One Lakh Hits

Err, hard to believe and totally insignificant too, but now I can boast of being a Lakhpathi. 1,00,000 hits and counting. (Ok, by now, the ‘and counting’ looks silly. You don’t sit and count numbers after that.) So, I decided I’d install StatCounter, just to see how the hits and the visits differ in the future. It’s up and running.

I thought of a few minor modifications to the blog, but I don’t think that would be all that necessary. I don’t know if I can blog all that actively in another 15 days or so anyway. Anyway, regardless, keep reading and keep the score board ticking.

I would not like to thank anyone for being a big support and all that. Jobless people, go do something useful for a change.

Jaishree’s Post on Tamil Movies

Once in a while, I stumble upon really well written posts (In my opinion at least) that somehow appeal to me. I remember linking Hari’s post here. This time over it’s Jaishree . I wish I could write as well as these people, but I can’t. So, I leave you with a link to her post. It’s worth a read.

If You’re a Kid in a Tamil Movie

Indian Traffic Boards

This morning, I had just finished watching the second movie back to back, when Abhishek (my Quizmate for the last year and a half, before which I had teammates of the likes of Shiva, Madhu and Hari), messages me taunting me. The message read “….I know you will be shocked seeing this message, especially at this time. I just wanted to say Good Morning…..” Now, I couldn’t resist messaging him back wishing him the same. We got messaging and I asked him to come out for a walk, which he declined. I went anyway, and got a few photographs. I normally go walking late evenings and that makes it very hard to get photographs, The lighting makes it almost impossible even if your camera boasts of a Xenon flash and there is always the risk of people thinking you are being voyeuristic.

It’s almost as if these boards are meant for disoriented pedestrians . It’s a warning. Look out. There is a tree ahead. If you are carrying a torch, the reflectors will come in handy.

Thank God, I was walking. If you were on a vehicle, you are actually expected to throw your cell phone out. Don’t you know the new rule ? It was passed in the parliament a few days back. It is to target cell phone users to use public transport facilities. The MTC drivers did protest though.

This is awesome. The speed limit is 40. You know, if ever you get caught, you don’t have to pay the cops money. You can prove it to them that you were traveling only at 40. You need to do a few conversions, and confuse them of course. But then if the cops are relentless saying “That and all I don’t know. 40 means 40, now give fifty and go”, then you still have a weapon. Pay him only twenty five bucks. (If you are an engineer.) Do you know how they say they will reduce half the marks for answers where you forget to mention the units ?

If the previous one was awesome, this one is even better. 40 kmps. Whoa!! Do they even know how much that is ? I’ll tell you what, all of you drive at whatever speeds you want. Feel confident. No matter how hard you try, I assure you, you will be within that speed limit prescribed there.

I feel a bit dejected though. They didn’t include aeroplanes and space shuttles on the picture. Maybe even Light.

(There is also this pic which I will post later where the unit for speed is equally creative. Credit goes to Marc for spotting that one. These three photos are almost like triumvirates of Indian Traffic Boards.)

Speed break. Yes. And have you observed how these boards always have two curves, whereas in reality there is always either one of them or three of them. It’s so that the driver brakes anyway. Even if he doesn’t read the board. Trust me, it works.

What message are they trying to convey ? I fail to understand.

Be aware. Be totally aware. What they are saying is if you (men) ever get married (or already are), and your wife will/is carry/ing your baby, then you can accuse her of being a thief. “You thief!! I read that board in Besant Nagar.I know what your intentions are. I am aware of you” Don’t be surprised if your wife then plans to divorce you.

Those house owners need to take it easy in and out of the garage. What are they thinking ? (Actually while photographing this, this girl from inside the house was looking at me suspiciously as if I was up to something. My intentions were honorable of course. Which is why I had to stand there an extra few seconds and make sure only the board was in the photo.)

This one reads “No Sound Horn” “Ok, driver, quick, switch to ultrasound. That should drive the bats away. Is that bat mobile in the front ? Use it again. That bugger never moves”

And that concludes this compilation of Indian Traffic Boards. There’s more to come. I am jobless and I carry a camera phone.

English Massacred by Indian Government

SAY NO TO ENGLISH. PROTECT INDIAN CULTURE

Well, the other day I remember discussing with Marc somewhere as to how the experience of obtaining a Driving Licence can be a whole lot worse than obtaining a Passport. Right now I am so confused and dizzy (thanks to the application), that I ask of the readers to “bare” with me if there are any errors at all in the post.

Here is (ample ample) proof. English language murdered and massacred and on an Official Government of India form. Talk about revenge.

• Signature of Thumb Impression

Ever thought about that ? You thumb impression can have a signature now. Completely digital too. Haven’t you heard of digital signatures ?

• Yes I Enclose. And… ?
  

#17 on the form says “I enclose three copies of my recent photograph (passport size photograph)” followed by a line where you are supposed to write something. What ? Yes, I do. ? Or do they expect us to write stuff like “This photograph was taken when I was in my 2nd year B.E. I used to play sports back then. That should explain the tan.”

• Mot less than

Em En O Pee. How does it matter ? It’s all the same anyway. Ever seen how MIT spells Massachusetts anyway ? With a V. And here we are criticizing our poor Govt. officials.

• Vehical fitred

Vehical is like logical. We don’t say Logicel now do we ? And it’s supposed to be fitted with some red thing of some sort. A Half lime smeared in blood perhaps ?

• Steering Whell

Whell, what can I say ?

• Au ourside, reaeily, ordinery, disbility

Au ourside ? Wow, we have the Gold on our side now. How boring an outside would be ? Who wants an outside when you have gold on your side ?

But then how can you be suffering from muscular power ? Isn’t that like awesome ? Having muscular power ? It’s like saying Superman suffers from superpowers. Indeed he does.

Once you are involved with a distillery, its quite ordinary to spell ordinary as ordinery. Big deal.

Disbility is like Invisibility. Another superpower.

• Here declare, there in are true

(shall upload soon)

• Beleif

(shall upload soon)

• Amplity

Amplity. Ok, I am clueless on this one. (Except it probably should have been amplify.)

• Maybe required to given further

Yeah. That’s right. Maybe required to given further details. Not give. Given.

• Spectacle, less of member

That these guys can even read and write English is a spectacle.

Less of a member ? This guy sure lost his member. Dismembered.

• Ordinery

Just an ordinery spelling mistake. Nothing to it really.

• Adriver

Adriver ? Is it like screwdriver or something ?

• An details

Now this could be in detail or and details. It’s your guess.

• Affax

Affax!! Meaning you can also do it over fax. Normally it has to be affixed in person.

• A manner of his signature….???

I leave this for people to comment.

P.S: Some of the images didn’t come out so well. But you can’t really complain. I used a camera, not a scanner. Now,there were (or surely must have been) more of this funny stuff on the form, but then it was quite tiring to get even these many.I hope it was enough to keep you entertained and keep the British away and any idea they might have of invading India again. Hurray to Indian Culture.

Microsoft Reader

Before people get started on Microsoft bashing and all that, (which you can do later. I won’t object) I would like to declare that I am not endorsing this product or anything. Just writing about it.

I came across a e-book that was in .lit format. I didn’t know of a .lit format or of the Microsoft Reader till then. I said to myself, that I might as well check out how good this ebook is considering it is only 200 odd KB. (Well, compare that with e-books in pdf format which occupy a few MB normally.)

To my surprise, the .lit format is pretty good. It is easy on the eyes and the page layout looks exactly like the book. What’s more if you had a mobile phone running Windows Mobile, you could read these books on your phone. Nice isn’t it ?

You should check it out for yourself.

Download this book and rename the file extension to .lit

Julius-Caesar

You may obtain the Microsoft reader from here,

Download

You can read about it, here.

My First Two Times

First Time:

While I may be a little late on the scene what with me being 21 and all, there’s always a first time. However, the first time is scary isn’t it ? You have never done it before. You are always scared you are going to screw up, that you will cause irreparable damage. So, then it’s not surprising that I was a little apprehensive. I had to get into gear slowly and make sure I picked up pace only gradually. After a while, I decided it was enough for one night. I had learned some valuable lessons that just cannot be taught. They have to be learnt and mastered. But I was jumping with joy like a kid by the end of it.

Second Time:

After having done it once, I was increasingly confident and was looking forward to proving that I was getting better at it. This time over, I had little trouble. All the mistakes I had made during my first time, I seemed to have learnt from. The entire ride was smoother. I picked up pace, made a few surprise moves. I even tried reverse. By, now I was enjoying it. I am still scared of doing it in crowded places though. That takes some practice.

What am I talking about ? Well, I did get more obvious towards the end, didn’t I. Car driving man!! Read the post again. It so happens that coincidentally, I went driving at night. I need to get a driving license soon. I am still not very confident of driving on congested roads. I just hope I get my LLR soon so that I can go driving on crowded roads.

BIGFlix Advertisement

This advertisement is really funny. First we have this guy making fun of Ranbir Kapoor in Saawariya (which is a movie one should never watch in his/her lifetime. Hence it deserves all the ridicule one can manage to make of it) The matrix impersonation with a stuffed toy is lame. However the end Dard-E-Disco is again funny. This time over, they poke fun at Shah Rukh Khan and his movie Om Shanti Om. Worth a watch.

BIGFlix is owned by Anil Ambani. So yet another Reliance product. Big Bucks or Big flicks ? Who cares, we have p2p.

Infosys Checklist

I thought I’d make a list of things to carry to Mysore. It’s always better to make check lists and make sure you are carrying everything before leaving. The check list I have made tries to be complete but I might have missed out on some details or certain other mundane things. If I have missed out on anything important, then do let me know. You always have the comments section.

Not everything is a necessity. If you want to find out what you are supposed to take, then you should refer to the offer letter. The content between [ and ] are my comments. The content between ( and ) are official.

Some of it might seem very less important and maybe even funny. In any case, even if you miss out on these things, you can always buy it once you go there.

Infosys-checklist

More Indians ?

No no need to be alarmed about the Indian population. (Well, not from the title of the post at least.) This is about Natives or Native Americans. Red Indians perhaps ?

I was flipping through TV channels a couple of days back and I saw photos of tribals and the news went on to announce how a new tribe had been found somewhere in the Amazon. (not the website, silly ) It was intriguing because this is the kind of stuff you read only in fiction.

Anyway, I got hold of a couple of snaps

The men are the figures in red dye and the black figure is supposed to be a woman. Whether these people are also cannibalistic is unknown.

There are a great many implications of finding a tribe. Sooner than later someone is going to go after these people and kill them by offering them Coke or something. They will try and westernize these tribals and teach them English alphabets. I say leave them alone.

Read more:

Uncontacted Indian Tribe Found in Brazil’s Amazon

New tribe of indigenous Indians discovered in Brazilian Amazon

The Amazonian tribe that hid from the rest of the world – until now

Expeditions and Trekking

Adventure Trips:

If you are the adventurous type that can never get enough sitting indoors and doing your daily chores, then you must make efforts to try and get closer to nature. While traveling and sight seeing are equally good alternatives, nothing beats trekking and mountaineering. Last month me and some of my friends had gone on a trip to a coastal area nearby and it was a wonderful and refreshing experience. In spite of some of the difficulties involved in travel, the trip was worth the trouble and we felt rejuvenated.

Difficulties in planning:

So we planned another trip this month. When we were making travel plans, we found out that it was extremely difficult to find information about many things such as:

• Mode of travel.
• Accommodation.
• Food arrangements.
• Other information such as expected weather, known local risks…etc

Unless you have already been to the place in question or happen to know someone, it is very difficult to find the information you want. Even then, things might have changed from the last time you or the other person went there.

Answers:

Generally, me and my friends take the following approach when we plan out trips and so far, it has always been successful.

1. First we make plans as to where we want to go and what we plan to do there
2. That is followed by preliminary information collection such as how far this place is, what are the modes of transport available, how long it will take to go and come back…etc
3. This is followed by secondary information collection such as availability of accommodation nearby, cost of accommodation, etc. Also we find out the places of interest in and around the place by scouting other people’s blogs and other websites which are dedicated to this.
4. Now that we have a fair idea as to what we want to do and how we are going to do it, we make a budget allowing for all expenses and also some emergency fund.
5. In case the travel involves going abroad, then we need to make sure that we have the necessary documents such as Passports and Visas in hand and hence we need to apply for them before hand.
6. This is followed by making reservations for travel tickets and also hotels. When it comes to hotels and comparing hotel prices, it can be a challenge. Which is why, using a tool like Hotels Combined makes the whole process much easier. You can find hotels in major Indian cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Goa, Jaipur and Mumbai. It’s basically a comparison website which searches for hotel reservations all over the world. They also offer the lowest prices. Transactions with them are also safe.
7. Then we make the trip and make minor changes to plans we had already made taking into account the local conditions. This is done on the fly and your plan needs to be flexible to make room for changes.

Although, you might not always visit a major city, facilities are mostly not available in smaller places. This necessitates that you camp at a city in some hotel and then finish the travel in the nearby areas before moving to the next city.

Bon voyage.