Drifting !
Drifting
Its the art of sleeping while attending a boring lecture. You require a thick pair of glasses and loads of wrist strength. The central idea is to hold up your head in the “interested” posture while sleeping behind your thick spectacles !
If you did not understand the above, do not drift away. Instead consider these very delectable definitions of drifting from the Modern Racer website
1) Kansei Drift- this is performed at race speeds, when entering a high speed corner a driver lifts his foot off the throttle to induce a mild over steer and then balances the drift through steering and throttle motions. Note that the car that is being used for this style of drift should be a neutral balanced car therefore the over steer will induce itself. If the car plows through any turn this technique will not work.
2) Braking drift- this is performed by trail braking into a corner, then loss of grip is obtained and then balance through steering and throttle motions. Note that this is mainly for medium to low speed corners.
3) Faint Drift- this is performed by rocking the car towards the outside of a turn and then using the rebound of grip to throw the car into the normal cornering direction. Note that this is heavy rally racing technique used to change vehicle attitudes during cornering, mainly tight mountain corners.
4) Clutch Kick- this is performed by depressing the clutch pedal on approach or during a mild drift, then pop the clutch to give a sudden jolt through the driveline to upset rear traction.
5) Shift Lock- this is performed by letting the revs drop on downshift into a corner and then releasing the clutch to put stress on the driveline to slow the rear tires inducing over steer. This is like pulling the E-brake through a turn – note that this should be performed in the wet to minimize damage to the driveline, etc.
6) E-Brake Drift- this technique is very basic, pull the E-Brake or (side brake) to induce rear traction loss and balance drift through steering and throttle play. Note that this can also be used to correct errors or fine tune drift angles.
7) Dirt Drop Drift- this is performed by dropping the rear tires off the road into the dirt to maintain or gain drift angle without losing power or speed and to set up for the next turn. Note that this technique is very useful for low horsepower cars.
Jump Drift- in this technique the rear tire on the inside of a turn or apex is bounced over a curb to lose traction resulting in oversteer.
9) Long Slide Drift- this is done by pulling the E-brake through a strait to start a high angel drift and to hold this to set up for the turn ahead. Note that this can only be done at high speed.
10) Swaying Drift- this is a slow side-to-side faint like drift where the rear end sways back and forth down a strait.
11) FF Drift- or front wheel drive drift. The E-brake as well as steering and braking techniques must be used to balance the car through a corner. Note that the E-brake is the main technique used to balance the drift.
12) Power Over- this performed when entering a corner and using full throttle to produce heavy oversteer (tail slide) through the turn. Note that you need horsepower to make this happen.
The seasoned racer will probably take home a lot from the above list. As an Indian I think this list is incomplete. It does not have the most important type of drifting available for use in India ! It comes it at number 13, but that number kind of symbolizes the implications of this drift.
13) Indian Drift- this is performed when trying to overtake a vehicle in front of you from the wrong side. As you approach the slowest vehicle on the slowest lane at high speed you suddenly steer towards the faster lane (in front of the vehicle you are overtaking). The only requirements for this is shear b***s and a government may care attitude !
Indian Drift
This drift is used as often as the communal toilet. Almost everybody on the road has used this for a variety of reasons. They range from the plane old “I can drive faster” to the very esoteric “I needed to take a head shot at the driver ahead”. The reason for many roadkill cases can be traced to the implementation of this drift in difficult and crowded environments by claustrophobic and under-trained village lads posing as experienced drivers.
Ghajini – Can half sleeves be rolled up ?
If I ever met the director of this movie – I would ask – How can you roll up half sleeved shirts ?
Another question that needs to be asked is, how in gods name could he take a brilliant movie like Memento and convert it to such trash ? If Christopher Nolan sees this version, he will probably tear his hair out in one nice curvaceous line !
I always have high expectations from an Amir Khan movie. Something in his acting makes me feel good about watching him. His eyes are evocative and his manners on screen are honed and perfected to suit the role. And I must say even in this movie he tries his best to be guy defined by the story. Only the story got too contorted by this imbecile director form the south of India.
The movie begins well and shows an ultra angry Amir Khan whooping some really bad asses. Phenomenal strength is depicted in his small body ! We see Amir thowing this monster like he was a bag of cotton ! The tap dripping blood at the end of the plumbing inside his stomach is something to watch out for. At this point I was getting heated up for some in your face action !
Jiah Khan is the bimbette doctor who looks like in need of psychiatric help more than Amir. She seems to have such a vacuum in her upper chamber that the average grey matter in the scenes containing her drop to near zero. She wants to pursue this case of the curious man with the line across his ahead !
Her meeting with Amir is well depicted and was the last part o the movie that I felt interested enough to watch. After this the “tamil movie onslaught” started in full force. The heroine is a plump girl who over acts all the time ! I felt I had suddenly started watching a street play ! Even more hilarious was the scene where Amir walks out of a private plane with his half sleeves rolled up to reveal his newly acquired biceps.
After a few moments of overacting from Asin (or whatever her name is) I was sure that this was a movie that I did not want to watch. The next best option was to go out and get drunk with my cousin who had hosted a party that night. (I should thank god for having mercy for my soul). After a few drinks I had almost forgotten the one hour of torture that I had to endure before walking out ! By today its almost a blurry memory and hopefully by next week I will be rid of all memories of this most abysmal Amitr movie in recent times !
My advice – If you like Rajnikant style fantasies – then go watch Rajnikant ! The guy has built his reputation in this genre. Amir on the other hand looks like a petulant child with some brawn thrown in. What a waste of talent. I wish that our directors can copy movies better in the future …I never expect them to be original anyway !
Oh Customer … are you right ?
The customer is right … or is he ?
To examine a question like the above one has to distance oneself from the word “customer” and derive the real meaning behind the word. Customer in essence defines a person who needs to be convinced that you are the person he/she needs to trust, to get some service/product at the “right” price and quality. The word “right” may mean a variety of things in this context – but most often it means the “best possible” .
This definition was very true during the “good old days”. People first trusted a service/product provider and if their trust was justified they landed up trusting the person even more. Hence we had a “big family” scenario. In such scenarios the roles of the participants are not defined by “career choice” or “core competency” or “at the right place and time” phenomena. The different people in such a setup, do various things depending on necessity and proximity/familiarity with the person who requires the deliverable.
However today’s technology has made us able to abstract the service from the service providers. So now we have the service – provided by various people who come and go based on their free will. Now this is a wonderful change in the business concept. We have immense flexibility at the personal as well at the professional level – to choose
a) what we do for a living
b) where we take our “business”
c) friends – who may not necessarily be involved in our workspace
This concept is driving world economies now. The best example is the chinese economy where the “person” is a number in the “system”. A machine who has to put in X hours of work for the Y amount payed. This concept is the cornerstone of all aggressive economies !
However as almost everyone today realizes – this method is not the best when it comes to forming meaningful bonds with other people around us. This method is great for making the “numbers” and the “cash”, but when it comes to the question of sustaining the human psyche in a healthy manner – this method has failed most miserably. Part of this failure is due to one important deficiency in this system. This system is unable to record “traits” (or the “personal touch” ). The customer comes away from every deal none the wiser about the intentions of the service/product provider. This leads to a lot of people with “bad intentions” getting away with the “good business”. The honest person has no motivation to stay honest – since his honesty is most often neither seen or appreciated by the people he is dealing with. This leads to a society that is morally bankrupt at every level.
However there is a way out in all this mess. And that way would include helping this system record the “personal touches” in the business. We do not have to go back to those days of limited productivity just to “know” the people who are working with us. We can in fact leverage our current technologies to maintain distributed but interconnected databases which have “ratings” and feedback provided by people, about any person in the database. This database should be openly accessible and every person shall have freedom to provide his “opinion” about any other person and see all other opinions about other people. Also these databases should record the nature of the transaction/deal (but not the transaction itself ) in the context of which the opinion is provided. Recording the actual transaction with all details may not be in the interest of maintaining one’s privacy from prying eyes ! Thus to prevent the “user” from getting demotivated (to provide a “feedback”) – we will have to forgo recording the details of every transactions.
Feedback please !
I personally believe that this will anyway come to happen in the near future. Even in our present we have many such databases, but they lack the “freedom” in viewership and authorship. Wikipidea is open to all but alas it records only facts ! The key to improved efficiencies in the future lies in our acknowledgment that people are indeed the most important block of any business and need to be “heard”. Technology can support any system – and corrupt systems along with their technology can only bring the whole of our civilization down ! Lets make the right choice while the going is still good !
