I’m watching Sikhnet Film Festival. A great attempt by Sikhnet.com to share the video submissions for the annual festival at the same time. Sikhnet is using a web service mogulus.com which provides free broadcast.

At this point of time, there are 146 viewers watching the “35″- A documentary on the importance of learning Punjabi script by Sikhs. A very professionally made video by 19 years old Raj Singh. I’m impressed.

I invite more people to join Satluj, where we – a group of Punjabi Techies are constantly working on enabling softwares in Punjabi and Localization of Linux.

Last week was pretty eventful. On Sunday, I invited my friend Stephen Goforth and his son John to visit the Memphis gurudwara. John is majoring in Music at the University of South Alabama. He is already composing and writing music, although he still is a freshman at the University. Check his song Tunnel no light here. We talked a lot about western and Indian music and that how fusion music has revived a lot of lost music of past ages.

On the way back we visited Sun Studio in Memphis. It was here, where Elvis Presley recorded his first record at the age of 18. Artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johny Cash and B B King have been linked to this studio over the years.

During rest of the week I worked with engineers from Apple to setup a new XSAN in our Lab.

On thursday, we invited John and Roberto, the guys from Apple, for a get-together at a local pub, Blind Pig. The night turned into a nice little office social and our guests seemed to be pretty impressed with the hospitality and the “awesomeness” that Oxford had to offer.:)

Friday was a long day. The Apple folks left and I worked on rebuilding the workflow, imaging the systems and getting the lab back into business.

I recieved Rakhris in the mail from my sister in Texas and Canada. I remembered the days past by, the days in India and felt nostalgic.

Friday evening, department of student life had arranged an ice-cream social, where a 15 minute documentary – Celebrate What’s Right With The World was shown. A beautiful vision and very nicesly shot documentary.

Next week is going to be busy. But for now, I’m enjoying the weekend and reading a book on typography – Thinking in Type. It has been pretty interesting read so far.

The first one was Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture given at Carnegie Mellon University. Randy who died on July 25, 2008 was an American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University and creator of Alice.

It was a heart-touching and inspiring talk. I have seen there is one commonality in all great men – mastery of effective communication skills.

The other source of videos I usually watch is videos at TED – A get together of Technology Entertainment and Design.

Check out the talks especially introduction by Sirena Huang: Dazzling set by 11-year-old violinist, magical improvisations by Jennifer Lin: 14-year-old pianist or Ze Frank’s Nerdcore Comedy.

There is two types of ignorance and stupidity.

• Ignorance due to virtue – In people who are not exposed to education and thus information. Such ignorance is not just to be pitied upon, but one should try to help them see the world they have not been exposed to.
• Acquired ignorance and developed stupidity – You find this often in highly educated but religiously, regionally and racially unbalanced, un-secular and aligned top brass. And like many other fields of hypocrisy, we Indians have an edge over it.

My simple blog post on Firefox 3 in Punjabi attracted an example of the second kind.

A comment to the post was this:

You son of a ************(Here he introduced his mother’s name)……..still u ppl r not indians….u still think of a separate state..khalistan…….i never heard any gujuu saying that we have firefox in gujarati…..we ppl gave u shelter and instead of showing gratitude , u r showing attitude……In dia is a land of many religions, states, ppl…so let it be….ppl like u always try to break it…ur community is not bad, even u had some great ppl..and i respect them but because of ppl like u whole community has to suffer…Wat u know abt hindi..hindi is one of the most ancient language and scientific too…wat punjabi is -its a weird form of hindi

Now I have tried to get my head around what was this guy is offended at? Not having Firefox in Hindi or not being born to a Punjabi father?

And guess what? And who is this guy? One of my very known ones from my University’s Pharmacy department. He used a wrong email address while commenting on my blog, used a handle name “Manoj Mishra”.

How stupid? Stupid enough to not know that any website you visit, you leave digital footprints:). A thief who can’t hide! A “Patriotic” Indian, who could not even face his own words!!! What a shame! I’ll allow him his shame and not reveal his real identity here.

But here is my public answer to him on his comments.

My friend, Thanks for the words, but I don’t need them.

Lord Budha said, “if you don’t keep other person’s words they become his”. So here they are! YOURS to enjoy!

But wait let me return the words to you with some added ingredients!

• I never mentioned any Khalistan. It was just a simple post about what we achieved in Punjabi i18n group. We a group of 13 achieved a milestone in our mother toungue and shared it with others. A browser on an OS in Punjabi would help village folk, illiterate in English to work on a computer.

If Hindi users could not make this achievement, I’m sure there are hundred others that hindi-speaking users have achieved that we have not. I’m always happy when any Indian or for that mater any languages does something for people who can’t read/write english.

Coming to religious fiction that you mentioned, I don’t support any lame “Khalistan”, for share of sacrifices we gave for free India. Sikhs don’t want 2 % of India for their sacrifices contributed 73% – 80% for fight of Indian Independence. Sikhs want equal rights in Free India, same rights that the constitution provides to any majority.

Straighten your facts: (Figures below provided by Maulana Abul Azad, President of the Congress Party at the time of Independence.)

1. Out of 2125 Indians killed in the atrocities by the British, 1550 (73%) were Sikhs.
2. Out of 2646 Indians deported for life to the Andaman Islands (where the British exiled political and hardened criminals) 2147 (80%) were Sikhs.
3. Out of 127 Indians sent to the gallows, 92 (80%) were Sikhs.

So basically you did not give us shelter (lol, were you even born at the time??), but maybe the sacrifice of my Indian elders provided your forefathers a place to give birth to you.

• Dude, I hardly am a country citizen. See the banner on the top (maybe you need an ophthalmologist) – It says the world is my backyard. With American education, the world is my playground. So I’m thousands miles away from regionalism. However, I definitely would love to give back to all cultures and societies that shaped me and my career.

• Even if today I start supporting some “lame”-istan, I would do as a free man. I’m free of all shackles, I’m not a coward. I write under my own name rather than hiding like a coward behind a screen name.

So next time, you want to write – gather some courage. Or just visit my office, its just two blocks away.

And trust me, I love Hindi. My best line for you would be “zyaadaa laggi ke thodi aur mirchi laoon???:)”