Rohit's nukkad

India - Cricket World Cup champions

2011-04-02T20:23:00.004-05:00

My earliest memories of cricket goes back to Reliance World Cup 1987 India vs England semi-finals. We were returning home (Mumbai) by train and following the score through radio commentary. In a world with no cellphones, sms and LIVE internet updates, radio commentary was the best medium to keep tabs of the score when not watching the match LIVE on TV. Though Graham Gooch spoiled our party for a dream World Cup finals with Pakistan (Australia made sure our arch rivals didn't make it too), the love for the game came alive.

This started my religious following of the game. Watching endless games, keeping tabs of scores, stats, reading endless articles from SPORTSTAR (I am not sure if the magazine still in circulation), collecting posters, analyzing each match before and after, not just Indian games but every regular cricket match we played at our building every evening. Discussing with my father old cricket test matches, the survival of test series in 1970s - Englad victory, the Caribbean brutality, the glorious 1983 World Cup. Over the years, the match following has been turned into a number of times team bashing - how can we lose in such a situation, how can we play so ridiculously. One would hear of the short golden period of cricket from 1983 - 1986.

I am sure every one in my "cricket crazy" generation has experienced something similar - a story how the game interest started, how it became an obsession, the team expectations, the team bashing.

Today it all culminated as a dream one-day World Cup Final - in Mumbai. We have the mix right of talent and experience. But will we deliver.

Oh yes !!!! We did it and we did it in style. Hello World, the New World Cup champions - Team India has arrived.

All credit goes to players, support staff and all the crazy fans. A more than billion people bleed blue tonight. I am sure there are number of people who didn't moved from their seats during the game or who were wearing their lucky charms.

Its not many times that a diverse country like India is so united. My best lifetime recollections are more in times of calamities or disaster than in happier times. Major highlights would be the Pokhran Nuclear tests, the Kargil War, Olympic sucess etc. But nothing beats this one. After 28 years we have accomplished what we are expected to win every time the World Cup season starts.

WE ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS !!!!!! ENJOY AND LIVE THIS MOMENT, BE PROUD TO BE INDIAN.

Readers Bill of Rights

2009-10-16T22:17:00.002-05:00

The First Ten amendments in the United States Constitution, are known as the Bill of Rights. Similarly in Danniel Pennac’s book “Better than life”, he defines TEN BILL OF RIGHTS FOR READERS.

THE RIGHT TO NOT READ – Yes you heard me right, the right to NOT read, this makes everyone read at their own leisure and time. And even if they don’t want to read it’s okay.

THE RIGHT TO SKIP PAGES – how many times have we skipped pages while reading? We once in a while look diagonally. And even if you are someone who like to read word to word. Its just another pleasure among the many pleasures of reading.

THE RIGHT TO NOT FINISH – it you lose interest in a book before finishing it, that’s okay. Let it go. Books are unlike wine, they don’t age, they sit on the shelves and wait for us to age and as we mature we might pick them up one day

THE RIGHT TO REREAD – we watch television programs and movies again and again why can’t we reread books?

THE RIGHT TO READ ANYTHING – there should no boundaries on what to read, let the reader decide what to read.

THE RIGHT TO ESCAPISM – Immediate gratification of our senses is what escapism is all about. We all started out like this, before we laid our hands on “great literature” works

THE RIGHT TO READ ANYWHERE – one should be given the freedom to read anywhere. For all the people who don’t have time to read - reading needs to be stolen from other life obligations hence subway is the world’s longest reading room

THE RIGHT TO BROWSE – we all browse through books, you don’t need to read them, browse through them

THE RIGHT TO READ OUT LOUD - this art has lost its charm in recent times. Reading aloud test the story which the book is meant for any one can reach a larger audience.

THE RIGHT TO NOT DEFEND YOUR TASTES – absolutely one doesn’t need to defend what they are reading

House on the Waterfront

2009-08-30T02:18:00.012-05:00

Water bodies in the form of pond, lake, river, sea or ocean are always very pleasing and soothing to the eyes. The water with turquoise color, the coolness, the stillness of the water or the crashing of the waves, the sound is very pleasant and great place to relax and enjoy.

A house on the waterfront is like a dream. Recently I came cross couple of such houses in Austin overlooking the Colorado river. I would like to share some with you.

1. You have a car parking, how about boat parking

Generally people have car parking, but if you have a house or apartment on the waterfront you can have a boat parking too, just take your boat out of the driveway and off into the lake. And ofcourse from those balconies or patio you will get some great view too.

2. How about high on the hills over looking the river

If you don't want to share your boat parking space, how about a house high up on the hill.

And for these views

the house is really something

3. How about having your personal bridge to get near the water front.

Firstly, I am not sure if this an apartment building or a personal house. The size tells me its an apartment building but the design tells me its a personal house. Take a guess. If its a personal house, I am short of my ohs and ahs for the beautiful structure. To the extreme right hand corner we can see a bridge projection out. The bridge goes across a narrow street onto a private patio overlooking the river.

After seeing these beautiful houses, one can just envy the people who enjoy such houses, and more importantly the great view of the river.

An oasis in the homogenous US cities desert

2009-08-16T22:00:00.013-05:00

If you have taken a road trip across the US or visited a number of American cities. You will notice a lot of similarities. The weather and landscape might change across cities but BIG corporation have made sure that there is certain amount of homogenization in these cities. One can see the same Taco Bells, McDonald's and other fast food joints, same stores, menus and even the same structures. The same grocery and clothing chain like Walmart and JC Penny.

The corporation might debate that the idea behind the generalization is not to confuse the general public but they have tossed out creativity and innovations in the process. Forget the stores may be a little creativity can go long way in design the store signs and store structure.

Couple of days back I came across couple of unique and funky looking stores in Austin. The stores and signs went very well with the city slogan of - Keep Austin Weird. I just couldn't help admiring their creativity and some reminded me of some great stories. Another interesting part is all these stores are located on the same street.

1. Genie Car Wash - The sign is very inviting.

2. Ichiban - Japanese restaurant. This reminded me of FRIENDS episode - Joey's Japanese ad

3. The Lightbulb Shop - I will let the sign and the store do the talking.

4. Hey Cupcake - the giant cupcake is rotating too :-)

5. Atomic Tatoo - their art speaks so loudly about their work :-)

6. Icehouse - you can't get more Texan than this

7. Clay House Studio

8. Plumbing Supply Store

If these stores can do it. Hopefully others can give creativity a thought too.

Its a chariot, its a cobra, ....no its a Ford Mustang Convertible

2009-06-16T20:18:00.006-05:00

Couple of weeks back a friend of mine and myself made a fun trip to Phoenix, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. We wanted to make it a memorable one and right from the get go we knew it would be one hell of a trip.

The fun began the moment we rented a FORD Mustang convertible. We were exploring all the gadgetry in the car. 'Hey look out the acceleration man', said one, 'the pick up of the car is pretty awesome', another said. 'Wow it goes from 0-60 in 6 seconds'. We were very excited about the vehicle.

But after 5 minutes of drive on the highway it suddenly started raining. Since we had already got the roof down. My friend wanted to get the roof up. So we tried pressing the automatic rooftop lift up button in the appropriate direction but nothing worked. We tried hard but no luck. We thought lets return the vehicle. I made a quick exit in Downtown Phoenix and was waiting on a signal and my friend was still fidgeting with the rooftop button. Suddenly ...eehhhhhhh...the roof started coming up... yeah its coming up it coming up. In the mean time I got the signal to GO. I stepped on the gas, the hood just stopped. It was only half done.

It was hilarious. I couldn't get any rear view. The car looked like a chariot, or a cobra with his spread neck ready to attack.

We made a quick stop and got the roof down. With everything fine no complains about the car, we were all set to enjoy the trip.

Even today the incident just cracks me up :-)

Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-11T22:15:00.003-05:00

5th May, is a special day in Mexican history, its celebrated as Cinco de Mayo which is Spanish for May 5th. The Mexicans defeated the French forces in 1862.

The irony of the day is, its celebrated on a bigger scale in the United States as compared to that in Mexico. Though the day's significance in Mexico is more regional but in the US its a full blown celebration right from television programs to shopping mall. So why is it more popular in US ? May be its like other things in the US something commercial value in the US.

My Five Favorite posts

2009-05-09T01:28:00.008-05:00

Its difficult to pick your favorite posts and even more difficult to narrow it down to five. But if one sets in some boundaries the work becomes easier.
To pick my five favorite posts I have used the following criteria.

1. The post should be timeless and anytime one reads it a smile is inevitable.

2. It should be an original piece. Inspirations are fine but copying is no good.

3. Book reviews and movie reviews have been left out.

So the list goes as follows, they are ordered in how they appeared on the blog.

1. Wonderful Human Being - I can proudly rate this article as one of my best. Its just feels good article. A chance encounter with a stranger - a genuine, down to earth and simple man. As in the article I wish I can be like Lala when I reach his age.

2. Interesting Love story or is it stories - A great piece. An article out of nothing. A headache at work, turned into a great post and pleasure reading. Even now whenever I read it brings a chuckle. Hope you enjoy it similarly.

3. The Man, the machine... Street hawk - A great nostalgic post, took me back to good old TV days, growing up days, programs I enjoyed watching and even now would love to watch them.

4. You won't believe what happened one night - Great memories, a scary experience, great time.

5. Two men and a truck - One of the fun moments of moving I had with this TV purchase. The TV, the size and the bargain price all blinded me with the crucial part of the purchase - the heavy lifting involved. So big life lesson learned from the experience.

Three years to blogging

2009-05-09T00:52:00.003-05:00

Can you imagine it has been three years since I put up my first post on Rohit's Nukkad - Express yourself. Three years, a highly enjoyable time and wonderful period writing blog, 113 published posts quite a feat but still miles to go.

"He who believes that the past cannot be changed has not yet written his memoirs." ~Torvald Gahlin

Well the blog posts are kind of memoirs. They help me reflect how much I have changed over the years - be it my maturity level or my writing skills or my reading interest. Whenever I read any of my old posts its like sitting in a time machine and getting transported to the time when I wrote the post, the incidents happening in my life around the time, how did I write the post, the comments related with the posts etc. Some posts bring a smile on my face, while some make me chuckle, while others make me realize there is lot of scope of improvement in my writing.

Couple of interesting statistics related with posts on Rohit's Nukkad
1. Total posts published 113, that makes it roughly 38 posts per year, though I would have loved to have more posts, the number is still decent.

2. Months without any posts - Though being regular is important but at the same time its the toughest thing to do. I too had couple of my short falls. There were months where not a single post was posted on the blog, 5 months in total - November 2006, July 2007, October 2007, January 2009 and April 2009. Why did this irregularity, I don't have a clear answer for this. Its not like I was extremely busy with my work life in these months. On the contrary months when I was extremely busy I have used blogging as my stress buster and written a good number of posts. Having material for writing is one of the main reasons for being irregular.

3. Book reviews and Movie reviews - these two have been the most regular and discussed topics on the blog. I have written about 8 book reviews and number of book related articles like John Grisham works etc. Well no complains - more book reviews coming your way in future, reading being one of my interests its an obvious path to write about them. Movie reviews have dropped down over the period of time, only when some real good or crazy movie comes up a blog post can be expected.

These were just couple of observations about the blog, watch out for my next article short listing couple on my favorite blog posts so far. But as of now all I can say, good job Rohit, be consist and keep on posting.

The Lord of the Rings moment

2009-05-03T08:15:00.002-05:00

"The Lord of the Rings" you might not have seen the movie or read the book but you cannot escape the mention of this epic modern mythological story. Some call it the greatest book of the twentieth century.

Couple of days back I brought a "Lord of the Rings" DVD - a documentary by National Geographic, which takes us beyond the book, far beyond the movie. They look for similarities between the book and real life places, language, people and the various inspirations for the author J R R Tolkien. The idea of the book which started around the World War I and goes back and forth with mythology, past archeological structures long lost languages. A must watch for a "Lord of the Rings" fan.

The story is of gigantic proportions, which takes years, may be decades of hard work to explore, create and bring it together. J R R Tolkien has taken this giant step for us. We need to sit back and enjoy this epic story. My next step would be to either read the books or watch the movies.

Book Review - Click – What Millions of People Are Doing Online And Why It Matters

2009-03-25T22:06:00.002-05:00

Bill Tracer, the author is a guy who “loves data”. He talks about this job in this book about analyzing huge amounts of search data on the Internet. The work involves understanding people mindset and in general understanding current worldly search trends.

The author most importantly talks about odd and sporadic behavior seen on the Internet based on the search engine data. He talks about False Hope Syndrome which a lot of people go though due to failed new year resolutions or how the third week of January is the most depressing week of January.

The author talks in length about Web 2.0 where the user content plays an important part. Websites like Facebook, MySpace are part of Web 2.0. For Web 2.0 user participation is calculated as 90-9-1 formula where out of 100 people visiting a web page 90 of them are passive visitors, 9 are partial participant, only one is an active participant. He talks about people like Tila Tequila, on MySpace who has over a million friends. From his analysis based on so much data Bill divides the people online into five categories – innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and the Laggards. Its the Early adopters that you need to look for a profitable online business or popularity.

Overall the book gives a nice perspective about internet search data analysis, how people behave on the net. It talks about some good examples about the strange behavior of the net and walks you though them. Though a lot of examples are specific events related like Katrina or how there was a search surge for Pontiac G6 after a specific advertisement, there are some which can look for trends over years like shopping trends for prom dresses or how new year resolution related like weight loss search. The book is recommended as casual read.

The Google’s “Groundhog Day” Approach

2009-03-20T18:38:00.003-05:00

Have you seen the movie Groundhog Day? If not let me share an insight of the movie. The movie is about a local news reporter played by Bill Murray who covers Groundhog day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. What makes the movie interesting is Bill's character keeps gets up to the same day everyday - Groundhog day. Initially he gets quite frustrated with life monotony and even tries all sorts of tricks to end it. He tries to win over his love interest played by the News reporting team producer. But he soon realized the incidents of the day are same and starts working on improving his days by changing himself slightly each day. He learns new skills right from ice sculpturing to learning piano. He keeps working on his mistakes and learning from them. Towards the end he finally wins over the new report producer and wakes up to a new day.

The learning from mistakes and improving oneself has been the approach of things on the Web. The prime example being - Google; they keep coming with these wonderful products –Gmail, Orkut, Chrome, etc... But if you look at the initial versions (beta versions) of these products they are very crude, raw and very fragile. But they keep improving on them, asking for feedbacks from the users in the form of emails, forums,blogs etc. They kept rectifying the bugs in the product and adding new features to it. Thus making the product very robust and something brand recognition when the actual product is launched.

You were born to Play this Game - Cranium

2009-03-17T23:43:00.002-05:00

As kids board games formed a big part of indoor games with friends especially during harsh summer months when the school was off and playing outdoors was impossible. Board games provided a good refuge. Monopoly, business whatever you may call it used to lead the pack followed by other trivia and sport games like cricket and soccer.

But somehow board games lost their charm as I grew older until the day I played CRANIUM. The game tag line says it all "You were born to Play this Game". The game is a mix of activities like clay sculpturing, sketching with eyes closed, acting involving puppeteering, acting out as a famous personality, vocabulary test, general knowledge etc.

The game can be played with any number of players but more the better. The game is not about winning or losing, but amount of laughs and fun it provides that it is hard to stop. One just hopes that the game keeps on going... and going... and going :-)

So if you haven't played the game yet. give it a try you are sure to fall in love with it.

Audio Books

2009-03-15T09:43:00.002-05:00

Audio books have been around for a long time. Even before I started reading. The earlier days involved the analog format of audio tapes but nowadays they are available in the form of audio CDs in WAV or MP3 format, making it more portable.

Its just recently I started exploring the idea of listening to audio CDs than reading the book. Though hesitant about the change I did bit of cheating for my first audio book. I picked up a book I had read long time back - It's not about the Bike by Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins. And I should say it was a wonderful experience listening to the heroics of Lance Armstrong once again. I was able to listen to at work made it even better. Multitasking at its best :-)

There are couple of benifits of listening to audio books over reading them. The main being it doesn't require your 100% attention, its like listening to music. At some subconscious level your mind is capturing it. And if not then the Rewind button is very handy. You can listen to audio books multiple time as compared to reading a book multiple times (I have not done multiple reading of a book so far).

On the flip side, nothing beats a physical book at hand. The feeling is quite relaxed when one is reading a book. Not all books make a good audio book. It depends on lot of factor right from the contents of the books to the voice over for the book.

Though my conclusion stands that audio books are good though they cannot replace the activity of reading books. It is sure another weapon to keep in an avid book lovers arsenal.

A little more HHOOTTT sauce

2009-03-15T09:30:00.002-05:00

Following up with the Mad Dog Hot sauce experience, my curiousness led me again to the sub place to try out some other hot sauce. Though they have nothing hotter than Mad Dog Sauce (the maximum legal possible), I went for the second best available - Da Bomb Hot sauce.

Hmmmm now how can I categorize this one the scale of my tongue's tastebuds. I guess after a certain point anything hot just gives a crazy sensation to the tongue. It is just HOT nothing else, the sensitive parts like tongue and lips burn for 10 mins or so. However taking in lot of water helps. Yes its definately fun.

Also another observation the place has 55 different kinds of sauces. I have a long long way to go in exploring different sauces :-)

How much HOT sauce can you take

2009-02-18T23:02:00.004-06:00

Over the weekend I had a unique experience of tasting the spiciest sauce I have ever tasted. I had gone to purchase a sub(a 6 inch sandwich) for supper while the sub was being prepared I couldn't help noticing the large variety of sauces at the sub shop. I asked the owner to direct me to the spiciest sauce possible. And he happily pointed to the Mad Dog Sauce 357. The owner challenged me that if am able to have two table spoons of the sauce with my sub then the sub is FREE.

While the proposition was interesting, it got me thinking how much spicy is the sauce actually. SO to get the feeling of the sauce I just licked a small part of it and my tongue and lips started burning like hell. It was just plain HOT just HOOOOTTTT. I had never tasted anything spicier or hotter than this. It got me running for water to sooth out the effect. Even after couple of glasses of water the spiciness lasted for good 10 minutes. And this was just a bit of the sauce. I can't imagine what would be effect be of two table spoons of the sauce trying to extract a free sub :-)

A few highlights about Mad Dog Sauce 357

1. The hotness is just below the legal limit to call it a sauce

2. Its hotness is 357000 in scoville units (units to measure hotness where 0 is regular bell peppers). Tabasco sauce rates 2000 scoville units.

3. It is 70 times hotter than jalapeño

4. The bottle has a warning - "this sauce will blow you away" and it really does.

And even if now you are not convinced about the spiciness of this sauce you should give it a try. Make sure to just taste it before thinking of gulping in large quantities ( I am sure you won't think about it once you have tasted it).

5 Ineresting Economics Questions you wanted to know the answer to

2009-02-15T20:45:00.003-06:00

1. Why are companies referest to as Ltd, Inc, Gmbh or S.A ?

At heart of capitalism is private ownership and a limited liability. A limited liability assures that the owners of a company will never have to pay more than they have invested in the company. The names of the companies around the world reflect this limited liability "Gmbh" - Gesellschaft(German) is a Privatly held company in Germany. In the US its known as "Inc" - Incorporated, it is known as "Ltd" in other English-speaking countries."S.A" in French and Spanish-speaking countries.

2. What is Bankruptcy?

Bankruptcy, in modern economic climate deals with an ailing company that cannot pay its debts. It has a choice of either liquidating its assets immediately or may be allowed to attempt to recover under a supervised legal framework. In most capitalist countries, bankrupt companies are first encouraged to try to continue operating under legal supervision in order to generate enough money to pay off creditors. Rehabilitation of an ailing company allows it to reorganize and possibility of returning to profitability - "Chapter 11" (US), or "Administration"(UK). If the company still has no real prospect of recovery then it is forced into "liquidation" known as "Chapter Seven" in United States or "receivership" in Britain.

3. How is Gold Used in International investments?

Gold can be traded in every country and currency imaginable. Until recently gold served as a uniquely liquid investment that could be exchanged anywhere in the world at any given time. Now it is perceived mostly as “hedge” - provide a stable refuge for investors in inflationary times when financial instruments like stock or bonds tend to lose their value.

4. How does a Swiss Account work?

Switzerland is one of the few countries in the world, which by law guarantees the secrecy of its bank accounts. As long as the person doesn’t have anything considered illegal in Switzerland including tax evasion in home country, the bank won’t reveal the identity. Opening a bank account in Switzerland is relatively easy and Swiss bankers are known to be dependable, trustworthy and discreet. These qualities make Switzerland a world banking center, but also money laundering center.

5. How is Wealth Determined around the world?

Countries have different ways to determine wealth, and each country tends to look at a different group of statistics. One way to determine using the salary earned in each country. However salaries are actually used to buy products or services. Hence salary’s “purchasing power” tells us how much the salary can buy. Comparing the costs of a group of goods and services gives us a more reliable exchange rate, called “purchasing power parity” to determine wealth across the world.

Coutesy :- A Beginner's Guide to the World Economy - Randy Charles Epping.

How did the markets faired in 2008

2008-12-31T11:14:00.002-06:00

As 2008 comes to an end it would be a good idea to look back at the stupendous fall in markets world over.

New York - down 34%
London - down 31.3%
Paris - down 42.7%
Frankfurt - down 40.4%
Mumbai - down 51.9%
Singapore - down 49.2%
Sydney - down 41.3%
Hong Kong - down 48.3%
Shanghai - down 65.2%
Tokyo - down 42.1%

courtesy :- BBC News

The unknown link between Mexico and India

2008-11-09T21:10:00.005-06:00

I enjoy talking to common people from different walks of life, and one of such recent conversations led me to the discover an unexplored connection between Mexico and India.

I was talking to a Mexican immigrant who has been in the US for the past 20 years. On the topic of hobbies, the person informed me reading comics as one of his hobbies. He has used comics like Batman for improving his English verbal skills other than using it as a good means of entertainment. On digging more he told that as a child he used to enjoy - Kaliman comics in Mexico.

The character Kaliman fascinated me and while looking up for more information I found that Kaliman is very popular comic book hero across Latin America. "Kaliman an orphan, adopted by prince Abul Pasha from one of the kingdoms in the valley of Kalimantan, he's the fifth man in a dynasty of men dedicated to preserving justice in the world, and that he's the seventh man of the goddess Kali's dynasty"* !!!!!

Kali - if you are familiar with Hindu religion, Goddess Kali is associated with death and destruction. So Kaliman belongs to the goddess Kali dynasty and works on eradicating evil from the world.

Kaliman and Kali.....wow, I don't know how the writers got the idea for this comic hero. But somewhere they linked the mysterious character to goddess Kali. Leading to a wonderful link between Mexico and India. Hmmm.......interesting, very interesting.

*courtesy : Wikipedia

Dancing partner Puzzle

2008-10-27T06:56:00.002-05:00

Julie invited couple of friends for an evening of dance, great food and fine wines. Each of the guests was handed over numbers from 2 to 18 with the number 1 reserved for Julie. Over the course of the dance Julie observed that the dancing partners numbers add up to perfect squares e.g. if number 1 is paired with number 8 then the total is 9 (8 +1) which is a perfect square of number 3.

If all the pairs add to perfect square what is Julie’s dancing partner’s number.

Courtesy: Car Talk

Austin Film Festival

2008-10-27T06:30:00.002-05:00

At a recently concluded Austin Film Festival (16th and 23rd October 2008) I got an opportunity to watch a number of independent, international and short films. One of the movies, Lost and Found, a Japanese film and jury winner of the Narrative Feature Competition is one of the outstanding movies I had viewed in recent times.

Movie Synopsis:
A rural train station in Japan is the setting for this charming and sad story. The lives of the denizens of this station, from the lovelorn to the lonely, all intersect in and around the lost and found department. Shot with an incredible grace, and with wonderfully subtle and human performances by an ensemble cast, Miyake’s feature is a tale of human bonds and the need for connection.

Courtesy: Austin Film Festival

The movie is very sensitive, simple and has great screenplay. The camera work is unique, it might be amateurish but weaves well with the movie story. Don't miss a chance to view this wonderful movie.

Movie Scripts

2008-10-27T06:14:00.002-05:00

Recently I had an opportunity to read couple of original movie scripts, movies like Silence of the Lambs, Lethal Weapon series, American Gangster and television shows like pilot episode of Family Guy or one of the episodes of The Office.

It was a wonderful experience going over them, these scripts are so much in depth and detail that right from the dialogues to the actor expression and movements to end of scene everything is there. It you are keen on reading movie scripts a one place stop is : IMSDB

America Loves Drive Through

2008-10-26T16:28:00.006-05:00

One of the first things that amazed me when I first came to the US was the drive through or drive thru available at banks. Drive thru at fast food joints is not a big deal but for banks they are just amazing, one can make a check deposit or talk to a bank representative without stepping out of ones car. Its fast, easy and provide for longer hours than regular bank hours.

The drive thru concept has been in the US for decades, there are drive thru available for anything and everything, from drive thru for fast food joints to movie theater to banks to liquor stores. In Las Vegas one can get married by drive thru.

With the 2008 Presidential Elections round the corner in California voter registration and voting is available by drive thru.

I don’t know what is next in drive thru list.

And the Roller Coaster Ride Continues…

2008-10-20T22:07:00.002-05:00

There is so much happening on the global economic front that its difficult to ignore them or keep tabs of all the happenings. The following is just a gist of all the happening in the past 10 months and majorly in the past one month. And mind well the roller coaster ride is still on. So fasten your seat belts (or your money) and enjoy the ride.

Jan – March 2008 :
Bank of America buys Countrywide, the major mortgage lending firm for $4 billion
Bear Stearns, one of the five major brokerage firms get sold out for peanuts price to JP Morgan Chase

September 7 th – Fannie Mae and Freddie mac are nationalized by the US Treasury for $5 trillion

September 15th - Lehman Brothers, the second major brokerage firm files for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch the third brokerage firm is brought by Bank of America

September 16th – A $85 billion Federal loan to insurance giant AIG

September 19th – Henry Paulson, the national secretary call for a major bailout plan for the country’s financial backbone, banks to be give loans in huge denomination by the government

September 20th – A $700 billion bailout plan is revealed

September 21 st – Golfman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two standing brokerage firms are made into bank holding companies.

September 24th – Warran Buffer buys 9% of Goldman Saschs. Gives a $5 billion loan to GE, which is finding hard to get the loans

September 25th – Washington Mutual(WAMU) closed by US Government, JP Morgan buys the assets worth $1.9 billion

September 29th – US house of Representatives reject the $700 billion bailout. DOW drops by 800 points.

October 1st – US senate revamps the US financial resue plan

October 3rd – US house of representative pass the $700 billion bail out package.
Wachovia is bought by Wells Fargo. Initially Citibank wanted to strike a deal by things didn’t workout

October 5th – European Union nations fight over saving their economies. Germany, France, Iceland, Britain etc. all work for a bailout packages.

October 8th – A co-ordinated global interest rate cut pumps $87.2 in the economy

Your Prayers have been answered

2008-09-13T00:56:00.005-05:00

How many times have you tried to get away from phone conversations but couldn't get the right excuse. Whether its at office or home or telemarketers finding the right excuse can save some precious time.

Well your prayers have been answered and the help is just a click away. Just check out the following website http://www.sorrygottago.com/

The website lists excuses by section like at the office, home and telemarketers. Make sure to listen to the telemarketers excuses especially My number is ... and sit down for dinner. They are hilarious.

Mumbai meri jaan

2008-09-01T00:54:00.004-05:00

Mumbai meri jaan, is the apt title for a recently released hindi movie based on July 2006 Mumbai local train bomb blasts.

Its one of the best hindi movies I have watched in recent times. The movie unfolds with five characters from different walks of life and how the bomb blasts gives them a different perspective about life.

One of the best portrayal's in the movie is about a telivision reporter character life getting effected by bomb blasts and how news channels have become a mockery and ready to cash in cheap publicity in India.

Worth the wait

2008-08-23T00:36:00.006-05:00

I just came back from watching - The Dark Knight at the IMAX theater. You might be wondering its more than a month since the movie was released why did I delay the watch. Well the wait was not intentional it just happened that tickets were hard to get. The experience was one of the most thrilling movie experience I have ever had.

The visuals are truly amazing and the superior sound quality complements it very well. One of the action sequences shot entirely with IMAX camera is the best.
So if you haven't seen Dark Knight yet then look for an IMAX theater near you and enjoy the movie king size.

Starbucks offers iced grande for $2

2008-08-05T21:37:00.002-05:00

Yes you read the blog title right. Starbucks is going to offer any iced grande beverage for $2 across US. Looks like Starbucks is making all efforts to lure back customers after slower growth rate for the past couple of months.

But before you rush to get your grande Caffè Vanilla Frappuccino from Starbucks there is catch in the $2 beverage offer. Firstly, the offer is available after 2 pm and secondly it is available ONLY to customers who pay a morning visit to Starbucks and are able to reproduce the receipt from the morning visit.

Now is this a smart business move, I would disagree with the Starbucks management team.

The idea behind the strategy is to bring back regular customers to Starbucks in the afternoon by luring them with half priced cold beverages. But this is on the assumption that people are going to keep track of their morning receipts and would make an extra trip to Starbucks to get there trophy drink of $2.

The problem lies in Starbucks drastic expansions made in the late 90s and early 2000's with goal to multiply its stores in the process losing on the its market value. Starbucks needs to think on long term strategy rather than thinking of short term ridiculous marketing gimmicks.

More about the Starbucks $2 iced beverage offer click here

Funny Sayings

2008-08-02T17:40:00.002-05:00

Never be afraid to try something new remember amateurs build the Ark while professional build the Titanic

Love is grand, Divorce is couple of hundred grands.

Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. Both need to be changed regularly and for the same reasons.

I always wanted to be procrastinator but I never got around to it.

A day without sunshine is like night.

Source: Car Talk

Funny Restaurant Sign

2008-08-02T17:32:00.005-05:00

With the Olympic just round the corner, Chinese are making all efforts
to make it a great success. One of the efforts is putting signs in English.

One of the local restaurant owner decided to put in his restaurant name in English to attract visitors. So he went online and used one of the Chinese to English translation tools to get the English name. He printed and put up the sign.

Once the sign was up couple of visitors had a nice laugh at the sign.
Making the owner wonder whether if it is anything to do with the new sign in English.

So what exactly did the sign say..... Any guesses ????

Translate Server Error

A Personal Victory

2008-07-27T22:37:00.002-05:00

As a kid I used to play cricket a lot, and was a pretty good batsmen. But somewhere during my growing up years I got hooked to bowling and being a left arm bowler it helped. In the process I lost focus on batting and was always part of a team as good bowler who can somewhat bat.

Fast Forward to 2008, for the last couple of years I have been playing cricket once in a while. But once I moved to Austin I started playing once per week. Within the first week itself I was able to establish myself as a good bowler. But the first two weeks have been disastrous as a batsman such that in the third week I was taunted as "one ball batsman".

So today, during the third week I was very determined to bat well and decided upon one thing I am going to stay on the crease for a long time even though I am unable to score runs. The first couple of balls were with minor hiccups but the turning point came when I hooked one of the good bowlers for six. A SIX....after a long time, I don't even remember the last time I hit a SIX :-). After that it was quite a smooth ride and I led a good batting innings which took the team to victory.

So how did I manage to play well and surpass my own expectations. Well couple of things

1. I was determined to play well today.

2. Every ball I faced I tried to focus hard on that ball not thinking of the past or the future just the moment. This is easier said than done.

3. I was very aware of the fielders and tried to play the game at my pace than at how the bowler wanted.

Overall a good innings to get back my batting confidence and a personal victory for the day.

Olympics Games begins on 8-8-08 at 8:08:08 pm

2008-07-21T09:30:00.004-05:00

By now you must have understood the obvious from the blog title. A lot of eights in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Well the Chinese have a fascination for number 8.

In Chinese culture numbers are considered auspicious or inauspicious depending on the Chinese word the number sounds similar to. The number 8 (ba) is similar sounding to the Chinese word 'fa' which means to prosper or wealth. Hence a lot of businesses and individuals shell out lot of money to have an 8 in the telephone number. The telephone number 888-8888 was sold out for $270k.

The Beijing Olympics organizers are taking no chances and want all the luck and prosperity with the number 8 for the Olympic games.

Amazing facts about 5 Asian Cities

2008-07-18T12:12:00.002-05:00

1. Jerusalem - Its the most important city for Muslims after Mecca and Medina.

2. Dubai - 99% of UAE population lives in Dubai according to official figures.

3. Bomday - Founded in 1533 by Portuguese.
Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) founded in 1875 is the oldest stock exchange in Asia

4. Hong Kong - In 1898 China treaty made HongKong and about 230 neighboring islands under British protectorate for 99 years.
In 1997 Hong Kong came under Chinese Special Administrative Region.

5. Singapore - Singapore gets it name from Singha Pura meaning the "Lion City".

July 11 th 2006 - Mumbai Bomb Blasts

2008-07-11T14:16:00.002-05:00

One of my earlier post in January 2007 - 187 Mumbai Stories I had mentioned about the commendable work by the Indian express team by covering each and every person who died in the July 2006 Mumbai train bomb blasts.

Today on the 2nd anniversary Indian express along with Harper Collins are releasing a book titled - 187 Lives. I look forward to reading this book. With the 187 Mumbai stores commendable work I am sure great work on the book too.

Check out the press release of the book - here

Two men and a truck

2008-07-09T23:36:00.003-05:00

Today I purchased a used television. The TV was a sweet deal and a bargain for the size and the price offered. I just went bonkers once I saw the television and made a quick payment to get the television. Once the TV was purchased and the owner wanted us (myself and roommate) to pick the TV to our car I realized the TV was heavy, very heavy. We somehow managed to get to our apartment complex but the herculean task was to move TV on a flight of stairs to get to our living room.

Some how we were able to climb 3 steps when my roommate gave in and we realized the task required more hands. Finally two more friends helped up to get over the challenging task and we completed the job.

So how much exactly did this TV weigh since it needed 4 pair of hands.
Any guesses ....75...100 .......125 pounds.

Keep guessing .........154 pounds.

Lesson for the day : Before purchasing a TV decide if you going to carry the TV, if so then forget the price and the looks of the TV, weigh it first ;-)

PS: So what has the title suppose to do we the post, well I see these moving company trucks - Two men and a truck they are movers with a funny name. But today my roommate and myself were in this situation where two men picking up a truck (TV in this case which was size of a truck).

It can't get better than this

2008-07-06T19:47:00.002-05:00

What a fantastic game of tennis. Whomever one would have supported for the Wimbledon Men's singles finals today - whether Nadal or Federer as a fan of the game would have just loved it. More than four and half hours of amazing tennis filled with tense moments. Though I am great fan of Roger Federer and love his game I had a strong intuition of Nadal winning the finals today. There are couple of reasons for this: one Nadal has been in great form on grass court. He has improved his grass performance a lot and also came in very close last year to win the championship. Though Nadal lacks the ability to hit aces at will like Roger Federer on grass he makes it up by his speeed and agility on the court.

I hope to see another great game between these two next year on the Wimbledon center court.

For a Family Guy Fan

2008-07-01T09:55:00.003-05:00

There's a good article from a Family Guy fan on CNN today.

Check it out here

Movie weekend

2008-06-29T14:37:00.002-05:00

After a long time I saw couple of movies over the weekend. Three movies to be precise.

1. Wall-E: Its the most adorable movie I have seen in recent times. Coming from the house of Pixar and Disney the animation, storyline and background music is awesome. But what stands out most in the film is with minimum dialogues the story unfolds beautifully. One of the best scenes in the movie is when Wall-E, the garbage disposing robot tries to impress EVE, a robot send to find life on earth, with his garbage disposing abilities. This is a too good movie to miss.

2. The Lives of Others: This German film is a 2007 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film along with numerous international awards. The film is set during the mid 1980's period and tells the story of a Stasi (East Germany secret police) officer who during one of his artists monitoring operations gets influence goes beyond his duties to protects the writer/director of a theater being surveyed. The best scene of the movie is the film ending scene.

3. De Taali - This is a recent Hindi movie highly influenced or copied from 2001 Hollywood movie - Saving Silverman. Please don't care to watch this movie. Its a waste of time :-)

Harversting Diamonds

2008-06-22T17:00:00.003-05:00

Can you imagine diamonds being harvested just like crops ?
Science and technology is making it a possibility and companies like Massachusetts based Apollo have made it possible using the process called chemical vapor deposition(CVD).

Artificial diamonds for industrial applications have been available for quite some time but the process of growing diamonds in pure and nearly as big as the one naturally found has only been perfected in the past decade.

These harvested diamonds are available at 15-20% less value than the natural diamonds. And even an expert jeweler eye cannot spot the difference.

To read more about the these diamonds here is an interesting link - Diamonds on Demand

New Residence - Austin TX

2008-06-21T13:55:00.003-05:00

Recently I moved to Austin TX and the last couple of days I have just moved around the place enjoying the new city as a new "Austinite".
The city is amazing - its often ranked as one of the best cities to stay in the US. The young professional crowd with large number of universities keeps the place ticking.
It provides a large variety of restaurants for dinning options. The official city slogan is "The Live music capital of the World" makes it a big attraction for musicians . "Austin City limits" and "South by Southwest" are the major music festivals that the city celebrates every year.
But the best part of the city is the unofficial slogan of the city - Keep Austin Weird.
So as I explore more of this city I will make my contributions to keep the city weird ;-)

A Letter from Father to Son

2008-05-16T15:29:00.002-05:00

I have been a regular reader of Zen Habits blog. The blog generally talks about productivity, getting things done, getting organized, simple living etc. The blogger Leo Babauta has a great knack of writing great articles. One of the most recent articles on the blog is a letter he writes to his three years old son Seth. In the letter he shares some worldly wisdom and hopes that his son will enjoy and appreciate it when the time comes.

The letter is simply amazing. Among the other points in the letter the best point I liked was "Life is not a competition". So many times we think about the end result of failure or success that we lose the little pleasures enjoying the journey.

To read the entire letter click here

The King of Torts

2008-05-06T08:52:00.002-05:00

The King of Torts a 2003 novel by John Grisham walks the reader to an area of the legal profession, a group of lawyers who fear the jury and the judge. They bring down big corporations by class-action lawsuits and collect couple of millions by out of court settlements.
The novel is a wonderful read and lets the reader explore this class of lawyers.

Two years of blogging

2008-05-06T08:50:00.003-05:00

Congrats rohit, for two year of blogging. Keep up the good work and be regular :-)

The Olympic torch relay - 10 interesting facts

2008-04-17T14:38:00.003-05:00

With 2008 Summer Olympics round the corner and the Olympic torch relay making rounds in a number of countries before reaching the final destination - Beijing. It would be nice to look at some interesting facts related with the Olympic torch

1. The origins of lighting the torch at the ancient city of Olympia in Greece and running it through different countries was invented by the organizers of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was used by the Nazi leadership as a propaganda platform.

2. In 1956 the equestrian events were held in Stockholm while the rest of the events in Melbourne. The torch relay to Stockholm had all the torch bearers traveling on horseback.

3. 1956 seems to be an interest for Olympic torch stories. The most interesting one was for the Melbourne torch relay. The Mayor of Sydney was supposed to receive the torch from cross-country champion Harry Dillon but couple of students prime among them Barry Larkin's staged a hoax by pretending to be the athlete by carrying a fake torch made out of a burning part of underpants and a plum pudding can on the end of the chair leg and handed over the fake torch to the Mayor. Before anyone can realize the prank Barry disappeared.

4. In 2000 Sydney Olympics the torch was carried under water by drivers near the Great Barrier Reef using a special enclosure.

5. In 2004 Athens Olympics the torch traveled all over the world and for the first time visiting all previous held Olympics cities.

6. The origin of the torch for both Summer and Winter Olympics begins in Olympia with Athens (Greece) as the next stop, before the torch makes its route around the world before reaching the host nation.

7. There are plans to carry 2008 Olympic torch on top of Mount Everest.

8. Using the torch to light the fire at the central stadium marks the beginning of the games. One of the most spectacular lighting of the fire was during 1992 Barcelona Olympics where archer Antonio Rebollo shot a burning arrow over the cauldron from a platform at the opposite end of the stadium.

9. During the 1976 Montreal Olympics a rainstorm doused the flame after the games had opened, an official re-lit using his cigarette lighter. The organizers quickly dozed of the flame and re-lit using the backup of the original flame.

10. The 2008 Olympic torch relay is expected to cover the maximum distance and most number of athletes to carry the torch. However with all the controversy surrounding the flame this might be the last Olympic torch relays.

First time visitor to India

2008-04-15T15:39:00.003-05:00

" In New York City, for example, a horn blast usually means: "Yo! These cars aren't moving. I hate this. YO!"

Here's what a honk means in India: "Ah, hello. I'm about two inches from you, so if you jiggle the wheel even slightly we'll both end up knocked into that rickshaw carrying a family of seven, the man pedaling 22 crates of live chickens, and a cow. Thanks much!"

The above lines are from "India for first-time visitor" an article on CNN.com today. The article is hilarious but in general gives a very stereotype view about India where the visitor just visits a few place in Northern India. To read the entire article click here

The Partner

2008-04-13T10:44:00.002-05:00

This is probably the best John Grisham book I have read so far. The story begins from the end and walks the reader with regular surprises with each chapter. And when you think all surprises are over the biggest one hits you in the last chapter. It is hard to keep the book down once you begin reading. A strongly recommended book whether you like read a good legal thriller or a casual reader.

John Grisham

2008-04-10T08:35:00.002-05:00

Of late I have been writing about a lot of John Grisham's works I have been reading like crazy on my blog. Well there is a good reason behind all the reading.

Around the first week of February I decided to read all of John Grisham's work in 2008. But why John Grisham, well there are couple of reasons for it

1. Mr. Grisham has been churning out bestsellers for the past 15-20 years pretty consistently. So it good to get in touch with one of the bestseller authors of our times.

2. Some of his works I have read before (e.g. the Chamber) and seen couple of movies based on his works (e.g. Pelican Breif, the Runaway Jury) I liked the detailing about characters, the explanation of the US justice system, social issues brought along with court cases like in the Rainmaker the case is against the medical insurance companies or like in Runaway Jury it was against the gun laws in the US.

3. Last but not the least I like Mr.Grisham's narration a lot. He is a very good story teller. Once you pick up the book it is hard to keep it down.

So where do I stand on my reading assignment. Well the following is the list of all of John Girsham's work

Legal Friction work

1. A Time to Kill (1989)
2. The Firm (1991)
3. The Pelican Brief (1992)
4. The Client (1993)
5. The Chamber (1994)
6. The Rainmaker (1995)
7. The Runaway Jury (1996)
8. The Partner (1997)
9. The Street Lawyer (1998)
10. The Testament (1999)
11. The Brethren (2000)
12. The Summons (2002)
13. The King of Torts (2003)
14. The Last Juror (2004)
15. The Broker (2005)
16. The Appeal (2008)

Non-legal fiction

17. A Painted House (2001)
18. Skipping Christmas (2002)
19. Bleachers (2003)
20. Playing for Pizza (2007)

Non-fiction

21. The Innocent Man (2006)

Out of the above list currently I have read 5 of his works in the past couple of weeks The Firm, The Rainmaker, The Testament, A Painted House and The Summons. I have seen A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief, the Runaway Jury and the Client. I have read The Chamber couple of years back. So I plan to read them towards the end.

So the following is the reading list as of today

Legal Friction work

1. The Partner (1997)
2. The Street Lawyer (1998)
3. The Brethren (2000)
4. The King of Torts (2003)
5. The Last Juror (2004)
6. The Broker (2005)
7. The Appeal (2008)

Non-legal fiction

8. Skipping Christmas (2002)
9. Bleachers (2003)
10. Playing for Pizza (2007)

Non-fiction

11. The Innocent Man (2006)

A Painted House

2008-04-05T16:20:00.002-05:00

Keeping up with my readings of John Grisham's work the latest book I completed couple of days back is A Painted House.

The book is a big surprise, since it is nothing to do with lawyers, court room drama or a suspense thriller. The book is based in early 1950s in Arkansas and it is being told from the eyes of seven year old kid Luke Chandler. The narration describes the life of poor farmers and the day to day activities of a small town during the cotton picking season. The book gives a great detail about growing up in the rural South. It walks a predictable path with few minor surprises but what most impressed me about Grisham from this book is his great sense of humor and love for baseball.

The Bear Stearns Fiasco

2008-03-28T10:05:00.009-05:00

Everyone is aware of the current Subprime mortgage crisis leading the US economy into a possible recession (or are we already in a recession). But a lot of people like me were surprised with the Bear Stearns, one of the largest global investment bank taken over by JP Morgan Chase with the help of Federal Reserve backing, couple of weekends back for $2 per share. How can a company being traded for $172 a share in January 2007 or $93 a share in February 2008 be sold out for such an outrages price on 14th March 2008.

With this post I will try to answer the Bear Stearns mess. Before we begin lets have an overview of the company.

Overview

Bear Stearns was founded in 1923 as an equity trading house. The company has headquarters located in Manhattan, NY with a number of offices in US and internationally.

Bear Stearns operates as an investment banking, securities and derivatives trading, and clearing and brokerage company serving governments, corporations, institutions and individuals worldwide. Based on 2006 revenue distributions the company has 80% business in capital markets, under 10% in wealth management and about 12% in clearing services.

In 2005-2007, Bear Stearns was recognized as the "most admired" securities firm in Fortune's "America's Most Admired Companies" survey, and second overall in the security firm section. The company holds this distinction second time in the past three years.

Bear Stearns and subprime mess

The first cracks of subprime mess were seen in Bear Stearns as early as June 2007. The company pledged a collateral loan of $3.2 billion to bail out one of its funds. But when things didn't work out in July 2007 it disclosed that two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value. And this was just the beginning of the bad news for Bear Stearns. The following are highlights of what followed July 2007.

1. In Aug 2007, investors in the two funds took action against Bear Stearns
2. In Sept 2007, there was a reported 60% drop in net profits of Bear Stearns due to the hedge funds losses
3. The company's credit ration was lowered from AA to A by Standard & Poor's credit rating with AAA being the highest safety rating and D being the lowest with anything lower than BBB considered as junk bond)
4. In Nov 2007, the company reported a $1.2 billion losses related with mortgage-related securities, their first loss in 83 years.

So the writing was on the wall. Further pointers about the mess was seen a week before the purchase.

1. The week before it was sold Bear Stearns shares were trading at $76 a shared on Thursday and $30 on Friday.
2. The talks of the company having liquidity problems were making rounds, making its clients and lenders to withdraw their money from the firm leading to drastic loss in share value.
3. Bear Stearns with its bad investments had in totality $31 in debt per $1 it had.

So if the Federal Reserve wouldn't have stepped in and had make the take over a possibility over the weekend then over the course of the week Bear Stearns would have collapsed under the weight of its own problems and the effects would have been even more devastating.

Bear Stearns would have eventually file for bankruptcy freezing its client assets. Thus leading to taxpayers footing in the bill for assets which the Federal insured in the bailout. And the panic which this would have caused would have spell devastation beyond words.

10 reasons I like Family Guy

2008-03-25T09:23:00.003-05:00

1. Stewie Griffin the adult vocabulary blabbering one year old kid.

2. The show explains stories in a mighty hilarious way.
e.g. the "free bare arms" as second amendment. One of the episodes it shows the founding fathers looking at "bear arms" hung on the wall and discussing if it would be ok to include in the second amendment.

3. The Stewie and Brian partner ship. No one understand Stewie better than Brian and they bring down the house when both are drunk.

4. Peter and rooster fight, a random event for no apparent reason.

5. The show being animated nothing is impossible for the characters and the makers make good use of this liberty.

6. The take on celebrities in the show.

7. Peter Griffin's laughter .....eeeehhheeee

8. The evil monkey and Herbert who are always after Chris

9. Peter's friends - always charged up Joe, the gigadi gigadi guy Glenn Quagmire, and Cleveland

10. Last but not the least Peter's amazing flashbacks.

You won't believe what happened one night

2008-03-12T16:47:00.006-05:00

Couple of years back when I was in grad school I had one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Now whenever I look back at the incident it cracks me up.

This happened one weekend night, I was working late in my office doing a programming assignment due the following week. Let me just give an idea about my office. Its a big room 40 feet by 40 feet with high ceiling and just rows of cubicles for graduate students. The room has one main door, an emergency exit and no windows. In a way its depressing but good when one has to focus on work without distractions.

It was about one in the morning and I was pretty tired but determined to get the assignment out of my way. When suddenly I heard a strange noise .....zhing zhing .......... I didn't paid much attention to the sound but noticed that the sound became more clearer and louder. I tried to focus all my attention on the computer screen. When suddenly a wet thing popped up between my thighs and hands, it touched my hand. I just frooze, I wanted to scream but just air came out of my mouth. I should have jumped on my desk but I just froze.

Any guesses for what this thing was. It was the nose of a full size black Labrador. After a min or so I gained control over myself got up from my chair and shooed the dog away.

Now how the hell did this dog get into this enclosed building over the weekend. I did my little bit of investigation on this. The following is my conclusion for this.
Some background story, on Friday afternoon we had some air conditioning problem in our office. And the maintenance guys had just postponed the fix till Monday morning. It was quite hot and uneasy in the office over the weekend. One could feel the discomfort initially but got used to it after a while. Someone must have left the exit door open for some air circulation and forgot to close it. The dog must have come in from this exit door.

And if you are still wondering about the zhing zhing sound ........ its the dog collar tag which made the sound. The dog just roamed around the office like a manager who over sees every one is working and left through the exit door after 5-10 minutes it visited my desk.

The Rainmaker

2008-03-09T13:57:00.002-05:00

Keeping up with my reading of John Grisham's work, I just completed another interest book by the author "The Rainmaker". Like most of John Grisham's work this book deals with lawyers, law firms and courthouse.

The book is very different from "The Firm", it revolves around a young lawyer, Rudy Baylor just out of law school but one without a job and not much to look up as a bright career as a lawyer. Due to series of events he is forced to work with J. Lyman "Bruiser" Stone, a lawyer whose track record is famous for fighting cases for people on the wrong side of the law. Though Rudy Baylor stumbles on a good case against a big health insurance company, which Bruiser decides to fight while Rudy learns in court. But Bruiser disappears overnight and Rudy is left with "paralawyer", Deck who has not passed the bar exam even after six attempts, to fight the case against the best law firm in Memphis.

The book tracks Rudy's work as a lawyer, character's like Deck who knows how to get and win cases without being a lawyer. A Hollywood movie by the same name with Matt Damon as the lead character and Danny De Vito as Deck was released in 1997. This was one of John Grisham's work where I had seen the movie before I picked the movie. But no complains, the book keeps one engrossed entirely. Another recommended work if you want to read Grisham's work.

The Firm

2008-02-23T12:22:00.004-06:00

I just completed "The Firm" by John Grisham. And like my previous readings of John Grisham I enjoyed the gripping storyline. The book was second work of John Grisham and gives an insight of how big law firms work. A gist of the story follows ( don't worry there are no spoilers, so if you planning to read this one please do so).

The plot is something like this Mitch McDeere a top 5 students from Harvard Law school is just about to graduate with 3 job offers from big firms in New York, Chicago and Boston. He is interested in tax works and he is being called for a job interview in a small firm in Memphis. The firm wants him and gives an irresistible job offer better with great perks like a new BMW(that's hard to resist), a low mortgage house and vacations in Caymans Islands (Caribbeans). Within few days Mitch is on a roll, a self made man he becomes star of the firm by clearing bar exam with top scores and even putting in 60 hours on average at work as a rookie. But somethings are fishy around the office, his activities are monitored, his house is wired, and some FBI agent wants to talk to him about the firm. The rest of the book is how Mitch finds more about the firm, and how he dodges both the firm and the FBI to save his life.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who would like to have good read. A movie based on the novel was made in 1993 starring Tom Cruise as the lead character.

Valentine day bloopers

2008-02-21T10:34:00.003-06:00

Valentine day is a special day for lovers. Many times couples want to have great memories linked with this day but sometimes not too great. I heard couple of interesting stories about the weirdest V-day celebrations over the radio couple of days back and I have added some of my personal touch to it.

The first story is between Katie and Mike. Both used to work in the same office and were acquaintance but not great friends. On Valentine day 2005, Katie made a desperate phone call to Mike. She said, "Mike you are my last hope. I have two tickets to the LA Lakers game tonight. My boyfriend was suppose to come but something came up at work and he is going of town. I have talked with every other guy in office and everyone has plans. Mike, you are my last hope". Mike was listening but not very keen to go. So Katie pushed and pursuiated him to come and to be his date tonight as she didn't wanted to be alone on V-day. Finally he relented and said yes. He asked about the time and place where to meet up etc. Then just before he hung up Katie asked " So Mike you will pay for your ticket ?" ..........dannnnnngggggggggg

My second story is about graduate students. Graduate students are a unique class of people. They can survive on Ramen noodles, coke and chips for ages. A sign of free food never escapes there sight or ears. So this is a story about two graduate students Bill and Samantha. They were dating each other and on Valentine day instead of have the usual free food or noodles they decided to go to a Chinese restaurant for a proper meal. But due to the limited income they decided to split the bill into half. But Samantha didn't know what Bill had on his mind. She ordered the vegetable fried rice and Kung Pao Chicken. While Bill order water and single egg roll. So for the entire meal he was digging in Samanth's dishes.................... damn you cheap graduate students :-)

Increase your vocablury with some interesting words

2008-01-12T17:21:00.000-06:00

A lot of the words are added every year to the English dictionary. The following is a list of some of the interesting words I came across recently

password fatigue :- frustration caused by having too many passwords and failing to remember them
chindia :- to refer to China and India as a collective term in terms of economic power and strategic importance
tanorexia:- an obsessive desire to have tanned skin
credit card tart:- someone who transfers loans to a new card when the interest-free period of the first card expires
barista :- to one who has acquired some level of expertise in the preparation of espresso-based coffee drinks
blamestorming :- sitting around a group and discussion why a deadline or target was not met and who is responsible
mouse potato :- a person who spends a lot of time infront of the computer (from couch potato)
generica :- features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, etc.
404 :- someone who is clueless, derived from internet error message "404 Error - Page not Found"
assmosis :- a process by which some people absorb success and advancement by kissing upto the boss rather than working hard.

The Air Force Museum

2008-01-06T17:22:00.000-06:00

Couple of days back I got a chance to visit the National Musuem of the United States Air Force in Dayton Ohio. The Wright brothers, were from Dayton Ohio and the museum boosts of the official US Air Force museum has an amazing collection of about 400 aircrafts right from 1903 ( the year when the first flight was made) to modern times aircrafts like B-2 stealth bomber.
Some of the interesting facts from the museum and related with aviation I would like to share with you.
1. First in Aviation - First in flight : Though the Wright brothers were from Ohio and did a lot of their aviation work in Ohio. The first flight was performed in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina due to the availability of steady winds. Hence the Ohio state slogan (seen on car plate) is "Birthplace of aviation" while that North Carolina states "First in flight"
2. Three parts of the flying problem - The three parts of the flying problem involved - power, control and lift.
3. Wind Tunnel - Wind tunnel is a research tool developed to assist with studying the effects of air moving over or around solid objects. The Wright brothers designed the first wind tunnel in 1901 and the idea of wind tunnels is still used. Just that now we have computer simulations.
4. Other inventors - There were several other inventors working on a flying machine before and during the same time as the Wright Brothers. Prominently among them were Samuel Pierpont Langley, Octave Chanute and even Alexander Graham Bell.
5. Helicopter tail blades -The main rotor (blades) of a helicopter creates torque effect which causes the body of the helicopter to turn in the opposite direction of the rotor. To eliminate this effect, some sort of antitorque control must be used. The tail rotor performs the function of providing the antitorque to avoid the body of the helicopter to turn in opposite direction.
6. Stealth aircraft - A stealth aircraft uses stealth technology which makes it difficult to detect the aircraft on traditional radar system. The shape of these aircrafts play in important role. F-117 Nighthawk was one of the first stealth fighter used by the US Air force for a long time.
The B-2 stealth bomber is also available on public display. It was very effectively used during the first Gulf war in 1990.
7. Wright Cycle Company - The Wright brothers manufactured cycles to fund there interest in flying.
8. Air Force One - Air Force Two - The President of United States special plane is known as Air Force One. It's a customized Boeing 747-200B series and maintained by the US Air Force.
The Air Force aircraft for the Vice-President is known as Air Force Two.
9. Airships - In contrast to flying machines, rigid airship became the first aircraft to transport passengers and cargo over great distances.
10. Aviation - Commercial aviation saw a boom especially in the US after World War II due to the availability of pilots released from military services and many inexpensive war-surplus aircrafts.

The electron joke

2008-01-06T17:19:00.000-06:00

Two atoms were walking down a street when one of the atoms said " I think i lost an electron", the other atom asked, "Are you sure ?". To which the first atom replied " I am positive(+)".

A different India

2007-12-22T20:34:00.000-06:00

During my recent trip to India I traveled for the first time to the southern part of India to places like Tirupati and Chennai.
Tirupati a temple town in Andra Pradesh is the home of Tirumala temple, one of the most famous and highly visited religious places. The location of the temple is simply beautiful surrounded by mountains on all sides. One needs to cross seven mountains to reach the temple which can be done through foot or one can drive to the mountain. The management of the place really amazed me. Everything was so beautifully managed. Surly a place one should in his or her lifetime.
Chennai, fomerly knows as Madras is one of the original four metropolitan cities of India. A smaller city as compared to Mumbai. I found the city much cleaner, with nice beaches (though I just visited one), but the traffic was as usual bad. The roads were narrow with tons of hoardings for sarees and jewelry all over the city. I found very few skyscrapers in Chennai.
In both these places I observed that language can be a barrier. Knowledge of local language is very helpful. Another thing I saw that southern part of India is much greener, less crowded and
with a lot of small lakes as compared to central part of India.

The changed India

2007-11-13T20:12:00.000-06:00

It has been about a week since I have been in India and invariably I can't ignore the changes I have seen since the last time I visited India two years back. The very first change one observes while landing out of the flight are the changes on the airport. The distinct smell of humid air is the same but one can see the transformed immigration counters, the new LCD monitors, the new luggage belt, the new luggage trolleys, etc. The staff is more professional and the entire system is much more efficient. It took me about 20 mins from the time I stepped out of the flight to the time I was out of the airport.
The variety of cellphones which I have seen over here really surprises me. Latest models with the best features at a very reasonable price makes me think about the poor cellphones one gets in the US, above that the binding contracts which forces one to carry on one service provider and instrument for one or two years. I am pretty sure the cellphone providers just want to keep the poor services in such an open US market. Hopefully pretty soon with Google's entry in the cellphone market will change things.
But somethings never change and atleast in Mumbai they won't. The crowd, the ocean of people one sees everywhere it is simply amazing - whether travelling in trains or by road. Another common thing is the pollution, the sweat and dust.
For someone who has grown in this city getting back to this lifestyle hardly takes any time. The very next day I was amazed to see myself being so good at crossing roads or jumping in and out of trains with ease. Its like a skill which was ingrained in my DNA and will never change.
Well the above were few first observations will add in more as my stay progresses.

Pictures speak a thousands words

2007-09-29T18:24:00.000-05:00

So true are the above words, some pictures speak to you in volumes something words cannot express.

Couple of days back I came across a touching story on CNN.com where a 5 year kid, Youssif in Iraq was attacked by masked men and burnt with gasoline. On the surface the story looked to be a sad one but after looking at the pictures ones heart goes out for the kid.

The atricle got great response and a lot of people donated money for the child and his family to come to the US and undergo surgery. I think this one the best stories CNN has carried in recent months and has been doing a good job following the latest developments. These days Youssif in the US and undergoing treatments for his burns.

In the past there are similar pictures which become defining moment or the face of a historical event. The following two pictures are something which have stayed along with me.

The first one is from Gujrat (India) communal riots of 2002. A lot of people died in these riots and the state government was irresponsible and ineffective in protecting innocent people. The following picture just stuck out, it showed the helplessness of a common man in front of a mob and his plea not to kill him.

The other picture is one of the defining moment and surly shows the Power of One, how one man can change anything.

The picture is famously known as Tank man or the unknown rebel. Just a quick background of the historical event related with the picture. In 1989, a huge protest took place in the Tienanmen Square in Beijing where a lot of students, intellects and labor activists were protesting against the
Communist ruling.

The incident got a lot of international media coverage. Hence to crush the protesters the Chinese
government implemented martial law and called in the army. The above photo and video shows the Power of one, one person standing and trying to stop these huge military tanks.

Truly these pictures speak more than thousand words.

Old TV Shows - link

2007-09-08T06:59:00.000-05:00

In one of my earlier post the man, the machine...Street hawk( May 17th 2007) I mentioned how much enjoyed watching TV show in Doordarshan in the late 80's and early 90's. Recently I found a very interesting link to watch couple of these shows. The link is http://rajshri.com/ and it comes from the house of Rajshri productions makes of films like Maine pyar kiya, Hum aapke hain kaun etc and it is legal.
The website has complete episodes for shows like Malgudi Days, Fauji, Mahabharat, Surabhi and many more. I watched couple of shows of Malgudi days and must say the quality is simply great. These shows are available for free for online viewing, one can download these shows for a small charge. There are tons of movies to watch too if you are interested. So sit back and enjoy the shows and movies you loved.

WebOS

2007-08-26T10:50:00.000-05:00

WebOS or Webtop or web operating system, is moving the traditional desktop operating system to the web to support web applications. In the traditional sense the operating system had a dependency on the machine hardware and its drivers. But WebOS as no such dependency, one just needs a web browser to use a WebOS from any machine connected to the internet.
I found the concept very intriguing and with Google taking major strides to create such an operating system(if rumors are to be believed, but aren’t Google docs and spreadsheets a step in that direction). Till Google comes out of it own WebOS there are quite a few existing ones that one can explore.
G.ho.st is one such webOS I explored. Though in it infancy(the alpha version is available right now) I found it very easy to operate. It provides login ftp to transfer files to the webOS 3GB free disk space. The feel of the desktop is similar to Microsoft windows, though a lot of widgets like notepad etc are built in. They have web editor to edit word documents, a web browser and many other operating system applications to use. One of the fun things I liked is the game of criket, names as Ashes, though not very high on graphics it is fun to play.

There are other available WebOS like YouOS, Desktoptwo, and many others which I hope to explore and review in my coming blog posts.

I am back

2007-08-24T15:45:00.000-05:00

I am back after a self- proclaimed sabbatical of two months from blogging. There are couple of reasons for the break. One a break from any kind of routine or regular work is a good way to refresh ones mind and to incorporate new ideas. And when you are your own boss (in this case) one can take leave anytime. Secondly, my work has also been keeping me busy lately. Hence it left very little time for leisure, fun or even reading online articles for the blog.
Initially I had planned for a month break from blogging but it got extended to almost two months. But nothing to worry, I will make up for it by more interesting articles in the coming weeks.

AT&T becomes Cingular or Cingular becomes AT&T

2007-06-24T12:43:00.000-05:00

In this ever changing world of business, mergers, takeover are everyday stories. But Cingular and AT&T(American Telephone and Telegraph company) fiasco is one story you won't want to miss out.
Those not familiar with Cingular, it is one of US major cellphone service provider company along with Verizon, T-Mobile etc while AT&T is a telecom giant. In 2004, Cingular acquired AT&T mobile services for $41 billion. To announce the major purchase there were series of advertisements explaining how Cingular is now the largest wireless network in the US. However in late 2006, it was announced that AT&T is taking over Cingular and changing all Cingular customers to AT&T, with ads having a tag line as "Cingular now the new AT&T". So isn't it a little weird that a company (AT&T in this case) whose wireless division becomes part of a big cellphone company and just two years down the line the cellphone company gets accuired by the same company.
Well to know more about this acquisition we need some history lessons. In 1984 the US justice department forced AT&T to split into different regional companies since till then it had a monopoly over the telecom industry. Hence AT&T was broken into several regional bells or "Baby Bells", while AT&T took care of the international calling services. The original Baby bells were

Ameritech
Bell Atlantic (changed later to Verizon),
BellSouth,
NYNEW,
Pacific Telesis,
Southwestern Bell
US West.

Among the Baby bells, Southestern Bell, based in San Antonio, Texas acquired Pacific Telesis, Ameritech and couple of other regional companies in the late nineties and in 2002 changed its name to SBC, mind you this is not an acronym for Southwestern Bell Corp. it doesn't stand for anything.
In 2000 Southwestern Bell(SBC) combined its cellular services with BellSouth (another Baby bell) to form a company Cingular with SBC having 60% hold in this new company. Then in 2004 Cingular purchases the wireless division of AT&T which was started in 2000 for $41 billion. However AT&T wanted to keep the brand name hence Cingular has to change all the new and existing customers of AT&T cellphone service to Cingular. Then in 2005, SBC purchases it former parent AT&T for $16 billion. So now SBC which has a major share in Cingular which, purchased AT&T wireless division and now has also purchased AT&T. After the merger was approved SBC again rebrands to AT&T.
But wait AT&T had the AT&T wireless brand name so now SBC and BellSouth decide to market the AT&T as the cellphone service rather than Cingular (making sense) in some markets.
Then to add to this fiasco, in 2006 new AT&T ( former SBC) announces the purchase of BellSouth for $67 billion, so now it has total control of the Cingular brand name and decides to phase out the Cingular brand completely and change it to AT&T.

Zen V Plus - review

2007-06-10T12:37:00.000-05:00

I recently purchased Zen V plus (2GB)- mp3 player. The following is my review about the player.
Pros:

Size - the image on the left is the actual size of this player. It is smaller than ones palm size, though a little thick about an inch.

Great battery life - the player uses lithium-ion rechargeable battery with charging time about 6 hours (though it gets done much faster in 5 hours or so) and one full charge lasts for 15-20 hours depending upon use.

the joy stick (center button) is the main button with five way navigation movement, though it looks small and uncomfortable to some people I found it very convenient and easy to use

The Zen V plus comes along with features like playing videos and radio (though they are not available with Zen V player). It has preset 32 FM channels for radio

It is one of the cheapest mp3 player available for the features and the quality

On the flip side of the player

Creative brand is not as popular as Apply Ipod hence not a lot of accessories are available. Though one can get couple of them from the creative store things like armband or car charger are not easily available in store. Ebay is a good resource for getting these accessories.
Online reviews like CNET and other places give it a high editor and user ratings to the player, however forums have people complaining with the player running into problems like dead pixel, to the player getting stuck and most common being the player just stops working soon after one year warranty. I guess in my case I will have to wait and watch for the warranty issue.
Though the player has a factory set time and date - changing it might be difficult (user manual gives no information about this). I found out by playing around with the player. I would recommend couple of things to do so that the player runs smoothly and help you change date/time.
The video quality is not too great probably due to two reasons, one the screen is OLED based display which gives better battery life in the bargain of loosing the picture quality and second the screen size is 1.5 inches so whatever the video is it won't look all that great because it is simply too small.
Organizing music might be a hassle. I guess this goes for other players too having to download particular software for transferring files on the device (like V plus has Creative Media Explorer) , arranging the files in particular folders etc (isn't the DRM issue all about this). If you just want to dump files on the player without any particular folders then V plus works just fine.

To conclude, if you are looking for a budget small capacity mp3 player you might want to give Zen V plus a thought

Basics of Indian Classical music

2007-06-02T21:21:00.001-05:00

Couple of days back I had the opportunity to explore a wonderful music software - Swarshala.
The software is complete tool for learning Indian classical music, it not only gives theoretical knowledge about learning various raagas and taal, but provides means to practice it too. One of the best and probably the most widely used feature of the software is creating your own music piece by using the various instruments provided in the software database. Though I am novice to music, my idea of exploring the software was to get some basic information about Indian classical music. Let me share some of my learning.
First and foremost Indian classical music is one of the most complex and complete music system ever developed. It consists of basic notes - Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ne Sa which is similar to Western classical music notes - Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Do.
There are two streams of Indian classical music
1. Hindustani music -North Indian music
2. Carnatic music - South Indian music also known as Karnataka Sangeet
Both are similar in a lot of ways they use one raaga and one tala in one song. Usually not always songs are preceeded by improvised prelude called alap. But Carnatic music lays more emphasis on vocals, raagas are much faster and shorter in tempo as compared to Hindustani music. On the other hand Hindustani music is more influenced by Persian music with instruments like tabla, sitar, sarod, basuri, shenai more prominently use. In Hindustani music the tabla provides the rhythm while the tanpura is played with a steady tone throughout the performance of a raaga.In Carnatic music veena (similar to sitar), mridangam (similar to tabla), kanjira and violin are the commonly used instruments.
Raaga in Indian classical music is the equivalent to what Western music would call a scale or mode. However, in ragas, the actual tonal distance between the notes may be completely different than "Do, Re, Mi". Taal which means "clap", is a rhythmical pattern which determines the rhythmical structure of a composition. It is similar to metre in Western music.

Useful resources for Indian classical music:

Musical Nirvana is a great website giving complete information about Indian classical music.
Music india online, a music website has a great collection for Indian classical music.
Sunil Mukhi, a physicist at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and an Indian classical music lover gives some wonderful information about Indian classical music and good list of commercial and non-commercial websites.

George Bush joke

2007-05-26T08:51:00.000-05:00

US president George Bush is very popular among late night show hosts like Jay Leno, David Lettermen, etc. and butt of jokes among a lot of American people. But internationally too he is equally popular. At a recent diplomatic level meeting between North and South Korea officials, to ease out the tension one of the officials cracked a joke on Mr. Bush's liberty. The joke goes something like this.
One spring morning Mr. Bush was having his jog around the White House as usual he was in deep thoughts about solving world issues ( read Iraq war). A speeding car was heading towards him, the driver honked but there was no affect on the president. Just then a group of children heading towards school dived towards Mr. Bush and saved his life.
Mr. Bush was so impressed by the act of bravery that he asked the children what they wanted. He gave them the freedom to ask anything and since he is the president he will fulfill their wish. The children replied that they would each like to get a cremation spot at the Arlington Memorial cemetery.
Mr.Bush was surprised with the answer. He asked the children for the reason behind such an unusual wish. To which the children replied "when our parents come to know what we have done they will kill us."

Keyboard shortcuts

2007-05-24T07:55:00.000-05:00

The more time you spend everyday working with computers the switch between keyboard and mouse sometimes becomes an annoyance. And if you are using a laptop then don't even ask about the issues between switching from keboard to the laptop mouse.
I recently came across a great artcile about Productivity Ninja 101 keyobard short cuts. The list is simply amazing and Firefox short cuts are my favorite especially quick search using / and reopening closed tab using Ctrl + Shft + T.
A very very useful shortcut key mentioned in the post is F2 to edit a cell in Microsoft Excel. I will let you enjoy the article and make good use of the shortcut keys.
To add to the list are couple of more shortcuts you might want to try out

1.Windows
-alt +spacebar = Display shortcut menu for current window
-alt + spacebar + n = Shrink (minimize) current window
-alt + spacebar + x = Maximize current window

2. IE, while typing the web address press Ctrl+Enter enters the www. and .com and for Firefox additional support with Ctrl=Shift-Enter adds .org, and shift-enter fills in .net is provided.

3. Ever wondered the use of Windows key between Ctrl and Alt, it can be used for opening the Start menu and it provides some great shortcuts too

Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restore the minimized windows)
Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
Windows Logo+F (Search for a file or a folder)
Windows Logo+ L (Lock the keyboard)
Windows Logo+R (Open the Run dialog box)
Windows Logo+U (Open Utility Manager)

If you know more such useful keyboard shortcuts please do share with us.

the man, the machine ....Street Hawk

2007-05-17T19:03:00.000-05:00

How many of you can remember Street Hawk. If you cannot then let me refresh your memory, Street Hawk was a TV series telecast in India in the late 80's on Doordarshan at Sunday noon (originally it was telecast in the US for one season in 1985 on ABC). It probably the first show which showed how cooool bikes are. Well I am trying to recollect some good TV shows which I used to enjoy as a kid. Let me try to list them as I can remember them in no particular order.

Giant Robot (today I came to know the right name of this series - Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, for us it was alway Giant robot) - a Japanese series about this huge robot controlled by a kid, who fights the bad guys and weird creatures. This program was telecast on DD Metro and was a favorite (more info).
The World this Week - one of the best new programs to be telecast in India. I still miss the coverage by Pranab Roy and his team. They later on went to work with Star News and then created NDTV 24 hour news channel. But ' The World this Week' was the best.
Flop Show/Ulta-Pulta - a comedy show by Jaspal Batti and his group. This show consisted of just 13 episodes but all the shows were simply hilarious. It was probably the first comedy show which made Indians laugh at them selves. There were countless reruns of the show. Ulta-Pulta was a small segment program of 5 mins in the morning where jokes were presented.
Fauji - 'I say chap' who can forget this cool line. I guess now this show enjoys more popularity because it had Shahrukh Khan (a very popular Bollywood star) in his early struggling days on television. But a great show.
Didi's Comedy Show - One of my favorite foreign comedy shows. The show was orignally from Germany.
Wagle ki duniya - one of the best portrait of common (middle class) man 's life and problems in India
Malgudi days - "Swami .........ta na tana naaa....." , a kid's life growing up in a small South Indian town Malgudi. There were a number of short stories part of this program.
Dekh Bhai dekh/ Aa bail mujhe maar/ Idhar Udhar - a great bunch of actors thrown in together and results were very hilarious
Neev - one of the best serials about hostel life. It was great to watch kids getting in trouble learning from mistakes and how different hostels used to compete among themselves to be the best.
Spider Man - well not the movie series, it was the animation version which made us familiar to this Marvel comics super hero.
He-Man - this show was great fun, He-man and the Master's of the universe.... tune nu nu tu .........(music). Orko, Ramman, Skeletor, etc great bunch of characters.
Surabhi - great cultural educational program. I doubt any other program came close to it.

There is one more program which I really liked but couldn't recollect the name. It used to be a one hour segment on Sunday mornings sponsored by Tata Steel about animals. It was very informative. Well these were some of my favorite childhood programs. Feel free to share with us your favorite childhood programs.
Note: The following link has title song for some of the mentioned TV programs and many more, thanks Aditya for the link

Mother's Day

2007-05-12T22:09:00.000-05:00

This post is a guest post written by my sister Darshana Chaube. I invited her to write a blog post and she chose to write on mother's. So enjoy reading her post.

Mother, Maa, Amma, Mummy, Mamma, Mom there are n number of ways you can call her but she is and will always be the MOST important person in every one’s life. Today on Mothers day I want to honor, celebrate motherhood and especially Thank them for what they are. It is rightly said, “GOD can not be everywhere that’s why he made Mothers”.
We don’t need a special day to tell our Mothers how important they are to us. It is something that should be felt and done daily, as the unconditional love and blessings that a Mother gives enables a normal human being to achieve the impossible. Like Fathers are the backbone of a family financially a Mother is the backbone of a family emotionally. Being a full time Mother is one of the highest paid jobs in the world as the salary is pure Love.
Mothers are the most selfless people as they always think about their children before they think about themselves. We all know how important she is to us but still we forget to appreciate her. Its sad these days to see children just avoiding or throwing their parents after they feel they are too grownup to take care of themselves. We need to be more responsible and thank our Mothers for all what they have done. Small gestures speak volumes.
On today’s special occasion I want to thank my Mother for being the most wonderful and beautiful person ever. I can go on writing about my mother, but to sum up today’s special day I would like to say .

“Ma, some day I would like to grow up to be Just like you –PERFECT “.

Contradicting Oneself

2007-05-12T09:35:00.000-05:00

Couple of days back I wrote a blog post about looking back at one year of blogging. In the post I mentioned about having a more focussed blog with posts related to one topic or a group of topics. I asked for inputs from my readers too what they would like to read. One of the comments for the post from Aditya Ayre mentioned the following

Well, isn't it "Rohit's nukkad"?
Write whatever is in/around your 'nukkad'.
and keep us amused

This comment put a smile on my face, it made me realize that my new approach of having a focussed group of topics on the blog was not in compliance with my blog title "Rohit's Nukkad". "Nukkad" is a Hindi word meaning "street corner" which is an ideal meeting place for friends to hang out and talk about anything under the sun. So changing the blog title should be the first step if the new approach of specific topic posts has to be put in practice. Well I won't do that, I will continue to write on Rohit's Nukkad on topics which I find interesting and keep my readers amused.

Mother's Day story

2007-05-11T23:02:00.000-05:00

Second Sunday of May is celebrated as Mother's day in the United Sates and number of other countries. This year it falls on the 13th of May. The story behind Mother's day celebration in US is an interesting one.
Anna Reeve Jarvis, a young West Virginia homemaker, during the Civil War started something called Mothers' Work Days. The idea was group of women to work for better sanitary conditions during the war. After her death her daughter, Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first Mother's day was celebrated in her honor in 1908. Though it started as a local West Virginia tradition soon it spread throughout the nation and by 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's day to recognize and honour all those mothers whose sons have died in war.
Very soon commercialization creeped into the holiday and materialistic things mattered more than the sentiments and trueness of honouring our mothers. Seeing all this Anna Jarvis, became a major opponent of the holiday and worked against removing it as a national holiday till the end of her life. However as it is seen today, Mother's Day continues to be one of the most commercially successful US holidays.
I hope you won't make this Mother's day a commercial and materialistic affair and thank your mother just one day of the year.

You can read more about mother's day celebrations in other countries here

Why Cricket World cup 2007 blog FAILED ?

2007-05-04T15:40:00.000-05:00

In my previous post I mentioned about my failed attempt to continue a second blog - Cricket World Cup 2007. The whole purpose of started the blog was I wanted to have a blog with focusing on one topic, with cricket world cup 2007 just 2 months away (I started writing the blog in January 2007) it proved to be an ideal topic to write about. I started off with a lot of curiosity and did some ground work like understanding the tournament format, studying the teams, their pre tournament standing, which team will perform good in Caribbean conditions and which teams will surprise.
But soon I realized that websites like cricinfo, the official cricket world cup 2007 website were very well at giving updated information related with the world cup. It didn't make sense to just copy material from these websites. I was finding it dificult to get original blog material. I couldn't find any other well written blog related with the topic. Yes jorunalists and reporters of major TV channels and newspapers have there cricketing blogs but an open, unbiased view was missing. Another thing which contributed towards my loosing interest with the blog was "India's inconsistent performance". If you are an Indian team fan you will understand what I trying to say. India has a great bunch of players, but everything is holds good only on paper. The team is always full of surprises. This contributes to a love and hate relation with the game for its fans including myself. One time the team gives some great performance that we(fans) just have cricket to talk about but the other times the team will be defeated by some lowly ranked teams in the most pathetic manner and we just want to hang our players and never want to see a game of cricket ever(though soon everything gets forgiven and foregotten pretty soon).
Truly speaking the blog never took off in reality. When I started the blog World cup was 2 months away hence it was expected that I make at least one blog post per day but I just didn't contribute to the cause. After writing just three article I just let the blog sit there.
Anyway the experience helped me explore another blog hosting website - wordpress. After exploring their tools and services I was very impressed and I will get back to them with another blog topic in the future. The blogging experience made me realize that I enjoy cricket more to play than to watch and read about it.

One year of blogging

2007-05-02T16:15:00.000-05:00

Today marks one year of blogging on "Rohit's Nukkad. Well quite an achievement with 48 posts and about 100 comments made in the past one year. It depicts a consistent blog updating effort at the same time keen interest from my readers. I was just going over my first blog post Express yourself and trying to analyze how the blogging experience has been over the past one year and what I plan to make changes in future.
I started of writing pretty long posts and mostly discussing about myself. I was under the impression that blog would be like an online diary. But soon I realized there is tons of blogging material around me like office love story or inspiration about life from common people like - Lala (this is my favorite article). Movies and articles related with movies have been a good chunk of my blog posts. May be about 30%, however I have tried to refrain myself from being a movie critic and just focusing on things which strikes me in the movie like some dialogue or may be some scene which just blew me off.
My initial months of blogging were the most enthusiastic ones however a good five months from August to December 2006 I went into hibernation. I just contributed 9 posts over this period with no posts in the month of November. However a new year resolution and determination to continue with blogging helped me. And since January 2007 I have made it a point to write at least one post per week.
In January I started another blog about Cricket 2007 World cup. I failed pretty miserably with it. The reason why this blog failed and what I learned from it I will discuss in a future post.
My blog has been very inconsistent with the choice of post material. In one post I might discuss some cool Internet tool and the next I discuss about some movie. This is one of the things I would like to change and focus on one or group of related topics in future. I would love to get feedback from my readers what they would like to read on my blog. Another aspect of my blog which I would like to change is write more interesting post and not just write for the sake of writing.

Cricket World Cup 2007 -perspective

2007-04-28T09:13:00.000-05:00

The finals between Australia vs Sri Lanka for World Cup 2007 will be played today. As the World Cup comes to an end I would like to present my personal perspective of the tournament.

Bob Woolmer being murdered, surly brought the ugly face of the game - betting.

First and foremost both India and Pakistan had to pay a high price for their inconsistent performance and were eliminated in the first round on the tournament. People of these countries have a "short term memory" and soon everything will be forgotten and forgiven once these team give some positive results in near future (if they give so).This as always delays the process of putting a strong team not only on paper but also on the field.

Little known team like Ireland played really well in the tournament. I guess more international tours are restored for them in the future and maybe a test status couple of years down the line.

The consistent "winning" performance by the Australian team has two perspective to it. They have set great standard of performance for the game. But at the same time it is high time that someone defeat them. They stand in a league apart than all the other cricket playing nations. None of the teams have troubled them slightly. Their players may give bold statements on and off field but the bottom line is they have given performance to match these statements.

Team like England and West Indies have been hyped during the tournament. In the past couple of years these teams have never looked strong one-day teams. They might have given couple of good performance here and there but surly they have to do give some consistent performance.

South Africa was my biggest disappointment second to India. They had played some good games but the way they played the semis was by far there worst performance. They definitely could have given a much better performance.

A lot of people complained the tournament was too long. But I think it was the best format since top 8 teams got even chance and only the top 4 performers got into the semis. I guess the complain is to do more with very few interesting games (if I am correct there were just 3 nail bitting games).

Well now the tournament comes is ending lets move on to the next sporting event .

Babubhai Katara - Mr. Smarty pants

2007-04-19T22:21:00.000-05:00

Babubhai Katara, is a sitting MP in India, from the state of Gujarat. Our friend Mr. Katara was making a trip to Toronto last week from New Delhi. He was smart enough to take a woman and a child and enlisted them as his wife and child. However Mr. Smarty pants took his wife's diplomatic passport to pass through immigration for the woman accompanying him. The customs got suspicious when the photo on the passport and the woman didn't match.
All three were arrested and put behind bars. Now the case has taken a serious turn with a bunch of people involved in human trafficking case.
But what surprises me the most and made me enjoy a hearty laugh is what made Mr. Katara believe that no one will suspect the lady accompanying him is not his wife. He surly is the most smartest person to think this.

You will be blown away

2007-04-14T02:14:00.000-05:00

I just got home after watching Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse. For those who haven't heard about the movie. It is twin movies films having Robert Rodriguiz's Planet terror and Quentin's Death Proof in one movie. And it lasts good three hours.
I have been a great fan of Quentin Tarantino's movies and Kill Bill vol.1 was one of his first movie to strike me. There was so much blood and mind blowing action that not for one second one could relax. His movie take you on a high journey and there are elements which will surprise you. Following the surprise element Grindhouse doesn't disappoint either.
The first movie, Planet Terror deals with zombie's and how a group of people try to escape from them in a small town in Texas. This movie has its wierd elements like one character likes to keep the balls ( literally human balls ) of the person he kills or the lead female character having a machine gun attached to her amputated leg. All this is crazy but still the movie entertains you and at times the movie even looks funny.
The second movie Death Proof, starts off with a slow note. With a lot of talking going around and very little action coming. However the last 45 minutes are unbelievable. One needs to see it to believe it. The dare devil stunts and the car chase sequence is just out of this world. One knows it is a movie but still they are so well executed that they look realistic and credit to Quentin for always giving something out of this world. I look forward for his future works.

PS: One needs to be in right state of mind to watch and enjoy these movies. If you don't like blood then this movie or for that matter any other Quentin works are not for you.

Racquetball or Squash

2007-04-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

I am a big fan of Racquetball, a game played in enclosed courts indoors or outdoors with the a simple objective to hit the front wall and place the ball in such a way that your opponent has difficulty in returning the shot. It is very similar to squash, with similarities can be drawn from the enclosed space to the use of racquets and ball as equipmentsto play. But at the same time there are a lot of differences between the two games.
1. Court : the court size vary and the layout also varies for the two sports, like in squash one needs to hit above a certain line on the front wall while serving, no such lines exist in racquetball. Moreover in racquetball the aim is to hit the ball as low as possible.
2. Equipment: The squash racquet are similar to tennis raquets though little smaller in size and lighter in weight. The racquetball racquets are without the neck and they are more egglike in shape. The strings are much tighter in squash to give the player better control while in racquetball it is more loosened up so that more power can be used. The ball used in racquet ball is hard, hollow and bigger in size as compared to squash ball. It has more bounce and speed, while a squash ball tends to be slower and tends to die down if placed in corners.
3. Game techniques : Squash is slower and more methodical. Long rallies are common in squash with each point taking any where from 50-100 strokes. Hence squash requires good stamina. While racquetball is all about power and speed with each point taking anything between 10-20 strokes.
These are just few of the differences among the two sports. However both games are good overall workout with fitness being the key in winning or losing a game.

Pani puri

2007-03-31T14:15:00.000-05:00

Couple of days back, while I was at work, apparently for no reason I had this uncontrollable craving for Pani Puri. For those not familiar with pani puri it is an Indian snack part of the chaat family which consists of small puris stuffed with mashed potatoes, boiled dal, fresh mint water( i.e. pani) and tamarind/dates chutney.
The snack is heavenly and those who love it will swear by it. I have been a big fan of pani puri since childhood. I remember asking my mom to make tons of pani puri for my birthday so I can eat them till my stomach bust open.
So what makes pani puri so great. I guess the whole idea of consuming something filled with water in one go (one needs to eat the complete puri otherwise the water will spill over). To the best of my knowledge I don't any other dish which comes close to it. Another fun aspect of pani puri is the 'on the go' taste change. Pani puri is very commonly sold by street vendors, the vendor fills up the stuffing in the puris and the customer just gulps it down while instructing the vendor to make it more hot or add in the sweet chutney more. So one gets to adjust the taste of the dish on the go. Isn't that amazing.
Pani puri is also known as Golguppe (north india) or Foochka (Puchka) in West Bengal or Gupchup in central part of India and Orissa. But whatever the name of this wonderful dish, I am sure if you are big fan of this dish you must be craving for more by now.

Tracking package on Google Maps

2007-03-17T14:05:00.000-05:00

Major package delivery companies like FedEx, UPS or USPS offer online tracking. One needs to enter the shipment number and the company displays the latest location of the package.
Package Mapping is an interesting website where one can look for online status package from FebEx, UPS, USPS or DHL not only in the US but globally. There are couple of added features to Package Mapping which are not available at other online tracking services. It displays the current location of the package on Google maps, there are Firefox and Thunderbird extensions available which are linked with package mapping to track your package, one can receive not only email but also RSS feeds for a particular package status.
If you don't remember the packaging company, no problem just enter the pakage number and Package Mapping with not only pull up the package location but also the packaging company information.

Wii makes you go Wee

2007-03-10T19:57:00.000-06:00

Everyone in the developed nations (especially Japan and US ) saw the mad rush by gamers for Sony Playstation 3 or Nintendo Wii last November around Thanksgiving. There were news articles how gamers stood in line for three-four days to lay hands on these gaming machines with arguments how each of these consoles were better than there predecessors.
Well I don't want to get into the argument which one is better or which one is not. But today I got a chance to lay my hands on Nintendo Wii, and I should admit that I never had so much fun playing video games. The highlight about Wii is its motion sensor technology. So while playing games like tennis one needs to swing the controller to play the shots. The technology is awesome. A set of games like tennis, golf, bowling, baseball and boxing (this one is the best) come along with the initial pack which also includes the Opera browser, forecast channel, photo organizer and many more features. Along with these sporting games I got a chance to play couple of fun games like Smooth Moves. This game involves a set of random actions not lasting more than couple of seconds. So one needs to be very alert since one doesn't know what fun activity might pop up.
Though Microsoft Xbox and Sony Playstation series are very popular they target male audience, especially teens with war or action games as there main bestsellers. However Nintendo has focused on family games and entertainment for the entire family. So Wii games can be played by a three year kid to seventy year old grandpa.
So if you haven't played Wii, give it a try. I can guarantee you, you wont want to stop jumping around with excitement and fun.

Samba software

2007-03-03T07:58:00.000-06:00

A lot of times we do things without getting to know much details about it, but once we find out the results may be very surprising. One of such things which I practiced at work has been mapping a network folder on my local machine. A very common practice in school and work places having a Client/Server or network setup. One has network accounts (your files are not on your local machine but on a network server) so to have a Windows interface we map the drive to our local machine. Click on following link to know how to map drive.
One of things which hit me like a brain wave the other day was the names of these network drives. In different organizations I worked with the general setup was \\server_name\shared_folder where server_name is the name of the server where the required folder resides and the shared_folder the folder one wants on the local machine. The server might be e.g. blogger.com or google.com however a lot of times ( for me it was always) while mapping the server name was Samba.blogger.com or Samba.google.com or Samba.xyz.com. So the name Samba caught my curiosity and I wanted to know what this Samba is, why different server names but Samba remains the same.
As it turns out "Samba is open source software that can be run on a platform other than Microsoft Windows, for example, UNIX, Linux, IBM System 390, OpenVMS, and other operating systems. Samba uses the TCP/IP protocol that is installed on the host server. When correctly configured, it allows that host to interact with a Microsoft Windows client or server as if it is a Windows file and print server". In layman terms , Samba runs on Unix platform but communicates with Windows as a native.
So how is this possible, well it all happens using the protocol suite called "Common Internet Files System' (CIFS). To know more details about Samba click here. (Don't miss the story at the top the web page).
Is Samba the only one providing the CIFS networking, the answer is no, there are commercial CIFS products for Macintosh and other platforms (including several others for Unix).
However CIFS is not the only implementation of Samba, it has dozens of other protocols and services available.

Further reading
Samba - homepage
Samba - wikipedia

New Daylight Saving TIme

2007-02-24T10:35:00.000-06:00

Generally the daylight saving time is on the first sunday of April (eg. 2nd April 2006) but from 2007, it has been changed to the second sunday of March (this year it is 11th March). The idea behind this to save energy.
Though it's not a big deal but some folks look as a major software bug after the Y2K scare. But I think it is more of an "American overhpye" thing. Over hype since it is just matter to couple seconds (on personal machine) to hours (large servers managing thousands of computers) and major software vendors have provided a patch to fix the problem. Since vendors are more aware about the effects on their clients. Some software providers like Apple are automatically updating their users with the patch , some like Microsoft Windows home users have to get the patch from the Support Center.
So if you have not got the patch yet follow the links towards the end of this post for Windows XP and other Microsoft users.

Windows XP home users
Microsoft Support (other Window users)

Nigerian Prince Inheritance

2007-02-19T15:06:00.000-06:00

A lot of times I have received emails from some lawyer in Nigeria ( or some other African country) stating that some rich oil magnate or prince has died and he has been my long lost uncle and has chosen me (of all people) to inherit his fortune tuned to be in millions of dollars. To gain access to the money I have to contact the lawyer (he/she give his name, address, phone number and email id in the mail) so that they know I am for real. I generally used to neglect such mails and used to put them in trash. But the mails kept coming though may be with a different heading or different contact address but one thing never changed "me being the lucky one".
One time out of curiosity I replied back to the email. To which I got a response from the concern person asking me to send in my bank account number so that the money be wired to me. This just confirmed my doubts about the money making scam.
It seems that such types of mails are pretty common and a lot of people have been fooled by it.
But since this trick has become somewhat old a new method used is about rare dog breed which will be send to you if you can send in the shipping charges for the dog from Africa. A lot of people complained about this to a local radio station in San Francisco. To prove it as a money making scandal the radio jockey, on live program called up the number of the concerned person ( the lawyer or the breeder), and after the usual greetings the jockey asked for some proof if the dogs are for real. To which the reply came whoof whoof..............whoof whoof .

Gossip News telecast

2007-02-17T18:21:00.000-06:00

American News channel really know how to turn the television into idiot box. In the last couple of days two news stories that has dominated the news channels have been the astronaut love triangle and the Ann Nicole Smith's mysterious death (well this one continues to dominate with a new twist added every day).
Among the news channels CNN and FOX news stand tall with there amazing ability to put gossip news as prime time news. CNN made a coverage for straight 90 minutes without commercial break during the death of Ann Nicole Smith, such is the importance of that news story. This was longer than the President's address to the nation but slightly less than the commercial free coverage on 9/11 ( reference The Daily Report by Jon Stewart).
These channels bombard you time and again with the same story thinking they are delivering news. I have no doubt that 24 hour news channel originated from the US with 24 hours dominated with gossip and sports news. It is really pathetic and to see such channels as the most top rated channels.
But such type of new coverage is gaining ground in India too. Channels like Aaj Tak, IBN-CNN ( no doubt CNN is it partner) are following the footsteps of there American associates.
A similar gossip news to dominate these Indian channels on prime time is the engagement of two Bollywood stars. The irony was none of the news channels had pictures or confirmation about the news and the only thing they had was to show the clipping from the engaged stars old movies. But they still kept on planning it over and over again.
A piece of advice, an interesting article to keep one brain more active states that one should watch less television and put more time in other activity like reading or family time.
Thanks to such great channels gossip news will always be breaking news.

Efficient use of Public Transportation

2007-02-04T11:21:00.000-06:00

I recently read an interesting post on Dumb little man, about two amazing websites Google Transit and Hopstop. These websites provide an efficent way to plan your intracity travel using the public transport systems in couple of major US cities. One needs to enter in the starting and destination address and the time of travelling and these websites will pull the most efficient way to reach ones destination with details about the subway and/or bus system to be used along with the distance and timing details throughout the trip. It is like taking Yahoo maps or Google maps with out your personal vehicle and replacing with the respective public transport system.
Hopstop caters to major North eastern cities like New York, Boston , Chicago etc, while Google transit has been focusing more on California cites and random cities throughout the country. However Google transit is expanding to other cities.
So next time when you make a trip to one of the big cities try using these websites to plan your public transport system, giving you more time to enjoy the city.

Neena aa gaya tera kameena

2007-02-03T10:05:00.000-06:00

Don't be surprised by the title of this post. It is one of the dialogues from the movie Spiderman 1.
Surpirsed ...to be precise Spiderman 1 dubbed in Punjabi. Yes, somebody took the efforts to make the audio track in Punjabi and the results are hilarious.
The movie is uploaded in parts on Youtube, with each clip running for about 6 - 7 mins.
Peter Parker is named Murali and Mary Jane as Nina.
Now, without leaking anymore details about the Punjabi Spiderman. I will let you enjoy for yourself.

SpiderMan in Punjabi -1

Good Feed Reader

2007-01-29T20:41:00.000-06:00

In one of my earlier posts i mentioned about the idea of RSS feeds which help in getting all the latest news articles or blog posts from the various linked websites giving one the convenience to scan over the headlines first and if interested reading the complete article.
News feeds can be of two types something which can be locally to ones machine like outlook express for emails or like a web based service like yahoo or gmail. The advantage of having a web based RSS is it gives one the flexibility to access from any machine connected to the internet.
Recently I have started using Netvibes, a web based news feed. It is very easy to use. One can even link emails, calender, weather and a whole lot of things to it. It gives you the freedom to get all your favorite website feeds at one place. So you can scan through hundreds of news articles however only reading those which interest you. The tab feature helps to categorize ones feeds.
Another similar web based feeds reader is Pageflages. I haven't used it but seems to be quite similar to netvibes. If you know more about Pageflages or any other interesting feed reader do let me know.

187 Mumbai Stories

2007-01-23T20:09:00.000-06:00

You must be wondering what the above title stands for ........ 187 Mumbai stories...... well 187 people lost their lives in the July 11th 2006 train bomb blasts in Mumbai. In order to bring the stories behind each and every person who died in the bomb blasts, Indian Express carried out a series called "187 Mumbai stories" in their Mumbai edition with one story per person per day.
Anyone humane felt the pain and anger about the tragic bomb blasts but for someone born and brought up in Mumbai the pain and anger was even more against the faceless enemy called "terrorist" who were responsible for the bomb blasts. I felt really sad too. I just didn't knew what to do. I was happy that all my family, friends and acquaintance were not injured or hurt in this terrible tragedy (except for a friend who was minorly injured).
But kudos to the team at Indian Express who covered the story behind each and every person. I started following their articles sometime in November onwards and made it a point to read them daily. These ordinary people had extraordinary lives. How the family is coping up the losses and trying to fill in the void was really very touching.
Today an editorial and list of all the stories was published in the Indian express online edition. I would request you to read couple of them and just understand the pain and suffering of the families and friends behind these 187 people.

New Year resolutions - a follow up

2007-01-20T11:20:00.000-06:00

At the start of this year I mentioned about "goals" for this year. Here is a follow up.
1. Exercise regularly - I am happy to say that so far I have been very regular even though my work is keeping me busy. I have been able to go 5 times per week in the past 3 weeks with 3 days focussed on running and playing racketball ( though I have played racketball only 4-5 times so far) and the rest of the days focussed on some weight workout. Hope to keep up the good work.

2. Blog update - Thanks to strong advise and support from my friend Aditya and my sister Darshana. I have been updating my blog pretty regularly.

3. Eating more healthy food : Oh yes I have been able to do this one pretty well. Have included nuts and more fruits in my diet. However eating outside still needs to be brought down to one time per week yet. I working on that one.

4. Investment for the future : Making some efforts but still a lot needs to be done.

The other day a friend of mine mentioned something good about getting some new or good activity in our daily routine. If we are able to do some activity continously for 3 weeks (21 days) then automatically the activity will become part of the routine and our daily activities will be made around the new regular activity. So if you are planning to put in a new or good activity like going to the gym or doing some exercise try doing it for 21 days, with especially the first one week the most toughest but you are bound to make that activity regular. I too have to reach my target of 21 days to making my new activities in my routine.

Sealand Purchase Update

2007-01-20T11:03:00.000-06:00

As mentioned in my earlier article about Sealand, the nation which The Pirate Bay were suppose to purchase to make it there HQ, to have a country free of all copyrights laws.
Well it seems the current owner is not interested in selling it to any one which would harm the interest of it neighbors England and country with on copyrights won't suit England or any other country. So even if The Pirate Bay are able to raise one billion dollars ( yes that is the estimated price of Sealand) they would have to look for other small countries.
There are couple of other nations like Ladonia, near the coast of Sweeden or Isla Montuosa, a 227 acre island near the coast of Panama.
To read more about the the not possible sale of Sealand or the other options for Pirate Bay follow the links
Sealand Sale
Possible locations for The Pirate Bay

Get citizenship of "Sealand" !!!!

2007-01-13T07:26:00.000-06:00

Pirate Bay, world's largest Bit Torrent tracker would like to seek your donations to purchase a man made off shore installation "The Principality of Sealand" (or just Sealand) to provide a safe haven for high speed internet and where copyright laws don't exist.
Sounds very exciting and fun but where is "The Principality of Sealand", let's get to know some history of this place and something more about Pirate Bay.
"The Principality of Sealand", is a man-made off-shore installation located in the North Sea off the coast of Suffolk,England. Since 1967, the population of Sealand has been associates and family members of Paddy Roy Bates, a former radio broadcaster and former British Army Major. The population of the facility rarely exceeds ten, and its area is 5920 sq. ft.
Though Mr.Bates and his family claim rights to Sealand, it is disputed to be part of England mainland. Hence claiming Sealand a sovereignty has always been in disputed, it is not recognised by any country , yet it is sometimes cited^[1] in debates as an interesting case study of how various principles of international law can be applied to a territorial dispute (to read more about sealand follow this link Wiki).
On the other hand the other party involved in purchasing this piece of land is Pirate bay, which bills itself as the "the world's largest Bit torrent tracker" and operates from Sweeden. It is used for sharing music files, movies softwares and even Linux discs. But it has some dark history of being raided in May 2006. Though it is back, up and running (to read more about Pirate bay read the following link Wiki)
So when Sealand was offered for sale, Pirate bay lost no opportunity to purchase it. It is seeking donations from its users and in return one gets citizenship of the Sealand. So if you support such a cause or would like to seek "citizenship" of Sealand make a donation.
There forums available for the citizens to discuss about the laws governing the new pla

Telivision vs Radio

2007-01-07T16:26:00.000-06:00

I belong to the generation which saw the boom of television. During my teenage years, television channels were booming due to the open market policy adopted by the Indian government. Upto the late 80's there were just 2 channels ( in urban areas while in rural India just one channel) with programs only televised only at limited times of the day. But once the open air policy was adapted there were just increasing number of channels for entertainment. So I was never got a chance to explore the idea of "listening" to radio. Since television fulfilled my both audio and visual requirement.
However in recent months I have been listening to radio quite often and enjoy it way more than television. I mostly listen to NPR (national public radio), a public radio service in the US. I generally listen to current affairs, discussions, sports and music recording of great orchestra pieces. It is a wonderful experience. Television is more about glamor and very distractive at times due to weird camera movements while radio is more like having an intelligent conversation where you are going to be the beneficiary . Radio also gives you the freedom to work at the same time listen to some interesting program.
The survival of radio over the years against the television proves the strong audience for radio. Satellite radio and audio podcasting the latest addition, to this medium give radio a new dimension and open new audience to this medium.

"Goals " for New Year

2007-01-03T18:42:00.000-06:00

I have never believed in new year resolutions, since if we set out to resolute i.e firmly or determined to resolve something we tend to be unsuccessful. So it is better to define "goals" during the new year. The following are my goals for the coming year.
1. Exercise regularly
4-5 times going to the gym per week. 1st month focusing on getting regular, from 2nd month onwards getting a lean and fit body

2. Updating my blog atleast twice per week, if I am able to do more then better.

3. Eating more healthy food and reducing the number of time I eat outside to once per week.

4. Making investment for the future.

By putting up this list on my blog I will be more responsible towards meeting my goals.

Interesting post - Six webapps to help keep your New Year Resolutions

New York city

2006-12-31T17:26:00.000-06:00

Recently I made my first trip to New York city - the big apple, the financial capital of US and one of the greatest cities in the world. The city has a unique vibe, something which makes New York what New york is. It is made up of five boroughs (again something unique for New York City) important from administrative point of view. They are Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. Out of these Manhattan is the most important one, with a beautiful skyline, all the great shopping stores, the Wall street, the Times Square and the list goes on.
A lot of tourists come to New York to see the various attractions, but for me going on top of the Empire State Building was the biggest attraction. One of the main reasons why Empire State attracted me was the sheer joy of seeing from top of the tallest building in the Manhattan skyline (the World Trade Center towers were taller than it). One amazing fact about Empire State is that it was completed in a short span of 14 months. Two neighboring states are visible too, Connecticut and New Jersey. You have to go on top of the empire state to experience it.
Here are couple of tips while making your trip to New York.

Try to stay with a friend or family since hotels are expensive. But if you are booking a hotel room get one in New Jersey, and take the the subway to visit New York city.
Use the subway system , it is very efficient and a cheap transportation option. Renting or taking your own vehicle is not a good idea. The routes are easy to follow and learn with maps available at all subway stations.
The subway and the bus system come under MTA, hence purchasing a ticket makes it valid on both. Tickets can be purchased at any subway station or a gas station near bus stations.
Be prepared to walk a lot since that is the best was to explore Manhattan and other areas in New York.

One last word, explore the city and try doing not just the regular touristy things .

Munshi Premchand

2006-12-31T09:20:00.000-06:00

Anyone familiar with hindi literature knows about Munshi Premchand. He has been to Hindi literature what William Shakespeare is to English. Premchand's work uses words and phrases from everyday life which made his work popular among all ages and all sections of society.
A friend of mine reintroduced me to some audio e-books of Munshi Premchand (the link is available at the end of this post). The books are been beautifully read out by group of artists led by Harish Bhimani ( a legendary 'main samay hun' voice on Indian telivision). It was such a wonderful experience listening to such great works. The stories are simple and short (each enactment no longer than 30 mins).
So currently I am hunting for more hindi audio e-books of Premchand and other Hindi literature giants. I found this blogger link which has 130 of Premchands work online to be read (the link is at the end of this post). So if you know of any such links related with audio or books do let me know.

Link - audio
link - books

Long time

2006-12-31T09:14:00.000-06:00

It has been quite some time since i made my last post ( 76 days to be precise) , no particular reason for not updating the blog, was too lazy to do it. Anyways, new year is coming up so my new year resolution is to make regular blog posts, atleast once a week, more the better.

People in our lives - Part 1

2006-10-15T14:50:00.000-05:00

In life we come across different kind of people some good, some bad and some so so. I would like to divide these people into categories. First and foremost is family, one's close family. These are the people which brings us to the world, our parents, help us develop our character which sometimes lasts all our life. Our siblings, form part of the family group, they are someone with whom we grow up with, with whom we may fight a lot but stay very close to all our lives. A second group of people is relatives. They are someone we don't choose, some of them are very influencial in our lives but some are pain in the a**. Since even though we don't like them we have to keep up with them. Another group is our friends. these are the group of people we choose. This group of people are someone we grow close to since we choose them on common interests, someone we like to spend time with. A handful of them stay with us all our life while there are some with whom we spend a short period of time. And there are people whom we cannot categorise, people like our teachers, strangers we met, people with whom we have to deal with once in a while like ones car mechanic, the bank teller, some office colleagues etc.
Of all these categories, there is one category which is the most unpredicatable and too much to handle. This is the group of relatives. Relatives are a wierd group of people, it includes grand parents who shower you with love and gifts and just expect love in return. They are the coolest since they fulfil all your requirements which parents don't want to give. And then there is some distinct cousin or uncle or aunt who just want to drop by ones place and be the most annoying person to deal with. They might ask for financial help with or without assurances of returning the favor or just make ones life miserable by just being around.

Return of the Taliban

2006-10-07T15:30:00.000-05:00

Many of us has seen how the 9/11 attacks on the US changed the defination of "terrorists" for ever. In response to the terrorist attacks US "invaded " Afghanistan to kill Osama bin Laden and destroy the Taleban forces and restore democracy.
It has been 5 years since the invasion and US has been able to put in a democratic government in Afghanistan but the government is so weak that it cannot stand on its own. It needs tremendous international support.
What prompted me to write on this topic was a PBS Frontline program by Martin Smith telecasted on 3rd October 2006 and the video is available on the PBS website (click on the blog link). The episode or more so a documentary shows the history of Taleban and how after so many years neither US nor any other international forces have been unable to eliminate it completely. The problem lies with the Northern tribal parts of Pakistan which share the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan government has totally no control over these areas and during the 2001 Afghanistan invasion by the US many Taleban leaders and soldiers found a safe heaven in these tribal areas. Now Taleban have gathered forces and are within 100 miles of Kabul to gain control of the country. But the possibility of them gaining power in Kabul is very remote since the international forces will not let this happen as it will be a big defeat to all the world nations.
So in this whole history episode where was the problem for not being able to defeat Taleban. Should Pakistan have not allowed the Taleban leaders to enter its geographical borders ? Should they have co-operated more with the US on the war of terror ? As we all know, world politics is not very straight forward.
Firstly, uptil 2001 Pakistan helped create Taleban and bring them in power in Afghanistan. US was more than happy with Taleban because it helped destroy the Soviet in the late '80 thus leaving US as the unchallenged superpower in the world. But suddenly after Sept 11, 2001 things changed and Pakistan was asked to not only not support Taleban but also help the US in destroying it. This is easily said than done. Since the local people don't understand the details of world politics. For them America was the enemy trying to kill their friends "the Taleban". So they provided all the help and support to these Taleban leaders and soldiers.
So do we see an end to this war on terror or is it just going to go on.
It is a very open ended question and only time will tell.

Moving to a new city

2006-09-17T09:17:00.000-05:00

Moving to a new place or a new city is part of life. It is a choice we make for something better in life, may be a better job, better access to family or just to start a new phase in life. But a new environment brings in its own set of new unforseen problems.
Within the US, moving from one city to another is pretty easy, except for the climatic conditions and geographical location of the place. Most cities have similar outlines, having a downtown where all the businesses are located, the similar chain of fast food restaurants and huge malls where all the known brand of grocery, clothings, shoes and other home accessaries will be available. So every city strives to potray what it has different to offer, whether historical stories or political connections or friendly people or regional cuisine (truly speaking americans like to enjoy different type of cuisine and it is one of the first question they ask when they come to a new place).
I have recently made a temporary move to Austin, Texas related to my work. It is a wonderful city with so much natural beauty, a lot of live music to offer that is known as the "live music capital of the world". There is some big concert happening everyday and festivals every weekends. It has a lot of historical and political importance. Even though it is smaller than Dallas or Houston it is still the capital of texas. It provides a great amount of outdoor activities and the city seems to be obsessed with cycling. One can see people cycling any time of the day even on highways. Most of the credit goes to Lance Armstrong, the seven times tour de France winner who is a localite.
On the flip side, the traffic is bad, the public transportation is not of much help and most importantly without a group of friends it is not much to enjoy the city by oneself.

Snakes on a Plane

2006-09-13T20:05:00.000-05:00

well the title speaks it all about this movie , but one of the stand up commedian made a joke couple of days back just before the release of this movie. The movie was talk of the town especially on the net and tons of blogs dedicated to it even before it was released so the comedian was on a chat show and said " Bob, i don't know what all these folks are talking so much about this movie, what exactly is it about ."
Whatever the comedian said, the movie stands good, though it scares you at some points since we are all scared of snakes. At many places the snakes biting a person seems hilarious. If you have seen the movie you will know what I am talking about, e.g the snake bites a man in his pe*** when goes to the loo. Samuel Jackson is an A rated actor and does a great job in the movie. But a lot of times the movie just goes over the top.
But definately it is a good to watch the movie once and especially in the theater. So go ahead and watch it if you have not seen it yet.