just a thought...

When people are talking about months in a year, ever wondered how they usually go Jan, Feb but when it comes to the other long named months, they never say Dec or Nov or Oct, it's always December November October etc..

After some serious much-required thought, the only probable reason I could think of was that 'January' and 'February' are more tongue twisting than the fellow months.. and on further thought it also seems like saying Oct, Nov is more tongue twisting than using their actual names..

Phew! ..

Must See.... [Continuously Updated]

(In no particular order)

• Istanbul, Turkey
• Egypt
• Tel-Aviv, Israel
• Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
• Barcelona, Spain
• Greece
• Venice
• Northern Lights, Norway
• Moscow, Russia
• Switzerland
• Czech Republic
  

Dubai vs India

• No elections, no waste of time, effort and money, no false promises. I don't even have to start with the Indian equivalent of the same.
• The ruler doesn't have to spend time strategizing ways to keep his seat, as if not his, it'll be one of his family. Here more brains, think tanks.. et al are used to plan ways to win an election than is done to improve the city.
• As the rule has been coming down from generations, the king would take personal pride in seeing the city of his family grow unlike here in India where a flyover is built by congress just because an underpass was built by bjp with zero planning and foresight.
• The king owns most of the city, and if need be he gives his own money for the development of the city. Thus has a lot of respect from the residents. In aka India, every politician is trying to be a king and is trying to acquire land/property by shelling out money from the residents pockets. So it's reverse synergy in motion here.
• Even though the local group is a minority, they have made it clear who the boss is so even though everyone is allowed to do their thing and live life the way they want it, the basic rules of Islam have to be followed by everyone which in fact is not a big inconvenience. Back home, everyone tries hard to prove which group is more local than the other and thus who s rules are more important than the others and in this quest end up breaking the remaining rules.

So even though democracy seems like a cool rule, doesn't seem like it's doing too good in a country like India with a vast population.
But then Hey!, I wouldn't have been able to put up this article if not for democracy :)

All of us have heard/seen multitudes of horoscope sites.. daily.. weekly.. monthly.. yearly.. and so on.. but ever heard of horoscopes for your pet dog..?! it's really weird and funny...
Just in case you want to check out the fate of your dog today, refer to this..
http://www.artcharts.com/astrology/dog_horoscopes.html
And do get back to us on the relevancy of the predictions.. so we can suggest on more creatures for them to work on..
Whatever the case may be we have to salute the guy who came up with such an intellibruto idea..

While you are at it you might be interested to read more such scopes like MomScopes, FoodScopes, BeautyScopes, CatScopes.......... here
http://horoscopes.astrology.com/index/dailyindex.html

Apparently in the astrology world lunacy is not so uncommon...

Bangalore is doing it's best to reduce the traffic conditions.. while they are still at it here's a simple solution to reduce fuel consumption and the pollution.
On busy one-way junctures where traffic moves inch-by-inch (which is a very common sight in busy cities), the roads can be made slightly downward sloping. This way vehicles can turn off their ignition and smoothly move down until they get the go-signal.
For the driver, the fuel consumption goes down, he can go easy on the clutch and he needn't breathe in all the exhaust fumes.
For the environment, lesser noise/air pollution and lot of fuel saving.

Guess it's time they accept me into the CPCB ;)

out shopping.. so may things to choose from.. everything looks so great.. after a lot of trials and fashion parades you come down to two options.. which of them is the winner?.. both of them are good in their own way (one has a little extra of the bluish greenish pink tinge and the other shows more of greenish pinkish blue tinge and oh it makes so much of a difference to how you look) but cant buy them both.. at this juncture a god sent fellow shopper walks by and tells you how pretty the dress in your right hand is.. lo and behold the winner is decided.. the emergency is subdued.. and now everyone can go home.. or move on to fresher pasture..
so next time you see someone breaking their head over what to buy.. just give them your opinion and surely they would be glad you stopped by.. and even if they realize later that the other piece was a better one.. you would be too far away for their hexes to reach you..
so go ahead and do your good samaritan bit even if it lasts for just a couple of hours..

Warning: Dont over do it :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Have you ever wondered why the shape that is known as a heart, called a heart when it does not look like an anatomical heart?

There seems to be quiet a few explanations and controversies surrounding this..

• During the seventh century B.C., the city-state of Cyrene had a lucrative trade in a rare plant: silphium. It was reputed to be a form of birth control. The plant's seedpod looks like the heart shape we know today. The theory goes that the heart shape first became associated with sexuality, and eventually, with love.
• Some say that in the 17^th century, when a saint had a vision of the 'Heart' surrounded by thorns, it became known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus and was associated with love and devotion
• It is said that the shape of heart matches that of cattle more than human and as ancient beings had only known the insides of animals, that shape probably got associated for a heart.
• It's also said that the drawing of a modern heart possibly originated because of drawings of the human heart by medieval artists after a philosopher inaccurately described the shape.

Well, what ever may be the reasons, the shape turns out to be just fine because if we had to replicate the human heart every time, every one around the world would have to spend a lot more time in their biology classes.

A blog is a very nice way to show off things which you have always wanted to, but people never ask you questions relating to that no matter how hard you try.
For instance, you can have posts like
When I was taking my driving lessons,.....
On one of my early morning walks...
When my nephew disturbed me while I was playing on my WII...
While partying late night,..,..
When back packing in the Alps...,.,.,..

And it could go on..

Where ever I have seen a big vehicle parked on a slope, there' s one small rock/brick placed before every tyre to stop the vehicle from rolling down. But thinking about it, if a vehicle did start rolling down, the rock/brick can only slide away or break.
So are they trying to threaten the vehicle from rolling by placing those bricks there or do the drivers expect to wake up when they hear the brick crack from the truck s weight.

Dev-D

This is a must watch as it helps you realize/learn/understand/enlighten yourself with some much required knowledge. I can say it s as good as sitting under a Banyan Tree, but I would nt dare imagine, what form Buddhism would have taken if Buddha did watch Dev-D instead of relying on the good old ways.
After watching the movie,
1) You will realize that the movie was strategically named so, as its an acronym for Does everlasting Damage (although I'm yet to figure out what the hyphen there signifies).
2) You would have new found respect for Hindi Cinemas like Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham and Kuch Kuch Hotha Hai by Karan Johar and Subhash Ghai s Kisna.
3) You would develop sudden interest in martial arts/Karate to practice it out on the person who suggested the movie to you.
4) For once you ll realize what 2 and a half hours actually means, how long it is and what alllll you can do in that time if you were not in the theater.
5) For the first time you ll realize how the interiors of this theater looks like (even though you have come here many times before), the fabric of the seats, the neat alignment of the chairs, all the exit points, how the right most fan does not work, how the ceiling is spaced with 25 bulbs.....

So Hurry!, book your seats today to watch the movie which is filled with lou :)
And like any other good movie, this has a secret key factor, the momo guy. In your restlessness to walk out of the theater you might miss out the important link so watch out...

My Rating: 1 Black hole (Obviously this movie is beyond all stars)

ka-la-va-ra betta

After a lot of thought, we cleverly picked 26th jan 09 (partial solar eclipse), mid afternoon with a clear sky for our trek, so that we can make use of all our old caps and sunscreens which were stacked away in unknown corners of our cupboards.
Six of us started off in an esteemed esteem towards kalavara betta, which is in the Skandagiri range (drive on NH7 towards Chikaballapur, 58 km from hebbal, with a lot of grape plantations on either side). On reaching Chikaballapur and after some frantic search for decent food on 'brigade road', we packed some idlies in a garden view Shanthi Sagar.
This hill is situated at the end of mg road, in a village called kalavara. Driving past narrow lanes, dodging chicks crossing the road, roosters and hens, dogs, cyclists, pedestrians and the potholes.. we reached a temple where we could stop the tyres and start the legs.
The climb up is through a winding path lane, with rocks and shrubs all around, intermittent with wide empty spaces for the slightly less enthusiasts like us to unlax for a while. Though the climb as such is not tough, the heat got to all of us. Armed with Glucomin-D (step-sister of Glucon-D) and some water and some false information by the guys, we managed to drag ourselves to a spot shaded by 2 rocks placed like a mushroom. This we decided was where are uphill trek was going to end.
The view from here is like that for any other hill, more hills all around, small ponds, rocks, boulders, greenery and the sky. A serene place with just the sound of wind with some sporadic bleeting of sheep.
After a break of an hour or so, along with a meal shared with a bunch of goats and a dog, we started our walk down.
Walk down is always less tiring (also because it was slight slippery in places due to loose sand, we covered a few inches without lifting a foot:)) as it agrees with Newton uncles theories. And we were back to where we started in no time, of course with the un-inevitable photo shoots all through the way.

To Do s for this trip:
1) carry loads of water
2) caps, sunblocks/sucscreens, glares, good shoes.
3) snacks or food for energy
4) once on top of the hill, after exploring the wilderness, you could be ready for a game of UNO under the cool shade of the rocks.
finally
5) make sure the combination of your raasi, nakshatra, the position of the sun, moon, all the planets with their corresponding satellites are all in a favourable position :)

Overall a good fun 1-day trip.

My rating of the place : 3 and half stars.

Human beings have a knack of finding wrong solutions to the right problem in the heat of anger..
say for instance,
action: a bus runs over a few pedestrians, killing them..
reaction: burn the bus, let the driver go home and take rest so tomorrow he ll be ready to drive another bus.
Because it was the bus which decided to go against the driver and maneuver itself into the innocents..

action: Dr. Rajkumar passes away
reaction: burn down the city, throw stones at buildings, burn vehicles, cause havoc
Because some how the entire city joined up the previous night to conspire against him..

action: Mr. Raju s frawd case in Satyam
reaction: no physical reaction was seen for this, but interestingly, when traveling home with my colleague, we saw a Satyam bus pass by and he suggested we stone it :)
Because, of course it was the bus that influenced Raju to commit the fraud.

So if people spend an extra minute to calm down and find logical solutions, surely we would have fewer such mishaps..

Finally, if you don't like this post, do not stop visiting this page but instead throw your computer out the window :)..

slacktivist......

Slacker + Acktivism.
An interesting term I came across which stamps most of the software engineers as slacktivists of some or the other kinds.. where in we want to sit in the comfort of our chairs and also lend our hand in changing the world..
Be it signing internet petitions, wearing awareness bracelets, joining facebook/orkut communities or forwarding e-mails which claim to give 25p to some desolate family in some corner of the world everytime the Fwd button is clicked.
Thus by doing what we love to do (which is nothing) it gives us a sense of satisfaction of having contributed to a social cause.

I have done my slacktivist activity for the day by posting this, which would let my unaware slacktivist blog reading friends know that they are slacktivists too... :)

Geared!

While taking my car driving lessons an interesting idea occurred to me.
Isn't driving a geared 2 wheeler easier than driving a car? Of course keeping aside the balancing aspects.
A geared 2 wheeler has gear at the feet and rest of the options at the hands and the car is just the opposite. Considering our hands are more skilled and more in control than our feet, wouldn't it be a better idea to have the important levers like accelerator, clutch and brake as hand operated and leave the gear to the feet even in cars?, as you could go wrong with a gear and it would still be ok but if you went wrong with any of the others.... hmmmm.....
This view is based on my limited knowledge of both the vehicles, may be someone more experienced could throw some light.. and if possible this idea could be patented under the name vmw (visakhapatnam motor works) ;)

Manager's Humour!

My manager found it amusing to send this to all of us... if I was not in his To list, I would have probably found this funny.

I love watching cook shows..
There is usually one main cook and somtimes one another (who's mainly there to make yummy noises and hand over things which are already an arms length away..).. the main guy is in nice clothes and no matter what ingredients are given to him, he casually adds a dash of this and a pinch of that and voila! a finger licking dish is ready.. (at least thats what it looks like and thats the expression he makes when he takes the first bite..)
So my latest ambition is to be an excellent cook..
but wait a minute.. whats a kitchen? :)

There are no Rights and Wrongs, there are only views and perceptions.
- Dpt Chavali and ...... Nah let me not share the credit ..;)