My previous figure here

You're not a hoopy frood

You thought you were really with it and in with your younger colleagues but they just laugh at you because you can't hear beyond this! The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 14.1kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

The difference between Golf and Entrepreneurship is that as an entrepreneur, you are the golfer who must also run as his own caddie!

Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak.


Second in Line ...

A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk, I have a work station....
what more can I say........

I should not have copied a complete blog post from another blog and pasted it here ... but I simply couldn't resist ...

Atanu - please forgive my plagiarising

Woman 1: "What is that little trash can on the screen?"

Woman 2: "My son says that is called the 'recycle bin'. He tells me when I don't want a Word document anymore and I delete it, it really goes in there."

Woman 1: "Why in the recycle thingy? Can't you just erase it?"

Woman 2: "Oh no, Word wouldn't work for very long if I did that, I would run out of blank pages."

Woman 1: "Why?"

Woman 2: "Because it cleans the words off the pages, then sends the blank sheets back to Word so they can be used again. That's why it's called the recycle bin."

Source: Atanu Dey on India's Development

I got a nice forward today from Sabya ... the essence is something like this

Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you.

When someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. You’ll be happy you did. I guarantee it.

If you want to read it in full, you can read it here.

Angry boss: तुमने कभी उल्लू देखा है?
Executive (सर झुकाते हुए): नहीं sir.
Boss: नीचे क्या देख रहे हो ? मेरी तरफ देखो !!

With all the talks of opening a branch of IIM outside India .... here is the link of the IIT outside India - an institute 120 years old.

I was Googling for B.A.G. films - a medium sized production house, but was surprised when I did not find their homepage among the first few entries on the search page. I scrolled down the whole page, went to the next page - still only external page mentions to it.

Astonished, I went back to first search result - it was amusing- why should Dynamic HTML Central turn up when I search for BAG? And then I realized - this was indeed the homepage for BAG, but the developer did not even bother to change the 'title' of the page.

He picked up a template from Dynamic HTML Central, changed the text and the links in it and lo - the page is ready. He didn't even bother to edit the 'Title' of the page, which in the Google listing appears as 'Dynamic HTML Central ...".



The internet is the epitome of collaboration and open source. Huge number of scripts and templates are available for reuse for free. So using one of these scripts on your company's website is no crime.
But at least developers must sanitize scripts before using them so that Google is able to index them properly? Someone tell these guys!

Check out this demo courtesy Vodafone and see how different websites would look on a standard Nokia N95 ....

Even if you are not ... check it out just for fun!
Cool stuff .... eh?

Ok. I gave another test - this time link through RWBE. Its called the MBTI - MyersBriggs Test


Also check out the previous test I gave ...

Found this rather amusing quiz through Crystal Blur. Check out my results ...

You scored as Spiritual Atheist, Ah! Some of the coolest people in the world are Spiritual Atheists. Most of them weren't brought up in an organized religion and have very little baggage. They concentrate on making the world a better place and know that death is just another part of life. What comes after, comes after. Spiritual Atheist 83% Apathetic Atheist 67% Scientific Atheist 50% Agnostic 50% Militant Atheist 42% Angry Atheist 25% Theist 17% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

One difference that all Indians observe when landing into the western world is the change in the way people ‘talk’ English. What gets noticed most often is the accent which is slightly curly with the westerners and hard/dry with Asians. This might also lead to a conclusion that the English speak in the same way as the Americans.

However, there are a few subtleties in accent and language which you’d observe when you actually interact with these people. I have especially been observing this because:

• The project that I just finished in India involved working closely with our US counterparts and clients
• My department in UK is pretty diverse with more than 50% people being non-English – a mix of Americans, Australians, Africans, Chinese and of course Indians.

English speaking differs in two ways – accent and the way certain specific words are pronounced. Lets take accent first – Indians talk with most words having an ‘a’ (Hindi letter a) sound to them. Americans talk with an open mouth with most words having a ‘ə’ (‘a’ as in act) sound to them. English on the other hand talk with an oval mouth with most words having an ‘ow’ sound to them. South Africans might talk either like the English or like the Indians; the Australians talk mostly like the English with certain exceptions.

The other major difference in the way words are pronounced. No! I am not talking about the most common differences like ‘schedule’ which the Americans insist on pronouncing as ‘Skeldule’ while the English stick to ‘Shedule’. Most word specific differences are found in the way Indians and others pronounce them – Americans, English, Australians usually do not differ in these pronunciations among themselves.

As an example – take the word ‘either’ which is pronounced by Indians beginning with the sound ‘eye’ whereas the others pronounce the beginning with the sound ‘E’ (as in key). Similarly, comes ‘but’ – the Indian way takes a second to pronounce and the stress is on ‘B’. The others take a while to pronounce, elongate the ‘ut’ and de-stress the ‘b’. Another example is ‘opportunity’ – many Indians stress the (second) ‘o’ whereas the others would stress the ‘chu’ (tu) sound of it. Guess you get the hang of most if it; so probably I can get to the moot point of my post :D.

There are differing views as to which kind of pronunciation is correct, which is incorrect – even more should a visiting Indian change his accent and pronunciations or not. After all it’s the Queens language isn’t it? So shouldn’t the Indian just accept the way it is spoken in the Queens territory (I am actually doubtful whether it remains the Queens territory any more except in name – but that’s beside the point :-]).

I have a certain opinion – Indians definitely should change the way they pronounce certain specific words. The way the English pronounce these words is indeed the historically correct way and so let’s respect it for that.
Change of accent however is a matter of personal choice – just like religion. But even then, I wonder sometimes what the purpose of language would be if you can’t get your thought across to the next person and so – if change of accent aids better comprehension of your thought by the audience, shouldn’t one try to change it to suit the audience?

In other words – when in Rome do as the Romans.

Update (02/08/2006): Interesting ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English#Idioms_and_Popular_Phrases

Great Bong has put up two very touching posts [1] [2]. Quoting from [1] (GreatBong .. sorry for not asking for reprod permissions in advance :P )

"But therein lay the beauty of it. The beauty of conviction. The beauty of dreams. The fact that this man believes that one day he will make it as a poet . And what's inspiring is that despite the odds he faces every day, he still manages to radiate enthusiasm for his craft---a luminant joi de vivre that comes from believing in what he does.
That sales pitch of "a poem for 10 paisa" accompanied with the boisterous recitation---he must be doing this routine about hundreds of times every day, mostly to people who are irritated by his presence (I saw another group on the grass who basically told him to f*** off) and just want this nuisance to leave them alone. Looking at him going about his work, I realized that not once during his numerous sales pitches does his enthusiasm or self-belief waver, nor does he ever sell his poverty and ask for sympathy---not when insulted, not when rebuffed and not when sleeping on the footpath on a cold Calcutta night."

The post about Calcutta Book fare made me remember the Book fare we used to have in Bhopal at Kalibadis during Navratri / Puja days. One Kalibadi was in the BHEL township in Piplani C Sector (walking distance from my 1st 'home') and the other in Tin Shed area near New Market / Mata Mandir. Both places were great to visit during the Puja days and apart from all other attractions - the book fairs were great attractions for me. At these Book fares you could find those rare books about topics from Karl Marx to Ramakrishna Mission.
However, these books became attractions much later - my childhood was spent reading books that featured in Russian Book Fare which sold English and Hindi translations of Russian Books - some of the best educational books that have shaped my intellect and thinking came from these fares. Another set of books that satisfied my curious and (irritatibly) inquisitive mind were 'Children's Knowledge Bank' (Vol I-VII). I still have all those stacked up somewhere in my shelves.
But in today's world of internet, more importantly - Television and Cartoons - would the children still find the same amount of interest in 'static', 'un-animated', 'non-glossy' books? More importantly would their intellectual needs remain the same as were of our generation?

On sidelines - will Books fares retain their identity? Will someone write posts on 'Book Fares' after 50 years?

They stole the most expensive object from the high-profile Saree Store in Juhu. But probably, they will never be caught.



They stole the CCTV.

Just last post I wrote about the speed with which ideas penetrate through the net and now I find myself affected by the phenomenon. Reading Shubham’s blog on love I got a rush of ideas on my own concepts of love.
I have never believed in the concept of love-at-first-site. In my opinion love is an expression of emotional addiction to anything. We love our parents, our brothers, sisters, and even cars, bikes and cities and towns. We get used to anything with which we spend considerable amount of time and somehow develop affection towards it.
At first site we usually get attracted towards people (or for that matter objects like bikes) mainly due to one of the many attractive features in them. But love is not just appreciating these positive features. It goes much beyond infatuation; love means accepting your loved one along with the negative and positive points in it/him/her. I know some negative points about my mother, yet I love her – beyond expression. Same goes with my affection for my father or my brother. And same goes about my affection to my dear birthplace Bhopal.
This brings me to the peculiar relationship of love with cities I have lived in. I like Bhopal and I love it. But since my childhood I never liked Bhilai, I found it lousy and droopy city. Bhopal being a city of hills and lakes I was quite used to adventure and picnics – there are numerous adventure spots in and around Bhopal. Bhilai on the other hand is quite bland; its life is as plain as the roads there. Yet when I was leaving the city after spending 4 years of my engineering there, I felt bad – somewhere in my heart I had started loving the city; while I still disliked it. The same is happening with me in Mumbai. As I have already written in a previous post, I never liked it, never wanted to live here. But now that I have spent round about 1.5 years here I have come to love it. I still dislike then traffic and distances here, but there are memories which I identify with.
There can be no better examples of love and like being different. Bhopal is the city I love and like; but the other two are the ones I love but don’t like – testifying that one tends to love what he associates with for a long time – accepting even what you disliked in the first place.
I am hence a strong believer in the Indian philosophy of tolerance in relationships – whether its marriage or otherwise. If you are (by virtue of customs as it may be) forced to stay together you usually overcome any discontinuities and disagreements that arise. And so in my opinion the perfect pair is not the one which gels together well (there probably is no such pair I guess) but the one which can stay together.
I am now wondering whether I will ever want to spend my life with a partner . . . well no plans as of now ... but you never know whats coming your way . . . . . . . . . . . .