Six months and 1 week old…busy trying to stand up.
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| From Oct 2009 |
P.S: I wanted to crop off my ugly slippers seen at the corner but ah…forget it, no one is going to notice.
compared to Indians. Shanghai composite is down 5% today.
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| From Drop Box |
Noticed this when watching a Sholay (1975) song today:
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| From Bengaluru |
It’s been a couple of weeks since ISRO’s Bhuvan was announced. While it seems to have crappy accessibility and usability (I didn’t install it because of the accessibility issue) – it got a lot of PR in the India press. As usual, none of them include a URL! This also meant that none of the search engines can find it and some guy with an Ad sense account is profiting from the queries.
So search engines take note: Bhuvan by ISRO
You’re probably not alone if you got the marketing literature about the “bi-weekly payment plan” and how its going to save you a boat load of money. Since I didn’t want to deal with a third party – I tried to do this through my bank’s bill pay service.
For some strange reason, the mortgage vendors want to block this and make you go through their advertised plan. Their standard party line is: we don’t apply partial payments. You have to go through the hassle of calling customer service and opening tickets to combine the two half payments into one.
Sigh. I’ll be going back to my regular monthly payment plan. This was Citi Mortgage.
Found this at big bazaar and a couple of other places: two bars of oil of olay for Rs 99 ($2). That sounds like roughly the same price as walmart/target.
I still miss quilted northern 2-ply toilet roll.
I’ve been trying to understand some of the comment spam that occasionally shows up on my blog. The most recent one is a fine example.
Sometimes its very clear that they’re upset about the income gap between the haves (typically NRIs and software engineers) and have-nots. At other times, it sounds like a teenager with low scores in english having a bad day.
There is also this perception that I’m somehow forcing my opinions on them and forcing them to read my blog. But the fact that they take the pains to go through the capcha and write something that takes more than 10 seconds indicates that the underlying forces are strong.
Got any insights about what’s going on here?
I visited this hospital last week accompanying a family member. This is one of the upscale hospitals in the area in a property adjoining Bellary Road (a major highway). Thought I’d write down some of the differences observed for the benefit of fellow NRIs who may be curious.
The hospital premises are well kept and clean. The crowd was cosmopolitan – one could even say multi-national. I noticed a Jewish looking and an Asian family, apart from many Hindi speaking folks chatting busily on their bluetooth headsets while enjoying the big-screen TV (Have you seen one in the US?). I should’ve taken the hint that everything takes so long here that you need some entertainment while you wait.
Appointments don’t seem to be electronic (Someone manually wrote it on a sheet of paper). If the doctor doesn’t show up on time, you don’t get to see another doctor. People simply wait unless its an emergency. Once the doctor shows up, the nurse determines who goes in next. Folks already know their number in the line and dash into the room as soon as the last patient gets out. The poor doctor rarely gets a breather.
Ultrasound? X-ray? You typically wait 30 mins and then some before the data is available in the system to browse. If you want a report – you need to come back the next day, pick it up and see the doctor again.
Once the doctors consultation is done, he punches his fees in the system and you pay (typically cash) on the way out. Apart from excessive waits and disorderly entry/exit from doctors room, it seems to be generally a step forward.l
I was watching ಈ (kannada) TV today and one of the headlines was about an effort by religious leaders to get the govt to ban cow slaughter. The video footage showed mainly Hindu and Jain leaders and someone wearing a Muslim skull cap for completeness.
I returned from a recent trip to Kerala and was surprised by how beef is readily served in many restaurants. Given the vast difference in culture between the two states which are geographically so close to each other, I researched this topic a bit.
Clearly, this has been a political issue that typically rallies the Hindus together – almost to the extent of being a defining element. I learnt that banning cow slaughter is already in the indian constution. I also learnt about a book by D.N.Jha (he seems to be a communist) – claiming that banning cow slaughter is a recent phenomenon whose primary motivation is to rally Hindus against Muslims and British.
Also interesting are articles on this topic by Praful Bidwai (seems to be a left leaning anti-BJP journalist).
Kerala agriculture minister K R Gowri, herself a
Hindu, has termed the proposed bill “detrimental to
the interests of Kerala”. In Kerala, beef accounts for
an estimated 40 percent of all meat consumed. Some 80
percent of Kerala’s people regularly eat beef. They
include 72 Hindu communities, besides Muslim,
Christian and indigenous people.
Although it sounds illogical that cows should have more rights than sheep, what seems to be very clear is that this issue has become a political one – something that has the potential to rally Hindus together, assert their identity (sort of like eating rice/noodles for the Chinese) and to some extent get Muslims and other minorities in the country to respect majority sentiment – something most Muslim countries are very successful at.
