Chaos

I saw this movie before I stumbled upon the book. I was, without any doubt, impressed deeply by the movie. It is a different kind of movie, and the fact that it’s based on a true story made me feel really good about it. Immediately after the movie I stacked up a little more awe and respect for Sean Penn. I always thought he was a great actor for the roles he played in “I am Sam”, “Mystic River” etc. But, this was a movie directed by him. Left me wondering, just how talented this guy is!!

The main difference between the movie and the book, though they tell the same story, is that – I feel the movie was made with the sole idea of glorifying Chris McCandless’s life, the choices he made, the things he did, the life he gave up, everything. But, the book gives a more impartial perspective of his life. With all due respect to Chris, in my opinion it takes loads of courage and resolve to do what he did.

It could be said that the comparison is unfair, the book as a medium has the luxury of being extremely detailed and without any limits whereas the movie has an acceptable time limit. Besides, understandably, the movie misses out on details for things that the book provides an extra perspective for. For instance, the movie mentions that Chris was deeply impressed by the writings of Jack London and his advocacy of the glory of living in Alaska, in the wild but the Jon Krakauer mentions in the book that Jack London merely did what he was best at, write, because he lived in Alaska only for a summer in his whole life and spent a huge part of his life amongst most modern luxuries. Chris unfortunately picked and walked the path that Jack London imagined and dreamed of, perhaps.

Another instance, the movie, perhaps for the lack of time, undermines some of the acts that Chris pulls off during his great trip. Hunting isn’t as easy as its shown in the movie. For many including me, it’s pretty easy as you see it – you pick a gun, miss a couple of shots and puff out swears then you are all smiles because you get a clean next shot. The next scene in the movie is the actor eating stuff that looks like fried chicken from a small pot of fire. But, in reality, it’s very difficult, as mentioned in the journal that Chris maintained, there are times when all that he has hunted down is a squirrel in few days. Besides, during a favorable season, the list from Chris’s diary goes like this (quoted from the Jon Krakauer’s book) –

May 28: “Gourmet duck” June 1: “5 squirrel” June 2: “Porcupine, Ptarmigan, 4 squirrel, grey bird” June 3: “Another Porcupine, 4 squirrel, 2 grey bird, ash bird”…

Having a dead porcupine in front of you with a bullet in its head, for dinner!! – Now picturing this isn’t as easy as I had seen in the movie.

I would say, watch the movie, read the book and then formulate your opinion. Its a beautiful movie and a very well researched and precisely written book.

Another interesting thing I liked about the book is where Jon Krakauer discusses the lives of similar people and the trips they took. And the most important thing I liked about the book is the bits published from Chris’s diary, passages he had highlighted from the books he read and relevant quotes from great works of literature. Here are a few I like -

I wanted movement and a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and chance to sacrifice for my love. I felt in myself the super abundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life - “Family Happiness” Leo Tolstoy

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy - G.K. Chesterton

And of course how could I not mention it, Eddie vedder, he is one talented guy. WOW!! You listen to the sound tracks of this movie - the music and the lyrics; they just put the whole movie into perspective. If you watch the movie then you should listen to these tracks – Guaranteed, Society, Hard sun, Long nights etc. Amazing songs. Truly amazing!!

Well, I love the movie and I would recommend it. In no particular order, I would recommend both the book and the movie.

This was just a drawing that came to me some day, quite a few days ago, rather should I say I am not sure yet what to make out of it exactly… lol. Well, it is a crude charcoal drawing, on a slightly crumpled ruled paper (perhaps I didn’t have any resources around that day). Anyway, I like this drawing. Let me know what do you feel about it? Pardon me for the picture quality, that’s the best my camera could do.

Lets try. First of all, big congratulations to Rahman for breaking the deadlock for us Indians. He has to be credited for being able to pose for the press with an Oscar in each hand. Clearly, the reward is not only testimony for his work on Slumdog Millionaire but also the sea of musical scores and songs composed through his magical career.

At this juncture there are two issues that raises eyebrows. One, does the overall impact of the movie influence the number of times Slumdog songs are looped at our homes and offices? Two, if you sat down and listened to the songs from all the movies that Rahman has composed music for, would you rate Slumdog stuff as No.1.

I’d say YES to question one and NO to number two.

Yes, and a big one at that. A movie that has a wider reach and more impact simply due its production value is more obvious to get accolades for all its technicians and musicians and screenwriters and a whole host of cinema army. Undoubtedly, the larger picture elevates the value of its ingredients.

No, simply because most ardent Rahman fans would tell you (and its quite obvious) that the Slumdog tracks are no match to the romantic tunes of Roja or the anthems from Dil Se or the mystery of Bombay; quite comfortably placed several leagues higher. Its hard for me not to single out other Rahman work that are musically superior to the Oscar winning soundtrack.

This puts us in a judgmental dilemma. Are the Oscars the ultimate form of reward? Are they fair and objective to garland each category without shrouding their eyes with the widespread acclaim that the movie boasts off as a whole? Or is it the magic of the oldest rags to riches formula that has charmed its way to the big league? Or just the shocking truth of the Dharavi community?

If there’s anybody who could have made us proud, undoubtedly the first choice is Rahman. But a decade and a half ago for Roja, and again later for Bombay and I could effortlessly crowd the list.

Objectivity is almost contradictory to human nature and to second this Id say that the genius was always an Oscar winner, from the time we knew him,

The Undercover Economist is a decent read. The book starts off very well explaining ‘who pays for your coffee’, the subtle but very important economics involved in efficient pricing of a product,  coffee, the scores of different businesses that come together in free market to make a small product like coffee possible (serendipity, it seems like),  and similar interesting and clever ideas of some of the world’s great economic thinkers simplified so that a normal person can understand. The most impressive parts were the most obvious but rarely noticed aspects like the reason for segregation of classes in trains and even some clever marketing strategies of IBM.

It’s a book for the layman, there are no complex economic terminologies and jargons used in the book, everything is explained with simple real life examples and with simple logic - what I would call ‘Logical Economic reasoning’ lol.
The book disappointed me when about 30-40 pages of a 250 page book were used to explain that corruption dampens economic growth - I don’t have to read to book to learn that corruption hampers growth, more over this explanation was not much of any economic concept but was predominantly anecdotes of the author cheated by corrupt officials in a poor country.
The book ends well, China’s economy and its secret for rapid growth, Effects of globalization, importance of trade. Comparison of growing economies - India and China, and their economic policy.
All in all - a decent read.

When I look up I see a million, when I look down I see another million, these are the odds of being a normal person. Well, may be no one has to be ordinary to experience this, perhaps every individual experiences this, even if he is on the extremes of the scale.

Now should I look up? For I could find the prospective dream path for the life ahead or should i look down, the competitive edge might give me a confidence boost and self belief, two essential ingredients for success.

I strongly believe that anyone can do any job in this world and can do it well. Any one can be lawyer, engineer, doctor, journalist, quizzer, sportsmen etc. They just need to have a driving force, a sense of responsibility, a personal want to fulfill needs, then anyone will do anything and can do it well. For instance, lets say a poor guy has a family to support and finds it hard to make ends meet, this guy might have always wanted to be a painter and he still does paint as a profession, but just to earn the money that sustains him, he has also picked up a part time job of a cartoonist. The driving force here is that he needs the money and if he doesn’t do a good job, he might loose the job, so it’s like this – he was never destined nor interested in being a cartoonist but he becomes a good one. This is just to illustrate that anyone can do any job, if necessary.

Now, I will take up success as a destination, simply because i cannot define success as it’s subjective to the pursuers opinion and the field concerned. Let’s say the person picks up a profession X, and the success as the person defines it is to reach a destination, like for a race driver the destination might be a race win or perhaps the championship which comes by hard work, meticulous practice and precision. Now this person we consider has a destination to reach in the field of X and undoubtedly hard work must be an obvious input. I still say that any person can achieve this feat, but it just would take extra effort to achieve the same destination. I mean, lets consider a driver who was always passionate about racing, had sharp reflexes and every ingredient to be a good race driver, he perhaps would need 10 laps to master a circuit and perform good, but on the other hand any normal guy can still perform the same way but would need a lot of extra effort to do it, like perhaps work outs to become physically race fit, improving reflexes by practicing simulations, practicing for about 100 laps to perform at par with the other candidate. So, my point is that it is possible to do it but it just takes a lot more effort and time.

This brings me to the point where a person has to identify what his field is or what is the thing that he can do best, this is the self realization. For instance, if i had to be an artist, then the only reason it is because I already have an edge over the others with me. So, if a person is destined to be a poet or a writer then it is because the person already has those qualities that are intrinsic that the others would take a lot of time to learn.May be a writer would draw inspiration to write about sorrow just by looking at an fly stuck in a spider’s web, on the other hand perhaps a normal guy would have to live through a catastrophe and may be attain the same mental state as the writer after a whole lot of personal loss. So, its just the same destination to be reached but just that this person will have to travel a lot less to reach there.

I can’t become a physicist now because if I start learning basics of physics now then perhaps I would take another 20 years to be well versed, at par with other physicists. Rather, I should look at fields that I am good at, and I am interested in.

This is where the power of the sub-conscious human brain comes into play. The mind is this wonderful phenomena which involuntarily makes the correct and substantial decisions for us and lets of the other decisions to be made consciously by us. A strong mind doesn’t have likes and dislikes, it just has choices. For example, If a person is working in a factory, say he handles a component in the manufacturing assembly line. If this person is buried deep in debt then he would have no complaints about his job but might as well look for an additional one to pay off his debt, but if he had no such immediate responsibility and if it was working out a little easy for him then is when the he would perhaps say my job is monotonous, i am not satisfied with my job. In the first case, the mind decided unconsciously for the person, quiting the present job was not even an option, but presented to his conscious self, the options of picking up another job or not, which were logical options available to solve his problems. In the second case, the mind decides that the persons life is comfortable enough to provide a choice to the mans conscious to decide if the job is monotonous or not.Perhaps we can say, emotions are just the circumstantial logical choices that are provided by the sub-conscious mind to the conscious, i.e in simpler words, you cry only when you can afford to. You don’t see a poor daily wage laborer’s 14 year old son crying because his father did not buy him a PSP for his birthday.

Point, simple – You can do anything, all you need is a little bit of self belief and of course identify what you are good at so that you can use that edge over others to drive you ahead towards your goal faster.

The world has witnessed Barack Obama come to power and I cant help noticing the number of people influenced, insignificantly perhaps, but its become a commonly used phrase overnight - “The change has come”. A search for “Obama” and the immediate and weird consequences of this recent Presidential win ranging from Obama updating regularly on twitter to news reports of new born kids in a place as remote as Kenya named after Obama and even his wife. My point is that this man has serendipitously risen up as a ray of hope to all the people in distress. A sense of expectation and hope has suddenly sprung up from no where. I don’t know if this man is actually committed or is just putting up an act which might be a burst of enthusiasm, a direct consequence of his recent formidable win, by showcasing an urgency in creating his radical-damage control policies to rationalize, but I am sure what he has achieved in terms of the backing of the whole world, is commendable.

Now the thought that cropped up in my mind is how to replicate such effects in India, I know it wouldn’t be that easy considering that India is totally a different scenario, but it wouldn’t hurt to bring up a suitable candidate who could represent and inject such change into the people. Well, Of all I could think of Rahul Gandhi, I think this would be a great time for the Congress Party to bring out Rahul Gandhi as the Indian equivalent for the Obama effect. Rahul Gandhi is no new comer into the political arena of India, he has been prominent in some geographies, but it would be great if he is marketed as the young restless blood, the jolt of revival in the failing times. This could work because the congress party has the wise men it always had, plus an added advantage if its coupled with some sense of a promise of young renaissance into the Indian system. It could be a very small section of the vote bank that is targeted by this, the young 20 to 30 year olds of the urban educated population, but it wouldn’t hurt when it can increase Rahul Gandhi’s reach from a few certain geographies to another demography.

I guess with a conscious effort and some wise vision, this could happen, Rahul Gandhi can be portrayed as the Obama of India and perhaps given a chance he will deliver.

We have huge problems to deal with, we need someone able to do it, we have got to decide wisely. For instance, the IT sector of India - we don’t need governance that would subsidize IT, to try to revive it during its fall but we need a governance that could see whats big next and make the scenario favorable for that to flourish.

If branding and believing in Rahul Gandhi as the Obama of India can help then why not?

So here it is - My tiny tiny effort to start with.

We can sit here and listen to the Finance Minister and the RBI Governor say its all going to be fine, things are under control. Should we believe them, should we not? They are obviously more qualified than we are and so in that sense I guess its better we take their word instead of making our own predictions about the economy. But, in a position they are, you can’t expect them to do anything differently either. For instance, let’s consider that the whole financial system is down, the banks are suffering a big blow, then these people at the privileged and responsible positions just cannot openly admit “yes, we are screwed” for the simple reason because that would inject panic and would send the system go tumbling down and obliterate any hope of recovery even if there was one.

So hearing the truth from the official sources is almost null or if that happens then we have already perhaps crossed the threshold or in common terms called as FUBAR (lol). In that case, perhaps the reassurances we are given are fake too.

Ok, then now who should we turn to for a humble and true opinion? We cannot turn to the media, for the simple reason that there are about some 10 different news sources covering the same crisis and each one show cases the opinions of a few economists, every one of them is highly qualified, but the opinions range from one end of the spectrum to the other. Choosing from all those opinions would be as good as taking our own guess.

The question really is “How bad is it?”

The reassurances kept coming, and in fact some were not even assurances but they were positives pointed out. I have heard it all in the media, ranging from “it’s a 1930 again”, to “it’s worse than 1930”, to “it’s the down fall of western world domination and rise of Asian and European economies”, to “India is not affected much, in fact China and India will emerge out of this crisis as the new super powers”, to “Transition from west to east” etc.

All these optimistic things are what that the majority of people believe or should I more appropriately say, the people force themselves to involuntarily believe even though the demon of the worst to come might be lingering all the time at the back of the heads. Its normal human tendency to cling on to any ray of hope; let’s face it, no one wants to see the bad or face the bad, so we start looking for the comfort zones to reside our fears in, even if its not coming from a very reliable source.

Even I believed that the crisis was not very bad and then USA started to shut down, slowly but surely. Now the same assurances were versioned to favour the current situation, it was said US was the epicenter and so it crashed. Our market indices keep falling but the word is that the market index doesn’t depict the overall economy, and we are reassured again, we are strong fundamentally and we are safe.

We are still being told we are fundamentally sound and there are just the mild momentarily fluctuations caused by the repercussions. And while this was happening, Lakhs of crores worth money was lost, and we continue to loose it everyday in the markets. Biggest in the business are suffering, there were stocks that lost 10% to 20% of their valuation in a day. And there were more than one such day. And how it affects the smaller players, a friend had a job consultancy, doing fine enough, he had hired a handful of employees and suddenly I hear from him today, the consultancy is shut down and the employees fired. Reason, a bigger bank owes money and haven’t paid and not many jobs in the offering in the market currently.

We were told the financial sector is hurt but the other sectors won’t be affected much, then the IT companies started the layoffs blaming the strong rupee. But in some strange sense it was fortunate for the IT companies that the rupee lost and fell rapidly relative to the dollar and so somehow there was some sort of decency brought into the quarterly balance sheets. Any way not much of the crisis would have been shown in this quarter results as the results speak about the quarter that went. What would be interesting is to see how the companies will do in the next quarter.

Along side to this, there were the reputed airliners that started layoffs, but there was this turn around overnight and a cheap sentimental show was put up as the employees were hired back. Now as it is speculated, its due to the fear and oppression of a political party.

The other airliner comes up with a newer scheme, 15000 employees are suspended. They remain employees but they won’t be paid. Now, what in hell does that mean?

I speak to a friend who is into the real estate property business and he says there are no buyers already. There are so many sellers of land but there are no buyers. Now I deduce a simple logic, the prices are going to drop, well is this sub prime that was rehearsed in the US of A a little earlier?

One commodity that has yet to show its vulnerabilities is Gold, people are investing with the belief that gold cant fall but I differ in my opinion. Just a brief search proves it evidently that, through the crisis gold ebbs but on the longer run it has lost.

Now if all this happen it is obvious every one feels the pinch and there will be a rise in unemployment and who knows how far it will go, perhaps a food crisis, inflation, commodity prices will shoot up. Buying power of the consumer will be limited, case studies such as iron ore prices or coke prices prove that they have increased out of bounds lately and such increases will affect manufacturers, commodities will be costlier, businesses will find it hard to sustain, layoffs.

We all rode on the bubble, with or without our knowledge, now the markets are re-evaluating everything. So if we get through, then we will be evaluated and will be put back to the place where we actually belong and what we actually deserve. The over-valued offset is about to be eliminated.

Tough times ahead.

Now this completely depends on what you define a developer as?
Any person who writes code ?  and I presume most of you would agree with that..

One of my closest observation is that today’s coders are more efficient and less competent. Now these are
two contradicting aspects that are put together. But that is true, its an appalling situation,
most of the coders have less or no knowledge of anything in detail, apart from the syntaxes and
few very commonly faced problems.

I don’t say that the normal coder is not knowledgeable, but the knowledge is confined to a tunnel - just the one way in. Learning is limited.

Now, Are you a developer?
In my opinion the normal coder is not a developer, now the definitive reason for that would be lack of design skills etc.
Now, My views, Every coder doesn’t necessarily get to work on the cutting edge, future trend setting projects, but yes there is a level of competence that has to be achieved.
Primarily, If a coder is given a requirement ‘to implement X on Y’ and if the coder searches the internet for ‘what is X’ or ‘What is Y’ followed by ‘how to implement X on Y’ then the coder is perhaps not even proficient enough to be called a coder. Though as i said, since there is an perpetual and quality source of information available on demand, and precise search results of relevance, the coder might just complete the task right on schedule.

The excessive dependence on the internet is a cause of concern,  its similar to calculator,for instance, simple addition manually to avoid the over dependence on a calculator. I mean, we know the calculators will not go anywhere, so we can be liberal enough to rely on them, completely.
So we know the internet will not go away but is it good to depend, rather over depend on it. Fine, even if we accept the fact that no coder can know everything and so no matter how knowledgeable a coder is?  there are twice as many things that he will still have to ask himself  ‘What is X?’, but there are the learning curves of the coders that are receding rapidly. For instance if there is an error that a coder encounters, which has nothing to do with the syntax or code but is an error in the interoperability of the code with another compatible software, then the coder searches the internet repositories for the restoration of the error.

In that case the coder will have to face every possible error to look for the fix and become proficient enough to be internet independent.

The easy alternative would be to understand the basics of the interoperability of the compatible software, so the coder has at least a faint understanding of the problem and more importantly a logical understanding of the solution when he finds it, instead of a thumb rule approach ( Something like the concept of gravity, we all know its occurs but we have know idea why? )
Now again, i wouldn’t say that the coder can be expected to know all supporting and compatible soft wares but sure can about some inevitable ones like the Operating system etc. The OS, now this is one software that i think every coder should have some basic understanding at least, only because any piece of code that the coder writes has to invariably interact with the OS.

It is of profound importance to understand the basic and inner workings such as memory, process, storage management, security, file systems etc. And sadly, I don’t see many who know much about it. Basically, at least the Kernel, shell etc should mean more than a couple of concentric circles or blocks as they were depicted and taught in the books.

So that is my view on what a developer has to be, its obviously up to personal discretion whether a person thinks of himself as a ordinary coder or a good developer.Learn, Learn more, Learn the basics perfectly and update yourself consistently. Most importantly, I think the developer has to like what he does, and it would be great if that’s what he does best.

This is an article I read , it explains the economic crisis using a simple example. I have no clue who the author is, but I liked the article. So to share it I put it up on my blog. So if you authored this article please claim your ownership.

Read on…..

Once there was a little island country. The land of this country was the tiny island itself. The total money in circulation was 2 dollars as there were only two pieces of 1 dollar coins circulating around.

1) There were 3 citizens living on this island country.  A owned the land. B and C each owned 1 dollar.

2) B decided to purchase the land from A for 1 dollar. So, now A and C own 1 dollar each while B owned a piece of land that is worth 1 dollar.

* The net asset of the country now = 3 dollars.

3) Now C thought that since there is only one piece of land in the country, and land is non producible asset, its value must definitely go up. So, he borrowed 1 dollar from A, and together with his own 1 dollar, he bought the land from B for 2 dollars.

*A has a loan to C of 1 dollar, so his net asset is 1 dollar.
* B sold his land and got 2 dollars, so his net asset is 2 dollars.
* C owned the piece of land worth 2 dollars but with his 1 dollar debt to A, his net residual asset is 1 dollar.
* Thus, the net asset of the country = 4 dollars.

4) A saw that the land he once owned has risen in value. He regretted having sold it. Luckily, he has a 1 dollar loan to C. He then borrowed 2 dollars from B and acquired the land back from C for 3 dollars. The payment is by 2 dollars cash (which he borrowed) and cancellation of the 1 dollar loan to C. As a result, A now owned a piece of land that is worth 3 dollars. But since he owed B 2 dollars, his net asset is 1 dollar.

* B loaned 2 dollars to A. So his net asset is 2 dollars.
* C now has the 2 coins. His net asset is also 2 dollars.
* The net asset of the country = 5 dollars. A bubble is building up.

(5) B saw that the value of land kept rising. He also wanted to own the land. So he bought the land from A for 4 dollars. The payment is by borrowing 2 dollars from C, and cancellation of his 2 dollars loan to A.

* As a result, A has got his debt cleared and he got the 2 coins. His net asset is 2 dollars.
* B owned a piece of land that is worth 4 dollars, but since he has a debt of 2 dollars with C, his net Asset is 2 dollars.
* C loaned 2 dollars to B, so his net asset is 2 dollars.

* The net asset of the country = 6 dollars; even though, the country has only one piece of land and 2 Dollars in circulation.

(6) Everybody has made money and everybody felt happy and prosperous.

(7) One day an evil wind blew, and an evil thought came to C’s mind. “Hey, what if the land price stop going up, how could B repay my loan. There is only 2 dollars in circulation, and, I think after all the land that B owns is worth at most only 1 dollar, and no more.”

(8) A also thought the same way.

(9) Nobody wanted to buy land anymore.

* So, in the end, A owns the 2 dollar coins, his net asset is 2 dollars.
* B owed C 2 dollars and the land he owned which he thought worth 4 dollars is now 1 dollar. So his net asset is only 1 dollar.
* C has a loan of 2 dollars to B. But it is a bad debt. Although his net asset is still 2 dollars, his Heart is palpitating.
* The net asset of the country = 3 dollars again.

(10) So, who has stolen the 3 dollars from the country? Of course, before the bubble burst B thought his land was worth 4 dollars. Actually, right before the collapse, the net asset of the country was 6 dollars on paper. B’s net asset is still 2 dollars, his heart is palpitating.

(11) B had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. C as to relinquish his 2 dollars bad debt to B, but in return he acquired the land which is worth 1 dollar now.

* A owns the 2 coins; his net asset is 2 dollars.
* B is bankrupt; his net asset is 0 dollar. (He lost everything)
* C got no choice but end up with a land worth only 1 dollar

* the net asset of the country = 3 dollars.

************ **End of the story; BUT ************ ********* ******

There is however a redistribution of wealth.
A is the winner, B is the loser, C is lucky that he is spared.
A few points worth noting -

(1) when a bubble is building up, the debt of individuals to one another in a country is also building up.
(2) This story of the island is a closed system whereby there is no other country and hence no foreign debt. The worth of the asset can only be calculated using the island’s own currency. Hence, there is no net loss.
(3) An over-damped system is assumed when the bubble burst, meaning the land’s value did not go down to below 1 dollar.
(4) When the bubble burst, the fellow with cash is the winner. The fellows having the land or extending loan to others are the losers. The asset could shrink or in worst case, they go bankrupt.
(5) If there is another citizen D either holding a dollar or another piece of land but refrains from taking part in the game, he will neither win nor lose. But he will see the value of his money or land goes up and down like a see saw.
(6) When the bubble was in the growing phase, everybody made money.
(7) If you are smart and know that you are living in a growing bubble, it is worthwhile to borrow money (like A) and take part in the game. But you must know when you should change everything back to cash.
(8) As in the case of land, the above phenomenon applies to stocks as well.
(9) The actual worth of land or stocks depends largely on psychology (or speculation).

A few days ago I just realized the power of twitter,  the ease with which the news and information spreads and the speed at which it spreads.

The course of events was something like this :

I watch the Belgian GP, and everyone knows how the race unfolded, Raikkonen crashes out of the race in the final laps, being a Raikkonen supporter i was pissed and a lap or two later, Lewis wins. I am more pissed and go out for a walk pondering, how tiny and subtle things can have catastrophic aftermaths in the long run. If you had watched the race then you would understand what I am talking about, Kimi is in the lead for 42 laps in the 44 lap race and then slight rain comes down, Kimi is on dry weather tyres and he struggles for grip, Lewis forces Kimi to push that tiny little bit more than he should have, Kimi looses the lead, pushes harder and eventually crashes out. Then, championship standings after the race were Lewis is comfortably ahead of KImi by about 20 points. If rain had come down 2 or 3 minutes later then Lewis, Massa and Kimi would have all been clogged up within 11 championship points and that would have made the season more promising and prospective (Kimi supporter u see ..lol) . That’s enough of the prologue.

Ok getting back to the point about my witness about power of twitter, am having my normal day routine later at night, surfing the net , working on some thing, whatever, and my twitterfox just pops up a tweet - “F1 Massa inherits Belgian win after Hamilton penalised: Ferrari’s Felipe Massa has been declared the winner of Su.. http://tinyurl.com/6249qz ”

I follow the link, I read about it, I thought, atleast a sort of consolation.

Next day, On my way to work, a friend sitting next to me, arguably a F1 enthusiast, tells me - Hey, did you see today’s news? Massa wins the race, Lewis is penalized. And the first involuntary thought that came to my mind was - eh! wasn’t that yesterday’s news ?

HaHa that’s power of twitter, without which, Me getting this news update( Lewis penalized) the previous day would be reduced to a chance factor of me getting to a relevant news source after I got the news confirmation( watching the race itself). You know the odds of that happening, that would be heights of optimism to watch the entire formula 1 race, and go back a few hours later to the formula1.com or a news feed to check, just in case miraculously some one else won..lol

I know this is not any major news that would affect me if I got know about it a few hours later, but information is information, it just depend on the nature of the news, which defines its gravity. This reminds of the movie “Wall Street” i think, a dialogue in it goes something like this - its minutes before the stock markets close and this character is speaking on phone - I need the information now, at 4:00 I am a dinasour (not sure about the quote, watched the movie long ago, but you get the point)

Twitter had reversed the normal flow, the news had come to me