Ode to Asterix & Obelix Growing up during an era when WWW stood for ‘World War Warplanes’, comics were our life line. Phantom, Flash Gordon, Archie and Asterix were part of our lives from child hood days. Even today, I treasure my collection of their fabled episodes and may have read them over and over again – a zillion times, and will continue to do so in the future. So, when I saw ‘Asterix & Obleix’s Birthday’, which my daughter had picked up recently, I was almost transported back in time and was drooling to sit down with that book for a few hours immediately. However, with priorities redefined over the passage of time, I set aside a couple of hours on Sunday for the same. I must admit, the few hours on Sunday were a letdown. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe the big gap between Goscinny’s death and the recent launch by Uderzo, had worsened the critic in me, or simply, father time, which had caught up with the great Asterix and Obelix in the firs...

Simplistic Complexities!!! Complicating simple stuff seems to be the motto of the current era. Value addition today, comes at the cost of the Core Value system in itself. Take Mailing for starters, especially sending out an e-mail from a smartphone. Opt to send out a mail and there pops a list of mail accounts, pick one and the next is a question on plain text or html, answer that and the query regarding attachments needs to be negotiated, and once you think you can now focus on typing the message, you have to make a decision on the input option - QWERTY sliding board, On screen QWERTY and further a single click typing or a SWYPE slide option . . . phew, not sure if my wife can come up with so many questions . . . . This seems to rub off on everything else as well. Take your car for an example. I remember our family’s monster Dodge, half the size of a truck, with complete 7 mm hard steel shell, weighing over a ton. It had just one simple key hole to start the car,...

You are what your Wheels are . . . Show me your Bike or Car, I’ll tell you who you are . . . Possibly sums up the gist of my views in one line. I am a strong believer that a man's archetype, are the classifications of his Cars and Bikes. This is a reflection of his true self, for he is actually living out who he wants to be, through his vehicles. A skinny nerdy wimp may want to be a Macho six packed brute. He knows that the Gym is the longer route. Solution? Grab that monster 1000 CC R1 or a Cherokee or that hunky Hummer H2, rip down the road . . . You think clothes make the man? Think again. Engines speak louder than words, and what you drive says more about you than your costliest 3 piece Armani or the Salvador TuxIcon ever could. The apparel may, at best, get you a second look at a Black Tie Dinner, but get your hands on that drooling Limo, a Maybach if you can afford one, and see the way the world treats a man on a different set of wheels. . . . So, what is the rela...