I was working on a WebObjects project that needed some reports for which I was using ReportMill. Now the ReportMill templates are to be kept in the Resources folder of the WOLips project (I use Eclipse/WOLips/Project Wonder - is there any WO developer out there that does not use this combo? Please send me an email!!!).

First cut at the reports - obviously it wouldn't work. I thought I had figured out the problem (the object that you actually pass to the report wasn't bound correctly to the table in the template) and fixed it. Tried it again. No luck. Made some more changes. Nope. Started the template from scratch. Nothing.

Then I don't know what struck me. I cleaned the project. Voila! It worked. I had forgotten an important WOLips (Eclipse?) rule. Clean your project when you modify your resources. The build system figures out whenever you have changed your java files and auto-compiles and uses the latest. Not so for the resources. It does not by default check if the resources are modified and includes them afresh. You need to clean the project and then the new files will be picked up.

I am sure there must be a simpler way to get the latest resources to be picked up every time! Anybody?

I had heard a few instances of Nanos catching fire. But this happened to me.

First of all, for the past few months, the Nano has been giving us a lot of problems. It stopped right in the middle fot he road on two occasions and just wouldn't start. My dad was driving it both times. He had it pushed to the side of he road and then we called the workshop and they had to tow the vehicle to their place. Both times they said some part had to be changed which they did and brought it back.

About a week back, I was in the Nano and my driver was driving it. Suddenly, in the middle of thick traffic, there was fire below the hand brake and smoke around. We were shocked. My driver immediately switched off the car and steered to the side of the road. We both got out of the car and then had it pushed to my brother's house which was close by.

We called the workshop again and they towed it away again.

I talked to the manager and asked them to take the car back and give me a refund. They say they will check the problem and let me know.

On Saturday, we had dinner at my uncle's house. It was a big family dinner. The occasion was his son's wedding anniversary and their daughter-in-law was in town though they stay in the US.

I, as usual, reached early. Well, their house is in between my office and home. So, instead of going home and coming back half way, I thought might as well go there straightaway. To kill time till the rest of the family strutted in, I took my iPad with me. I was checking my email on it when my cousin sisters' kids came there. Two cousin sisters. Four kids. All from out of town. In the age group of probably 6 to 10.

They asked me in the cutest possible tone, "Aa shoo chhe?" (What is this?) I told them it is called "iPad". I then did a quick demo of the Photos app. They were all floored. They all sat in a line next to me and one by one took the iPad in their hand and played with the Photos app. Zoom in, zoom out, pan, rotate. I also showed them some pics of some of them from a few years back. Squeals of laughter and delight!

By then their mothers had sensed that they were playing with a fancy device. They quickly warned them and me to be careful.

Next were a few simple games I have on my iPad. One by one they would take shots at the games and play for a few minutes each. "Next its my turn". "Then mine". "Then mine". They were clearly having a ball!

I then showed them the Piano and played a couple of popular tunes and then opened Penultimate. This was a huge hit. This is an app that allows you to write or draw with your finger. There are some fancy features like an eraser, adjusting the color and size of the pen etc. They were on a roll. One by one, they took the iPad and let their drawing skills loose. Mountains, the sun, birds, the ocean, fish.

After a while, the adults went berserk. They asked the kids to stop it at once. They asked me to put the iPad in. I didn't quite understand what the fuss was about. It was not as if they were fighting over it. They were drawing one by one in an extremely orderly manner, clearly fascinated by this new little gadget.

But the adults didn't care. It had to stop. They would 'spoil' something. This was an expensive device. Not to be fooled around with by a bunch of unruly kids!

The kids gave up. I put the iPad in.

After all, I couldn't stand up against the collective might of the maternal oligarchy of the Parekh kutumb!

There has been so much that has been said about the 2G scam and the corruption in India that I don't think I can add anything of value on the subject.

However, I was just thinking about the recently concluded Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. People are very gung-ho about the way the DMK government has been booted out and the very low number of seats they have won this time. Yes. Totally agree. Good that they were booted out. They deserve this. Probably more.

But think for a moment. Who has come in the DMK's place? Jayalalitha, the mother of corruption. And she has the gall to actually say that the mandate was not only against the DMK but decisively for the AIADMK. Apparently she is going to foist more corruption cases on the Karunanidhi family.

The people of Tamil Nadu always give a decisive mandate in favor of one party. So, turn by turn these two people come to power, loot the state and its people and then lose power, smug in the belief that they will get their chance after five years.

Talk about being having to chose between the devil and the deep sea!

I caught up with a few cousins this Sunday for breakfast at an aunt's house. (Yes, I missed my weekend rendezvous with Poorna Tiffins. I made up for it by going mid-week in the evening though!) We discussed a host of stuff. One of them was how the same language, Gujarati, is spoken so differently by us, who have been out of Gujarat forever and people who have been in Gujarat all their lives.

The Gujaratis who stay in Gujarat use very pure Gujarati, unpolluted by English or Hindi words. An example my sister gave - "Jo ben tamari seeti boli" evoked laughter among all of us. We were more used to "Jo seeti vaagi"! Another example she gave was - "Aatlu motu vahan nathi dekhaatu?" "Vahan"? We forgot that word long back!

I remember Dinesh growling, many years back, at the chaste Tamil being used by a group of students from Chennai who were going back to Chennai from Hyderabad on the same train as us. One of the students asked him in Tamil if the TT had come and gone. Dinesh spoilt his face after the guy went! Dinesh wasn't used to such pure Tamil!

Another thing that I noticed was people who are away from the state generally have a purer dialect than people in the state. The people in the state acquire the dialect of the region. People away from the state generally speak the 'official dialect', if there is such a thing! Again this is true mostly for people who haven't stayed for long in their native states.

The language of the people of a state who stay in other parts of the country slowly gets mixed with other languages. More importantly, they also get more attached to the culture and traditions of the place than their native states. For example, Sankranthi appeals to me more for the Pongal than the kites!