Festivals and Happiness

I have often believed that festivals are for happiness and people to come together.My belief was firmed up yesterday when i saw people celebrating christmas here.

I am here in a town called Hohhot, in china and there is hardly any christian here.
But last night people were on the road dancing, shopping and playing crackers.

Here are some moments that i spent along hundreds of people i dont know but was happy to be among them.


People are happy and they are enjoying with their families then why should it matter what religion the festival belongs to.






If a vendor can sell some crackers on some festivals and earn even a quick 100 bucks on this day, where as his normal income might be just 30 bucks, then the multiplying effect of happiness is more than visible as it will transcend from him to his family.
If all the shops in the mall sell more. If all the roadside bendors can sell more eateries and all the taxis can carry people overnnight.
I wish there could be one such festivals atleast once in a month!!

Kids singing carols..



Its great to see the festive soon going on as it brings more happiness around the planet and more cheers among people. May everybody have a share of this happiness and fun.

laila o laila

"laila o laoila, kaisi hun laila, har koi chahe mujhko, milna akela".This is a song i expect to hear in an indian pub or disco, but when i heard it in this chinese pub(not even the capital) it was a cracker for me.
Although i and my friend were the only Indians in that big crwod out there and i could see that no body was able to understand that, but i did feel happier to finally listen something Indian in this mandarin land where even english is an alien language.

Frozen Pond

I knew it is going to be cold(below 0) but i realized how cold it was when i saw the frozen fountian pond in my hotel.Here's one snapshot of it.
Right now it is -8 Celsius outside and thank god i am not outside.
At this i really felt like saluting our Soldiers who stand in the open on a border at temperature as low as -60 in Leh, and we sleep safely in our room at cozy temperatures.

I wish we never had any borders so that we never had disputes..

I was there again

I wrote CAT for the third time today and i still love the paper for its surprises and its simplicity to scare people.
Though my results continue to remain same but it was interesting to find only 75 questions in the paper besides the total duration having increased by 30 minutes.

That clearly meant, there is no space for leaving questions which you dont know and doing only those that you know. Time given was enough to do all if you knew the answers unlike other times when people used to sweat out for lack of time.

On the whole it was a good surprise, but i do belive that reducing the question from 150 3 years back to 75 today the CAT is more about aptitude and less about attitude than it was before.

long time - II

Its oen again almost 15 days since i wrote the last time. As if either i am too busy or i just dont like blogging anymore.
But none is the case, i still love blogging and and i dont think i have too mouch work. I think the real problem is i am loosing too much time because i dont know much about my work.
So once again i will try and organize things to get back on track. Lets see whats the outcome this time.

The leave that i did not want to leave

Finally my leave got over yesterday. The 18 day leave(not something people often get) was amzing since it was the first time i had taken a long leave since i have started working.

It felt amazing to be at home relaxing on the bed watching TV and always eating and drinking something.

Though i spent a lot of time travelling with my parents(a long time forgotten affair for me), it was more fun instead of sitting at my house here in banaglore.

This time i had a holistic aviation experience as well since my travel inclsded 4 different airlines unlike the normal single airline travel i always have.
It included train travel after a long time.

A cherishable leave in the end, one i will wait for eagerly till the next time.

More details on where i went how i went in my next post.

Amazing Singapore airport

Now this is what i call good governance. At least somewhere or the other the government does plays its role in making things better.

I am at the Singapore Airport transiting back to India from China, and writting this from one of the hundreds of treminals put up for free internet browsing.

This time i am lucky that i have a wait of 6hours on the Airport. While i check out the remaing airport in the remaining time( i doubt i would be able to do that, looking at the size of the airport), will try to log in once again before getting onboard again.

But i am loving it and i am eager to see indian airports coming upto this standard(atleast some percentage) in some years from now.

Chopsticks

At the end of my 2nd day in China, i ate noodles with chopsticks and was somehow able to manage to finish my meal. Though i tried to eat rice as well with chopsticks(since my coleague was doing so) but realizing my lunch might end with dinner i decided to use the spoon.
Fortunately he always takes me to places that have a few spoons.

But i still dont know what i am eating except that it is vegetarian. Vegetarian because my parents told me that these days are some specific days when only veg should be eaten.

What has amazed me is the fact that besides english being an alien language in China, china has been able to make so much of growth in business and is leapfrogging ahead of all the big countries in the world. But India has been able to grow through the IT sector primarily due to huge number of english speaking workforce.

Now the day China starts gaining momentum in english(since it has already been made compulsory language in primary education), it would be interesting to see how India competes against China.

For now i am thinking what surprise is going to popup in the dinner!!

less than 100% degree

I was going through this article on Azim Prem Ji today on rediff.
Prem Ji had to leave his electrical engineering from Standford in the midst, due to sudden demise of his father and take up the family business.

But the last line from premji states that he went back to standford in 1994 and completed his degree.
I think more than prem Ji's will it is the institute's flexibility to permit ex-students to complete their half or so degrees.

Though i can understand that PremJi had become a big and rich businessman by 1994 for any university to day no, but does the indian eductaion system allow anybody to complete such less than 100% degrees after a break(that too such long).

Will have to find out the answer.

Human efficiency

I have been thinking on Time management for a long time now. Almost 4 months have passed by since when i had come up with 5 important points to improve the efficieny at work.

Well those points have been there in my sheet ever since without any implementation. And this being so, besides i being an implemntation engineer.

I am once again thinking about those points because i see tasks again slipping from the schedule, and delays creeping in.
This is what i had concluded to get work done in time and to work efficiently:

1. Identifying the goals.
2. Prioritizing tasks.
3. Staying focused.
4. Effective communication.
5. Time management.

Time management being the most important since that would help organizing the other things.
But for now will not bore on the elaboration of these points and will do so some other time.

With weekend right on the brink will see if i can get atleast something right.

long time

Its been a long time i wrote last time. More than a month indeed.

Initially i had thought i will start writing again only once i reach back on my home(sarzameen).

But its almost a week now that i have been back but no updates yet. so will try to start regularly soon.

Lets hope i live up to the plans.

Till then Chao!!

17 websites

Now that the blogspot ban is almost over or may be already over as most of the bloggers dont seem to be reporting the issue on their blogs how and why they are not able to access other's blogs and others are not able to access their blogs.

I incidentally found this list of the 17 websites that were ordered by the GoI to be banned and which resulted in all the havoc. I thought of just wandering through and finding out what do the websites really contain that the government had to carry out take such a great( greatly futile) decision.

I was able to find the list of the 17 websites online as published by "The Hindu".scanned copy of the original governmemnt orders here : http://www.hinduonnet.com/nic/banned.pdf

So lets see what each of them contains and how justified does the GoI's decision is in banning these 17 websites in the name of action taken against terrorsim*.

1. http://www.hinduunity.org/

The website is definitely pro-hindu and even to a certan extent anti islamist. But primarily what seems to be major reason for blocking this is the dedication it is showing towards bajrang dal, VHP. Now i am sure congress would have been waiting for a long time to find a reason to ban this website, but then why didnt the NDA government ever declare this website in their india shining campaign or give it a status of national importance for cultural preservation. But more from a neutral perspective, their would be so many other religious websites publishing equally agressive content, then why were all of them not banned??

2. http://www.mypetjawa.mu.nu/

The blog is based on the terrorism activities happening around the world, but more on what is happening in middle east on a regular basis. Also the information and the titles of the topics are against the jihadi terrorism, but then what is wrong in that, or may be the government had to show that these blogs/websites had atleast something to do with terrorismm, then whatever it may be.

3. www.pajamaeditors.blogspot.com

Mission Statement: Mission statement? Who needs a friggin' mission statement?! I'm not out to change the World, just screw with those who are. Yeah, that means you, Lefty!

Thats the description of the blog by the blogger. So what does it look like a terrorism site , of course yes, and the victims being all the leftists so the government had to protect them else the government would have become the victim of the left. What i fail to understand is why is the left afraid of all these blogs after all their main vote bank is the unions and i wonder how many labour union guys read these blogs??

Other than that the content is not very outrageous. But yes, one of the recent posts suggested that the blogger was unhappy with the ban being lifted as he was happier to be getting the attention for being among the bannaed blog from so many millions of blogs( and why would he not be).

4. http://www.exposingtheleft.blogspot.com/ (Opini Pundit)

Now what does the name suggest?? Ok, i will not write much about this one as it falls on the same lines as the above and the name is good enough even without visiting the URL. But the left on these urls is more of a global left and thats why the posts are often about the US.The other thing that i discovered by visiting this one was that the JAWA blogger is a co-blogger for this one. So you see the government really worked hard to find out the links, not between the terrorists and the mumbai blasts but the bloggers who are hand in hand against the left.

5. http://www.thepiratescove.us/

This was also one of the displayed blogs on the exposing left blog. Didnt i say there was a lot of hardwork put by the investigators to find out who's linked to whom!!

6. http://www.commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com/

If i didnt go to a wrong url, it was in chinese so ???????????????
But i am sure there might be some chinese terrorism based content on this blog, but the archives were in english and had only 2 months displayed: June, July 2006. Lucky chap got so much popularity so early in the blog life. I wish my blog would have been banned.

7. http://www.bamapachyderm.com/

Pachyderm means fat foot specially for mammmals like elephant or the hippo. But the blog is not about the animals, the title is "My Vast Right Wing conspiracy". There is so much of content on this page that you got to spend time and brain to understand everything. I have time but no brains and so did not attemp to delve too deep. As usual has content on US, Israel etc. Is the indian government fighting terrorism agains indians or fixing or blocking all the pages that contains or touch the israel issues??

8. http://www.princesskimberley.blogspot.com/

This blog has/had only two posts as of today. I am not sure if they had same number of posts when it was banned but if so be the case, then why, why, why ??? was it banned.

9. http://www.merrimusings.typepad.com/

I think i am too late to carrry out my investigations, this page is not opening may be they have moved or may be i need to check again after sometime.

And yes my guess was right, it has moved and the new link is www.merrimusings.mu.nu The blog is just another blog with a nice creative tempelate. But then why didnt the government issue another order for
banning the new webpage??

10. http://www.mackers-world.com/

Now this is an absolute genral blog from the guy writing about walmart to wishing his mother a Happy Birthday. Now if they ban such pages then i think the ISPs were much better in blocking all the blogs atleast that makes more sense than blocking some unknown, harmless blog.

11. www.dalitstan.org

This page did not open for me as of now. But searching on google, first two lines speak that the this page is by a human rights oranization working for the upliftment of the dalits(backward classes), and this ban comes from the same government, the Human Resource Department of which is roaring to give another 27 percent reservation to the dalits. arjun singh ji, please ask your government to delete this site from the list else you may loose some votes, i am sure our HRD minister will say, dont worry kid the real voters dont read all these news an blogs. ??

12. www.hinduhumanrights.org

The website enlightens/exposes/updates about the vrious atrocities faced by hindus around the world. So, any website that tries to do anything hindu should be banned and let every one lese do everything else. great !!!!!

13. www.nndh.com

Again too late and could not find the link.

14. http://bloodrovaltriped.com/

I have missed the action....... cannot find this one too. not any great results on google too.

15. http://imagessearchyahoo.com

Looking at the page name itself the link looks wrong. Else if you try to figure out similar links then there is
http://image.search.yahoo.com/ , which is nothing but image search engine from yahoo, just like the image search of google. Whats wrong with yahoo image search thats right with google image search?? mmmm??
16. http://imamali8.com
Again the closest match i found was http://www.imamali.8m.com/ and it contains "Information on the life and qualities of
Ameer ul Momineen" so no need to explain. one more informative page i would say, as its always good to know about people. But
then our dear government does not believes much in information.
17. http://www.rahulyadav.com/
ha ha ha. let me laugh first and then i will write something about this one. I am plannning to put all the religious
websites, political websites, anti left websites as my most read and viewed links on my blog soon. So that government bans my
blog. bichara rahul yaday, but he is unhappy with the ban. I suggest he should be happy, the whole blog thing is all about
eye balls game, you want your blog to be read by as many people as possible and he got it for doing nothing, not even posting
regularly. Important links: on the cover page are: my resume,my blog, my college, my workplace. ha ha ha again.
Good things that came to the front from this ban:
1. Some pages really benefited through the popularity, and yes the owners were happy too.
2. Shallowness of the government exposed.
3. Technical inability of the ISP's to ban only a few pages( as they have removed the block even from the listed websites in
order to avoid banning the complete domains).
4. The blogging community has become strong enough and it was clearly evident as the government could not continue the ban
for mere 2 weeks.
5. The ordinary housewifes and all other non technical people also learnt how to use proxy servers in order to bypass the
block and access the pages that they wanted to.
6. pkblogs shared their script for bypassing the blogs in order to create inblogs. Clearly evident ordinary citizens dont
wnat to fight and would be happy to help each other when required.
So i think it was good that we had these bans for some days. But yes i am definitely disappointed from the government that
they did not ban my blog.

* I am not any expert and this is more than brief description of each page.

My costliest haircut

I was reluctant to go for a haircut(yes i was being over conscious about the african hairstyle).

I could imagine myself in all the possible new hairstyles that the saloon guy would come up on my head. There was another thought that crossed my mind very frquently, almost all the local guys are balled( what could be the reason?? ). What if, after the 20 minutes of head down when i raise my head and look into the mirror and there are no hair on my head??

But the question "when are you planning to change your hairstyle", which i had heard from a number of people (including the receptionist of the hotel i am staying in, the guy who sits next to me in my office, the project manager from the customers side for the project i am working on) made me reconsider my decision of a hair cut only when i go back home.

Well they were not wrong, my hair had grown really long and being curly as well, they clearly looked out of control. But i wasnt wrong either in making such a decision of no hair-cut in this new place. My intial schedule being for less than 3 months, i really might not have reached this stage. But now with almost 3.5 months gone it was time to look for a descent place where i could go with less inhibitions.

I went to the near by mall (that was the only place i knew for a hair-cut). I felt at ease after reaching the saloon. When i sat on the executionary chair, i asked the man to only trim the out of order strings and not to shorten them. He did a good job, except that he made them a little short( thank god i didnt say him to make them short, god knows what he would have done).

Now comes the leaving time and he gave me a receipt for 82 pula, i asked him again is it 8 or 3. i dont know what he would have thought but he replied vey calmly "sir: 8". I showed equal equanimity and gave him P 82. But i knew what i had done. with currency rate of Pula1 > Rs8, i just paid more than Rs650 for a single hair-cut. Trying to figure out the gravity of the situation further, i calculated that even if i go to a better than normal place in bangalore for my hair-cut, pay Rs50 for 1 time, and keep my frequency of once every 2 months(ususal for me), i could have managed a hair-cut for the next 2 years in the same amount.

May be i should have just let my hair cover my ear so that i did not listen to those who had said to me "when are you going to change your hair style".

100 days

It just occured to me this morning, yesterday it was my 100th day outside India.

It was my first time outside India when i was leaving on 7th April but its been more than 3 months now. When i left i had a scheduled return on 25th June. Things have been moving forward and its been quite long, and now i am desperately missing ghar ka khana (woh roti woh rajma). Infact i am even missing that dosa from the near by sagar that i used to hate eating every day. But I still believe i was lucky, and came to a much better places than so many other countries.

Botswana(in southern africa) is a very nice and small country. Has a sound economy and low population. Everything here is in order and readily available (except dal roti).

People have been nice enough to me that i never felt running away from this place. The best thing being that i arrived here in april and would be retreating by July end, so i fortunately escaped the worst Indian summers, instead i faced winters in the month of may for the first time in my life with temperatures going down to 0 in June.

It has been a great experience for me and i have learnt a lot of things by meeting new people having so much difference in culture than ours. By seeing things totally unlike ours, detailed description of that some other time.

For now i am just searching to eat something, lets see i eat pizza or burger.

There goes the plane >>>>>>>>>>

Thats a flight going to India and i am not inside it. I am only standing on the ground and watching it going away.

Though my tickets were ready and i was supposed to be there, my schedule got postponed and that too without any confirmed date for my final return.

This happened becasue there were some plan changes. Sometimes i fail to understand why do we have plans if we have to change them.

After spending 3 months away from the home land, it was exciting to pack my bags to
roll back.

But sometimes things dont come by that easily. May be it has to be more exciting and thats why some more wait.

Now the only thing i am sure about is, i am not travelling tomorrow, and when would it
be? i just dunno.

Lets hope i move soon.......

Mumbai Blasts : what, when, where, who, why ??

8 explosions took place on various Mumbai local trains, the life line of Mumbai public on 11 July. This was a very sad incidence. But has this not happened ever before?
Since its first serial bomb explosions in 1993 there have been 6 terrorist attcks in Mumbai alone, one in delhi last october (many more oevr the years) and almost every week in J&K. In 1993, death toll was more than 250( 257 to be precise), in 2003 it was 48 and now more than 200 have been killed and close to 500 injured.

But will it not happend again ? to say no!! is being over optimistic rather it is being naive (who will change the situation, was some minister's relative a victim that he will take some action?), but at the same time saying yes it would happen again is more than painful and disappointing.

Where could it happen the next time? does this really have any boundaries ? it could be any where , the malls that you go to every weekend, the bus or auto u travel by could be carrying the packets, the cinema hall you go for a movie once in a month, railway station, airport, bus stand, a school, college, car parking, a road crossing, it could happen wherever life exists.

Who does such henious crime?? As an ordinary citizen i can only guess based on the previous culprits ( anyways Indian government has not been able to find out that too, and there have been no guilty sentenced ever), but isn't the government, the police, the authorities supposed to know this. But in India they wait for some terrorist organization to claim the responsibility ( the government waits as long their is a media report announcing the name of the organization which claims the responsibilty as if they have done job worth appreciation) and government acknowledges it with equal respect , as if it will verified so that only the authentic owner is honoured for the act.
This lackdaisical attitude of government is the key reason that attacks have become just a regular thing in India and to hide their own misgovernance the government calls it the spirit of mumbai( but what option do people have, but to get back to their work as they obviously cannot sit at home). Look at USA after 9/11 its almost 5 years now and not even a small grenade has not exploded there ( i dont mean to say that it should happen there , but why cant the Indian goverment do atleast 50% of that).

Why does this happen at all ? Those who do it call it freedom struggle( freedom against whom , from what, i am sure even these a**h**** dont know). Those who face it know only one thing, they never ever wished of something like this to happen to anybody and still they are at the receiving end.

what can be done ? as an ordinary mortal citizen i and u can only do some small things before and after such incident. Being careful and attentive when in public places. Avoid thinking, who's got the time to report something unusual to the police, and why should it matter to me. Helping those in need at this difficult time, it could be the injured or the ones out there helping the injured ( indirect help is often more valuable as it reduces the chaos and panic). But then government is not as helpless as we are and it can definitely do more than just condemning ( Manmohan Singh said we will not be cowed down by any such thing) or expressing shock( sonia gandhi expressed shock over the incidence, as if it happened for the first time in India, ofocurse this might not have happened ever in Italy, and she might still be having the FIFA hangover as she might still be celebrating).

Mumbai help (http://www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/) is a good blog that is doing a commendable Job in providing information on almost everything from injured list to hospital numbers.

And all those who cannot help directly or indirectly, can pray for those who left us, can pray for those who are in pain, and pray for some miracles to happen and bring an end to these things (where wll this miracle come from?).
But surprising was the extensive coverage of these blasts on CNN and BBC, and annoying was to see them comparing it with 9/11, please some body explain it to Americans, what they faced was what India is facing since 1989 and not what we faced was after they faced something for the first time from the terrorist attacks.

What will you do with 1 Million ?

Thats what i saw on a bill-board today morning (it was an advertisement by a mobile operator, announcing its prize money i could win by choosing their new scheme on offer).

I knew no body will give it to me, but then what would i do if i got it by chace (i assumed). My mind started ticking fast looking at everything as if i could buy it.

All things that were ever on my wish list, started appearing in front of my eyes in flashes.

How about a Honda city I thought, but that is too much (0.68 million). I said to myself lets make a compromise and go for Maruti Swift ( only fifty percent of the total money i had won).

But then flashed another thought, what about making my parents go on some foreign holiday and becoming a great son. And suddenly i heard a voice from somewhere "keep your feet on ground"( i dont know who said that, but i followed the advice).

So i thought, may be i can put this money into some sort of business or start-up, make some profit and then plan for the bigger things. This looked more sensible to me. But wait , what if the business fails:
(1) i will loose all the money that i got by mistake and

(2) once again i would be left empty hands.

I said to myself, its better taking professional help from some fund manager and investing wisely.

The brakes were applied, the car stopped and the taxi driver turned back towards me and said " sir, 20 bugs".I looked at him and then looked outside the window, my office had arrived. I got out of the taxi, opened my wallet and had the last note in it, but it was a 100 ( only two 0's ???) .

I again stared at the driver thinking about the remaining 0's as if i had lost some money. The driver gave me even a dirtier look ( i am sure he thought i am going to run away without paying him).

I realized thats the advantage of sometimes not driving the car, you get to see some dreamy bill boards, which otherwise i would have missed because of the eyes stuck on the road.

Everything ends finally but only for a new start

Two big sporting events ended today - FIFA world cup 2006 and Wimbledon 2006.

Obviously each had a winner and a looser( now this is not some secret. since every sport has it).

But this also makes me think about life, this is how it is supposed to go on , isnt it?? where the phases keep passing by, with the ups and downs coming and going but the life not stopping by any phase.

There is something to learn from everything and this is the most important lesson i have learnt from sports : there is a winner and there is a looser, both have there share of glory till when it comes to the final moment and then people forget the looser. But then life does not stops, it only tells you to look forward so that u do not become a looser the next time, and for that you neet to start again.

Zidane strikes again !!!!!

Well may be only a penalty could have finished the game in 90 minutes, else we might have once again reached the penalty shootouts.

32 minutes into the game and here comes the refree awarding a penalty to the French much to the dislike of portugese.

Though Ricardo, considered as the man who can stop any penalty( and yes he did jump in the right direction) could not do much to the lightning fast power shot by Zidane, and there it was the first goal of the match which also turned out be the last of the semi-finals at the FIFA 2006.

This also brought the dream run of Luiz Fillpe Scolari to an end, with a defeat after 12 victories in a row at the world cups.

Now portugal meets Germany on saturady for 3rd and 4th position.

But on the big day ( sunday the 9th ) we see Italy vs France. France chasing its 2nd and Italy its 4th cup.

Its a Gooooooooaaaaaaaaallllllll

When everybody thought you wont get to hear it here in the play time, and there would be penalty shootouts again, it was a time for surpirse and shock for the home team, when there were 2 hits in the 119 and 120th minute.

But then its said who wins is the better team.

So now when the French or the Portugese meet Italy in the finals they will know one thing for sure : Italy has been into the finals every 12 years since 1970 - 1970, 1982( they won), 1994 ..... now you do the maths.

Kick Off

The idea of writing had been there for some time but then this blog came into existence when i had to create a blogger account for posting a comment on http://www.youthcurry.blogspot.com/. Now that the account is ready and i can publish my own content, i thought lets try my hand at this.

So i kick-off with writing about me and my stupid thoughts.

So lets start and see how long i survive. But i will keep writing as long as somebody does not go to court to sue me for publishing useless material on the net.But anyways who cares if somebody goes to court, i will still keep writing and may be someday i would be able to start another blog with some more meaningful or innovative content instead of writing about me and my futile ventures.