Really crowded Bhopal railway station

Few days after Diwali, I was on Bhopal railway station. It was really crowded. See for yourself.

Hayden explains himself

So hayden first says something and then explains itself.

One of the things I love the most about India, is that you walk around the back of the hotel, and there's a man who's selling peanuts on the street for one cent a month, and he holds his head so high, and is so proud, as if he was making $2 million a month

So what he meant to say when he made his famous remark

Often we find ourselves waiting with hands on hips for someone to face up or someone on the sight board to move away or some of those little frustrations happening with third world countries

He was only talking about frustration that he gets out of eating peanuts that he buys from a proud peanut seller who makes one cent a month.
What is wrong with this guy, one cent a month, that is like 50 paise. Who will sell peanuts for a months if he was making 50 paise a month. I don't really get these people.

Media losing grip again

Here is an interesting news article. Everybody agrees that it is next to impossible to guess whether a movie will be successful or not. Here the media just proclaims that the movie will be a bigger success then another successful movie.

Aamir Khan's â??Ghajiniâ?? is expected to set a record of sorts. While the promotion of the film kick-started during Diwali, the Indian distributors have decided to go that extra mile and ensure that the biggies rakes in big moolah when it opens during the Christmas week.

They claim that this is because of the fact that the movie is being released with a very large number of prints. If that were to be true, why doesn't everybody just release a very large number of prints.

While â??Singh Is Kingâ?? was released with 1,050 prints [physical and digital] in India,â??Ghajiniâ?? will have close to 1,200 prints in circulation in India alone.

Another technology MNC

Every time I visit a technology company, I have high hopes from them in the way they would be doing things smartly and probably setting an example on how to use technology. Here is another example of how wrong I am about that assumption.

Now this really crappy mousetrap is lying in the company's cafeteria for some weeks and I have not seen any mouse pay a visit to that. It seems mice are smarter then the company staff.

No accountability in this country

Here is a sad news.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday expressed grief and shock at the killing of a Bihari examinee, who died in the violence unleashed allegedly by MNS activists on North Indian candidates, and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 1.5 lakh for his family.

Now if I am correct a person being beaten to death should be counted as a murder and if it is a murder somebody should go to jail for it. It is the government's job to find out who really did it.
But everybody is just talking.

Iceland is all but bankrupt

So the financial crisis 2008 has finally taken its toll on iceland. The country seems to have gone bankrupt.

"Iceland is bankrupt," said Arsaell Valfells, a professor at the University of Iceland. "The Icelandic krona is history. The IMF has to come and rescue us."

The world is getting scarier day by day.

Types of drivers

I have been driving four wheelers for around 10 years and I have observed multiple type of behaviours from other drivers on traffic signals. Here I am listing down multiple types of drivers that I have seen.

• The most common variety of drivers that I have seen is the group of people who never stop at a traffic signal. The only way these people stop on signal if the car infront of them stops otherwise they will never been seen first at a red light.


• The second variety is which will always stop at a signal (irrespective of it being red or green). They stop for a random amount of pre-defined time and drive on. They don't care what is the colour of light. They think they have done their duty if they stopped for some time.


• The third variety of the people who will never stop on their own and they will even honk if they are stuck behind somebody who "unfortunately" follows traffic rules.


• An then their are auto drivers..

Terrorism, a football for intellectuals

We all agree that terrorism is bad and fighting it is extremely difficult. How does one save himself from somebody who is willing to die to kill you. Police are not really very credible in India but still they are the only defense that we have and to a large extent we will have to trust them.

SO here I read this article. Now the article concludes following.

A fact finding team which visited Jamia Nagar where the Delhi [Images] police killed two alleged terrorists linked to the Delhi serial blasts has stated that there is clear evidence to show that the bullets fired on Sajid's head were from point blank range. The photographs after autopsy of Sajid, 17, show that there were seven gun shots to his head and it was from point blank range.

Here is the composition of the team.

The fact finding team comprised teachers, students, civil rights activists and intellectuals. The team comprised 14 persons which included, Professor Siddique Hassan, deputy amir, Jamat-e-Islami Hind, SAR Geelani, reader, Zakir Hussain College, Delhi University, Dr Karen Gabriel, reader, St. Stephens, Banojyotsna Lahiri (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Vanessa Chisti (JNU) and Sumati Panikkar (independent researcher) among others.

Please note that none of these guys are criminologists or experts in forensics. Shouldn't these guys mind their own business. What is the purpose of doing such acts. If they don't trust what is happening, they can approach courts and courts would order proper forensic analysis of what has happened.

If one sees the list of people in the so called committee of intellectuals, one of them is SAR Geelani, who was acquitted in parliament attack case. But the supreme court had this to say about him.

Geelani's conduct at the time when Parliament was being attacked on December 13, 2001 was  'disturbing' to note and gave rise to 'serious suspicion' about him, the bench said. It also took note of the 'untruthful pleas raised by Geelani about his contacts with Shaukat and Afzal.'

Though it raised a finger of suspicion at the lecturer, the court was quick to add that suspicion alone, howsoever grave it might be, could not be the ground for the conviction of anyone.

I think these JNU types should just shut up. They are not aiding in fighting terrorism. They don't speakup when an act of terror happens. What is their point of speaking now. May be if Delhi police is really on the right side of law, they should sue these people for character assasination.

Another modest sportsperson

Somehow modesty seems to be in such short supply now-a-days. See this from Hamilton.

"I have had a talent since I was very young and it was just a case of taking that talent and grabbing it with both hands and nurturing it and trying to do the very best job I can."

Anyway, I don't really like him. He may be a good racer but not a very good "hero".

Spoon counters strike again

Some time back I blogged about spoon counters.. They seem to be hard at work. Not only they have not stopped counting, they have still not learnt how to count it right.

Stupid mainstream media (again)

See this news item here which showed up in Indian Express just after Large Hadron Collider. Just to get a juicy headline, the news paper claims "prove rumours wrong". Now, I don't believe that the LHC experiment is going to end the world but the time has not come to say that rumours have been proven wrong. Today the beam was only shot in clockwise direction, then it would have to be fired anti-clockwise and only after that beams will be fired in both the directions for collision.
Only when collision happens, we can conclude that rumours have been proven wrong. Why don't the news papers just stick to reporting, rather than making up news. 

We are like that only

Some people never learn. Here is an interesting news story that I saw in today's news paper.

The CCTV footage showed how Bhatia manoeuvred to steal the wallet, trying to make sure that no one around noticed him while carrying out the act, official said."First he waited for Mehta to proceed ahead. Then he looked around pretending to be browsing for a particular item in the shop. After a few minutes, he pulled out his own wallet and kept it above Mehta's, only to pull them both into his bag immediately," said a police official. "I had given up all hopes of getting the purse. The incident proves that thieves do roam about in suit and tie," Mehta said.

Yes, thieves do roam about in suit and tie.

NSG Waiver for India

Finally the NSG approved the waiver for India for civilian nuclear cooperation and the reactions have been usual. Now I can go an try to analyse if it was good for India or not but I thought let's look at the reactions and probably that would give the indication on whether it was good or bad for India.
Worldwide most of the countries have welcomed the deal. There have been some countries like Austria and some other countries that have been less enthusiastic about the deal but that probably has more to do with ideology of not supplying the fuel to not NPT countries.
Most notable country that at the last moment was against the deal was China. I would not be surprised at that reaction of China. They have lot to lose with India being able to buy fuel from market. I read somewhere that the price of nuclear fuel has gone up few fold since the year 2000, India joining that club of buyers would put further pressure in that market. Also I always believed that China just doesn't like India.
Who else is against the deal, not surprisingly BJP and Communists. Now if you look at the groups that area gainst the deal for non idelogical reasons, it is BJP, Communists and China and ofcourse pakistan. I don't really know what is the common interest there.

Snake on an Air India plane

Here is an interesting story. An airbus from Air India had an unlikely passenger on board. A snake was having fun in plane below one of the seats. The best part is the interesting statement from Air India spokesman.

"There was commotion which scared the snake and it went further inside," an airport official quoted.

Reports that the snake was a venomous cobra were denied by an Air India spokesman.

"The aircraft was parked at Delhi airport for maintenance purposes. There was a snake but not a cobra," he told.

"We have no details of what kind of a snake it was, or where it is now. We have taken up this matter with Delhi airport authorities."

The interesting part is that Air India denies that the snake was a cobra but then claims that they have no idea which snake was it. Really funny if you are reading about it but must be bizarre for passengers.

Russian PM Putin saves TV crew from Siberian tiger

Here is an interesting story, Vladimir Putin actually tranquilized a tiger who charged at a TV crew.

Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran towards a nearby camera crew, the country's main television station said. Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun.

Interesting notices

Recently on my visit to one top technology MNC in Bangalore, I came across following notice board in cafeteria.


I find two things funny with this notice.

1. This is a technology MNC and is counting spoons. I am sure the cost of the spoon is not really much and if they think it is a big issues, just tell the employees to get their own spoons.
2. If you really decide to count the spoons, atleast count them right.

I suppose nobody cares.

Excuses, excuses

So, our cricket captain has come up with another gem. No I am not talking about the good innings that he played in the last match against Sri Lanka. I am talking about his new excuse on why we are dropping catches. See here. He claims it is because of the crowd's wardrobe.

Since Sri Lanka had a colourful crowd it becomes difficult to spot the ball in the night specially after it (ball) becomes a bit dirty,

Other teams, are you listening. Just request your fans to wear colorful clothes to defeat India. Indian fans, please wear all black attire for day-night matches and all white attire for day matches.

iPhone magic fails in India

Finally the iPhone was launched in India and it seems it pretty much failed to impress users.

The stage was set for a grand launch, complete with confetti and cheerleaders, but at the stroke of midnight, there were just 10 people who actually bought the high-end device.

At a Vodafone store in Connaught Place, Central Delhi, journalists outnumbered customers by a huge margin. Only about 15 customers turned up to buy the phone. The Airtel retail store nearby wore a deserted look on Friday afternoon, with not a single customer buying the iPhone.

May be things will look as time passes by but I would really be surprised if it is really a block buster. It is priced same as an N96 and is no comparison to the features that it offers.

Tata Teleservices behaving like ICICI Bank

It seems like the disease is spreading. First it was ICICI bank and now Tata Teleservices who have started threatening their customers.

Later, the company announced a change of plan which did not suit Nandwani, so he asked for the connection to be cancelled. Instead, he received a bill amounting to Rs 2,000 and his outgoing calls were suddenly barred. When he complained against this, he started receiving threatening calls from people claiming to be advocates and recovery agents of the company. He also filed police complaints. The companyâ??s plea that on surrender of the handset the customer was required to pay Rs 2,000, did not find favour with the commission.

One more company black listed. But I am really running out of decent service providers right from banking to telephony.

Akhil Kumar loses quarter finals in olympics

I finally watched the Olympic boxing 54 Kg match between Indian Akhil Kumar and Moldovan Gojan Veaceslav. I have to say that I don't understand boxing much but it seemed like that Moldovan just went with a strategy of all out defense with precision attack. I think almost everytime Gojan went for attack, he scored the point while Akhil was relentless in his attack but just did not find the righ spot where he gets the point. The only option that he had was to go for a knock out but he could not do that.
I always believed that boxing is a game of raw power, but I think I was wrong. It was as much about strategy and tactics as much it is about power and Akhil lost the game in strategy part.
If only bouts were decided on the basis of "energy" in the court, Akhil must have won. Looking forward to other two guys..Technorati Tags: Olympic, India, Sports