Variety is the spice of life

Repeating the correct pattern Solving a simple equation Identifying number of buses or boats or signal posts Self-authorizing  Can you guess the correlation between the 4 points mentioned above. Having already encountered one of them or the other daily, you might’ve realized already that these are nothing, but system checks to verify if the end user is a human being or not. There used to be a measure called as “Turing test” which evaluated a machine’s capability to replicate human responses. Key point being the evaluator was human, who must figure out which of his conversation partner was a system and which one is human. The results from those tests didn’t just border on right or wrong response but how closely the responses mimicked human behavior. Ironically, the machines are doing this verification nowadays to determine which of their users are human beings!! And more worrisome fact being, humans are mimicking machine-like responses. For example, couple of weeks back, there was a...

Have you ever had a dream so vivid that you wanted to sleep a bit more only to see what happens next? I’ve had quite a few, which excite me as much as watching a thriller story unfold, to the extent that mid-dream I feel so refreshed I wake up ☹ !! And often, the same dream repeats itself a couple of times that it almost becomes familiar!!! Off late in one such dream, that I remember from midway, I happen to travel in a lift that would put Harry potter to shame!! It goes upwards and sidewards, almost like a share auto on busy street, using either of its wheel to balance on the pavement. I’ve a ticket with a 4-digit code written on it, supposedly an account number or something. The doors open vertically for that lift, and I enter a gargantuan hall resembling Connemara library, filled with desks, documents and clerks. I reach a table and the person sitting on that desk has one look at the code and take me to some vault kind of a place, before which he checks in a system for my details an...

If there is an industry that (supposedly) thrives by defying conventional logic, movie industry would be it. Even the famed casinos of Las Vegas pale in comparison to the sheer volume of bets that is witnessed every Friday in the tinsel town. Scores and scores of new talents, old talent, forgotten talent, long lost talent and all kinds of other talents fight it out for a wiggle room on the box office. Those who are already strongly entrenched, try to cement their temporary places for as long as possible. Eventually the one who manages to bring back people in waves, to spend their hard-earned leisure time of 120+minutes and money manage to compete in another Friday in foreseeable future. Those who fail at the first hurdle either vanish without a trace or banished to the end of the long queue for the start line. At times, movie industry operations resemble MLM, where someone comes up with a product and the earliest seller escapes with the slightest of losses with the last buyer set for t...

There are some movies that grab your attention from scene 1 and very rarely do we get movies that sustain that attention till the end rolls. This movie is right up there. When I saw in the reviews that it is an adaptation of a Keigo Higashino novel, I wanted to watch the movie as soon as possible. And even before that I wanted to get that book all the more eagerly. I still haven’t managed to get that book but landed with 2 other works of the master (yay!!). But with, the movie adaptation being quite decent, the expectation on the book has grown manifold. The story starts with a guy telling his friend about his successful wedding proposal to his girlfriend. That friend of him, immediately kills him, for he had his eyes on her. Right after that the movie takes off on a different direction with the hero being introduced as a board member cum fiancé of the CEO’s daughter, of the very same company where the murder in the first scene happens. From then onwards, it’s all rumble and tumble of ...

There is always this one question that is the hardest to answer and yet the easiest on paper. It is a single big word – WHEN. When to react and when not to? When to speak and when silent? When to move on and when to linger till things are settled? I am always stumped for an answer to these basic questions for my response to all of them have always been unidirectional and as a set template. I react almost always. I speak out almost always. I rarely move on and linger around what happened and how it should have happened and take things personally. Whenever people advise that we should let things go and not take it personally, I find it to be fake and even if I could see them practice what they preach, to me it feels very phony and not being true. But even after being at the wrong receiving end of several such instances, I continue with my bull-headed approach. Recently I almost got into a quarrel when someone several levels higher up was accusing me for something that I didn’t do. Enrage...