Code Scavenger’s Chronicles

Strawberries and Cream.

Oh yeah, that was what I felt like having today; that very english summer delicacy. But alas, neither do we have strawberries lying around nor cream. Driven by my desire to sample this delectable delicacy (and not finding it close at hand), I ended up searching (yes, yes – google search – the bane of this generation and others to come) for it; and voila, stumbled upon some prose – the kind of which we don’t come across anymore.

It’s from the “The Expedition of Humphry Clinker” by Tobias Smollett; describing, strawberries and cream – he wrote:

"I need not dwell upon the pallid, contaminated mash, which they call strawberries; soiled and tossed by greasy paws through twenty baskets crusted with dirt; and then presented with the worst milk, thickened with the worst flour, into a bad likeness of cream: but the milk itself should not pass unanalysed, the produce of faded cabbage-leaves and sour draff, lowered with hot water, frothed with bruised snails, carried through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings, discharged from doors and windows, spittle, snot, and tobacco-quids from foot passengers, overflowings from mud carts, spatterings from coach wheels, dirt and trash chucked into it by roguish boys for the joke’s sake, the spewings of infants, who have slabbered in the tin-measure, which is thrown back in that condition among the milk, for the benefit of the next customer; and, finally, the vermin that drops from the rags of the nasty drab that vends this precious mixture, under the respectable denomination of milk-maid."


Arrrgh! There goes my appetite for the err *delicacy*.

Better stick to tea and biscuits….for today.

Here are the links to Arun Shourie’s piece on political parties…worth reading in its entirety.

On the way down
The end of ideology
How the party withers away
Ring out the old ring in the new

PS: Nothing like having a place to put up a page, even if you do that once in 6 months

Read this on Haaretz.

Reprinted here (partly, coz I believe the gist is what matters), as always without any permission sought; nor given.

Moses was commanded to lead Israel from Egypt, but were he alive today, he likely wouldn’t pass the ratings test – an old man who began his leadership career at age 80, “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue” as Exodus tells us, humble as any man alive. Not exactly the traits that advance a public servant nowadays.

“Suddenly an idea erupted within me to write a biblical drama called ‘Moses’,” dreamed the state’s visionary, Theodore (Benjamin Ze’ev) Herzl. “A great, powerful figure, filled with the strength of life and the spirit of humor… He is the leader because he does not want to be it. Everything is swayed to his will because he has no personal desires. His aim is not the fulfillment, but the wandering.”

A leader who didn’t want to lead, who saw himself as someone undeserving for the mission at hand, is certainly unfit to hold a leadership post in this day and age.

“Who am I,” he asked God, “that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

And yet if the timetables were turned, who of this generation’s leaders would have been fit to lead the Israelites through the wilderness for 40 years?

How many could, like Moses, treat their brothers with patience, and without reporters and cameras, direct the lines of needy people growing month to month for today’s “bread of poverty” – as matzah is described in Scripture – or visit the factories sending home tens of thousands of workers?

How many of today’s leaders purified their hearts as shepherds for 40 years before seizing the staff of leadership? Who would dare shatter the tablets while the entire nation danced around the Golden Calf?

I doubt if any of the filth that passes as leaders today close to home are capable of shattering the tablets. They’re too busy dancing around the Golden Calf.

The circus is in town; Always been here – Guess it never left.

Usually, I am thick-skinned enough to weather such stuff without a whimper; but this one unsettled me a little – kind of sweet n sour though.

Incidence – Police verification for passport renewal. Yes, you read it right – renewal. Not a fresh application – just renewal; your ordinary run of the mill renewal – all in a day’s work; some cursory questions, a little flipping through the documents – or so I thought.

You know the question I got asked most? What do you do? Answer:- I write software (Well, I didn’t know how to make him understand what I do; I dont understand it myself sometime ). You know the next question I got asked? What do you do? Same answer. You know the immediate next question I got asked? What do you..Oh, dang it. I could go on and on about this. Same bloody question – 5 times in a row! Got the picture?

Are these people for real? Hilarious? Yes, it was; at the start.

And then it happened with all the other seemingly trivial questions. Repeatedly asking me as to how long I had stayed in Pune, where was I born, where did I work, how come there only two guys in the company in India, how long the company had been in India (as if I am supposed to know that; me just being a engineer and all) etc etc.

Thank my stars – my dad has always been a stickler for documentation and I had the right ones to shove in; whenever they asked for one. And as is customary around here; preparing affidavits whenever something could not be backed up with documentation.

But it makes me wonder; whether my profile has anything to do with it. Last name (red flag), Techie (red flag), changing jobs too frequently (nah, thats just a red flag for future employers), changing locations too frequently (red flag), came back from US post 9/11 (red flag), in-laws in Phillippines (surely a red flag in these troubled times)…

Who knew?

A silver lining though – probably my first interaction with police of any kind where they didn’t ask for moolah; and I didn’t shell out any.

Miracles happen – even in India!

Update: They took two months though! Something had to give.

A friend introduced me to scratch today..wrote a trivial program with it…A plane falling down on an unassuming unaware kitty, with sound effects of course…My kid loves it and I had fun writing it…if I can use the term ‘write’…its more like playing with lego. Very nice medium for teaching programming to kids!

Of course, its all based on squeak; another horse from the time-ravaged smalltalk stables – a language which offers among other jaw-dropping features – which methods (yes, method not classes) to package in a deployment unit, which version of classes (and methods) to deploy, add behavior to any class (yes, any..nothing is sacred); and this one is fun – bend the smalltalk grammer itself to your iron will.

Ah, one wonders what variation of man’s unfathomable greed led to the sad demise of such a wonderful thing – and of course led to the ugliness I have to deal with day in and day out.

Java.

Programming could have been so much more fun!

Hard to write about stuff when you are neck deep finding performance bottlenecks and thinking up algos to fix them.

Catching up on some hard-earned sleep…really need it….be back in a while.

ta.

PS – Its been a long while since I had two virgin books sitting on my bookshelf for 2 weeks.

In Thud, the dwarf Bashfullsson says “I need no axe to be a dwarf, Nor do I need to hate trolls. What kind of creature defines itself by hatred?”.

Don’t we?

Got some full time WFH feelers recently. Trying to figure out what it would mean:-
> Less CYA
> More coding
> Less time spent on conflict resolution
> Nil face-time with manager-types
> No drinking coffee in empty conf rooms

And I’m not even considering all the time left for my family yet. Sounds like music to my ears.

Now, if only I can land one of those.