Social TV ?

A couple of days back 2 friends of mine called me up at night and started drunken rambling ... conversation was fun and secrets came out tumbling. In between all that fun , friend A was apparently trying to change the channel on TV and was not having any luck and started cursing and abusing the remote control. Then I heard a lot of laughter coming from friend B, who informed me that friend A was so wasted that he was trying to change the TV channel with his cellphone !!!

Now what if mobile phone ( read smartphone ) could actually act as remote ? TV viewing has changed a lot ... these days many a time I switch on the TV after being told to do so by friends. I usually get a lot of SMSes / phone calls from friends alerting me about something interesting on TV - mostly sporting events, occassionally some reality programs also - we watch the show/event and then SMS each other or call and discuss what happened.

Sometimes watching and sharing things with friends makes it a much superior viewing experience, these are the guys I used to watch these matches together sometime in life.... now what if we could connect better while watching ....

Yesterday there was this wonderful tennis match in ATP World tour final event , this was semi-final between Nadal and Murray and the match swung between both players , I watched it for a while told a few friends about the wonderful match and then switched off the TV after a while when I was sure Nadal was gonna win . I got a call from a friend telling me that match was still on and had this time Murray was leading. I subsequently texted a few other friends the scoreline. In fact I was in touch 6 friends during the match at 11 pm ... this was a non-grand slam tennis match .... during cricket matches ( esp major events ) the people you are in touch with are much higher.

I guess if my TV remote was on my cellphone and I could tell my friends about this really good tennis match going on this particular channel with match being interestingly poised ( perhaps an update on the score-line and why should tune in ) , then it would be really cool

Searched online for more on this and found this piece on Technology review website

Though they are talking about making TV remote a smart remote , though I would prefer doing away with it and having Mobile phone do the same task.

So efforts are actually on to make watching television something that viewers in different places can share and discuss. It wont be too far when your social network and television meet. That means my friend - who is a smart and successful Manager when sober - was not all that wrong when he tried to change channels with his smartphone , only problem was that he was a little ahead of time !

Books I read - Sep/Oct

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - by Paul Torday

This is a brilliant political satire about a ludicrous idea of a sheik from Middle East to introduce Salmon fishing as a sport in the wadis of his desert nation. When international politics , government departments , inept bureaucrats and even British prime minister's office get on board the insanity reaches epic proportions and a dazed fisheries scientist finds himself in the middle of this ! This delightful novel pokes fun at British society , TV/news , the spin-meisters and politicians superbly.

Book begins with this idea of a Middle east billionaire to introduce salmon fishing in his country and interestingly uses letters and office memos , diary entries , report from House of commons , interrogation tapes and hilariously even intercepted Al Qaeda mails being used to move the story forward. The idea which began through correspondence through letters (and internal memos) from a firm representing the Sheik and fisheries dept and this scientist moves forward quickly and reaches the highest office in the country and the ridiculous idea catches the fancy of a few and becomes an order from dept and project of huge national importance ! The Sheik and the scientist bond well and he starts admiring and respecting the sheik and his vision and the idea actually seems to take off and the entire team starts "believing" Sheik's vision until absurdities of life catch up in the end. This is a really wonderful read. Somewhere along the line there is a lesson for some real world nations who too believe in such improbable ideas !

Ps : There is a movie being made on this book

A Short History of tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

I picked up this book because of the title , the book is again a humorous account of how life changes for a middle aged Ukrainian immigrant in Britain when her mother dies and her extremely old father decides to marry a young Ukrainian woman who is clearly marrying only for her father's money and to get citizenship. The daughters plot and plan and fight to save the old man from clutches of "the evil painted Russian tart" and in process try to discover a family bond which never seemed to have existed. The story is narrated in a very light tone , but it does touch a lot of real serious stuff about relationships , loneliness , ageing , sibling rivalry , life in the communist nations , World war 2 , the hardships faced by these immigrants before and in UK. The title comes from the book this old father is writing about innovation in farm equipment and machinery in Ukraine , he notes how innovation which could have helped cultivate the world and create food got changed into wrong direction. Instead of tractors the focus moved to machines for war like tanks and instead of machines which tilled , machines which killed were created.

Happy Diwali folks !

India is shining this Diwali, economy is doing well, country is rapidly progressing, the sensex is trading at 21k and so on ... Even if you leave these indicators aside, overall there is a considerable improvement in standards of living, along with it the kind of celebrations during festivals have also become much grander. From the time I remember, Diwali/Deepavali used to be celebrated with people getting attired in new clothes, decorating their homes, getting together with family along with lot of sweets and lot of fireworks. When we were young the fireworks were the highlight, there were lot of safety concerns those days, perhaps all that made it more appealing and thrilling with that hint of danger involved !

In 80s and early 90s, the amount of crackers and other items were limited due to budgetary restrictions; But gradually as standards of living went up the ability to splurge on big festivals also went up and the amount of money spent on firecrackers, the options available and noise generated have also gone up quite a lot. Until a few years back, I have heard people mention with pride in Tamil Nadu, the amount of money they spent on buying crackers and other fireworks. This used to be some kind of indicator of social status , the louder and more colourful and longer your firecracker orgy, the more ahead you were in society or something on those lines !!!

I wonder how firecrackers, 'flowerpots' etc got included as part of celebration. My guess is that since this is a celebration of dispelling darkness and vanquishing the enemy, crackers are perhaps able to symbolize this well with the visual effect as well as the sound effect.

I live in a neighborhood which is dotted with so many high-rise flats where Diwali was celebrated with lots of crackers and firework display this year . I started writing this after seeing a few birds which had curled up in a corner in my balcony while the crackers were creating a huge din outside. Normally when I open the balcony door and step out these pigeons,if they were around fly away immediately, yesterday night i saw them cowering in a corner and then understood why !

While we celebrate we trouble so many of these innocent birds and animals who get so disturbed by the unnatural flashes of light and loud noises which totally scare and confuse them.

Fire-crackers may work symbolically and I do admit I enjoyed it when I was a kid, but the cons far outweigh whatever pros they offer . Kids these days have so many avenues for fun anyways ! Air and noise pollution affect everyone, especially the most vulnerable sections - Children and senior citizens and of course animals and birds in the area.

Thankfully more and more people are moving away from firecrackers of late . Govt also is enforcing rules more strictly. Today morning in my daily newspaper in the front page between various Ads for electronic goods and real estate projects managed to find a news item which mentioned that the level of noise pollution (due to fire-crackers ) during Diwali this year have been lower than last year. Hope the trend continues and we all realize that there are better ways to celebrate the festival of lights and prosperity and to spread joy and celebrate it with near and dear ones !