To say the fab four from Sex and the City love clothes is a massive understatement. Maybe it was just a matter of time before one of the fab wore a desi designer outfit. At a recent premier of Sex and the City 2 (SATC2) Kim Cattrall wore a creation by Naeem Khan. (Don’t you love the familiar riffs from Deep Purple’s Smoke on Water,  another desi favorite?) You might recollect that  First Lady Michelle Obama wore a Naeem Khan creation at the state dinner for Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2009?  But I digressed. Back to the main theme of this post, which is desi elements in SATC2. Did you spot the desis and desi elements/influence in SATC2? There are quite a few in the movie. The Naeem Khan gown was just the start of the desi influence or elements that I spotted in SATC2.

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“New York…these streets will make you feel brand new,” sang Alicia Keys as stunning images of Manhattan skyline unfolded on the big silver screen. I held my breath as dazzling, beautiful, sun dappled images of the art deco Chrysler building were shown in loving, quick succession. You see I am partial to Manhattan’s Chrysler building and seeing those fabulous visuals I silently told myself this movie promises to be a good flick. And then a quick shot of the shoes. Yes, those pointy, shiny stilettos. Ah! Are those the famous Manlo Blanhik, the trademark shoes of Sex and the City girls? Those Manlos did play a key role in the first Sex and the City picture. But no! wait these glittery stilettos are not Manlos ….umm they look a lot like Christian Louboutin, those little fashion decadence shoes as someone had aptly pointed out in an article.

You could smell and see the sheer glamor and  luxury as the camera pans into Carrie’s lush apartment and studio-size closet. I sank deeper into the seat anticipating a frothy, fun and fabulous film about fashion, friendship and angst among these 4 women: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Krisitin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). They are the ultimate BFFs, who come through for each other through thick and thin.

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Thanks for checking in. Did you think I had disappeared? Not really. If you don’t find me here mosey over to Twitter where we have a rich, fun and interactive conversation on life, people and ideas. The nature of conversation on twitter is quite amazing and I come away learning new things and making new friends every day.

Sometime you can also find me doing a music show on Stanford University’s radio station KZSU. You can listen to it live on 90.1 FM if you live in San Francisco bay area or listen to a stream.

Thanks for checking in and do say hello if you are on Twitter.

And as always thanks for tuning in.

Chances are you may or may not have heard of Anandibai Joshee, the first Indian woman to attend an American medical college and get a medical degree. Anandibai studied at the Women’s Medical College in Pennsylvania and returned to India after completing her studies. Tragically she died within months of her return on February 27, 1887. She was barely 22 years old.

The reason why we may not have heard of Anandibai is because she came to the US in the late 19th century. The US did not figure in the imagination of young Indians under the British Raj and neither was  it their country of preference to study. It was England and the English universities that were the preferred destinations for modern young Indians like Kadambini Ganguly (who studied medicine in England the same time Anandibai was studying in the USA), Pandita Ramabai, Gandhi, Nehru and others.

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In early March there was a lot of buzz around Cisco’s press release about how it plans to “forever change the Internet.”  What was this big technology announcement that Cisco was going to make? Could it be a new set-top box? Could it be Cisco would take a leadership role in the last mile access issue? There were a lot of speculations prior to the official announcement. There was a lot of buzz around this announcement.

On March 9, 2010 Cisco unveiled its plans that will “forever change the Internet.” Cisco unveiled a new mega router CRS-3,  and this was the big announcement. CRS-3 will be available in the third quarter and is currently being tested by AT&T. The product will sit in the data centers of big telcos like AT&T and others and help speed up the delivery of content to end-users. CRS-3 has a capacity to deliver 92 terabits per second. What does this mean? It means you can download all the movies (I believe I heard there are 2 million movies? Don’t quote me on this.) in the world in 4 minutes, download the content of the Library of Congress in one second and every man, woman and child can be on a video call simultaneously. That is a huge improvement from what routers can deliver today. But, like many observers and analysts have pointed out building a huge network capacity is closely tied to the last mile access, which has not yet been resolved.

Cisco’s big announcement fell a little flat and I guess many were expecting something more than the unveiling of a mega router. Many people were left wondering how could this big router change the Internet forever? “The shift happened so quickly that it felt both jarring and stupendous at the same time,” wrote Ashlee Vance in The New York Times.

I missed watching the announcement because of my radio show at KZSU, Stanford. The next day after the announcement I trooped down to Cisco’s headquarters to talk to Srivatsan Desikan and Melissa Mines, who are both marketing managers. The result is this short video clip where Srivatsan and Melissa answered some of the questions that were on your mind and my mind as well.

Our Family Wedding is a funny movie about family and weddings. Angelenos Lucia Ramirez (America Ferrera) and Marcus Boyd (Lance Gross) meet and fall in love while studying at Columbia University.  The fun begins when the two lovers decide to  head back home to Los Angeles and get married in a small wedding ceremony. Neither of them have told their family of their plans and are in for a surprise when they let their family into their secret. That is when the two realize they are not marrying each other, but they are also marrying their extended family.  Or to echo the words of Lucia it is “Our marriage, their wedding.”

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