Mad Mike Magee’s Musings

PERHAPS NOT. We will discuss this claim in detail this coming week, after having had a chance to check out some establishments in the Silicon City. ♣

LEAVING PUNE invites some comparisons between it and Bangalore. The eighth century Shiva temple to Pataleshvara and Parvati, hewn out of solid rock, is pretty impressive. But the traffic is worse than Bangalore, the roads narrower and the pace much different. We liked the fact we saw smiths using bellows and hammers and tongs to create wonderful things - although whether the poor people toiling in the humidity of Pune feel the same is very doubtful.

Caption: Eighth century Pataleshvara Temple in Pune, hewn out of solid rock

There is a lot of building going on and there are already three IT/science parks here, but the roads aren’t up to much - that is except for the Expressway which runs between Pune and Mumbai. The problem with the Expressway from the Pune end is that it takes about an hour to get there.

The problem probably wasn’t pacified by the visit of President Patil yesterday and today, although we have a feeling that even though Bangalore is bad, Pune is worse, politicians or not.

The Expressway runs right the way through Lonavala, which we visited overnight - and that really is a pretty nice place. The chikki franchise, however, seems to be owed by a monopoly, as far as we could make out. Pictures later, hopefully. ♦

Here, in the rather rainy village of Khandala, I’m staying at the Velvett (sic) Country, which describes itself as a hill resort and a healing centre. Physician, heal thyself.

On the way to this hotel, which has three tariffs of normal, modified American plan, and American plan, mobile phones don’t work. The wi-fi connection is in an “experimental stage”, which means that like the mausum it possesses a mind of its own. WiMAX might be really useful here. So might electricity, because there’s a whopping big candle in the ashtray next to book matches which don’t work when the lights go out.

Everything is almost all right here in Velvett Country, if only the incessant sound of the rain would stop. I’m going mad, I tell you, going completely off my trolley.

In the middle of the night, a rhapsody started which I have tentatively named Teaspoon, screaming and plate symphony. The music commenced with slightly raised voices, broken by a beautiful silent passage which after about 30 seconds was punctuated by the sound of a teaspoon hitting the deck. The sound of a small plate followed, with the sound of other pieces of cutlery and crockery building up to the crescendo, worthy I’d say of Beethoven at his best, where the most enormous bangs and alarums were followed by silence.

Now I said this was a rhapsody but when I came down for nashta this morning it’s obvious that this was really kinetic art, as you can see from the picture below.

YES, we reported that the laundry wars were over. But a final skirmish happened as we checked out of the Centre of Laundry Excellence.

We discovered a pair of socks that belonged to another guest. How do we know they belonged to another guest? He always wears bright red spotted socks. And we don’t. ♣

I’M FLYING out of the new Bengaluru (BIAL) airport to Pune this morning. The fright is at 11:30, but got up early in case of the widely rumoured traffic that can force a very long journey.

But travelling here was a dream, a breeze, a snap and no crackle or pop. Why? The truckers in India are on a nationwide strike. All there was on the road were cars, bikes and buses. So every cloud has a silver lining. The cloud being that the local newspapers are reporting that Bengaluru will run out of vegetables by Monday. Mumbai and Delhi are chock-a-block.

I am, by the way, writing this using the free wi-fi at BIAL. This airport is really an improvement over HAL.  I mean it’s even filled the shelves of the shops here. ♦

THE RECENT ATI gig in Old California must have been quite an affair. A megageek writes to tell us that at the cocktail party held there, he was in conversation with some other geek about shaders and the like, when an attractive Berkeley student tipped up.

Apparently she, like many another, had been engaged by ATI’s PR to engage in social intercourse with the media. The megageek was annoyed, seeing as he was engrossed in social intercourse with another geek about shaders and the like.

The conversation turned to San Francisco and the subject of skiing came up, as well as chit chat about the town and that.

This event bears all the hallmarks of former, now current AMD spinner Chris Hook, from Canadaland. Former readers of the INQster will recall not only that Charlie Demerjian attended his wedding, but that when he was based in Europe he caused Mike Magee to fall off his stool at a Hampstead hostelry.

We haven’t heard from Chris since he found himself drafted back to North America. But it does sound as if he still has a flair for party PR, by all accounts. ♥