooms were clean and functional, and the kitchen was well laid out, with high stress on hygine. i did get to go into the kitchen as we were the last people to be there (they were closing by the time we finished dinner) and i was quite impressed with many things.

Do go there if you find the time, and want to eat some nice food! we had a nice chat with the head chef Carlo who is italian.

why are we here?

in the relm of life, there exist certain instances that we invariably think. stop to think. stop. think. what makes us real? what is the line that defines a person who is artistic and one who is autistic? what drives a person mad? what makes them think?

why are we here? why is it that we go about living? existing in the quantum of energy, abundance of natural resources, yet, nothing is reachable. all is kept under lock and key!

i guess today is one of those days when i am just feeling really low. the low points in my life! lowlife!
:(

well, c'est la vie!

what can i say.....?

Ø Regular naps prevent old age... especially if you take them while driving.

Ø Having one child makes you a parent; having two you are a referee.

Ø Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right and the other is the husband!

Ø I believe we should all pay our tax with a smile. I tried - but they wanted cash

Ø A child's greatest period of growth is the month after you've purchased new school uniforms.

Ø Don't feel bad. A lot of people have no talent

Ø Don't marry the person you want to live with, marry the one you cannot live without,,, but whatever you do, you'll regret it later.

Ø You can't buy love . . . but you pay heavily for it

Ø Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Ø Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired

Ø Marriage is give and take. You'd better give it to her or she'll take it anyway.

Ø My wife and I always compromise. I admit I'm wrong and she agrees with me.

Ø Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others.

Ø Ladies first. Pretty ladies sooner.

Ø A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

Ø You're getting old when you enjoy remembering things more than doing them.

Ø It doesn't matter how often a married man changes his job, he still ends up with the same boss.

Ø Real friends are the ones who survive transitions between address books.

Ø Saving is the best thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.

Ø Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something

Ø They call our language the mother tongue because the father seldom gets to speak!