I post my thoughts on my blog.

The silence heard around the world

We mail, we blog, we twitter. Yet, it is on mornings like that of August 6, that we stop taking for granted how dependent we are on technology. I’m talking about the social network meltdown, of course. As several sites were attacked, Twitter went down due to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack leaving millions of users without the ability to communicate in bite-sized pieces.

DDoS is the technological equivalent of a human brain freeze. A teller at a bank counter can easily process one or two customers’ transactions at a time. Two or three hundred simultaneous customers, however, may lead to extreme confusion. For the sake of analogy let’s say this leads to unconsciousness, making it impossible for any more customers to be served. This essentially is what happened to applications in the online social networking world last Thursday. Malicious attackers bombarded websites from different locations (thus the word distributed) with seemingly legitimate messages causing some of them to slow down, and knocking others like Twitter out cold. Twitterers using the website, their mobiles or other means weren’t able to tweet as well. It was a brief, complete blackout.

The attacks that shook the online world this time around are reported to have political motives. Mashable.com reported that social networking sites including Facebook, Google and Twitter might well have been attacked to silence just one person – a blogger in the republic of Georgia, underscoring the role these sites play as a medium of expression. This wasn’t the first time Twitter was down, either. Earlier this year, a cracker got control of Twitter accounts giving him the ability to impersonate, among others, President Obama. Wonder what would have happened if that attack was politically motivated!

Motives notwithstanding, reactions to the outage were varied. Given the duration of Thursday’s attack, we were far from a Die Hard 4.0 like situation of technology-initiated anarchy. Prem Panicker, a journalist by profession and a twitterer known for his live tweets on cricket says, “I heard about the outage on Twitter and followed it on Twitter. So — what outage?”. For most casual users, it was merely a temporary loss of another source of information. At the other end of the spectrum, for those whose social lives are conducted online in a large part, this was akin to being marooned on an island. Given the entangled nature of the web, India was also affected by the turmoil as ‘tweeple’ from across the country faced issues in logging in to Twitter. Netra Parikh, a popular twitterer, thought at first that her internet connection was down. “When I realised that Twitter was not working, I felt like I ran out of oxygen” she recalls. “I immediately went to Facebook and posted that Twitter is down. I received close to 60 messages within the hour.”

The generation with probably the shortest attention span was left without its newest toy. We didn’t just miss out on opportunities to know what others were doing, browsing or eating. We also got a taste of what we take for granted in the otherwise stable world of technology. As the social web saw cracks erupt that fateful Thursday morning, the blackout of one of the world’s most used services reinforced the reality of the virtual world in our lives. We realised that we have come a long way from a few years ago — a time when social networking websites were the flavours of the season and ‘nice-to-haves’; a time when a new website mushroomed every few weeks and our e-mails reminded us of not having added a stranger as a friend on an unknown social network.

Today, we are at a stage where these networks are an integral part of keeping in touch with friends and family, an effective marketing tool and a way of killing time. Twitter itself isn’t limited to sharing information about the weather or pictures of funny cats. Brick and mortar businesses rely on it to reach their newest consumers. Bloggers, celebrities and politicians have all leveraged Twitter’s enormous reach to rival established modes of communication. In this context, downtime today costs money and service providers are answerable to why even their ‘free’ services are down or slower than usual.

On a lighter note, the outage generated a lot of fodder for humour in the media. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel said, ‘For two hours this morning (Thursday) no one could find out what breakfast cereal Ashton Kutcher was eating.’ taking a dig at the world’s most popular Twitterer. Another user commented on a CNN website, “Horrors! People will have to communicate face to face!” Hopefully, it won’t come to that just yet.

Me: I get slightly dizzy these days in the evening, and have a recurring cough that fails to go away.
Doc: So which ‘industry’ do you work in?
Me: *rolling eyes* The IT industry.
Doc: Hmm… *blood sucking mode on; intelligent look and phony contemplation* Have you hit your head somewhere?
Me: What?! No!
Doc: Do you tend to go towards one side?
Me: Only when I ride the bike.
Doc: So you have a tendency of going to one side? Which side is it?
Me: The left side. That’s the side of the road we’re supposed to drive on.
Doc: Hmm… ok. Any family history of insanity/ mental problems?
Me: (Wha… motha… fug…) No.
Doc: Hmm.. and what of this cough? Are you spitting blood?
Me: No – although I would be pretty sure to mention it if I was.
Doc: Hmm.. and phlegm?
Me: A little.
Doc: *more contemplation and phony intelligence display* Here, do these battery of tests. (sounding very please to use the word ‘battery’)
Me: What are these tests?
Doc: Well, you need to go for a brain scan becau…
Me: What what what! A brain scan? What’s wrong with me?
Doc: You never know, you could have injured your brain or …*inchorence*
Me: And what about the cough?
Doc: I suspect Tuberculosis. Very common in Chennai, don’t worry.
Me: So you’re saying that I have TB and brain problems?
Doc: Most likely, but there is nothing to worry at this stage.

Fortunately, I later found another doc (not affiliated with the hospital) who said I have a mild case of vertigo and gave me something for my cough.

Adding to the really long list of social objectives that this blog fulfils; here’s another piece of information – when in Chennai, find a good physician preferably not inside big hospitals.

In the past year, I’ve had TB, brain problems, blood pressure, back spasms and many other issues for which I’ve been sucked dry of urine and blood. A doctor at another large hospital where my company has a free Master Health Check tie-up prescribed me 3000 bucks worth of meds for blood pressure when I just mentioned that I had a spike the previous week. And then he told me that these meds would apparently help me lose weight, causing my BP to fall.

And then there’s the standard fare when you go in with anything above 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Anitbiotics, vitamin B Complex supplements and paracetomols. Yes, antibiotics are the first thing they write down.

Now not all docs in big hospitals are bad, but one needs to be aware of the pitfalls and the strategies that many of these guys use to screw patients over. I for one, am happy to have found a physician who knows what she’s talking about. And happier to not have TB and brain tumors.

1. Thou shalt not deny the booze. There is no excuse to say no to alcohol. Not after the uncle offering you the booze bought five bottles of whiskey on his way back home from a bypass surgery.

2. Thou shalt diversify. No edible item at the table is ‘the best’. The moment you start stuffing yourself with fried fish thinking it’s the yummiest thing on the menu, you discover the chicken curry. But you might just be a kilo too late.

3. Thou shalt extrapolate. Even if you don’t understand the language, you shall do your best to reconstruct a coherent sentence from the 2 words you understand out of every 30.

4. Thou shalt not try fancy, new-fangled technology devices. Mobile signals are weak and the GPS thingy does not even connect to a satellite. Shame on you for fiddling with that fancy phone.

5. Thou shalt never ever, EVER travel by sleeper class. Whether it’s the noisy guys on the way to Kerala or the ribald Romeos on the way back, you don’t want to have to show your macho moves to save the wife. Mainly because you don’t have any.

6. Thou shalt not accept gifts heavier than 1 kg. You now have enough rice flour and bananas to adopt a pet monkey who likes appams. And if it weren’t for coolies, you would have lost a shoulder.

7. Thou shalt lose weight BEFORE thou travel(eth?). Because 3 breakfasts and 2 lunches and a smorgasbord for dinner everyday will push you over the quintal.

8. Thou shalt believe in a higher presence. Not because there are a large number of places of worship per area, but because you have travelled on a road not wide enough for two cars at 80 KMPH and lived to tell the tale.

9. Thou shalt respect traditional dress. The mundu is not only airy, but also customizable from long to short at a single flick of the wrist.

10. Thou shalt not state preference of food under any condition. Else thou shalt have to eat thy preference till thou loosen thy mundu, regain thy weight, and manage to speak the two words to communicate that you are done.

But seriously, Kerala is a beautiful place to visit especially if you have relatives there like my wife does. Despite not understanding the language, I really look forward to going because of the copious alcohol, the delectable cuisine, the fresh air and the warm people. What more is there to life, really?

1. Switch off your TV, Mister, if you don’t like it, or change the channel. Moral policing is not our job.
2. We don’t think our social values are so fragile that one TV programme will
damage them.

Seriously, these culturally erect guys took the hard way out by pursuing legal action rather than pressing a button on their remotes. What do they want anyway? An apology? “Sir, I am so sorry that I stole money from my job or slept with some random person. I will never do it again, and even if I do, I won’t tell because as you pointed out, telling the truth ‘offends your culture and ethos‘.” WTF?

The contestants come of their own volition, have a choice to discontinue at any point, and if they lose their jobs or their wives so be it. They are mature adults and cannot be told how to act by other, more mature adults.

I have a feeling that the actual reason for demanding a ban on the serial is that we are unable to accept a different opinion or behaviour and we want to believe life is dandy and perfect. Ain’t that the truth?

A: Oink.

I know, don’t tell me – I’m mean as an average. Sick as a mass murderer. Aaargh.

The similes are off colour today. Apologies. A little under the weather. And speaking of weather, check this out.

Hurrah for our government and their proactiveness. Ok back to the bed. Blogging shall soon resume. Don’t go too far.

As I sat in the front portion of the rear part of the vehicle, two young ladies got in behind me. To make this clearer, please understand that my rather voluptuous behind was unintentionally touching their feet as they sat on an elevated seat behind me. As the ladies felt more and more uncomfortable, especially since where I was sitting was surrounded by muck, they began to pass remarks about how uncomfortable it was and how they couldn’t sit properly etc. My buttocks may have been mentioned once or twice.

It was a while before they realised that I was getting irritated with all the complaining and ka-pow! I almost got disoriented by what happened next. Lady 1 tapped my shoulder and said, “Excuse me, you have broad shoulders.” followed by a barrage of compliments about me and my appearance. Now, this is bizarre in most places, but in Chennai this is downright miraculous. Of course, it wasn’t so miraculous when I realised that the lady was from Delhi, but at that stage I was reeling from the opening line anyway.

Much later I understood that Lady 1 was apparently trying to flirt with yours truly and I didn’t realise this till we got off the wretched vehicle and Friend of Lady 1 told me that Lady 1 was asking me for my card because she wanted my phone number. At this stage, I articulated something on the lines of, “Ungh I’m married aagrh help.”

And that was that. I turned around and have never looked in that general direction again for fear of seeing these women again.

So what I’m saying is that it’s really embarassing for me when a person of the opposite gender makes a move on me. Being the decent man that I am, I’m usually found fumbling with words and my expressions are randomly swinging between perspiring-embarassed-dull-gaze to glorious-ego-boosted-smile.

I wonder how other dudes treat these situations. Any comments?

Update: Another interesting Chennai travel story.

Unless, of course, you find it very embarassing. I’d understand. Sigh.

The URL again is: http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/daily_humor/