Thursday, January 31, 2008

A for Accelerator; B for Brake and C for Clutch


A for Accelerator; B for Brake and C for Clutch

From the second part of December, when I had relatively less items in my calendar, I just thought I would focus on getting some driving learnt. The class tutor (Parthiban) of Bala Driving School, Kamarajapuram had an interesting way of starting the teaching.

Any learning starts as A, B, C right. Going by the same lines, he makes the trainee understands the three basic entities of any car.
  1. A for Accelerator
  2. B for Brake
  3. C for Clutch

And interestingly these would form right to left in Indian cars. Sometime back we were discussing about cars in United States here. Interestingly in India, it is right-handed driving and we follow 'Keep Left' policy on roads.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Making our country safer and secure

Making our country safer and secure

I came across a very good website called SaferIndia from my friend Aravind Babu and Mohan Chandran and would like to share the website with others too.

About the website:

This website of an NGO is started by Ms. Kiran Bedi. One can browse this website and lodge a complaint against any crime if the police station in your website is refusing to accept the same. The NGO would take your complaint and forward it to the DGP of your area. You can also use the email as a legal document in case of filing a case in the court.

Also, since the website is monitored by Ms. Kiran Bedi, all emails directly go to her.

Let us try to educate everyone about this website so that people feel more secure in their homeland.

Indian Railways -- Getting More Secure

Indian Railways -- Getting More Secure

Indian Railways are said to be the largest employers and one of the world's biggest enterprises. We would need to proud to have such a big entity in our motherland and should sincerely thank Lord Dalhousie (who is being rightly revered as 'Father of Indian Railways') for bringing this marvelous public commuting system to India when Britishers ruled us. It is most economical and comfortabe transporation system. The only concern currently in Indian Railways is an amicable security cover for the passengers through out the journey. There exists three modes of transport between the cities:

  1. Buses
  2. Railways
  3. Airways
A flight between the two cities is just about 35 minutes maximum but costs not less than INR 3000. It is extremely safe and secure journey but is simply out of reach for normal use, unless there is an urgency or someone is sponsoring us. Buses are good as long as there are no political riots anywhere. At least for women passengers, Indian Railways have a separate coach for them.
Now to extend this security coverage and enhance the security of passengers, I came across from a newspaper that they have brought in a helpline mobile number (+919962500500) calling which a Railway Protection Force (RPF) would immediately come to your rescue and services.

Some interesting recipes to relish in Chennai

Some interesting recipes in Chennai

I have been thinking of sharing this for a while but just took some time to confirm the latest updates with the service providers. I am sure, in Chennai it would be nightmarish now to drive and we soon become very tired. There are two good restaurants in the West End of Chennai and East End of Chennai. They are just ordinary restaurants and not categorized as star so don't worry about pricking your wallet. Remember that we just discussed about 'The value of every 'Penny' sometime back very recently.

The two interesting recipes that I wanted to share was:

  1. Thoothukudi Parota
  2. Kanchipuram Idli
Thoothukudi Parota:

This is a very interesting recipe that is available in Bhat's Bhojan at Tambaram. It is just priced at about half a dollar (20 INR now). Thoothukudi is the tamil name of Tuticorin, an important harbour town of Tamil Nadu near Kaniyakumari (Cape Comorin). The another interesting recipe of Bhat's Bhojan is the hot Sambar Idli which you can be confident to get from 7 AM to 11 PM for a little price of INR 10 (quarter dollar).

Kanchipuram Idli:

This is a very interesting recipe that is available at Hotel Sri Krishna Bhavan near Tiruvallikeni Parthasarathy temple. It is a little restaurant but is very innovative in bringing new dishes every day. Most of them are like innovative south Indian dishes. Kanchipuram is a little town near Chennai and the Kanchipuram Idli would be something like a hot stuffed puffs or a little bigger than that. The other interesting dishes of this restaurant are:
  1. Adai Aviyal
  2. Mini Idli

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The value of every 'Penny'

The value of every 'Penny'

I was just thinking of writing about this for a while but a variety of factors were en route either preventing it or procrastinating it. What are they?

  1. A seamless flow of content. Sometimes, we get a thought directly from the sky but we would be struck on where to start, how to draft and how to express it to others.
  2. Time factor. With a plethora of tasks outlined, the 24 hours that the Lord has bestowed for every day seems to be too little. But, when I say this, I recall, the quote that my Mathematics teacher in standard twelfth at Balalok and the then tuition master used to say "It is not that 24 hours which is insufficient. But we do not know how to make the best use of every second. We have 60 seconds a minute. 60 minutes to comprise an hour and 24 hours to comprise a day. And so on and so forth. The need of the hour then is an efficient time management".



Well! I just thought the current generation seems to be so much spendthrift like never before. Perhaps either they are misguided by bad television screenings, illicit films and/or bad companionship. I would like to substantiate this fact with a simpler discussion with one of my colleague. A few days back in a curious conversation, I was commenting out that it is cooler outside the Anna University. I was actually using a dual meaning phrase, to be frank.
  1. The cool shady avenues in the University (Straight Frank Fact)
  2. In the amateurish college days, we normally like to go out on a romantic dates right. I don't see anything wrong in that. Perhaps the adolescent hormonal effects inspire and steer the people in that age group to that direction.

And the response I got from him, in a very cynical way, made me think of the destiny to which the younger generation is heading too. The casual dating at the cool avenues which was an exchange of friendship those days resembles as outmoded for the younger generation. They felt a more lavish way -- brandishing their wallet at Inox, swiping the gold, silver and gray colored plastic currency cards for a pleasure that just going to be for a couple of hours and not surely more than that in any case.

I was reminded of this conversation yesterday, when I was in Canara Bank, Padmanabha Nagar branch. While I was waiting in the queue to make a remittance to the savings account, the guy before me was using a challan. The challan read as 'A/C Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School, Adyar' and it was for a LKG (Kindergarten). I was just astonished by the fees being levied for the term -- INR 4000 (101.9 USD). I recall that the annual fee of my Engineering about ten years back was just about an equivalent -- INR 6500 (165.5 USD). With such sky rocketing prices and cost of living, shouldn't we cultivate the habit of savings instead of being a lavish spendthrift.


A few more comparisons where the younger generation seems to be lavish when an equivalent economical and ethical means exist.

  1. New Year Celebrations

    1. We @Classic: Visiting temple, Getting the blessings of elders
    2. Newer Generation: Lavish dance partying at a star hotel, Boozing and spoiling the health. We should not and can not forget that this attitude of youth and callousness of people deriving benefit out of it had caused fatal accidents at Hotel Savera when the New Year dawned for 2008. Check out the news report here. Interestingly, at 00:00 hours of 1st January, 2008 when NDTV, AajTak and other news channel were showing a count down clock for Happy New Year 2008, NDTV was also flashing a news like 'Chennai :: Tragedy in New Year Party. I died'.

  2. Costly Restaurants

    1. We @Classic: We love homely foods that are cooked in a clean and auspicious ambience at the comfort and care of our kitchen.
    2. Newer Generation: The junk food fever seems to be all-pervasive. The Dial-A-Pizza and the sick old Coke and Pepsi not to mention the rum and vodka bottles that always finds a royal seat in every get to gether is a curse of the time.

      We celebrate every year Independance day and Republic Day to commomerate the freedom from foreign rule. We recall that British entered our country as trademan, established the East India Company and then slowly captured the full country. Thankfully, we are now a free nation. But due to cultural plunge, we are allowing the evil Satan to capture us. In the great epic Mahabharata, King Parikshit had given four places to Kali Purushan to dwell -- Liquor shops, Brothels, Abattoirs and Gambling places. By succumbing to these maladies, aren't we trading off our great culture. We have discussed about Kali's dwelling places in detail here.

      We are close to celebrating another Republic day around the corner in another week. At least, as a new year resolution or a republic day promise let us try to strive hard safeguarding our culture.
    3. Luxury Partying

      1. We @Classic: When it is time to celebrate, it has been our custom to visit cool tourist places, pilgrimage spots where we gather mental comfort and then resume our routine chores with enhanced performance.
      2. Newer Generation: At every beck and call, they call upon going out for a party under different pretexts sometimes amateurish, sometimes childish and sometimes it resembles whether the person demanding party has gone mentally deranged. I have discussed two occasions where I have voiced against such crazy partying spree. I am not totally against it. But at the same time, the bottomline of the discussion is a justified use of the same.
      3. Reading Material:

        1. A Party at Buena Vista ECR Chennai
        2. Shame on the mimicing modernity
    4. The Perspective of Looking at Money

      1. We @Classic: We look money as Lordess Mahalakshmi. We ought to bow down to Her and use the currency and resources given by Her to us for Her services.
      2. Newer Generation: The newly flashing plastic currency is just a symbol of pride giving a source of mundane pleasure eliciting and kindling romantic spirits anytime and everytime. This happens against because of the avaricious greed of few who misguide youth into willfully wrong paths to satisfy their bestial instincts and pleasures.

        I would particularly like to file chargesheets against people violating National Do Not Call registry and disturbing us in our busy afternoon for the crazy insurance, junk mutual funds and gambling country clubs. In a regional magazine, I read a very interesting sentence in Tamil. I am not sure whether it is 'Junior Vikatan' or 'Tamil Osai'. The caption of the reader comment is "Mutual Fundu; Radhika Bendu". The name "Radhika" is an indicative that most telemarketers are normally females to lure customers with sweet voices. Sometimes in the sweet voice, I find the sweetness of English and supremecy of lexical grammar is cremated. It is rather a sweet poison. . Coming back to the discussion on the magazine, the line actually meets "Damn care about the junk mutual fund investments steered by meaningless telemarketing calls by useless persons who pepper up the sales only by unwarranted sexual provocations.". If I take a little time to rephrase this sentence in Tamil to English "Abstain from such Mutual Funds and such crazy things embraced by sexual blend of Radhika (Telemarketing Instance)'s vocal bends".

        That was little too harsh. But my thought process was to convey and reinstate the true value of money as the gift of God and not to allow it being misused and destroyed of its sanctity.



All is fine. But we should also ensure that the current generation is properly guided by elders and parents in the correct route. Just to satisfy the newer so-called modern trend, we need not succumb to a wrong unethical directions. It is quite easy. A few simple questions on making the youngsters realise of their responsibilities can make things perfect. A few starter tips may be:
  1. Minimize unwarranted excess pocket money every week. Do they need so much of pocket money while more than eight hours they are going to be in colleges and schools?
  2. No showoffs with high profile gadgets and gizmos like all those fancy mobile phones. Mobile Phones are essentially meant for quicker and efficient communications. I have discussed sometime about "Pure Luxury Communications Mobile (Vertu)".
  3. Why should we entertain our kids and younger brother/sister to showcase a high speed racing on our Maruti Wagon R, when our roads are only for passenger use and not race fields. What prevents them from supporting, patronizing and using the public conveyance?
  4. Perhaps a scheduled week every six months to an orphanage home and spending some time with people there. Thereby, we gain the following advantages:
    1. Mental bliss and happiness for the inmates there
    2. Our kids would realise the reality in the world and then turn a new leaf with more responsibility.
    3. We act with more social responsibility and social concern.

I think it is a fairly huge topic which I have tried to initiate a brainstorming upon so that we can strive to safeguard our rich culture and grow our kids in a more religious, god-fearing way, serving the society and the nation truly for a peace and harmonious ambience and atmosphere. I would also like to have readers to share their comments and thought process.

Online Tamil Dictionary

Online Tamil Dictionary

Sometime back we had a very interesting discussion in CodeProject Lounge on a particular guy in my close circle who has the habit of coughing in a very musical tone. For those interested, here is the permalink URL for the same. After that once, it so happened after a heavy lunch on Friday, myself and my other friend (the innovative inventors of the discussion thread outlined) had some constant burps. We were teasing each other like whether we are trying to emulate the Musical Cougher. In Tamil, we call burp as ஏப்பம். But I was trying to find out high and low on what is the English equivalent of this ஏப்பம்.

Today I found a very good Tamil - English website which gives the English words for Tamil words. In our current context ஏப்பம் means burp or belching sound in English. But I would say, anyone should have this Online Tamil English dictionary in their favorites as it is very useful for everyone. Check it out here:

http://www.tamildict.com/display.php?alphabet=search&by=B&nr_page=35

Saturday, January 19, 2008

A Quick General Knowledge cum Fun Quiz on Internet

A Quick General Knowledge cum Fun Quiz on Internet

A casual Saturday browsing brought me around a unique website that checks our knowledge on how deep our knowledge on Internet is. It wanders around the various Internet protocols, history etc.

At the end of the test, it gives an interesting score and a website badge that you can proudly showcase on your website too. Check out the Fun cum Knowledge Test on Internet here.

Time crammed January 20th, 2008 (Busy Busy Sunday)

Time crammed January 20th, 2008 (Busy Busy Sunday)

I have three invites for celebrations across the city tomorrow. Perhaps, to take rest, since Sunday is also the only day to take rest, I may chose to send the wishes by calling them too.
  1. My friend (Rekha's Wedding) -- Unavoidable or there might be an aggressive call from Bangalore demanding a reason for absenting from the same. :)
  2. Sathya's Sister Wedding in West Mambalam -- This is actually my friend's sister. Hence I have some excuses for attending it via GSM. Anyway, I have his wedding to attend next month. :)
  3. A housewarming function of one of my colleague (Maria Sagayaraj). I may assign a ThreadPriority.Low to this for the following reasons:
    1. A very huge distance from my residence. It almost involves a semicircle trip across the Chennai City Map from Tambaram to Ambattur Pattaravalkam Railway Station.
  4. A one day technical workshop towards evening.
There are a real number of factors that are involved in which one to attend and which one to send a greetings live through GSM Text Messaging or a Voice Call or via a casual informal email note. A few of them at least with respect to the above schedules may be the following:

  1. The degree of proximity of the entities involved.
  2. The depth of relationships of the entities involved.
  3. The Precedence of functions. Attending one should not jeopardise the attendance to the other functions unduly or take too much travel expenditure or physical energy.
  4. My Schedule-slot availability in my Calendar also dictate which one to address and attend.
Considering the factors like 1, 2, 3 and 4 (and much more conceptualized), there are decisions to take.
"Sometimes, people feel when a particular decision is taken, we are harder on them and relaxed on the other. But the bottomline is that we always need to have a tradeoff to balance the schedules amicably. A few decisions does take a few people quite hard and a few like a breeze. But we need to go by such decisions and have to choose a wise decision.". One of my program managers in my previous organization ("Sasidharan Chinnaraj") used to go by this principle. He is very much systematic in his tasks and his time management is really amazing. I think he should be a role model for us to emulate to make the best use of time and cultivate best managerial skills.

I would keep you posted on the updates too.

My Pongal Celebrations 2008

My Pongal Celebrations 2008

I would like to draw the attention of users to our Pongal/Makara Sankranthi wishes before I discuss about my Pongal Celebrations this year. I think the weeklong Pongal Celebrations I was going through almost coincided with the exact days that has been earmarked for each of the festival. Rather, I would say, I was celebrating each day on its eve (a day before), with a sense of being an early bird.

Bhogi on 14th January 2008

The day before Pongal is celebrated as Bhogi. It is customary for the people of Tamil Nadu to white-wash (paint) their houses in bright colors, clear off all dust that has gathered and keep the environment spic-and-span. The elders also used to advise that on Bhogi day we should burn off all evil that have gathered at heart and cultivate a very holy thought-mind (Saatwic Mind). With this custom around, my schedule on 13th January 2008 was to clean up the house in full with all rubbish being destroyed. There were but little to huge junk mailers that have gathered which found the way to dustbin of Sembakkam Municipality.

Pongal Eve on 14th January 2008

I had two important tasks to complete on 14th. They were:

  1. Visiting my doctor to treat an acute bruise suffered in the leg due to boarding a running bus. The normal Dial-A-Pharmacist home therapy did not yield and fruitful results for the past two days other than making the pain severe and unmanageable.
  2. Watching the Makara Jyothi live on the television
Both these tasks were completed without any difficulties. However, I had to avail a half-day leave to achieve both (1) and (2).

Pongal on 15th January 2008

Due to medical advise on taking rest for the bruise suffered, I was staying indoors with all outdoor programmes scheduled on my calendar deferred for later days. The very interesting movie, Vettayadu Vilayadu which used to play fun during our Sabarimala Pilgrimage Year 4 and Year 5 was being aired and I got to watch it in full this time.

Playing with Rocky on 16th January 2008

The regular Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word conversations, I guess would roughly coincide with the Mattup Pongal since in Microsoft Word, we have the little Rocky to play with.

Kaanum Pongal on 17th January 2008

The Kaanum Pongal on 17th January 2008 coincided with my Thursday routine trip to Thiruvallikeni temple. Hence I got to travel by Marina Beach to even celebrate the Kaanum Pongal.

That completes the discussion of my celebration of sweet little Pongal Celebration.

Tax Time need not be Taxing Time

Tax Time need not be Taxing Time

As the month of March nears, most of us reel under acute mental stress and tensions since it is the period when you would need to consolidate your income, investments and other expenditures and submit the same to your taxman. Should you have been little lazy, then this period might bring you some more mental stress.

Fortunately, for everyone, Nithyanand has released a cool little tool again this year called Tax Calculator 2007-08 which should help us in calculating the investments made and that need to be done to escape the clutches of heavy tax burden.

I would also like to draw the attention of users towards our earlier discussion on "Tax and Investment -- A Guide".

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Happy Pongal and Makara Sankaranthi

Happy Pongal and Makara Sankaranthi

Let us wish each other a very happy and a prosperous new year besides a very happy Pongal/Makara Sankranthi Celebrations. Let us start this by watching the Live Telecast of Makara Jyothi from Sabarimala facilitated by Podhigai at 1630 hours today and Raj TV at 1700 hours today.

**Check out actually whether it is Podhigai or Jaya TV. I am little confused by the spurtof TV programme advertisements that I had a glimpse today morning. I think it is Podhigai.If some one could confirm, it would be great.

Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa!!

Saturday, January 12, 2008

A Free Astrologer Consultation Offer by Kumudam

A Free Astrologer Consultation Offer by Kumudam

While casually reading through the newsletter of Kumudam, a premiere Tamil Magazine in Tamil Nadu, India, I came across a lucrative offer that the magazine is bringing out for its readers. I just thought I would share across the same with other readers too for their benefit:




Offer Detail: Kumudam.com seems to have partnered with a few premiere astrologers in Tamil Nadu to scrutinize the horoscopes of interested readers from the perspectives of which planet is currently weaker, which one is stronger and also what Pariharams (appeasing) to the planets.

How to apply?

All the interested readers have to do is the following:

  1. Draft your query whatever it is like Career Queries, Problems in current work environment, Family issues, Financial Troubles in brief.
  2. Draft your Name, Birth Rasi and Birth Star
  3. Send the information to jothidam (at) kumudam.com
Kumudam.com would contact the astrologers and send you back a comprehensive report on your queries plus the various Pariharams that ought to be performed including if any temple visits are to be performed. I am also attaching a quick screenshot from the newsletter mailer.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Ninth Prize Winner of Community-Credit December 2007

Ninth Prize Winner of Community-Credit December 2007 
 
I am happy to share the information that I have again won the ninth prize in Community-Credit December 2007 contest. You can check out other Prize winners and prize details over here.
 
It is a sheer pleasure of helping peers in various technology forums and knowledge sharing and a recognition to cherish for ever. Here is a little quote from Community-Credit Prize Notification email:
 


 

Hello Deepak Kumar,

    Congratulations. You won 9th Prize in the December 2007 Contest. As you may know, a lot of people competed, but only a few won. Nicely done! Please also keep in mind that your prize is not just a stupid, geeky gift, but it's also a symbol to represent your contributions to the development community. When folks ask you how you won, you can tell them that it was by helping out other geeks. Be proud and brag.

Below you will find the details of your prize.

Mini Solar-Powered Car

Solar cars are, unfortunately, still in the research and development phase, although we saw one recently that drove from Texas to New York in 5 days. Despite being impressive, it'll likely be years before we have one sitting in the driveway, charging. Until then this working miniature model will have to keep us entertained.

The world's smallest solar powered car - it zooms along when the sun shines on the solar panel. No batteries - it gets its power just from the sun. No assembly required. Measures a tiny 3.3 x 2.2 x 1.4 cm. When the sun shines on the solar panel, the panel makes electricity that turns the motor and the wheels. A fun demonstration of solar power. Will also work when close to a strong artificial light source.




It's about getting married. Click here! Try it!