Haaris' Weekly Round-up - 6

Yup, it's still called a Weekly Round-up. I've spent three whole months in Bangalore and I have spent most of that period fixing things. Dealing with machines is tough because there are so many things that can go wrong. You might have a huge and complicated miracle of German Engineering producing high quality low cost products with interlocks and warrantees and all that it takes is one needle bearing to feel blue for the entire plant to come to a standstill. I've fixed a drier with a Hungarian dude who had one eye on the job and the other on how I could get him to a place with hooters (don't ask). I've had an entire pressure vessel replaced and tested with a tighter-than-a-dwarf's-bum schedule (I worked 14 hours for a month without holidays for that one). I've completed a crash course of sorts in kinematics. I've experienced week lag - a unique condition where you can't tell the day of the week because you've been working without any respect for the global convention of relieving weekends and frustrating Mondays.

Life couldn't have been harsher. A smart reader will now expect me to say something on the lines of, "And yet it was a brilliant experience." I will do nothing of that sort. It was stressful, strenuous and tortuous. I lost 8 kilos and a lot more besides fat.

I think I should stop right there. I was about to embark on another round-up and I ended up wasting valuable blog post material. Some other post then...

I'll soon be celebrating May Day with a mid-week holiday and here's the sort of links you should read if you are also part of a factory establishment (failing which you'll probably be on your way to work or to an exam).

1. A brilliant response from Chris Anderson who is the curator of TED to "fears" expressed by luminaries such as Deepak Chopra on TED's apparent censorship of "speculative" subjects. A must read.
2. Vincent Vega's red car from Pulp Fiction, Lost and Found.
3. A defence of the emoticon by a guy who really doesn't seem to like them so much.
4. The moment we all would have waited for if we had known John le Carre was writing another book. I did mention him in a previous round-up and I have read some of his other books since. Here's an abridged version of A Delicate Truth in the Guardian.

That's it for now. I generally like to have five links but I haven't managed to read anything worth putting here.

H