Great -I thought- now our friends in Mumbai can fix it, I can't be bothered. So one hour passed, two hours passed. After the third hour some Senior managers began to complain, so after one last /. post explaining why outsourcing is the end of Western Civilization as we know it, I decided to have a look.

People were panicking, our Mumbai colleagues conspicuously absent,  emails and instant messaging flying all around the place. So I took charge of the situation, diagnosed the problem (while calming people in the phone and shutting up a couple of Sr managers that were not helping) and after 3 hours of solid work I had the service back online. Got calls thanking me effusively. If they knew ....

Anyway, I learned long time ago that there is no people indispensable in any company, but I still marvel about how little some companies value expertise and skill. I may profit from that later (as a contractor) but is still completely mind blowing, I can think of several ways to still save money while keeping expertise in house. What are our managers doing?
---
On Saturday I went to a photography workshop, a very nice chap talked about studio photography by explaining illumination techniques showing photos of naked, extremely good looking, not page 3, female models.

He does this for a living. I am cursed.
---
I caught the second half of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I have to say that I really liked it (as a cinematic work, not that I actually enjoyed it). Most critics seem quite dismissive of it as blood porn, but frankly, what did they expect?

Physical punishment is banned as barbaric for a reason, add to that that surely the concept of "human rights" was not very developed in the Roman Empire (the Roman soldiers put a crown of thorns on Jesus from their own accord for bunnies sakes!), and frankly you fail to see how you could represent such barbaric passage in any other way if you are aiming for realism. And listening to spoken Latin is really cool. Thumbs up in my book.
---
I watched Tristan und Isolde, live from the Met Opera in NY, via a live relay to London. My goodness, 5:30 hours with a very minimalistic production, very enjoyable and involving. The interviews during the intermissions add another dimension to the experience.

Last two in the series should be as good as this one I hope.
----
Cat now acknowledges my existence by pretending I am not here. Unless I have to feed her, in which case the hypocrite comes around like is she was my best pal. That is Cat for you.

-----

I did more /. trolling today, even came back to HuSi. Honestly, what exactly is my company expecting me to do? It is not like my moral or commitment is going to be high, is it? Strange, they should have offered me some more money and let me go, but when colleagues in the other side of the word confide that they are afraid to touch some of the systems, maybe somebody is getting the bad vibes and expects that the knowledge will be transferred by something akin to demonic possession as long as we are both typing in computers in the same network....