Watch out, there's an Abominable Snowman

Some run to the bathroom, some run across the Sahara. It's natural instinct, gut feeling. And a few people did trek 5,000 miles across the Sahara, but not without reality striking one runner.

Stuck in a nasty sandstorm, he sat down and asked himself: "What [the hell] am I doing?" But, he persevered and finished the trek. Battling extreme conditions, these guys are an inspiration. Compare that to Slavomir Rawicz, who wrote an amazingly boffo book: "The Long Walk."

Slav's amazingly 'true' story is about his capture and unjust imprisonment in a Gulag, escape and trek from near the Arctic Circle into India. He walks through Siberia, Mongolia, Gobi desert and the Himalayas, ultimately landing up in Calcutta. To do that is incredible -- humanly impossible -- his will to live must have been amazing.

First, he crosses Siberia, living on camp supplies and hunted animals and fish. He swims across rivers effortlessly. Amazing, I thought. Soon, Slav and his escapee gang meet Mongolians with conical caps. They walk across the unforgiving Gobi sands, dehydrated and killing snakes for dinner.

I told myself "Wow. This is absolutely unreal. I didn't know Mongolians wore conical caps and Gobi had snakes."

Soon they climb hard Himalayan peaks, all hungry, tired and cold. Wow, dude, this really can't be happening.

And then Slav sees the Abominable Snowman. Arghh! In one quick second, reality came crumbling down. This guy is a fraud.

But who was to prove this story is fake? Channel 4 did an expose of this so-called "true story." He didn't do the long walk, nor was he innocent.

Official records indicated that Rawicz was sent to prison for killing an NKVD officer, and he was released as part of an Polish amnesty. (NKVD is KGB's predecessor.) He went on to fight in World War II out of Russia, not from Palestine, where he claims to have fought from.

Nevertheless, the story's an interesting read. The literature's strange -- words like 'blouse,' 'garter,' and 'girdle' are used to describe men's clothing. It reads like a design journal at times with rooms detailed in excruciatingly painful detail. And of course, the Abominable Snowman gets 2-3 pages.

Blunders apart, the campy plot makes up for the poor literature. If you're into Russia/Mongolia stuff, pick it up.

Cool to the G

Jazz artist Praful brings coolness to retro Gujju names. Sure, the guy did some dumb stuff during his day, like spending time with Osho, but who hasn't (done weird stuff, not spend time with Osho.)

His name came up when chatting with a friend about Bebel Gilberto's upcoming grassroots album and how Diana Krall deserves a Grammy for best jazz vocal album (Nancy Wilson won). This friend -- a freakish jazz artist who swears by Charlie Parker -- then switched to Praful.

"Pray-fool," he said, "is amazing. You have to hear him." A Gujju wielding a tenor sax playing bossa nova? I just couldn't believe it.

So I googled. And his Web site, which purveyed interesting sounds, the type you'd hear at Pearl's or on a Buddha Bar CD. He looks Indian, born in Germany, cheesily noting that he's a "citizen of the world." He's also a 5th kyu in Judo, which isn't really saying a lot (it's really far from a black belt.)

He seemed like an Oliver Rajamani-Bally Sagoo mix. Rajamani in the number of instruments he plays (sax and flute/bansuri), his love for world music. Also like Rajamani in his self-obsession with music, forgetting the audience after a while and striking his own, unexplainable tangent in Roma/world music rendition. Bally Sagoo in that he can hit the right beats and mix it up.

Pray-fool's real story comes after he lost his "voice," his inner sanctum of peace, karma et al. To confront "burnout and personal problems, he went in search for inner peace and his own lost voice. He spent 6 months in India in the Ashram of the enlightened teacher Osho, followed by 6 months in Brazil."

The enlightened Osho openly distributed dope and loved the idea of a ménage-à-trois, but he's changed the lives of many people, including Praful. After six months with Osho's gang, Praful was back on his feet, re-obsessed with the sax and collaborating with some really cool sounding groups. He topped the U.S. jazz charts with the single "Sigh".

It's fun tracking the Indian alternative music scene -- through desi parties, BBC's Asian Network radio station or bootleg CDs -- but somehow Praful's passed my radar, even during my days in London, where the Indian alt scene's just booming.

He collaborated with the radical chant artist Deva Premal, who I can't bear, but any work with her means Praful has to be good. I suspect his stuff's gonna be like The Thievery Corporation, or similar, with some more Indian riffs to it. In any case, should make for interesting hear given his background. Next stop: Amoeba!

Sepia Mutiny's journalism effect

"Wire stories don't have Jhumpa Lahiri quality text," a PR friend told me recently. I was telling her how Bengali's had great family relations but bad food.

I looked back at her blankly. "Do you expect every breaking story to be a Jhumpa Lahiri book?"

"No, but you guys can write better," she replied.

She was driving me nuts. "Do you expect Shakesperean text from a reporter who gets 15 minutes to write a story?"

"Atleast you can fix it," she replied, with no sign of giving up.

"I get only one pass to check a story for structure, errs and inconsistency. Even Jhumpa Lahiri can't perfect a story in that time." I said, hoping she'd go away for a pee or something.

Welcome to a day in my life as an editor.

Our news unit's full of easily excitable and talented folks who thrive under pressure. News is constantly breaking, we're on call 24/7 and there's barely any time to enjoy a sit-down lunch. The newsroom is humming: phone calls flowing in, wires tracking news, editors reminding reporters that an error could cost them their job. A wire job usually holds a short leash.

The're something sexy about breaking news. It's fun being a journalist, but we're feeling a pinch from the bloggers who break news and provide a spin on it too. Sepia Mutiny beats any news source with its humor spin and sources. A standard question between a desi colleague and me: "Did you read Sepia Mutiny today?"

Sepia Mutiny worries not just me, but other journalists. It dishes out meaty, selected info much quicker than us, without a formal editing process. It rips traditional journalism apart, getting rid of the journalist as an information provider and the editor as a gatekeeper. Sepia Mutiny in a way is killing journalism, or redefining it, however you want to look at it.

They also show news isn't limited to big conglomerates, unless they turn into one someday. You and I can publish news. Readers will figure out the trustworthy and untrustworthy bloggers over time.

CNN's taking a Sepia Mutiny-type approach with I-Reports, where a video camera in hand makes anyone a reporter. CNN says: You shoot breaking news, we'll carry and you can tell people "I reported for CNN." It's an interesting experiment, and the site has great stuff to surf through.

CNN's initiative says something -- journalism is open to everyone today. Journalists try to keep up, but a person standing next to you with a video camera as competition is a scary proposition.

In generic terms, journalism isn't specialist work like engineering or medicine. Adapting to work requires a few years in the profession. The real value as a journalist comes in skill versatility, contacts and specialties -- regional, science and others -- something that ultimately lands you in a think tank.

Traditional journalists are trying to adapt to the world created by bloggers and podcasters. Learning to blog, hold video cameras and edit videos, and podcast. No matter what, the race is to get information out quicker. Traditional journalism is crumbling, which is good news. Free information to people.

I saw that coming years ago, and regrouped to focus on specialties. That's my future, though I can't say the same about some other journalists I know.

Running away from Vista

Give me a hammer, and the first thing I'll do is break my skanky old laptop PC, a work substitute. Time to go shopping for a new one.

Buy a Mac, a friend says. It's better hardware, more user friendly and it doesn't crash. But Mac-tops are delicate sweethearts -- I remember them smashing clean on one fall in journalism school. It just can't operate on the field like a Panasonic Toughbook or IBM T40 (a standard issue at work).

As a wire service guy, I need great stability, mobility and great battery life. A failed PC could cost me a job. I need to self-fix it on the fly. No IS department will fly in to help on the road.

Then hang on till summer, friend said, when Apple comes out with its new operating system and supporting hardware. Good try, but a Mac is a Mac, I can't see its use on the road, especially if it breaks down and costs me my job.

So I looked into Windows Vista PCs, recently launched, and found these interesting aspects which make it useless for laptop:

-> It needs a major investment in new hardware, especially for small, portable laptops.
-> Vista could sap up more battery life than XP. It's more demanding, and needs more hardware to operate.
-> It doesn't support all standard programs yet.
-> It's still incomplete, open to viruses though hardware vendors may claim otherwise.
-> I just understand XP very well and can fix issues quickly, or call someone to fix stuff. As long as I can file and edit a story and it works, I'm happy. It's not worth spending hours trying to fix a Vista problem, not worth it.

If it's a home PC, sure, I'd try Vista. But not as a portable, tiny laptop that I use as a work substitute. But if I were to buy a home PC, why not buy a Mac instead?

But what pisses me off even more -- I can't find a brand new laptop from Dell or HP that has XP. Microsoft is forcing Vista on us, taking advantage of us, just the f***ing way I don't want it.

But I could be wrong. If Microsoft didn't develop Vista with laptops and portability in mind, they certainly were dumb.

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