Trivia Fun

When topics to blog run out, it is time to come up with some innovative stuff to blog :-). Since most of my friends are curious and smart, I thought I would mine some trivia about personalities and post a trivia quiz. As a first go at this, I am posting 5 questions. All you need to do is to identify the personality without taking help from any of the popular search engines :P. Post your answers as comments, the right answers would be posted in a week.

So here we go,

1) An easy one for all the filmi folks out there. Sujata being her real name, this nightingale can be arguably called as the queen of indi-pop culture. She is also known to have lent her voice to umpteen number of hit numbers. Her debut private album was Jadoo that was released as early as 1985 and her debut movie as a playback singer was Tarzan. She is also known to have sued Magnasound over a royalty issue on one of her albums. Who is she?

2) This controversial cricketer was probably one of the greatest of his times. Known for his big hitting, he currently resides in Somerset and is actively involved in supporting leukemia foundations across the globe. His Aussie-bashing exploits include, branding Aussie spectators at the MCG as criminals to complaining about Aussie beds as too tiny for him. Currently, a commentator, his son is known to have made it quite big in Rugby. His autobiography, "Don't tell Cath" is a book about his off the field misadventures. Who is he?

3) Born on August 17th 1944, this millionaire started his career at Ampex Corp. Inspired by a paper from Edgar Codd, he setup his own company in 1977 called "Software Development Laboratory" that was later renamed as "Relational Inc.". Married to novelist Melanie Craft, he is known to have won the disastrous Sydney-Hobart yatch race on his boat "Sayanora" and later given up on ocean racing. His estate is in Woodside, CA. Who is he?

4) Born on April 23rd in Warwickshire and married to Anna Hathaway, this person is known as a popular poet too. He has a rare symmetry to his life as his birthday and the day he died are the same. A father of 3 children, he was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Legend has it that lot of his work is buried with him in his tomb. The epitaph on his tomb reads as,
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
But cursed be he that moves my bones.
Who is he?

5) Born to an ardent fan of Benito Mussolini at Orbassano, her real name is Antonio Maino. She met her future husband when doing an English course at Cambridge, England and got married to him in 1968. She was then working in a Greek restaurant. She has written 2 books on her husband and has also edited books like 'Freedom's Daughter' and 'Two Alone, Two Together' . A mother of 2 children, she rose to fame and nearly became the head of state. Who is she?

Answers next week... Till then.... :-)

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You live, You learn!!!!

You live, you learn, you love, you learn,
You cry, you learn, you lose, you learn!
You bleed, you learn, you scream, you learn.
You grieve, you learn, you choke, you learn,
You laugh, you learn, you lose, you learn!
You pray, you learn, you ask, you learn.
-Alanis Morisette

Experience they say is a harsh teacher as she gives the exam first, before giving the lesson. But is the retention of the lesson learnt from experience higher than that learnt from a teacher or from other's experiences? Perhaps yes.

In a recent interview on television, I saw Arundhati Roy (Booker prize winner for "The God of small things") speak eloquently on a plethora of topics ranging from US invasion of Iraq to the Narmada dam project in India, freely expressing her opinion with passion and emotion. She was talking about her new book consisting of a set of her interviews between 2001 and 2003 (The cheque book and the cruise missile). After the programme, I wanted to see how exceedingly well educated Ms Roy is to speak with authority on these subjects and write books of world appeal. It turns out that she is not a graduate from Harvard nor a double doctorate from a prestigious university. At the age of 16, Ms Roy left her hometown in Kerala only to live in a tin roof hut within the walls of the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi before getting a degree in architectural art. Where does she get such abundance of knowledge from then? Personally, I feel she has gone through the "been there and done that" school and that has enriched her persona.

But does that mean that education or a teacher is not useful or necessary? No, Teachers and education are a must. I feel education is nothing but a tool that helps us extract learning from our experiences. A good teacher should be the one who shows us how to use this tool. They say that whenever you lose never lose the lesson. The lesson is lost if education is not applied to the loss.

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