This Fine Day...

Born to be mild?

There is nothing much that should tip a mild-mannered, neutral-handling man of 1970s vintage into a caffeine-fuelled rage during unsocial hours of a drab Monday morning. A certain prancing horse being utterly lacklustre and then whirling out of contention possibly contributed, but there certainly is more to winning than coming tops! The de-caffeinated coffee with light-cane sugar should take part of the blame. Detuned blandness for the sake of health and safety is, admittedly, most unappealing. But, there had to be something more.

 

The real vexation, as it turned out, was his sudden, almost overnight realization that greatness and the greats demand a wider mediocrity; rarity and the rare, a broader commonness. Years of experience has inevitably instilled in him the realization that managed conformity is the route rather than irreverent individuality; consensus rather than confrontation; discussed inanities rather than absolutes; moderation rather than conspicuous excesses. Not surprising, therefore, that his subdued demeanour neither clamours for nor attains much attention, but, manages to reveal a determined streak that can conjure up moments of brilliance when challenged.

 

Looks follow this trend of function over fashion, albeit with occasional indulgences. No Hoffmeister kinks or flame-surfacing here, just clean lines, uncluttered layers, sober colours and barely enough tailoring to hide the passable paunch. The body isn’t quite primed and toned, but then, he is no bloated slob either – again, a compromise demanded by life, work and available grooming time in between. Life, of late, has been about being useful, not merely appealing. An ageless, if conservative, package that neither comes across too severe nor hovers on the bleeding edge of modernity.

 

There is a time and a place for white-knuckled, on the edge thrills, power-slides and forbidden pleasures that temperamental rears of mid-engined widow-makers of yore hold. If one is Ari Vatanen doing Pike’s Peak, that is. Darwinian ideas of evolution that counts the move from four pods to two a major enhancement notwithstanding, he is as controlled as all-fours motors, with traces of mild turn-in understeer assuaging apprehensions getting into activities. Adroit tackling of mid-activity undulations and a smooth, non-twitchy exit to finish completes the picture. By and large, the handling is neutral and reassuringly predictable - rewarding when pushed and forgiving when abused. Being married does that to men, apparently.

 

New kids in town with rippling muscles, penchant for heavy metal, braids, body-piercing, wild dreams and a roomful of dusty recording equipment bought on credit, tempered by a complete aversion to commitment and the Vatican’s stance on birth-control should provide a ride up there in the pleasure-pain curve with Muskegon’s Shivering Timbers and Brooklyn’s Cyclone. Living with this one is by and large a smooth, swishy ride with enough firmness of damping to get through life’s abrupt twists and turns. Not much of external annoyances are allowed through the protective shield he crafts diligently. But be warned, self-perpetrated, minor ones might therefore jar and take some getting used to.

Atlas May Shrug!

I have seen my last Formula 1 Grand Prix, at least for the foreseeable future. That sport means nothing to me, all of a sudden. Nothing at all. The curtain fell on this season’s racing at São Paulo last Sunday. Lewis Hamilton won the championship - having won less races than the eminently more deserving Felipe Massa, having never had a mechanical failure, having had run into the backs of Alonso’s and Raikkonnen’s cars with some juvenile driving, having run Glock off the track in Monza, having cut Raikkonnen up at Spa and Montreal and having been compared with Senna and Schumacher. Someone even called him Britain’s Obama the other day!

I think Glock slowed down much more than he should have on that last lap at Interlagos. But, I must be wrong and fervently hope I am. After all, who else but the most morally corrupt would accuse McLaren and Ron Dennis of conspiring and covering up? They did the nasty and got caught trying a pitiful cover-up last season, alright, but, surely they are honourable men – at least, ever since. Conspiracies, by definition, are those that are planned to Hamilton’s detriment by vested interests, especially if you asked The Guardian’s Gemma Briggs, by jealous fiends. They, who are much unlike her own independent, non-partisan eminence, she having broken into the world of motor-sport journalism courtesy a deputy-editorship at, hold your breath, Racing Line, the McLaren Formula 1 team magazine! How much more independent can one get, indeed! But then, les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas. I love my fellow self-appointed, opinionated, know-alls way too much for an argument. But no, it was not the greatest Grand Prix F1 has ever seen, not even close, not by a large margin – just the most desperate.

The whole of the British media establishment and political glitterati got in on the act as well – the win essentially being branded a ‘British’ triumph. Now, I do understand the need of this nation, starved of even reasonable international sporting success of late, save the last Olympic Games, to embrace Hamilton’s success as its own. After all, while she reigns supreme in well-remunerated meets, even Ms Radcliffe comes a cropper when running for Queen, country and mere glory. How skilfully did I get that unnecessary dig in, sideways! What I do not understand is how its proud people can celebrate the success of this nouveau riche prodigy who, at the first whiff of serious money, ditched its over-taxed shores for his current Swiss abode, making the rest of us mortals on this lovely island feel distinctly Jacques Bonhomme. I do not understand how the move and its rather feeble excuse – apparently, it was us souls who drove him away, accosting him in motorway convenience stations – could ever be condoned, much less forgiven any time soon. Shameless and inconsiderate of us, approaching a national treasure expressly paid to be a glorified billboard for the myriad enterprises that sponsor him without respect for his privacy, especially at the hallowed grounds of motorway service stations that he is likely to frequent…

I think Glock slowed down much more than he had to on that last lap at Interlagos. Hopefully, I have managed to ratchet the accusation up a notch without many folks noticing, right there. Silly me and my louche thoughts! McLaren’s analysts in their Woking lair will have you believe that they knew Hamilton would catch Glock up, eventually. As in with-a-few-hundred-yards-to-go eventually. They can also, arguably, predict when the GDP will finally show growth and the economy will wrestle out of a recession, eventually. Only, just at the last bend. They did also predict an Obama success, by the way, apparently. Now, if Brundle thinks the stewards act such that the leader is deliberately picked on so the title is decided only in the very last race, an act that is evidently becoming harder by the year, he surely knows this claim to be the humbug that it is. Glock was matching Haclaren (a Freudian slip) pace on the penultimate lap, for sure. Now unless they employ God, which is quite unlikely, that extrapolated prediction would have been as reliable as Moody’s ratings of securitised asset-tranches proved to be, for McLaren to base their season’s fortunes on. They simply could not have deliberately left the passing move to the very last corner – no one has cojones that big!

Now, I wanted Glock to retain his position so Ferrari and their man Massa could win the title. There, that is the crux of it all. It’s really all about what I wanted! And how far should I go finding fault with and mongering rumours about what really transpired? How much should envy cloud my frequently flawed judgement? How far am I willing to go to discredit Hamilton and his achievement? I will shoot myself the day I go as far as visitors to that now-notorious ‘voodoo’ web-site where, allegedly, Alonso’s supporters, mainly Spanish, left the most nasty and vile comments of the racist variety. That is just not done. Open your eyes, fiends, and look around. The world has changed. Narrow-mindedness, racism and bigotry are passé. Your comments would have hurt Hamilton, just as it would any other decent being, but, the only real damage you did is to your selves, your culture and your society at large. You are building yourself a reputation, with your deeds and acts of direst cruelty, so stinky that all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten your little hands. Alonso should have distanced himself clearly and publicly, upbraiding any attempts to associate his name with the misguided acts. I am aghast that he has chosen not to, at least not forcefully enough. We are getting so used to racist chants, abuse and vile gestures at football matches in Iberia that we have taught ourselves to ignore it. But, we do care. Yes, Sir! Do not mistake our indifference for tolerance or weakness. It is just that in our culture, petulance and ignorance are not cured by argument, coercion, bullying or brute force – we will continue to show you the other cheek for a while more, yet. But, do mark my words, folks, even Atlas will shrug if pushed far enough.

I think I have changed my mind. Maybe, I have just seen my last Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix, at least for the foreseeable future. That race appointment, tarnished by the devil’s own acts of guile, means nothing to me, all of a sudden. Nothing at all!

Surely Not…

Dear Miss «object of your desire»,

I saw you indulging a smile at «object of your ire» the other day and I am very worried. It is not really me to meddle in such affairs, but, have you really thought through who you would want in your life, for life?

Surely, not too
-tall, for you will forever be looking up to him,
-short, for you will never retrieve that tin of tea-bags that are at the back of the top shelf

-thin, for you will have to run for a paper-weight every time you switch the fan on
-fat, for you will rue the day you run into an old acquaintance who still carries a six-pack

-rich, for he will always wonder if it was for the money
-poor, for you can’t live on love and fresh air alone

-smart, for even the dumb ones think they know it all
-dull, for it will soon rub off on you

-good a cook, for you will pile on the pounds
-bad a cook, for you will never get even a lousy soup when you are ill

-introverted, because foraging for his socks is bad enough, you will often have to go searching for his self
-extroverted, for there is no better excuse he will have for flirting with your cute friends

-funny, for life is enough of a joke
-serious, for there will be no adventures left safe to try

-handsome, for you will never get your quality time with any mirror
-ugly, for you will forever pine for a ski-mask

-busy, for you will wait to wait before you wait some more
-laid back, for your neighbour will do better

-butch, for he often will walk around in the buff
-camp, for he never will

-polite, for traffic is mad and you need to get there
-rude, for he will grate and infuriate

-soft, for you will be his shoulder to cry on
-hard, for you will never have one to cry on

-prompt, for you will never fall out and make up
-tardy, for your life is too short to wait around

-protective, for that’s one wee step from possessive
-passive, for that bunny who cuts in front of you in queue will never get shoved back

-loud, for the neighbours will know
-soft, for even your silence will argue at times

A nervous, bumbling, geeky nerd is not that bad afterall, eh?

Yours as ever,
«your apellation here»

PS: If you are reading this, Miss Fay, please give the poor sod who got this to you last week, obviously as his own thoughtful penmanship, a try. He paid me in collectors’ edition copies of M*A*S*H and Jeeves & Wooster, Calvin & Hobbes comics and a PING putter, so I would conjure this incomprehensible sub-kindergarten psychobabble up, just so he would look rather smart. Please, Miss Fay.

Spotlight on Reason

It has got to be spectacular. There is reasonable consensus on that across the rumor-mills. Early indications revolve around ‘brick’, an ambitious design based on aluminium ingots shaped by Apple’s design boffins into something truly pretty, and built by experts with water-jets and lasers. There, however, are the few who already offer machines manufactured following such cutting-edge methods wondering out loud if its inevitable downside could be worth it - cost. That there is the crux of the matter.

There is a bit of an economic situation developing around the world, increasingly threatening to reach pandemic proportions. Money in short supply is the main symptom, and prudence and thrift the only treatment-plans. Dell, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba have reacted swiftly with the increasingly charming mini-PC ‘netbooks’ - cheap to own and operate, and built for purpose. Intel is channeling impressive effort into its Atom processor-series and peripheral paraphernalia. Ubuntu looks ready to do everything one could reasonably hope to, short of connecting to a corporate network-served bank of printers.

Apple has not responded. Sadly, they seem blind to their own backyard-bully - anti-monopoly monopoly status. Macintosh operating system, despite being compliant with Intel architecture and associated standards is still illegal on anything other than rather expensive hardware prepared by Apple themselves. One could cobble up a Hackintosh, but, not within the safe envelope of legality. There is the comparatively cheap Mac Mini, but only if you BYOKBMM and dish out ample money for the privilege in the process. Apple has not bothered with Blu-ray yet. In short, there has been no mass-market Macintosh machine of great appeal, yet. To anyone with financial sniffles, Windows-based offerings from Dell, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba offer affordable familiarity, bloatware and all. Their Ubuntu-based offerings, I dare say, are risk-free acts of near-perfection. With erosion of competitive differentiation in functional appeal, features, utility and performance, the much higher costs of anything Apple have little or no defence. It’s time for Apple to act and do so decisively.

This is what I hope to see announced on October 14th, a Spotlight on Reason:
1. The stunning new design and manufacturing process, so it’s clear Apple haven’t lost their mojo
2. Prices cut across the range, so it’s clear Apple understands the real world
3. Mac Mini which can be a true living-room computer and multi-media station
4. Blu-ray on Macs
5. Macbooks with Bluetooth-connected detachable keyboards and HDMI / DVI connected detachable screens, and
6. Restrictions-free Macintosh operating system that can be installed on all recent Intel-architected machines

As for me, just (6) will bring a lot to cheer about and a fresh love for all things Mac. For Apple, you’ve lost that loving feeling…

Performance Appraisal

Dear All, (said the original message)

Further to mails you have received regarding performance appraisals and reward letters.

We would like to ask you to bear with us and thank you for your patience. For those expecting mirror letters please contact your local HR team with any questions. Should any letters arrive for you, you will be notified.

Please note specific questions cannot be answered until after the letters have been finalised and issued. For any other queries I take this time to remind you about HR Queryfacility.

Please bear with us and thank you for your patience.

Regards
HR

You whinging prats, (is what it really sounded like)

I know this is one mail of mine you will read through and want to grab the opportunity. What better way to start my annual minutes of fame than feigning politeness and sounding pompous at the same time. See, I am so overcome with emotion I cannot even finish my sentences!

Now, please do not bother me with queries on bonuses and contract-renewals like previous years; I am sick and tired of dodging them and not professing answers. And I really cannot stand those who pester me about letters due from those insignificant local teams - you are adults and should know who to bother for what. If something does come for you, surely, even you losers know by now that if there is anything we think will keep you quiet even for a while, you can trust us to get it across to you promptly.

If what has been said above is not clear enough, please be informed that I will not answer individuals’ or groups’ queries collectively or individually - there is a reason birthday gatherings are being avoided nowadays. Also I will not be answering questions that require specific answers, except those relating to office administration, passport details, invite letters and the hourly revamp of the approval workflow, all of which I rule, as you know. If you have general queries about life, the living, the recent US prime-rib credit munch tissue, the weather, transition to the new email service or other matters of no consequence, please send it to my lackeys who will try and dodge it the best way their meager acumen can.

Now, if Sarah Palin can sound grandiose with a wink, surely I can too with a repeat exhortation to put up further with incompetence and tardiness. I am on your side. I am your friend. Don’t you know by now? Come, confide in me. Goose pimples…

That will do for now.
HUGE ARSE

Truly Blessed

You know, there isn’t much fun in taking a stance if there isn’t a different view. No, there isn’t. There isn’t much in a sacrifice if nobody takes heed. There isn’t catharsis in tears if there isn’t a shoulder to weep on or a kind hand to wipe them away. There isn’t meaning in effort without appreciation. Love is wasted were it not for reciprocation. Conquests shallow if the challenge isn’t robust enough. Victory incomplete if the battle wasn’t fair. Nothing momentous in getting back together if the falling out wasn’t tempestuous enough. No character in the scar if the wound wasn’t deep enough. No worth in achievement save for the obstacles. No redemption if the hand held out pleading for help is ignored. No mercy if a cry for help is unheard. Long you live and high you fly, but, only if you ride the tide. No poetry if there were no pain. No friendship if it doesn’t stand the test of a rainy day. No exhilaration but for a future unknown. No adventure if the journey isn’t as pleasing as the destination. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed; saintly, those who have seen but yet have kept the faith. And verily, verily, no love if there is no forgiveness…

There will come a day, so is the fear, when with the whole world pitted against, I cry out for that one kind voice to reach out in sympathy and comfort. I am truly blessed that I know for sure there will at least be two… 

Our Embarassing Apathy

Burma is burning. Most of Europe do not seem to care. There are not any reserves of petroleum or prospects of reconstruction in this impoverished land enough to titillate the rowdy crowd across the Atlantic pond. And it was never intended for Putingrad’s influence to reach that far in that sorry direction. Ergo, Burma burns and nobody seems to care.

I am not sure I know of a single place on earth that, having been touched by the scourge of British colonial greed and ghastly excesses that went along, is at peace now. There are a few in abject misery - Sudan, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone and Iraq. There are some that wish things were different - Nigeria, Ghana and some islands in the Caribbean. Yet others haven’t fared too bad - India, Egypt, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The so-called white-settler colonies have done very well for themselves indeed - Canada, United States of America, Australia and New Zealand. What with slavery, forced labour, concentration camps, division along any line - religious, racial, color, language, ethnicity, gender, class or creed - convenient, slickly executed democide and complete lack of anything remotely resembling human rights, the scars inflicted over generations have proven near fatal to many of these nations. Burma, unfortunately, haven’t fared very well. Burma is burning.

I am sad that Burma is burning. I am shocked that the junta blatantly refuses to move with the times and accord their own people free will. I am furious that the rest of the world ignores the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi and her fellow Myanmars except for impotent, stuttering, meaningless drivel every time news of an atrocity reaches us. I am ashamed that the economically and militarily mighty Indian nation that has such cultural influence on the Myanmars stand by in passive indifference while the junta cocks an impudent nose at their collective tolerance. There has been some tepid noise in the media about how India sees their ‘fight-against-terrorism’ being aided by the junta in some weird way, but, this is just nonsense that not even the warmongers in Bush’s clique will buy. With what they have been trying to pull in Tibet, China would not understandably deem it terribly appropriate to take umbrage publicly - dirty money in their left hand while the priest is shaking their right hand - and they are too pragmatic to have a different opinion in private. Bangladesh has too much going on to do much about their neighbours. Myanmars are on their own, then.

Just yesterday, they murdered a Japanese photographer in cold blood. His life was the price he had to pay for the privilege of tenaciously ferrying information out of the junta’s media seal. They say a few dozen people more have laid their lives at the altar of freedom in another stunted uprising that seems to have been brutally put down, yet again. I am angry, but, much too cowardly and comfortable with my petty life to do anything of it.

If you, like me, are wallowing in forced membership of this emasculated existence club, there is reason to take heart. For some of the most powerful men, women and un-decideds on this planet are firmly entrenched members. Unlike us, of course, they have voluntarily chosen this miserable membership…

I am no William Wallace. But, I see a whole army of brave souls there in defiance of tyranny. They have risen to fight as free men and women. And free they will be! What will they do without freedom? Will they not fight? Buddhist monks against guns and truncheons? Yes! For, fight and they may die. Run and they may live at least awhile. But, dying in their bed many years from now, would they not be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for this one chance, just one chance, to rise as one and tell their enemies that they may take their lives but never their FREEDOM!

F1 Shenanigans

Oh, the games people play. So, about 800 pages of technical information about Ferrari’s F1 effort gets to McLaren’s engineering chief. In a rarefied world where a few tenths of a second separate someone on the fourth row of the grid from the pole-sitter, would you be surprised that Ferrari principals went apoplectic? Come round one of arbitrations and the powers that be deem there is not sufficient evidence to penalise McLaren. Inevitably, Hungary happens and pressed by his reigning-champion driver, McLaren bossman Ron Dennis informs the FIA that one of his race-drivers and his main test-driver both possibly had access to a lot of the details that he had originally claimed were never used to the team’s benefit. The World Sporting Council takes up cudgels this time, hauls McLaren over and promptly slaps them with a forty nine million pound sterling fine along with exclusion from the season’s constructors’ championship quest. FIA bossman goes public saying the punishment was too lenient, McLaren bossman does so saying it was too harsh, British media kept reiterating that Hamilton did nothing wrong. No big surprises, then.

I, in between life and work, am not too happy with the whole turn of events. My inherent dislike of everything Hamilton further stokes unnecessary, useless angst. But my grouse is this - why did the team’s drivers keep their points and stay in hunt for the season’s drivers’ championship? Why does local media in England make Ron Dennis out to be a blameless lamb caught up in an unjust, rowdy crowd of villains?

Being of an engineering bend of mind, I look at the issue this way.

1. McLaren claimed, wrongly as it turns out, that receipt of information from Ferrari was the act of a “rogue employee”, an act that team-McLaren neither knew a great deal about nor used to their advantage.
   
2. Alonso and de la Rosa discussed over emails facets of information they had received from their team’s chief engineer, of Ferrari’s plans and their cars’ technical details. Such details included aspects of their race strategy (at least Raikkonnen’s in Melbourne), weight distribution, gas used to pressurise Ferrari’s Bridgestones and how reliable the information being fed to them was. They also discussed, at least in part, of how they were putting such information to use - in the simulator, mainly, and in seeking fairly innocuous clarifications from FIA that put paid to Ferrari’s “flexible undertray” stunt. You see, ever since the genius of Murray and God’s brilliant ground-effect conjured up the Brabham BT46B “fan-car”, it had been ruled naughty to have movable aerodynamic parts in F1 cars. Ferrari wanted to flex the rules, quite literally in this instance, and ended up falling foul of the FIA technical team after McLaren cribbed. Help me here - would a team as well-managed as McLaren let their drivers play games in the midst of other preparatory work unless they were certain that the attempts were driven by solidly reliable information from the fox’s lair?
3. Hamilton knew nothing of the information coming in about Ferrari. His lawyer’s impassioned plea to FIA - crucify Ron, save Hamilton, he is worth millions more in years to come - states that clearly. So, key developments and crucial simulator-work never involved Hamilton, did they? Either Hamilton didn’t have sufficient acumen to contribute, which I suspect is the case, or the team did not consider him relevant enough to participate. Alonso does have a case for being considered the team’s top driver, does he not?
4. Max Mosely categorically states that information about incriminating ‘e-mail’ evidence, as it turned out, came to him from Bernie Ecclestone. Ron Dennis and the legions of rabid Hamilton fans have consistently kept up their allegation that Alonso threatened to rat on McLaren and claim that Ron volunteered the crucial pieces of information to Mosely. These two claims do not add up, except in British press and for Martin Brundle. Either Ron Dennis is LYING or Max Mosely is - it should be fairly simple to establish who.
5. McLaren, if they think about it, will surely come to the conclusion that their course into the stinking creek they are half-way up now without paddles was mainly plotted by two of their employees - Coughlan and Hamilton. The former by being a blithering idiot and the latter, by being a haughty upstart. Hamilton did ignore plans as per his team’s strategy (do NOT confuse this with team ‘orders’) in Hungary deliberately. He then had to come into the pits behind Alonso having traipsed the extra lap that his deviousness afforded him. He came into the pits with just over 200 seconds left to cross the start-finish line knowing fully well that 165 of them were needed for the out-lap alone. There wasn’t anything illegal about the added five seconds Alonso remained on the blocks, or ten. Alonso was punished, Ron failed to discipline his wayward ward, threats were made and if Ron were to be believed, and I do not for a moment, information that would eventually lead to McLaren’s exclusion and penalty came to FIA’s notice.

The trouble, simply put, is that Ron has always had trouble managing huge talents with equally massive egos. Perceptions are all important to this micromanaging control-freak. No doubt his call on Hamilton was impeccable talent-spotting. His call on Alonso was equally impressive opportunism on both sides. His management skills - people and more importantly, talent - are, unfortunately, not as expansive as the rampant engineering skills of his team. He will never understand an Asturian and his way of doing things, cultural sensitivity being sorely missing. Were Senna alive, he would have borne testimony to this. His anger, at least this season, has been sadly misplaced and misdirected. 

And now, Hamilton says his gloves are off in the face of Alonso’s provocation. Provocation? Really? I saw Hamilton sashaying across the track literally forcing Massa on to the curb in Italy. I saw him making progress without making the first turn, with the sickeningly partisan Brundle winging on about how fair the move was. Take a look at recordings of the two starts, mate, and stop whining. You finished where you did because there were others who were faster on the day. Take it in your stride and go on. But, I sense a dollop of threat in his comments to the media just before the race weekend in Japan. I am sure Alonso is shivering in his boots. After all, he has merely taken on Schumacher and Ferrari, and won two magnificent seasons. That pales in comparison to the heights that Hamilton and Brundle have climbed…

Thankyou for the thrills, Colin…

Colin died last Saturday, the 15th of September. The life which scary speeds and spectacular tumbles could not snuff out was finally claimed by a rotary wing aircraft. News has it that just a day later, coming back to England from the Grand Prix at Spa, Prodrive’s boss and Colin’s ex-manager Dave Richards too had a scary moment in one of those abominations. He’s safe and yes, there will be a spectacular Aston or two in commemoration.

Colin, when you meet God, put in a word for another moment or two of inspired brilliance from Gordon Murray. A word for Aston in F1. A Ferrari V12 to shock and awe. Someone to carry on Michael Schumacher’s legacy. Fairness in sport. Someone to drive a Subaru beyond its limits, in anger, like only you could and did. An affordable M5. A less congested M25. Gentlemen racers.

And when you take Him on a spin, sideways at every turn, talk to him of tram-lining and limitations of materials he has made available for us to clobber vehicles together with. May be He will be inspired enough to upgrade some of His laws of Physics?

Good night, Mr. McRae, Sir. Rest in peace.