Getting on the road.

Today in suburban cities like Gurgaon, the supply of public transport is woefully inadequate for the daily commuters. Traditionally women, students and elderly have been more dependent on public transport and are hardest hit by failure of the public transport system. As our cities grow and public transport is not able to keep up, most people feel the need to own a vehicle. After a few attempts to use public transport, a daily commuter or suburban resident soon starts to evaluate which vehicle to buy and how to drive and maintain it.

In places like Gurgaon, it is not uncommon to see someone learning to drive a car that he or she has just bought. The requirement for a commuting solution is immediate and a new car owner is in a hurry to get up and running on the road. They have to quickly get up to speed on

-Learning to drive
-Getting a driving license,
-Deciding on the vehicle to buy
-Selecting and buying car insurance.
-Learning to maintain and protect your vehicle.
-Navigating and staying calm on the crowded roads of India.

The first milestone on this journey is getting your first driving license. The law is clear on this, “No person shall drive a motor vehicle in any public place unless he holds an effective Driving licence issued to him authorizing him to drive a vehicle of that particular category”.

There are two steps to acquiring a driving license and both involve a trip to the RTO office. First time you get checked for color blindness, take a simple objective type test and get a learner license issued. This license allows you to drive on the road provided you have someone with a valid driving license sitting along with you. Second time you return after learning to drive to get a Permanent license. This second visit should be within 30 days to 6 months of issue of learner license. You need to take your vehicle with you, demonstrate your driving skills, satisfy the examiners and become a proud recipient of a driving license. It is advisable to use a good professional driving school to help you through this stage.

At some point along the way you will also need to decide which vehicle to buy. Consider both second hand cars and first hand cars while comparing so that you get a full picture. While comparing various options, take into account the total cost of ownership per year to decide which fits your budget. A common mistake is to only consider fuel economy while assessing the ownership cost.

Total Cost of Ownership includes -

-Fuel Costs
-Insurance charges.
-Maintenance costs.
-Depreciation
-Interest if car loan is taken.

Take the example of a new 4 lakh rupee car, which is driven 1000 km a month with a petrol fuel economy of around 15km a litre.

-Fuel costs – about 3000 rupees a month.
-Car insurance policy would be about 10 – 12 thousand a year, or 1000 rupees a month.
-Depreciation would be 5000 – 10000 a month, considering that the car value goes down by 15% to 30% in a year.
-If you took a car loan of 75% you might be easily paying 4000 a month in interest alone.
-Servicing and maintenance charges - About 800-1000 per month.


So fuel economy though important, is just one cost among many associated with vehicle ownership. Lets compare this with a second hand car bought for 2 lakh.

-Its fuel economy would not be too different from a new car.
-Its maintenance cost might be higher, say at 2000 rupees a month,
-Its insurance would be lower at 100 - 500 rupees a month since the car is of lower IDV (insured's declared value)
-the depreciation would be lower for the same reason.
-You might be able to buy it without needing a loan.


You have to choose between having the greater reliability of a new car versus the lower cost of ownership of an older car. The prestige value attached to a new car may tilt your decision. On the other hand you may want to commit the beginner's mistakes, minor accidents, clutch plate burnouts on an older car and so opt for the latter.
Now that you have your car and your license, its time to get on the road and drive on towards a different lifestyle. Make sure you have the contact numbers of your dealer and service network with you and don't hesitate to call for help when facing any problems on the road. Inspect your car from time to time, by walking around it, bending down and looking at the undersides, kicking the tires and lifting the bonnet and having a look at the engine.

Your car is a machine that will carry you at high speeds in dense and chaotic traffic and you should tend it with care. Avoid unnecessary manoeuvres on the road, aim to protect your car and your car will protect you. Renew your insurance on time and never drive when you don't feel fit enough. Check the engine oil and coolant levels regularly and get the tires air pressure checked routinely. Ignore distractions, keep your focus on the road, stay cool and always wear a seat belt.

When one is commuting by bus one looks at cars and thinks they have it easy. When you own a car and realize its responsibilities, you may end up looking at the people riding on buses and thinking that they have it easy. No stress of driving, no worries about accidents and maintenance and no hassles over parking. Don't worry when you sit in your own car, turn up the music and rev up the engine all these thoughts will disappear as you get on the road and get going.

times change

fake ipl player...;

amazing creative discussions happening on fake ipl player blog .... sample below ---

to go there click this ...

the blog is hilarious..specially liked the part where fakie wonders if he can stick a cable up a big eared bowlers ass and see if receives satellite tv.....

A is for Awpheesh (as in Office). This is where the average Kolkakatan goes and spends a day hard at work. And if he works for the 'Vest Bengal Gawrment' he will arrive at 10, wipe his forehead till 11, have a tea break at 12, throw around a few files at 12.30, break for lunch at 1, smoke the 7th unfiltered cigarette at 2, break for 5th cup of tea at 3, sleep sitting down at 4 and go home at 4:30. It's a hard life!

B is for Bhision. For some reason many Bengalis don't have good bhision. In fact in Kolkata most people are wearing spectacles all the time....Bhishon Bhalo and Bibhotso.... though means opposite ...used for same situations.. .depending on the Beauty of fairer sex...are close ...almost in a tie for second spot....

C is for Chappell. Currently, this is the Bengali word for the Devil, for the worst form of evil. In the night mothers put their kids to sleep saying, 'Na ghumoley ebar Chappell eshey dhorey niye jabe.'

D is for Debashish or any other name starting with Deb. By an ancient law every fourth Bengali Child has to be named Debashish. So you have a Debashish everywhere and trying to get creative they are also called Deb, Debu, Deba with variations like Debopriyo, Deboprotim, Debojyoti, etc. thrown in at times....as creations of God himself !!

E is for Eeesh. This is a very common Bengali exclamation made famous by Aishwarya Rai in the movie Devdas. It is estimated that on an average a Bengali, especially Bengali women, use eeesh 10,089 times every year. 'Ei Morechhey' is a close second to Eeesh.

F is for Feeesh. These are creatures that swim in rivers and seas and are a favourite food of the Bengalis. Despite the fact that a fish market has such strong smells, with one sniff a Bengali knows if a fish is all right. If not, he will say 'eeesh what feeesh is theesh!'

G is for Good name. Every Bengali boy will have a good name like Debashish or Deboprotim and a pet name like Motka, Bhombol, Thobla, etc. While every Bengali girl will have pet names like Tia, Tuktuki, Mishti, Khuku, et cetera.

H is for Harmonium. This Bengali equivalent of a rock guitar. Take four Bengalis and a Harmonium and you have the successors to The Bheatles!

I is for Ileesh. This is a feeesh with 10,987 bones which would kill any ordinary person, but which the Bengalis eat with releeesh!

J is for Jhola. No selfrespecting Bengali is complete without his Jhola. It is a shapeless cloth bag where he keeps all his belongings and he fits an amazing number of things in. Even as you read this there are two million jholas bobbling around Kolkata, and they all look exactly the same! Note that 'Jhol'with mysterious condiments.. . as in Maachher Jhol is a close second. Jhaamela and Jachhetai are distant 3rd and 4th

K is for Kee Kaando! It used to be the favourite Bengali exclamation till eeesh took over because of Aishwarya Rai.Kee mushkil is a close second.

L is for Lungi, the dress for all occasions. People in Kolkata manage to play football and cricket wearing it not to mention the daily trip in the morning to the local bajaar. Now there is talk of a lungi expedition to Mt Everest.

M is for Minibaas. These are dangerous half buses whose antics would effortlessly frighten the living daylights out of all James Bond stuntmen as well as Formula 1 race car drivers.

N is for Nangto. This is the Bengali word for Naked. It is the most interesting naked word in any language!

O is for Oil. The Bengalis believe that a touch of mustard oil will cure anything from cold (oil in the nose), to earache (oil in the ear), to cough (oil on the throat) to piles (oil you know where!).

P is for Phootball. This is always a phavourite phassion of the Kolkattan. Every Bengali is born an expert in this game. The two biggest clubs there are MOHUNBAGAN and East Bengal and when they play the city comes to a stop.

Q is for Koshchen (question) as in "Mamatadi koshchens Cheap Ministaar in Writaars Buiding."

R is for Robi Thakur. Many many years ago Rabindranath got the Nobel Prize. This has given the right to all Bengalis no matter where they are to frame their acceptance speeches as if they were directly related to the great poet and walk with their head held high. This also gives Bengalis the birthright to look down at Delhi and Mumbai and of course 'all non-Bengawlees'! Note that 'Rawshogolla' comes a close second!

S is for Shourav. Now that they finally produced a genuine cricketer, that too a captain, Bengalis think that he should be allowed to play until he is 70 years old.

T is for Trams. Hundred years later there are still trams in Kolkata. Of course if you are in a hurry it's faster to walk....Trams are still existing in Paris too.......you see !

U is for Aambrela. When a Bengali baby is born he is handed one.

V is for Bhaayolence. Bengalis are the most non-violent violent people around. When an accident happens they will fold up their sleeves, shout and scream and curse and abuse, "Chherey De Bolchhi" but the last time someone actually hit someone was in 1939.

W is for Water. For three months of the year the city is underwater and every year for the last 200 years the authorities are taken by surprise by this!

X is for X'mas. It's very big in Kolkata, with Park Street fully lit up and all Bengalis agreeing that they must eat cake that day.

Y is for Yesshtaarday. Which is always better than today for a Bengali (see R for Robi Thakur)?. It is also for Jubraj Shingh and Joga.

Z is for Jebra, Joo, and Jipper.

cat pose

 

palin drome

 

uttarkashi

 

Child's Guide To United States Foreign Policy

Q: Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?

A: Because they had weapons of mass destruction honey.

Q: But the inspectors didn't find any weapons of mass destruction.

A: That's because the Iraqis were hiding them.

Q: And that's why we invaded Iraq?

A: Yep. Invasions always work better than inspections.

Q: But after we invaded them, we STILL didn't find any weapons of mass destruction, did we?

A: That's because the weapons are so well hidden. Don't worry, we'll find something, probably right before the 2008 election.

Q: Why did Iraq want all those weapons of mass destruction?

A: To use them in a war, silly.

Q: I'm confused. If they had all those weapons that they planned to use in a war, then why didn't they use any of those weapons when we went to war with them?

A: Well, obviously they didn't want anyone to know they had those weapons, so they chose to die by the thousands rather than defend themselves.

Q: That doesn't make sense Daddy. Why would they choose to die if they had all those big weapons to fight us back with?

A: It's a different culture. It's not supposed to make sense.

Q: I don't know about you, but I don't think they had any of those weapons our government said they did.

A: Well, you know, it doesn't matter whether or not they had those weapons. We had another good reason to invade them anyway.

Q: And what was that?

A: Even if Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator, which is another good reason to invade another country.

Q: Why? What does a cruel dictator do that makes it OK to invade his country?

A: Well, for one thing, he tortured his own people.

Q: Kind of like what they do in China?

A: Don't go comparing China to Iraq. China is a good economic competitor, where millions of people work for slave wages in sweatshops to make U.S. corporations richer.

Q: So if a country lets its people be exploited for American corporate gain, it's a good country, even if that country tortures people?

A: Right.

Q: Why were people in Iraq being tortured?

A: For political crimes, mostly, like criticizing the government. People who criticized the government in Iraq were sent to prison and tortured.

Q: Isn't that exactly what happens in China?

A: I told you, China is different.

Q: What's the difference between China and Iraq?

A: Well, for one thing, Iraq was ruled by the Ba'ath party, while China is Communist.

Q: Didn't you once tell me Communists were bad?

A: No, just Cuban Communists are bad.

Q: How are the Cuban Communists bad?

A: Well, for one thing, people who criticize the government in Cuba are sent to prison and tortured.

Q: Like in Iraq?

A: Exactly.

Q: And like in China, too?

A: I told you, China's a good economic competitor. Cuba, on the other hand, is not.

Q: How come Cuba isn't a good economic competitor?

A: Well, you see, back in the early 1960s, our government passed some laws that made it illegal for Americans to trade or do any business with Cuba until they stopped being communists and started being capitalists like us.

Q: But if we got rid of those laws, opened up trade with Cuba, and started doing business with them, wouldn't that help the Cubans become capitalists?

A: Don't be a smart-ass.

Q: I didn't think I was being one.

A: Well, anyway, they also don't have freedom of religion in Cuba.

Q: Kind of like China and the Falun Gong movement?

A: I told you, stop saying bad things about China. Anyway, Saddam Hussein came to power through a military coup, so he's not really a legitimate leader anyway.

Q: What's a military coup?

A: That's when a military general takes over the government of a country by force, instead of holding free elections like we do in the United States...

Q: Didn't the ruler of Pakistan come to power by a military coup?

A: You mean General Pervez Musharraf? Uh, yeah, he did, but Pakistan is our friend.

Q: Why is Pakistan our friend if their leader is illegitimate?

A: I never said Pervez Musharraf was illegitimate.

Q: Didn't you just say a military general who comes to power by forcibly overthrowing the legitimate government of a nation is an illegitimate leader?

A: Only Saddam Hussein. Pervez Musharraf is our friend, because he helped us invade Afghanistan.

Q: Why did we invade Afghanistan?

A: Because of what they did to us on September 11th.

Q: What did Afghanistan do to us on September 11th?

A: Well, on September 11th, nineteen men, fifteen of them Saudi Arabians, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them into buildings, killing over 3,000 Americans.

Q: So how did Afghanistan figure into all that?

A: Afghanistan was where those bad men trained, under the oppressive rule of the Taliban..

Q: Aren't the Taliban those bad radical Islamics who chopped off people's heads and hands?

A: Yes, that's exactly who they were. Not only did they chop off people's heads and hands, but they oppressed women, too.

Q: Didn't the Bush administration give the Taliban 43 million dollars back in May of 2001?

A: Yes, but that money was a reward because they did such a good job fighting drugs.

Q: Fighting drugs?

A: Yes, the Taliban were very helpful in stopping people from growing opium poppies.

Q: How did they do such a good job?

A: Simple. If people were caught growing opium poppies, the Taliban would have their hands and heads cut off.

Q: So, when the Taliban cut off people's heads and hands for growing flowers, that was OK, but not if they cut people's heads and hands off for other reasons?

A: Yes. It's OK with us if radical Islamic fundamentalists cut off people's hands for growing flowers, but it's cruel if they cut off people's hands for stealing bread.

Q: Don't they also cut off people's hands and heads in Saudi Arabia?

A: That's different. Afghanistan was ruled by a tyrannical patriarchy that oppressed women and forced them to wear burqas whenever they were in public, with death by stoning as the penalty for women who did not comply.

Q: Don't Saudi women have to wear burqas in public, too?

A: No, Saudi women merely wear a traditional Islamic body covering.

Q: What's the difference?

A: The traditional Islamic covering worn by Saudi women is a modest yet fashionable garment that covers all of a woman's body except for her eyes and fingers. The burqa, on the other hand, is an evil tool of patriarchal oppression that covers all of a woman's body except for her eyes and fingers.

Q: It sounds like the same thing with a different name.

A: Now, don't go comparing Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are our friends.

Q: But I thought you said 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were from Saudi Arabia.

A: Yes, but they trained in Afghanistan.

Q: Who trained them?

A: A very bad man named Osama bin Laden.

Q: Was he from Afghanistan?

A: Uh, no, he was from Saudi Arabia too. But he was a bad man, a very bad man.

Q: I seem to recall he was our friend once.

A: Only when we helped him and the mujahadeen repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in the 1980s.

Q: Who are the Soviets? Was that the Evil Communist Empire Ronald Reagan talked about?

A: There are no more Soviets. The Soviet Union broke up in 1990 or thereabouts, and now they have elections and capitalism like us. We call them Russians now.

Q: So the Soviets ? I mean, the Russians ? are now our friends?

A: Well, not really. You see, they were our friends for many years after they stopped being Soviets, but then they decided not to support our invasion of Iraq, so we're mad at them now. We're also mad at the French and the Germans because they didn't help us invade Iraq either.

Q: So the French and Germans are evil, too?

A: Not exactly evil, but just bad enough that we had to rename French fries and French toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast.

Q: Do we always rename foods whenever another country doesn't do what we want them to do?

A: No, we just do that to our friends. Our enemies, we invade.

Q: But wasn't Iraq one of our friends back in the 1980s?

A: Well, yeah. For a while.

Q: Was Saddam Hussein ruler of Iraq back then?

A: Yes, but at the time he was fighting against Iran, which made him our friend, temporarily.

Q: Why did that make him our friend?

A: Because at that time, Iran was our enemy.

Q: Isn't that when he gassed the Kurds?

A: Yeah, but since he was fighting against Iran at the time, we looked the other way, to show him we were his friend.

Q: So anyone who fights against one of our enemies automatically becomes our friend?

A: Most of the time, yes.

Q: And anyone who fights against one of our friends is automatically an enemy?

A: Sometimes that's true, too. However, if American corporations can profit by selling weapons to both sides at the same time, all the better.

Q: Why?

A: Because war is good for the economy, which means war is good for America Also, since God is on America's side, anyone who opposes war is a godless un-American Communist. Do you understand now why we attacked Iraq?

Q: I think so. We attacked them because God wanted us to, right?

A: Yes.

Q: But how did we know God wanted us to attack Iraq?

A: Well, you see, God personally speaks to George W. Bush and tells him what to do.

Q: So basically, what you're saying is that we attacked Iraq because George W. Bush hears voices in his head?

A: Yes! You finally understand how the world works. Now close your eyes, make yourself comfortable, and go to sleep. Good night.
************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* *******

shared stuff on the net

havent been blogging....but have been reading.....

click here.....or here.....or HERE ..... to see my virtual clipboard....where i share the stuff I find interesting...

gangotri

a pal went to the source of the ganges...brought back some pics..the glacier is fast receding and so is his hairline...but whatevers there looks kinda good....see the album here

monkey see monkey do

 

on the road

 

 

 

 

streets of nepal

 

 

 

 

pokhara - nepal

 
 
 
 

happy new year !!!!!!!

 
 
 
 

still alive

alive.... but settling in....still dont have broadband.....been busy swimming n working ...will start posting again in july

outsourcing

whom would you rather believe... this ....


or the wise guys at onion....

irshad!!

And over at the tagging life blog, Westy has come up with this lyrical gem...

There is a valley in the east of spain
Where the clouds hang out, pouring rain
The valley is wiide and has a gentle slope
A fantastic place to have a dope

Boris...the spider

As the New York times says in its take on Yeltsin and his era,

No one recognized more than he how far short he fell of his goal. In his resignation speech, he told the Russian people: “I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future.”

At the end, he was a man worn down. “I feel like a runner who has just completed a supermarathon of 40,000 kilometers,” he wrote in his memoir. “I gave it my all. I put my whole heart and soul into running my presidential marathon. I honestly went the distance. If I have to justify anything, here is what I will say: If you think you can do it better, just try. Run those 40,000 kilometers. Try to do it faster, better, more elegantly, or more easily. Because I did it.”

In an era of manufactured political leaders, Yeltsin was the last of the old school politico's. Someone who could orate, who could mingle, who could get drunk, who could shake a leg, who would use the local transport, who would remember what it meant to be poor and disenfranchised and who would get angry at the state of things around him. Power corrupts and Yeltsin too left the stage to polite applause and muttered whispers, but for a brief moment in time, he was the man who dared raise his voice and take a hammer to the machine-state.

Perhaps it would have been better if he had been a spider, able to weave his web and hang by a thread, play the parlour games and tread lightly on the ground...
Still we must judge a man by his actions in his youth and middle age, not in his dotage. For those who remember, Boris was not a spider, but a bear of a man, poking his nose where it wasnt appreciated, shoving his way into places where he wasnt welcome and forever ready to stand up and climb on tanks and talk to the people directly.

Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

There he is wrapped in a ball
Doesn't seem to move at all
Perhaps he's dead, I'll just make sure
Pick this book up off the floor

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly

He's come to a sticky end
Don't think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl 'round
He's embedded in the ground

Boris the spider
Boris the spider

and i aint no animal....

excerpts from an article about a man from gorakhpur......full article here

"He apes buffalo's bellowing to such an extent that whenever he visits the cattle-shed, a simple call by him (Munna) makes all the buffaloes turn their attention towards him. Likewise, crows too hover around his head no sooner than he gives out a call of caw-caw," said Raju, one of Munna's friends. "

and another -

"It may be of interest to know that the famed hunter-turned naturalist, Jim Corbett had mastered the art imitating the roar of mating call given by a tigress. It is said that often, he relied on it to lure his game."

thank god for a free press.... we would be so deprived of astonishing information if not for them....

btw.. Shantaram, the book about a guy in mumbai, too had characters from Gorakhpur, the bear handlers who loved their bhaloo, went back with him to their home in Gkp.

message in a bullet

Excerpts from the video message that Cho sent to NBC

"You had 100 billion choices and ways to avoid today but you decided to spill my blood instead," Cho said in one of the more coherent passages aired by NBC. "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off. ... I didn't have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," said Cho, the son of Korean immigrants who reportedly work in a dry cleaning business, in a passage apparently addressed to his victims. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. ... They weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything. "

shot through the heart...and you're to blame

Quoted from the Guardian - She said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something

In virginia tech.... 32 people killed by someone wandering around in a boy scout outfit and spraying bullets..... hmmmmmm

totally wierd.... whatever happens... theres something rotten in denmark....why are schools and colleges the best targets? ..... why not target offices ( where people may actually thank you for giving them a break ) etc...why does it happen in schools and colleges mostly.....

One theory doing the rounds is that the guy was angry coz his girlfriend had been cheating on him.

wierder...

qant..ass

Update .. an anonymous commenter informs me that i am an idiot for posting this....and its patently false and hopelessly outdated; since the current aussie humor standards are hovering at 73% below 1997 levels ....

note to anonieperson... please take up matter with Tamanna... see below...

Hat tip to Tamanna

"
After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form called a gripe sheet, which conveys to the mechanics problems encountered with the aircraft during the flight that need repair or correction. The engineers read and correct the problem, and then respond in writing on the lower half of the form what remedial action was taken, and the pilot reviews the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humor.
(P = the problem logged by the pilot
S = the solution and action taken by the engineers)

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.
P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.
P: Friction locks causes throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're there for.
P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.
P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.
P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.
P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.

:-D

Vonnegut 1922 - 2007

Player Piano (1952), The Sirens of Titan (1959), Cat's Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; or, Pearls Before Swine (1965), Mother Night (1966), Welcome to the Monkey House (stories, 1968), *Slaughterhouse Five; or the Children's Crusade: A Dance with Death (1969), Breakfast of Champions; or, Goodbye Blue Monday (1973), Slapstick, or Lonesome No More (1976), Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galapágos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), Hocus Pocus (1990), Timequake (1997), Bagombo Snuff Box (stories, 1999) and on and on ...unfortunately the chain shall stop now...and Kurt Vonnegut, god bless him, will no longer pour out the molten lumpy crackling prose that made each book of his feel like a journey in a amateurish space ship.

I was doing my summer internship in an architects office in Calcutta in the middle of the worst spells of summer that Kolkata has ever seen. Luckily the American Centre was just behind my office, and I took a membership in their library. For a couple of months while I commuted in trams, buses and trains, I was lost in the world of American writing. Not knowing much about American authors apart from irving wallace and robert ludlum etc, I took potluck each time, choosing books based on their titles. It was a good move, and led me to discover authors like Mailer, Styron, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Saroyan, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald et al and I was having fun escaping from the heat of the city, sitting in the airconditioned library, when I should have been standing by a construction site taking notes....but hey...

So one day I chose Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. With a title like that, you could hardly lose. Had a nice ring to it. By the time I had finished the book, I knew I had stumbled upon a treasure. Soon I had read the entire shelf and it was a lot of heavy reading to pack into a 19 yr olds head in the short span of a month, still I will always remember how it used to feel to dip into the purple-green prose of Vonnegut and emerge later refreshed and weary as if from a long journey.

Read yesterday that Vonnegut had passed away at the age of 84, in Manhattan. A giant, truly.

Links -
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/04/12/vonnegut_obit/

from those who knew him.

the official (sic) website

the wiki

Cold Turkey - An article by Vonnegut

Brief Bio

Quotes by Vonnegut

Fact of the day - go vegan

Fact: -The United States alone slaughters more than 10 billion land animals every year.

Interesting post in "Philosophical Musings blog" which pointed me to this article from where I pulled out the above factoid.

An excerpt -

Last year researchers at the University of Chicago took the Prius down a peg when they turned their attention to another gas guzzling consumer purchase. They noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we'd need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels--and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide--as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.

According to the UN report, it gets even worse when we include the vast quantities of land needed to give us our steak and pork chops. Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of the total land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. Today, 70% of former Amazon rainforest is used for pastureland, and feed crops cover much of the remainder. These forests serve as "sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, and burning these forests releases all the stored carbon dioxide, quantities that exceed by far the fossil fuel emission of animal agriculture.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the real kicker comes when looking at gases besides carbon dioxide--gases like methane and nitrous oxide, enormously effective greenhouse gases with 23 and 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively. If carbon dioxide is responsible for about one-half of human-related greenhouse gas warming since the industrial revolution, methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for another one-third. These super-strong gases come primarily from farmed animals' digestive processes, and from their manure. In fact, while animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide.

Its a college, its a university, no its Infosys Mysore

In a story on how India is running out of tech workers, and the ways companies like Infosys are adapting to it, by setting up virtually their own educational institutions..the Time magazine reports

"It has 120 faculty members, more than 80 buildings, 2,350 hostel rooms and a 500,000-square-foot education complex. There's a movie complex built inside a geodesic dome. An army of workers sweeps the already-spotless streets and trims the already-perfect lawns.

Month by month, it's getting bigger. Today, some 4,500 students at a time attend the 16-week course for new employees. By September, there will be space for 13,000.

Infosys spent $350 million on the campus, and will spend $140 million this year on training, said Pai, the human resources chief."

april fools day

Courtesy of the careerbuilder website...heres a list of the funniest 10 pranks pulled off at work on April Fools Day.


1. Sent a letter signed by the president of the company that informed employees they would have to take potty breaks in alphabetical order.

2. Decreased the size of boss's lab coat. Joke continued after April 1 with boss perplexed by his coats getting tighter each week while he was dieting so diligently.

3. Made for a very foggy day with dry ice in the urinal.

4. Changed all of boss's reading glasses to clear glass.

5. Sent a note to co-worker's pager that said to contact "George." The number was to the White House.

6. Employee went to the restroom and when he came out, he ran into a wall of tape draped across the doorway, courtesy of his team.

7. Put "random burping" program on boss's computer that would loudly burp every few seconds. It went on for days.

8. Brought in jelly doughnuts filled with ketchup.

9. Had someone with a "questionable" profession call the office and ask for directions.

10. CEO placed a very large and official-looking "For Sale" sign in front of the building.

The essential guide to email writing

Interesting review in the New Yorker, about a book on how to email. This book seems to lay down the rules for this new medium, and it reads ....

Shipley and Schwalbe enumerate six essential e-mail types (the Ask, the Answer, Grovelling, etc.), eight deadly sins (too casual, too vague, too illegal, etc.), and a four-step checklist (S.E.N.D.) that reflects the authors’ broad-ranging e-mail conservatism. “S” stands for simple, “E” for effective, “N” for necessary, “D” for done. Generally, they’d have you hit “send” later and less often. They offer a hermeneutics of the cc, an invocation against the word “please,” and a number of rather chilling but by now self-evident rules (“Never forward without permission, and assume everything you write will be forwarded”). The reader gulps at the thought of unexploded self-incriminations ticking in servers around the world. The authors, astonishingly, come out in favor of exclamation points (“ ‘Thanks!!!!’ is way friendlier than ‘Thanks’ ”), abbreviations (“Is LOL . . . really inherently more opaque than FYI?”), and emoticons (those smiley faces and the like may “bug many people but they make us smile”).

and everyday the paperboy brings more

News of the day.... After 60 years of independence, we finally got around to doing a survey of our children being abused...and the results -

"More than half of India’s child population has been scarred by sexual abuse. The nauseating statistic, indicating that 53 per cent of the country’s children are sexually assaulted, was revealed by the Government of India’s first survey on child abuse."

read more here -

Embedded :)

You know when technology has totally embedded itself in your life when -

- after embedding the micro iPod chip in your testicle it can sense when you're having sex and play the right music.

a quarter empty

A quarter of the year is almost over. 3 more quarters left to finish off 007. Its been a busy time, and now the summer is threatening to wipe out all memories of the season past. The north Indian heat will be on us soon. Power outages will be extremely common. Ice will be the most used commodity from the refigerator and the streets will have a deserted look in the day. Dust storms will swirl up and people will get thinner and wearier. We will be praying for the rain and clouds and cursing global warming.

The year started off on a quiet note. The worst seemed over but noone was expecting a very quick upturn in the state of things. The world seemed a mess, with China becoming a capitalist sweatshop capital ( funny how the communists ended up exploiting the workers ), Russia getting scarily organised and authoritarian, America muddling along with George Bush and not really caring anymore, Europe not really looking outwards, Africa suffering from catastrophe overdose, the Muslim world trapped in a hobsons choice or either dictators or religious leaders and Australia having its taps run dry. Still everyone felt that it couldnt possibly get worse and maybe computers, education, internet and globalization would start moving people into more sensible endeavors.

got tagged...so here goes

had an attack of the killer tomatoes....and they tagged me ..

so here goes....

There was a young businesswoman in a bar in brazeel,
I got close but she said it cost five dollars just for a feel,
To get more you have to pay more,
she winked at me as she closed the door,
These are hard times and this is my only marketable skeel!!!

suggestions for further stanza's are welcomed. If you get tagged..well you know what to do...write one...and tag someone else

world cup starts....

well the cricket world cup is about to start....and 15 out of the 16 teams participating have been part of the british empire...with only the netherlands being the non colonial team... Its not a big thing for most of the world...but for Indians...this is the world series cup, the fifa world cup and the olympics combined into one long awaited sportsfest.. Its happening in the west indies...and this promises to be the best world cup ever, as it plays out in barbados, in jamaica, in port of spain and all the other beautiful sunny islands in the carribbean...

Google today had this logo .... pretty nicely done...

party on!!

The Times of India reports - Among those arrested were call centre and IT firm employees, children of affluent businessmen, air hostesses and college students. The police seized seven bottles of phenylfine hydrochloride, two-and-half-kg of marijuana (ganja), 100 gm of hashish (charas) beer cans, cigarettes, music systems, 45 cars, 29 two-wheelers and an unspecified number of mobile phones were seized from the spot.

The revellers had come for the party from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Belgaum, Chennai, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. They were charged an entry fee of Rs 500 per person to enter the party zone.

Nangre-Patil told TOI that 50 per cent of the names and addresses given by the suspects turned out to be fake. Some addresses were correct because they were taken from credit cards and driving licences. Interestingly, at the (badminton hall) court, friends and family members provided cigarettes to the suspects from windows. As soon as the judge left the court room, a few youths started singing, clapping and dancing!

the indian hell

An Indian dies and goes to hell. There he finds that

there is a different hell for each country. He goes first to the German hell and asks "What do they do here?" He is told "First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the German devil comes in and whips you for the rest ofthe day." The man does not like the sound of that at all, so he moves on.

He checks out the USA hell as well as the Russian hell and many more. He discovers that they are all more or less the same as the German hell.

Then he comes to the Indian hell and finds that there is a very long line of people waiting to get in.

Amazed he asks "What do they do there?" He is told "First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the Indian devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day." But that is exactly the same as all the other hells

Why are there so many people waiting to get in?" Because here there is never any electricity,so the electric chair does not work, someone has stolen all the nails, and the devil is a Govt. servant, so he comes in, signs in the register and then goes to the canteen!"

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

I look at this woman and I can’t feel anything but rage. What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone too.

read this post by the riverbend girl in baghdad.

quote of the day :)

Never have more children than you have car windows.

America

Now that three months have passed since my return from America, I find myself able to look back upon visit there with more perspective. So here goes, " A beginners guide to America - The north eastern part "

Disclaimer - I only saw a few cities and towns. Bits of Boston, Manhattan, Baltimore, DC, Pittsburgh and Buffalo. I saw a lot of Air Tran and also travelled by Greyhound, Amtrak, Chinese Bus Service, Taxicabs, Cars and on foot. I had never visited this country and my first visit was if not an eyeopener, but definitely a fresh experience.

Ever since my return from the US of A I have been trying to put a finger on what exactly it was that struck me as different. What was the character of the place that I visited. How did it make me feel.

As always when I cant think of a one word answer, I settle for 10. So there goes - 10 words that describe what I felt -

1. Scale - I felt everything was a bit out of scale, or atleast in a different scale than poor old india. The cars were bigger and so were the people. The buildings were bigger and so were the styrofoam cups. It seemed like everything had 10% extra, to make it bigger and better. Coming from a place where a lot of people share less resources and can't really afford to waste anything, the feeling of being in a place of plenty was exhilarating. It however did feel out of place, and not in sync with its users. The scale was not really so firmly linked to the Human Scale and sometimes one felt out of place in some settings, as if we were preparing all of this for some super being who would come and occupy the world we were creating.

2. Rumble - This was the soundtrack of America. The deep rumble of rubber on tarmac. No horns honking, no whistles blowing, no voices arguing, no brakes screeching, no birds twittering. Just the steady sound of rubber purring over the roads. Wherever one went, one was followed by this steady buzz and hiss. The roads were smooth, the cars in good shape. So no creaking sounds, no bumping sounds. Just a smooth steady rumble all day and all night, everyday and everynight, everywhere.

3. Sugar - This was the taste of america. Specially corn based fructose. Sweeteners. Additives. Sweet stuff everywhere. On donuts, in milkshakes, in fizzy drinks, sweets, candy and desserts. Some cold drinks had so much sugar, that if you let them stand for a while and then take a sip you felt like you were drinking syrup.

got tired...will continue later.

back...

4. Alchohol - Alchohol was everywhere. Socializing means drinking alchohol. Having a good time means drinking lots of liquor. Amazing variety of wine, beer, whiskey, rum, vodka, tequila in the stores where one would almost get giddy drunk just browsing through the displays. Favourites- Sam Adams, Guinness, Jim Beam, all varieties of tequila. Put on lots of weight and developed a curious dependency on the divine spirit. Gradually returning to normal and drying out.

5. Sterile and Fertile - These two words kept popping up in my head when i roamed around america. Sometimes it seemed so cut and dried. So antiseptic and so squeaky clean. Sterile means

Not producing or incapable of producing offspring. Not producing or incapable of producing seed, fruit spores, or other reproductive structures. Used of plants or their parts. Producing little or no vegetation; unfruitful: sterile land.
Free from live bacteria or other microorganisms: a sterile operating area; sterile instruments. Lacking imagination, creativity, or vitality. Lacking the power to function; not productive or effective; fruitless: a sterile discussion.

It did seem like the last generation. There didnt seem to be anything new springing up, any new directions, new movements, fresh growths. America seemed stuck in the mould of itself. To grow is to change. To change one must shed some part of the old. Thats where I felt the society was a bit sterile, since to shed some part of the old now might get called Un-American. There was a bit too much predictability in the experiences one had there.

The land was fertile though. Very fertile. Lush turgid rivers, fat green trees, huge overfed squirrels and enormous quantities of food. The human layer which has been laid over the earth layer seemed incongruous, a sterile icing on a rich nutty cake. I kept hoping to find something organic, something that grew out of the earth and grew according to the constraints of nature. Instead of that, one could feel the heavy machinery and the imposing human will that had leveled mountains, flattened hills and build huge boxes of concretes called malls everywhere.

6. Smile - I never saw so many smiles in a day as I did in America. I felt happy thinking that the sight of me was making people light up with a big smile, but later I came to realise that its the default facial expression. Everyone had great white teeth, perfect dental work and the ability to keep smiling for longer than I would have thought physically possible.

7. Color - Black and White and the shades in between - For the first time I was living somewhere where most of the people didnt look like me, not even in the shades of their skin colors. I ended up sharing a house with a pale gentle commercial artist and a stocky grinning tanned engineer. It was nice feeling to see so much variety around. African origins, Asian origins, European origins, Middle eastern origins and the various other types were all mixed up in the malls and in the streets. DC was pretty nicely mixed up and I missed that when I travelled to Boston. Somehow there was less variety there. I saw a west african pub which was filled with the sound of reggae and shook with energy while besides it was a cafe pub with classic rock playing and white folks sitting around conversing. Parallel worlds which met and separated and met and separated again.

8. Sex

die tv

TV is unique in the EEG activity it summons in the human brain, and unique as well in that it drastically reduces the metabolic rate of the human organism. When you sleep, you use more energy than when you watch TV. When you stare at a painting or read a book or knit or fart in bed, you use more energy. EEG activity during television-watching is marked by alpha waves, those dreamy, spacey waves that also exist between sleeping and waking--a passive state in which sustained intense critical thought is pretty much impossible. Alpha waves are also associated with coma.

the above was from a nice article i read. Read it here.


-- Disclaimer - I never owned a TV except for once in 2004 when i bought one as a package deal from a guy leaving town. After a few months, I realised my mistake and promptly gave it away to a pal who got married.

indian team for the world cup?

I feel the following pick themselves.
The 11 member team would be -

uthappa
ganguly
dravid
tendulkar
dhoni
agarkar
kumble
2 out of - yuvraj / kartik / sehwag / mongia
2 out of - sreesanth/powar/munaf / Pathan / zaheer

All these names would be in the final 15 member squad.


I would go with

Uthappa
Ganguly
Dravid
Tendulkar
Yuvraj
Sehwag
Dhoni
Pathan
Agarkar
Kumble
Zaheer

new post #2 of the new year.

2006 was not such a bad year after all. It was also a very interesting year. It marked the peak of the neo-conservative, american imperialist ideology and the latter part of the year saw the climbdown from the lofty peaks of righteous rhetoric.
As Nostradamus predicted, it was a man in a blue turban who rose in the middle east and threw down the newest challenge to the rather confused american war machine. In fact there were many men, and lots of differently coloured turbans which flickered on and off CNN throughout the year. Muqtada Al Sadr managed to become an increasingly important figure, while Nasrullah came from behind to capture the hearts and minds of a fractured middle east like no one had done before.

Sometimes the west forgets that the east is not different. Just like the pioneers in the west preferred to die in glory than live in slavery, so does the Arab. Nasrullah and hezbollah gave some pride back to the Arab world, and the arab world was ready to forgive the destruction of beirut and the loss of homes and infrastructure, just to be able to see someone at least stand up to the war machine. With the kidnapping of a few israeli soldiers, the destruction of an Israeli ship and the grim dogfight to the end with patched together katyusha rockets, Hezbollah at least managed to keep the hope alive in the hearts of ordinary arabs and served as an inspiration for others struggling to assert their independence.

In personal terms it was an interesting year too. I roamed around the country a bit and also started to throw my weight around work and home. After years of living in silence, exile and cunning, the combined effect of a months vacation and two months regular swimming made me sit up and demand more. So off I went to the US of A to see for myself what god and mammon hath wrought. The three months I spent there were very interesting. I didnt see much except the north eastern corner, but what I saw was fascinating. I still havent been able to figure out how to write what I felt and observed about the land of the native american, and maybe I will attempt something in the next post. I saw the summer and fall in the area between washington DC to Boston. I saw halloween weekend in manhattan and drove to the canada border to see the niagara fall. It was a lot of fun, but I couldnt wait to get back home :)

a new year..a new post...a new beginning or a new direction

hi there.... hope you read this..because this is written for you. Hope you are having a great start to the new year and hope everythings going fine. I never thought when I started to write this blog a year ago that I would actually have any readers. I put links to it everywhere, in my emails, on my IM status messages and on my profiles in orkut, linkedin, ryze etc etc. Some time ago I started to monitor my site traffic statistics and found that there were actually a lot of people who landed up here while searching for the hundreds of little things that google is so useful for. There also were some regular readers who even came back to read this blog when there were no new posts. I would have stopped writing and lost interest soon enough if it was not for your constant encouragement... thank you!!!!!!

Now that I finally kicked the holiday rust off my typing fingers, I wonder what I should post about. So many things have been happening in this world. Technology has hooked us in its electric embrace and we are all connected, but now we come to the next question.....what do we do after we connect?

The last year was quite eventful. I had just moved into a new house, was about to complete a year in a job ( a first ) and was just starting out this blog. Looking back at the posts I find that the original purpose of the blog, that of a diary for myself got left behind somewhere and it ended up being more of a scrapbook of odds and ends which somehow got stuck in my head. I found I wasnt too comfortable writing personal entries like - I bought a new toothbrush and X didnt like it. She told me to get an electric one, but I went and bought a shaver instead.

Also I found that I read more and discovered more about the internet since I started blogging. Its so easy to research something on the internet and you can do your writing, communicating and research on the same machine, so really theres no excuse for not getting your facts right. Just a quick google search, a peek through wikipedia, some copying and pasting and there you are , with all the information at your fingertips.

The last year also saw me return to the pattern of my yearly vacation. I used to take a months vacation every year ( usually after quitting my job ), but had stopped doing so for the last couple of years. This year I did it in style, taking advantage of the low cost airlines launched in India, to spend three weeks roaming around south and east India. From the ridge of Bangalore to the coast of Pondycherry, to the delta of Kolkata to the valley of Guwahati to the hills of Shillong, it was a lovely mad swing with just a backpack and it was great fun.

This was also the first year after quite some time that I found a convenient and big enough swimming pool in the neighbourhood and I spend the summer happily splashing away. It helped clear the head, tone the body and get rid of the toxins and cut down on smoking. The lungs opened up, the complexion cleared, energy returned and life was fun again.

happy new year

happy new year everyone.......have fun :)

Cricket: an indian player dishes it back to the s. africans

Cricket: This is Sreesanth, of India, responding to Andre (the Giant) Nel of South Africa by scoring a six and..... (more)

i i t

i i t. these three letters carry so much weight in india. entire industries have been built around these three letters. IIT, or the Indian Institute of Technology, is an engineering college setup to produce engineers. there are 5-6 of them currently in India, oases of academia among the chaotic bustle of India. Outside their gates young slumdwelling 9 yr olds wash plates in cold water early in the morning in winter preparatory to serving food to the IIT'ians red-eyed and famished from either studying or doing something else all night. Inside the IIT campus, acres of green land with buildings dotted all around give the lie to the belief that India is an overcrowded place.

Most IIT'ians end up outside india within a few years of graduating with a b.tech degree and go on to build stellar careers. 300,000 17 - 18 yr olds sit in an exam called the IITJEE ( Joint Entrance Exam ) which tests their ability in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics and ends up admitting only 4000 of them to its hallowed portals.

As wikipedia.org puts it in its inimitably droll style, "In order of establishment, the seven IITs are located at Kharagpur, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati, and Roorkee. Some IITs were established with financial assistance and technical expertise from UNESCO, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Each IIT is an autonomous university, linked to the others through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration. They have a common admission process for undergraduate admissions, using the Joint Entrance Examination (popularly known as IIT-JEE) to select around 4,000 undergraduate candidates a year. Graduate Admissions are done on the basis of the GATE. About 15,500 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students study in the seven IITs, in addition to research scholars."


I became an ex-IITian after leaving college. Some years after I left college, the alma mater finally got seduced and accepted to join the ranks of the IIT and change its maiden name to IIT Roorkee. The wiki again describes roorkee as -

"IIT Roorkee, originally known as the University of Roorkee, was established in 1847 as the first engineering college of the British Empire.[10] Located in Uttaranchal, the college was renamed The Thomason College of Civil Engineering in 1854 and was granted IIT status in 2001. The institute offers undergraduate degree courses in 10 disciplines of engineering and architecture, and postgraduate degrees in 55 disciplines. It has 375 faculty members. The campus is about 1.45 km² (360 acres) in size and has eight hostels."

Over 25000 IITians have settled in the USA and many more join their ranks every year. The fees for a 6 month semester when I was there was about a 100 dollars. The rest was subsidised by the state, which led to jokes about India subsidising America's technological development, since in those days about 70% of graduates headed straight to the good old melting pot.

Many IIT alumni have become entrepreneurs, including N.R. Narayana Murthy (co-founder and chairman of Infosys), Vinod Khosla (co-founder, Sun Microsystems), and Suhas S. Patil (founder and Chairman Emeritus Cirrus Logic Inc.) Other alumni have achieved leading positions in corporations, such as Rajat Gupta (former Managing Director, McKinsey), Arun Sarin (CEO, Vodafone), Victor Menezes (Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup), and Kanwal Rekhi (CTO, Novell).

One of the most famous IITians is Asok.

Recently the alumni have started to get together and try and leverage their collective strength. There have been several initiatives which aim at creating networking opportunities, help the institutes modernise and expand and to make a difference to society and community.

These efforts are still in the early stages and not really upto the level one would expect when the cream of india's technical talent comes together and creates something. Today, India and even the world, is crying out for genuine solutions to genuine problems. There is a need for someone to come forward with a reputation for incorruptibility, credibility, acumen and experience to show the way forward in the new millenium. The IIT's pass the test in all parameters. The selection procedure is still considered free from nepotism, corruption and bias. Their credibility is still intact, their acumen and experience acknowledged increasingly around the world.

Current and ex students together make up at least a 100 thousand strong team and they have money aplenty. So we have manpower, money and also we have infrastructure and a lot of bright minds with experience and innocent idealism teeming with ideas and a desire to do something for society. If the IITian organization can seize the day and lead rather than follow, the results could be magical.

We all know the familiar problems, the media is controlled by a few moghuls, the political class is venal, criminal and incompetent at times, society is divided by race, color, status, locatoin, language, caste and creed, the poor do not have access to the tools of learning, capital and community to better their life, the rich are increasingly divorced from reality and forced to lead lives of shallow desperation, while the middle class is caught between a rock and a hard place with costs of education and healthcare rising, social security decreasing and jobs not really a sinecure anymore.

What could the IITians do?

Well they could start a bunch of not for profit organisations which use the manpower of thousands of students, the capital of thousands of successful technocrats and the experience of the old hands married with the academic rigour of the faculty.

What kind of organisations?

well....let a thousand flowers bloom.

maybe a newspaper...there were lots of literary types around last time i looked around.

maybe a television and radio channel...maybe call it "technically speaking"

maybe a product company for the rural market?

maybe a software company for the domestic sector?

maybe a housing company, making small affordable slumhouses for the urban poor?

maybe ...maybe ...maybe...

yeah..i know....dream on.....

still its nice to know that it could happen ....u never know...

warnings

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a retard.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to think you can sing.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that ex-lovers are really dying for you to telephone them at four in the morning.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting.


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***WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and better looking than most people.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing WITH you.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause pregnancy.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe you are invisible.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause a disturbance in the time-space continuum, leaving you unable to account for large chunks of time.


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***WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you have mystical Kung Fu powers, resulting in you getting your ass kicked.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to roll over in the morning and see something really scary.


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WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is the leading cause of inexplicable rug burns on the forehead, knees and lower back.


WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.


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WARNING: The crumsumpten of alchlohol may Mack you tink you kan tpye reel gud!

fact of the day

In the USA,

58 percent of all convicted drug felony cases involve African-American men-even though Black men are only 6 percent of the national population and 72 percent of all illegal drug users are white. 12 percent of Black men aged 25 to 29 years old are imprisoned compared to 3 percent of Latinos and 1 percent of white men. In 2002, there were 603,000 Black men in college compared to 791,600 Black men in prison. Black women are two and a half times more likely than Latinas and four and a half times more likely than white women to be imprisoned. In total, 49 percent of the U.S.'s two million prisoners-in prison or in jail-are African American. This is a shocking statistic considering that Blacks are less than 13 percent of the entire United States population.

the male child

great post about sons and the joys they bring at momma's blog. check it out.

some samples

And you also find out interesting things when you have sons, like

1.) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.

2.) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.

3.) A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.

4.) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and
a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 ft. room.

5.) You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a
few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.

3rd December 1984

22 years later, we have forgotten something, which we never really wanted to remember. We have pushed it into one corner of our memories, and try not to stir up the ghost of 3rd december 1984 and face the disconcerting reality it represents. read it and weep

Where : - Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, ( literally meaning central province ) in India.
When :- 3rd December 1984
What :- 40 tonnes of MIC, methyl iso cyanide, a heavier than air toxic gas overheated and spilled out of its tanks in the middle of bustling heavily populated city in the morning hours, killing many while they slept, killing many as they ran to escape, killing many who were in trains passing through, still killing through toxic pollution and disease after all these years.

How many: - 20,000 deaths as a conservative estimate. 3000 killed initially...and the toll is still rising.

Who was responsible: - Union Carbide owned this company. It did not put adequate safety or warning procedures in place. Now owned by the Dow Chemical Company. The government did not do its part in making sure they checked the plant and the processes regularly.

Redress :- Average compensation paid to the families of the dead - $2200

Insurance coverage of the company - $10 Billion

Damages paid - $470 million.

What the company says : - A single employee deliberately pumped in water to the gas tanks causing the overflow and escape of gas. There was no fault of the company. This employee has never been named or any charges pressed against him.

What went wrong : - 1. Untested unproven technology was used. 2. No disaster management plan was ever made. 3. Warnings by scientists in Union Carbide were ignored. 4. Safety checks were infrequent. 5. Slip-blind plates that would have prevented water from pipes being cleaned from leaking into the MIC tanks via faulty valves were not installed. Their installation had been omitted from the cleaning checklist. 6. The MIC tank refrigeration unit was disabled to save money. 7.The gas scrubber was placed on standby. 8. Though the audible external alarm was activated to warn the residents of Bhopal, it was quickly silenced to avoid causing panic among the residents. Thus, many continued to sleep, unaware of the unfolding drama, and those that had woken assumed any problem had been sorted out. 9.The flare tower used to burn off gases before they are allowed to escape into the air was inoperational pending repairs. 10. The water curtain that may have reduced the concentration of the gas was only set to ~13 m and did not reach the gas.

why its tough to live anywhere else but india

any why its so damn maddening to live here. :)

bet u didnt know this trick

The most recent World Bank estimates for India are based on household surveys carried out in 1999-2000. It was found that almost 80% of purported superpower India's population was surviving on less than $2.15 a day (in PPP terms). That is, about 800 million people were living on $0.40 a day or less. Nearly 35% (350 million) were found to be living on $0.20 a day or less. Even if the proportion of poor people has fallen somewhat during the past 5-6 years, the absolute numbers would not look too different today.


To make purchasing power across countries comparable, economists developed what is known as the PPP (purchasing power parity) index. Taking into account the lower cost of living in impoverished countries, a conversion factor is now applied to market exchange rates to calculate what is minimally necessary to survive there.

Using widely quoted World Bank numbers on GDP, this conversion factor for a country like India (2005) can be computed to be approximately 5.3. This means that $1.08 a day in India should effectively imply a purchasing power of about 20 cents a day to an American--or indeed anyone--unacquainted with the nuances of PPP calculations. However, given how the numbers are quoted everywhere, the dominant impression that is conveyed is that the poor are living on less than $1 or $2 a day when, in fact, it would be enormously more accurate, as far as everyday English is concerned, to say that the poor are living on less than $0.20 or $0.40 a day.

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