Story of a Techie in US

Many insights thrown in the article ran by NYT. 

Sanjay's Story

Picture of the day: Arctic Circle

This is taken from the Arctic Circle in Norway during a charity challenge. These were some of the first clouds we saw in days.
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Madonna and her adoption programme

Madonna, Angelina Jolie adopting poor children sounds too generous of them. I am sure it adds up to their image as well. Recently, Jolie adopting an Indian Child was in news..Media was highlighting this news as if she is going to adopt whole India...Come on, not everyone is going to be that lucky :)

On a serious note, an article in New York Times, look at other aspects of celebrities adopting poor kids and things associated with it.

Here is the link which discusses about the ethical questions related to it. 

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Picture of the day

A supporter of Mayawati Kumari, of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, smoked a cigarette during a political rally in Palwal, India. The BSP was founded in 1984 to represent the Dalits, also regarded as untouchables in a caste system that has been formally abolished under the Indian Constitution. Discrimination and prejudice against Dalits still linger across South Asia.

Courtesy: New York Times

North Korea: Missile Launch

So much hue and cry over nothing...

Read this...Even if they were successful, it will take a very long time to actually built any capacity to launch nuclear weapon.

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Bihar to Kerala

One of my closest school friend is getting married to a girl from Kerala..really a quantum leap at least in terms of geographical distance. Things are changing at the ground level at least acceptance is not really a problem now considering the fact we are from remote place in Bihar too...Finally we are coming out of boundaries of our parochial thinking...Hopefully it will change the mindset of lot of people...

I am excited...Baraat Bihar se Kerala... :). First marriage among my friends and with a bang...it can't get better than this...

How to spy on your spouse

Pune Mirror runs an article today about how to keep a watch on your spouse and where to find detective services. Shows some interesting observations.

More than that, they also suggest if you are actually cheating your spouse how not to get caught...

They are:-

1. Keep your sex-life as normal as possible. Don't let it show in the bed. And yes, try keeping your extra-marital sex life as clean as possible. No love bites please!
   
2. Don't begin to shower love all of a sudden. Sudden wave of flowers and gifts might make your partner smell a rat!
3. Keep your phone clean. Delete all your messages, inbox, sent items, outbox everything possible and don't store that person's number in your phone book!
4. If your partner talks against the person in question, don't get defensive. Join in the bitching, if it isn't stretching things too far for you! Just don't seem to care about that person!
5. Pay in cash. Do not use credit cards to pay your hotel bills or the presents you have bought for your girlfriend/boyfriend. 
6. Have alibis. Do your homework before cooking up a story so that if your partner was to cross-check the timing, place and people match and all pieces of your fairy story fall into place. 

Here is the link to the article to all the suspicious ones :)

Pune Mirror Article

DevD

Watched DevD last night. To say the least, I was slightly depressed. But I totally empathize with character of Dev. His behaviour, his life does speak of all the frustration which is coming out of his own guilt.

...Love can make you ridiculous...WTF people fall in love anyway.

Amar Chitra Katha

On reading front, just finished 10 comics of Amar Chitra Katha. Got them through HSBC reward points :). They are amazing. Reading the comics after a long time remined me of good old days of days with no work but to read comics..and our great Heros of Raj Comics--Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Bhokal, Angara, Tausi, Fighter Todes and all. Chacha Chowdhary, Pinky they were great too.

Read about Chandragupta Maurya, whom Amar Chitra Katha shows as Warriors opposite to what I had seen in Chanakya. Have to figure out that. Didn't know about Chaitanya Mahapraphu and Maharshi Ramana. Had been totally oblivious of what happened to Vaishnav an Shav. Want to know more about them.

But comics are great. :)

Road horrors and religion

For a long time, I was living in a very populated part of Pune where 20km/hour may be average speed of automobiles. Distance to office was less just 5.5 km. Recently shifted to some 15km from office...to a place called Wakad. And average speed in this part is 60km/hour. On some stretches there is no partition on the roads. And people drive crazily. Cabwallah change their lane and I find with my poor bike going for a head-on collision.

Just day before yesterday, I was driving at some 60km/hr on empty road, a truck came from opposite direction driving almost on my lane. I couldn't figure it out for a long time, as it's right side headlight was not working.

Now, I have started believing in Gods even more. Everyday, at least once I feel anything can happen. India needs major transformation in Road safety standards, really.

Kids and Chocolates

I go to teach kids, most of whom are orphans, every Saturday. Joined through Teach India compaign of TOI. Kids are like any other kids, naughtly, always up for any game and always sleepy for anything remotely related to studies.

Couldn't go there for some time so thought of being nice to them and bought chocolates for them. And then, it worked. Everyone was ready to do anything for them. Was able to teach them something. But, from what I have observed a student of class 5 can't do sums properly. It's really horrible. Either they don't teach at PMC schools or these kids require better attention.

Really cute ones :)

Movies: Gulaal

Went to theatre after a long time to watch Gulaal. Though, I missed the first 15 minutes, movie was good. Different treatment but that's what I was looking from Anurag Kashyap. Missed DevD by a day :(. So, was looking forward for this. KK as usual gave a stellar performance. Others were good too.

Movie contains some abusive language but not those English ones but desi ones..which is used. I guess Though still not like Pulp fiction...End of movie is really impressive. For some moments you hate some of the characters but then you realize that they are actually right...they just looked at the bigger picture.

Movie takes a very strong dig at Rajputana culture or rather contemporary way of thinking. It seemed like a fashion to have a gharwali and a baharwali and nazayaz aulaad...living in a world of illusions and glorifying past for futile reasons...One of my friend didn't like the movie at all. He is a Rajpoot...obvious then :)

MS Access

Just finished a project on MS Access. It's amazing..totally great for non-technology greeks..Very easy to use. Generate really neat reports. Impressed by it. Really good for individual purpose. Though it can't handle huge amount of data but then there are already MySQL and MS SQL.

Currently working on ETL (Extract, Transform, Load). Seems interesting.

Long break...

It has been some 7 months since I scribbled anything on my blog. And it shows in my weekly visitor summary report. I can’t even say I had been terribly busy, may be somewhat but only lately.

Good thing is life has been anything but dull. It has been full of excitement, experience and learning on the way. Last time, I wrote a poem which was out of utter despair and pain. Lately, I hadn’t thought of anything such, so it has been good I guess.

There is so much to write about. I am wondering where to start from. Last December, I fought with my boss to go home for two weeks. One of best things, I did was boat ride on the Ganges. It was amazing. More than river, it was because of people around me. People were loading their motorbikes on the boat, which was fine. Some of them loaded their bhains on the boat. And she started with her gobar as soon she reached on the boat. People started telling stories. Some kind of Swades type feeling where Shahrukh Khan goes on the boat. Literally, waise hi lag raha tha. The Ganges looked so mesmerizing that for the first time I felt I should have one camera enabled phone, which I have now J. Some people were spitting in the river which was actually very sad. May be Amir Khan should add this as part of Preserve India Compaign.

I have decided to post regularly. Let’s see how it goes.