Tom and Jerry

Having successfully avoided Tom and Jerry through my childhood, I'm now consuming it at a rate that feels like 90 minutes per day. My impressions:

- The music is superb, and under-appreciated

- I'm surprised that my children enjoy this. They generally dislike violence on TV...even in Disney films. The probably get that the violence here is stylized

- I'm surprised the violence, stylized or otherwise, hasn't worried the censors or the morality police

- I find it a lot easier to identify with the predator (Tom) than the prey. That might be part of the reason I don't enjoy the violence

Attack of the Thermo-Nuclear Mosquitoes

Marathon training is really not happening here in Madras. I started off training outdoors. The heat and humidity sound manageable: 22C and 88% humidity. Just did not work out. I was dripping sweat, struggling to concentrate and was ready to drop after just 2 miles.

Have given up on road running for now. Did 5 comfortable and satisfying miles on the treadmill in an air-conditioned gym this morning.

The first unexpected hazard is the mosquitoes. They hang in the air in swarms thick enough to be opaque. They are able to bite even under my t-shirt.

The more interesting unexpected hazard is the culture. Road running is so counter-cultural in Madras, I almost expect the scrawny urchins loitering around on the pavements to break out into hoots or whistles as I pass. I was running in the Boat Club area partly because the roads are clean enough for a run to be possible, but also because it is an unambiguously posh area. Urchins just seem less likely to hoot at rich people in posh surroundings. The only other people running on the Boat Club roads were white. It's weird being a foreigner in my home town.

What are Moonballs?

This is my 50th post. It is time to clarify what moonballs are. Or more specifically, what moonballs are not. 

I have been surprised to learn that moonballs sounds risque to some of my peers and potential readers. While my imagination is piqued, I must confess that as a married, heterosexual, 37 year old banker of middle class south Indian antecedents, I am completely ignorant of the risque connotations of moonballs.

Rather than coarsen the tone of this blog by speculating on the possible risque connotations, here are a bunch of other possible meanings of moonballs: 

1. A nick name for idlis. A soft, white, round and iconic Tamil staple food 

2. A nick name for rossogollas. A soft, white, round, very sweet and iconic Bengali staple food 

3. Collector's item golf balls made from rocks that were brought back from the moon by Neil Armstrong 

4. Balls made of flubber, the material invented by The Absent Minded Professor in the film of the same name 

5. Formal dance balls (think Cinderella) held by the light of the harvest moon 

6. Brand name for a green cheese. This is a sphere of synthetically coloured cheddar cheese about the size and shape of a bulls-eye which is being test marketed as a healthy snack for American children 

7. Special white bowling balls used in the final, decisive round of professional bowling matches if the previous rounds fail to identify a clear winner 

8. A very high and slow lob played in tennis. As in: hit the ball all the way up to the moon. This is a cunning shot ideally played on floodlit courts. The ball is hard to spot if it goes above the height of the floodlights 

 9. Balls bowled by Mr Moon. Which translates to Mr Chandra in Sanskrit or Hindi. Planet Earth translates to Planet Prithvi 

10. A cricket delivery mastered by Jeremy Snape, captain of the Leicestershire Foxes and occasional England one-day specialist. A spinner's slower ball. Typically an offbreak bowled so slowly that the batter tends to mistime his hoick and holes out to mid wicket.

Cultural learnings of Eng-a-land for make benefit glorious nation of Hindustan

Kevin, our electrician/ plumber/ handyman came in over the weekend to help assemble the kid's bunk bed. He's a genial, happy and very helpful guy we've worked with a lot. We offered him tea or coffee. He turned us down...because he drinks only freshly ground coffee. How posh is that!

Tony Blair once famously claimed that "we're all middle class now." Is he right?

The Guardian survey below shows that the children of the old upper classes (think Bertie Wooster and colonial colonels) now describe themselves as middle class. Truck drivers and electricians want the best schools for their children and drink tall skinny lattes while referring to themselves as working class.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2195560,00.html

My take is that there is a real convergence of identities and values happening. Slowly. It's being driven by the emergent service economy. The fascinating twist is that the old notions of class are still self-defining, even while this convergence is happening.

My clearest window into English culture is Watching the English, by Kate Fox. The author is an English anthropologist, who has an insider's right to make un-PC anthropological observations that can never really be made about Amazonian tribes.

One of her central theses is that every English person comes with a built in radar that automatically switches on during social interactions to plot the other person onto a fine, richly layered social hierarchy. The English are uncomfortable with foreigners because this radar no longer works.

Will that class-radar get slowly ground to dust by the service economy? Hard to say. My money is on the service economy winning.

Flight 714

Just watched my favourite Tintin, Flight 714, on DVD.

It works. It was fun. But it doesn't work as well as the comic. Mainly because the DVD goes by too fast to soak up and enjoy the details.

I remember the comic frame when Professor Calculus demonstrates a "savate" move in Jakarta airport. I've spent hours laughing at the hundreds of things that flood out of his pockets. That frame lasts just a fraction of a second on the DVD. There's another frame when Captain Haddock pours some liquid (mineral water?) into a potted plant at the airport...and the plant wilts. I didn't spot that at all in the DVD.

A less visually rich comic, like Peanuts, probably works better on DVD than Tintin.

Blood Diamond, Syriana. The Economics

To me (and fellow geeks like me), the economic truth Blood Diamond and Syriana illustrate are as fascinating as the movies themselves.

Resource based economies tend to breed truly horrible social and political systems. Because to get rich and powerful in resource economies, all one needs to do is control the resource in question. The tycoon/ mogul/ sheikh/ oligarch who owns the oil well is the boss. The rest of society is all about getting on the gravy train that this tycoon/ mogul/ sheikh/ oligarch maintains. There is no reason (or room) to create or cooperate.

This is often phrased as "why is Bihar the poorest state in India despite it's wealth of natural resources?" This question is almost precisely invested. The real question is "how to save Bihar from it's wealth of natural resources?".

It's a hard question. One thing we do know is that nationalizing the resources does not work. Just look at Bihar or Putin's Russia for proof.

Blood Diamond, Syriana. The Movies

Watched (and enjoyed) a couple of recent Hollywood movies with overtly political themes.

Blood Diamond is about the horrible things that happen while mining diamonds in war-torn Africa. It features a superb performance by Leonardo DiCaprio as the Rhodesian mercenary: Danny Archer. It left a phrase embedded in my mind: TIA - This Is Africa. It had a happy ending.

Syriana is about the horrible things that happen while mining oil in the war-torn Middle East. It features a superb performance by Matt Damon as an American investment banker. It left a couple of gritty montages embedded in my mind: a lush, luxurious, sensuous party in Tehran, Pakistani migrant workers so bored that they would walk through the desert for entertainment. It had an ambigious and possibly tragic ending...and probably suffered in the box office for it.

Both movies have a ring of truth. Horrible things happen in oil and diamond mining.