Benazir Bhutto Assasinated

In an incident that has shocked the entire world, Benazir Bhutto was shot dead in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. She was just leaving a huge rally and getting into the car when two unknown assailants shot her in the head and neck by AK-47 guns. She ducked but the bullets still got to her. She was rushed to the hospital but soon succumbed to her injuries.

This is the complete death of people-will and democracy in Pakistan. Elections are supposed to be held in Pakistan in the first week of January. It was hoped that democracy would be restored in the nation after 8 years of army rule under General Pervez Musharraf. Now it seems that is not going to happen. Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto provided the two democratic alternatives to the Musharraf regime. Arguably Benazir was the more popular one. Now with her gone, it is hardly going to be a fair election.

The incident has put further questions on how a country so tightly gripped under extremism or lack of security can hold free and fair elections. Apparently Benazir repeatedly requested for security and investigations into death threats. Of course, Musharraf's security services did not take the required action. I was shocked to learn that she did not even have a bulletproof car! The failed attack on Nawaz Sharif, also today, and the thoughts of a former adviser to Benazir strongly indicate that a brilliant plan to eliminate the democratic threat was chalked out. Even with Nawaz Sharif escaping the bid on his life might not be enough to overcome the loss of Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf might argue that a nation in so obvious unrest needs the stability he can provide with his military regime.

Here is to a strong woman who continued to stand up for Pakistani people even in face of grave danger to her life. May God bless her soul and revive the spirit of her actions. Amen.

Indichix @ Linuxchix

A new mailing list has been setup for the Linuxchix India chapter. Earlier there was a yahoo group and everyone got tired of the clutter and spam. The new mailing list is mailman-based and hosted on Linuxchix.org.

It looks and feels better already. :)

Only bad thing

I got an interesting thought from a friend today. We were talking about something and I said, "... that is the only good thing...". He said that is was the good thing, not the only good thing.

He told me that is how he sometimes gets by with life. Even if he is in the middle of a disaster, he would look at everything and say that that is the only bad thing and for a tiny little nice thing he would say that that is the good thing.

I am going to try to see if it works. Perhaps that is the good thing.

Welcome is Unwelcome

I went to watch Welcome yesterday. I hoped for it to be a tickling comedy while it turned out to be a boring commercial piece of crap.

Akshay Kumar doesn't have much of a role. The movie mostly revolves around the eccentricities of the two underworld dons - Uday Shetty and Majnu Bhai and their quest for finding a groom belonging to a "respectable" family. The other prominent character is that of Dr. Ghungroo, Akshay Kumar's uncle, who is even more finicky about finding a bride for his nephew. He would employ an undercover tactic to reveal the true nature of the family and the prospective bride.

There isn't much of a story or script. The myriad of characters get little time to play their part. There is just a lot of commercial content poured in to get the front-row rickshaw-wallahs to watch the film. Dipping necklines, extras dancing in bikinis, misfit item number by Malaika Arora, the innocent look of Katrina Kaif, the dumbness of Paresh Rawal, foreign locations, Mallika Sherawat's antics etc. Even with all the elements, a lack of proper direction, story, and plot just renders the movie unwatchable.

My suggestion - watch it only if you have three hours to waste. It certainly not worth the time or money.

Dance show

Today was my first ever public stage performance, i.e. outside school or college. The Danceworx winter workshop finally came to an end. There were several performances, ours was just one batch that was a part of it too.

The day was really long and boring. They made us sit for hours before we had our tech run. In a tech run we get to perform on stage just before the actual performance. We mark out our positions etc. since the studios we usually practice in are not so big. After the tech run, we waited another couple of hours before our performance came. The performance was three minutes long and it was a lot of fun! Everyone put on glittery make up. We put on shiny jackets and all the girls tied them in a fancy way. I just wish they let us take photos!

I think I messed up in a couple of places but it wasn't too bad at all. The show, on the whole, was a drag. My parents, sister, and brother-in-law came to see the show. The announcer goofed-up while introducing our performance. He announced the batch number incorrectly. I was glad my family recognized me anyway.

I would be back to the normal tech classes in late January. After much deliberation, I did decide to take a month's break. My sore muscles need some rest in this cold weather ;). I have already registered for those classes, so I am certainly going back. Yipee!

All in all a great, but tiring, day.

Foss.in and Linuxchix

I went to Foss.in last week. I had heard a lot about it from friends and wanted to see what such a conference is like. It was big! There were people all around and it was bustling with activity.

I attended a few talks. The most noteworthy were the Firefox talks - Mozilla Foundation talk and How to Hack Firefox. I realized that I would have probably enjoyed the Mozilla project days than the main conference. In the second Firefox talk, Myk, a Mozilla developer, showed a small sample bug fix. I got to know the technologies Firefox uses. The core engine is in C++ but a lot of browser-side code is javascript, XML, and CSS. After my MBA stuff is done I would see if I can play around with it and fix anything.

The lovely Linuxchix got together and had a BoF. For the uninitiated, it is a Birds of a Feather session where people just brainstorm ideas about a common idea. There was a lot of discussion on how to take the Indian Chapter of Linuxchix forward. The complete notes are available at the Linuxchix India wiki here.

PS - I got a load of goodies from the conference. I now have a Linuxchix India T-shirt, an original Mozilla Firefox T-shirt, lots of stickers, a Foss.in mug. W00t!!!!