I thought I was immune to tags, until Celine pointed her tag gun at me. Here it goes:

Two names you go by (besides your given name):
1. final_transit (virtual name)
2. Puku (पुकू) (thats what everyone calls me)

Two things you are wearing right now:
1. underwear
2. errmm… hey! its almost bedtime

Two longest car rides:
1. Some car trip that went as follows: Mumbai - Pune - Kolhapur - Badami - Gokarn - Goa - Mumbai
2. Another car trip that went as follows: Mumbai - Pune - Mahabaleshwar - Ratnagiri - Murud - Mumbai
Single non-stop journey I remember was Mumbai-Goa (600 km)

Two of your favorite things to do:
Just 2?? damn! let me voluntarily change the question
Two of your favorite things to do in a library:
1. Look out for people who are sleeping
2. Prevent myself from sleeping

Two things you want very badly at the moment:
1. I don’t wanna sleep alone today, so…
2. If I get #1, I’m good.

Three animals you have or have had:
1. I prefer them in the forests.
2. Okay, or the zoo.

Two things you ate today:
1. Cereal for breakfast
2. Pad Thai for lunch

Two things you are doing tomorrow:
1. Going to that expensive apparel store again hoping to get a discount
2. Buy snow skates (regardless of how much they cost)

Two favorite holidays:
1. Diwali, for obvious reasons
2. Ganpati (will be replaced by Christmas soon)

Two favorite beverages:
1. Cranberry juice, the one served by cute bartender
2. Green Tea, the one I make

Who am I tagging? If you think it was going to be you, then it probably was you. Go ahead, do it

• schöne Tag (8)

On October 14th, a newly arrived Polish immigrant died at Vancouver International Airport after being Tasered by the police.

Taser is an electroshock weapon that is used by the police to fire a high-voltage electric shock at the victim in order to subdue his muscles. “Electroshock weapon technology uses a temporary high-voltage low-current electrical discharge to override the body’s muscle-triggering mechanisms. The recipient feels great pain, and can be momentarily paralyzed while an electric current is being applied. It is reported that applying electroshock devices to more sensitive parts of the body is more painful.” (Wikipedia)

Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant arrived at Vancouver, Canada after his first international flight. Speaking only Polish, he was left helpless at the airport arrival lounge for over 10 hours. This left him frustrated, he turned violent, and was left dead when the police fired Tasers at him aiming to control the unarmed man. The whole incident was captured by an eye-witness Paul Pritchard on his camera.

While I strongly condemn the Taser incident there is something in the Canadian society that I think is worth appreciating:

• I respect Paul for handing over the video to the police in order to help the investigations. Note that this incident involved the police, who, were also the investigators of the incident.
• I respect the faith a common man has in the police and law enforcement officers here.
• I respect the fact that the police returned the video back to Paul, fully knowing how humiliating and embarrassing it would be - not just to the RCMP, but to Canada itself.
• I respect the freedom of press here and how the matter is being discussed openly and transparent manner.
• Finally, I respect the fact that the common here man believes that justice will be delivered, despite the police themselves being involved in the incident.

The video is here. Content warning.

Indeed, there are many things we (Indians) need to learn…

Image from CBC News

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Oemar posted this video on his blog sometimes back, prompting me to write this.

Wikipedia defines subtitles as ‘textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen’.

Subtitles

Subtitles can be (a) Translation, or (b) Caption – text version of events on screen.

Here in Canada, Hindi movies shown in movie halls always have subtitles to them. These are, expectedly, English translation of Hindi dialogs. I have a nasty habit of reading the English subtitles ahead of the dialog delivery in Hindi. The minute the subtitles appear on screen, I digest them, and by the time the Hindi dialog ends, I am already reacting to it. Especially while watching Om Shanti Om, often I was laughing all by myself, because I read the subtitles but the Hindi dialogs were still getting spoken

Captions

In US and Canada, the words ‘captions’ and ‘subtitles’ have different meanings. Subtitles are only a textual version of the dialogs on screen – assuming that the viewer can hear the sounds. On the other hand, Captions mean a little more than that. The symbol CC (not to be confused with Creative Commons) seen in the picture stands for ‘closed captioning’ and is specifically aimed at people who have hearing disability. The CC’s transcribe speech and all the relevant sounds in the video being played.

Captioning has progressed immensely and eventually it aims to describe all non-speech information – such as the identity of speakers and their manner of speaking, along with music or sound effects using words or symbols.

Me

I know it would be foolish to ascertain ‘which disability is the highest disability’, but I feel more for the hearing disabled. Probably because sound takes me close to myself more than anything else. For me, voice is one of the important things that makes the other person sexy Finally, I’m overly musically oriented.

Among the games I like to play, Half Life 2 and Doom 3 feature CC. The best thing I can do is – switch off the noises sounds in the game, turn on the CC’s and play my favorite music in the background instead. That way I get the best of both – my music and my game. Even on TV shows, it would feel funny to read stuff like (phone rings), (serious music in the background) and things like that, but once used to it, I find it equally enjoyable. Expressive content, such as Bollowood movies, rely solely on the background score to enhance the intensity of the scene. Think about shehnai music, and it reminds you of either a marriage or something tragic, doen’t it?

The sense of hearing is something I always took for granted, until few years back when I made a new friend. Now I see it in a different perspective altogether.

It’s too noisy out there. Try to read the sounds sometime

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