What Would You Be Doing If Computers Didn't Exist?

This is a blog by Scott that I religiously follow. The extent is that I have a iGoogle widget for this blog, so I make it a point to read all the new posts. Well enough about that, but the point here I want to make is the last post. The question posed is quite an imaginative one.

I'm alive

I can't believe I have'nt posted anything since August. Well honestly, it was'nt out of choice, but I have been busy with the release of our new project for the company CMS and a bunch of 28 industry specific sites. This was a massive project, and a high profile project considering it would be shining like anything on my CV. The project was released in October first week, very silently. I cannot put emphasis on the word silently, because we did celebrate the release in our team.

Then I was busy with Diwali celebration, and my birthday, which was during the same days as Diwali. So it was lots of shopping, and preparing and celebrations. I guess this was the time, since when I have been regularly irregular to the gym. By the way, this was suppose to be a all time favourite statement from our mathematics teacher in school, Mrs Krishna Raman. I think I will write a separate entry for all my school teachers.

Coming back to the excuses, November saw my company being bought out by a media giant called Progressive Group. In a way it is good, as I can boast of being part of a huge family. This followed by the usual trimming and downsizing of the company. I did lose couple of friends in this process, but then you have to accept it as a part of life. Life just moves on!

And now we are approaching the end of November, and the things that is on my mind is nothing but my holiday. I can already hear the Christmas bell ringing....

Last Bank Holiday of the year 2008

It is'nt as gloomy as it sounds, because we still have christmas coming before the end of the year. But then it is still four months away, and that is when my India holidays start, so this was practically the last long weekend for me this year.

There will be some day offs here and there, and a long weekend just before my holidays as I would be visiting my Sis's Graduation ceremony at Lancaster University in the second week of December. But the idea of four months without any holiday is still bearable, with the incentives at the end of it.
If I would have been in India, it would have been the start of the festive season. August, September and October marks major festivals for all the religions and cultures in India. The week before we had Rakshabandhan (I was planning to write a separate entry for that, but could get into the mood of writing), and last weekend we had Janmashtami (The birth anniversary of Lord Krishna).

Just like Rakshabandhan I am planning to write a detailed essay on Janmashtami as well, and guess what? I also have started a blog for my local Hindu Temple. I would be writing all my articles on Hinduism and it's values over there. The address is http://vaishnavinlondon.blogspot.com. I am also planning to start up a website with informations about the temple, but that is still in the conception phase, and will see how it materializes. But till then do visit my other blogs and drop a line of feedback on how to improve on anything and everything.

Gujarati Mulakshar!!!

There has been countless discussions and arguments between me and my friends about how well we know Gujarati. I for instance, has always maintained, that I speak better Gujarati than most of my friends and also my Gujarati vocabulary is excellent. This claim has been put forward by me because I have been surrounded by Gujarati graduates since my early childhood. My Dad and my elder Sister has done Masters with Gujarati as a major subject, whereas my Mom has done the same thing at a bachelor level. This means I have been reading Zaverchand Meghani, Premchand, Priyakant Parikh, Raman Maharishi, and many more laureates as reading materials, when most of the kids around me were interested in Tinkles and Archies and other stuff.

But most of the time, the language efficiency and profeciency ended up by the question, do you know gujarati Mulakshar? I pretty much always was able to finish the correct order with couple of tries, but then most of my friends never took off beyond first 5 or 10 letters. So here goes an image which you can print, and stick up your desk, just to keep on revising it until you perfect it. It seems even I would need to do that, in order to get it correct first time, every time.

Why should the Manmohan Singh government be defeated at the Motion of No Confidence...

Lately there has been a string of accusations from and against the current government in place in India. One cannot get into the depth of the situation without knowing the root cause of the issue, and what exactly triggered the events.

If we switch back about 10 months, George Bush has just lost its major ally in the Gulf war. Britain has started partial withdrawl of troops from Afghanistan, and the new Prime minister in chair Gordon Brown has vowed to the public in wake of the elections, to publish a time line for complete withdrawl of the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. In the absense of major forces of the world backing US in its so called Peace Mission, US has been cornered bye its own foreign policy.

Withdrawing the troops now, will gurantee George Bush junior a place in history next to his father, who also could not get a substantial victory in the last gulf war. Also the extremists- The Talibans and Mujahiddins, in the Iraq and Afghanistan would declare it as their victory, and may even bounce back to the power, which would prove to be a nightmare turn true for the entire west.

Facing these threats, the US administration has three options to consider. One to forget and bury the cold war memories, and seek alliance from Russia, which George Bush tried, but with no results. Second option was to seek alliance from People's Republic of China. This was strategically impossible, as China would never accept American leadership. Chinese are too ambitious, and they do not see any reason why they should join forces with USA. So the third and last option left with USA is to seek alliance from developing giants such as India, Mexico and South African nations.

The only way to lure India into an alliance is through military aids. India has troubled borders on all sides. Starting from Pakistan on North west, to Srilanka in South, Indian borders are expensive to maintain. Also the rapid development of industries, and increasing standard of living of Indian citizens, has created a massive gap between generation and demand of energy supplies.

So here comes the Indo-US nuclear deal, a rescue offer to India, to ease her energy defeceit. But like all the offers from US in the past, these deal also comes with a price tag. And the discussion starts for the price tag amongst all the political parties in India.

The general rule of business, is one of the dealing parties, in this case USA, is always more interested in closing the deal for it's own gains. The other party, in this case India, must use this opportunity as a strong bargaining power, and get the deal to the maximum benefit of it's own. The general public of India, was never explained the vices or virtues of these treaty, by the in-power Congress. The only thing people heard is it would ease the pressure on the energy sector of the country.

Having looked at what is in the base of the issue, let us drill down a bit further for the most disputed points of these treaty, and why the Parliamentary parties are disputed, and the left Parties even considered bringing the Motion of No-confidence in the parliament which would almost certainely force an early general election in India, if passed.

The first disputed point is regarding India's foreign policy. There is a mandatory clause in these treaty for Indian government to abide by the Hyde Act, which states that Indian foreign policy needs to be congruent to that of United States. This necessarily mean, India cannot criticise any of the US foreign policy. In recent times, India has lead the opposition to any sanctions on Iran, based on speculations that Iran is enriching its nuclear armery. India demanded UN inspectors to provide proof of the US accusation. India also has in past criticised the way US dealt the middle east crisis. If the treaty is signed, any of these steps would suffice for US to withdraw the fuel supply.

The next point is Military Arm sale. Under this treaty, India will have the luxury of joint excercise with US military, but the cost of which would be buying expensive arms from US. The major reason why Pakistan could not accelerate its development was, all the foreign aid that it received were wiped out buying arms and ammunition from USA. USA has a past of giving aid, which comes with the condition, that you buy ammunition from US at a premium price. It is just like giving out a voucher in place of cash from departmental store which sells the same product at unreasonably high prices as a token of gratitude. India has maintained its clause of technology transfer instead of just ammunition sale with Russia, which has enabled the Indian Military to maintain and produce cheaper ammunitions at the same standards. Signing this treaty, makes this advancements a part of history, and all the ammunition would have to have "made in usa" tag attached to it.

The treaty does not contain the same clause as the one signed by China, which allows China to prohibit USA to terminate the treaty based on any internal laws. This means, US congress can pass any new law which would make India's life miserable, and India would have to abide by it, or risk running out of the fuel bringing everything back to square one.

The treaty enables Washington to claim all the fuel supply it has provided to New Delhi, in case of termination. Though Washington would have to provide sufficient financial reimbursement for the fuel at the current market prices, it means India would not gain anything. Washington has a month's notice to reimburse, which provides enough time to force the market to collapse, bringing the prices cheaper to what India paid while procuring those fuel.

This is what I have thought reading numerous blogs online about the whole episode. If someone beg to differ, I would be more than happy to learn new facts.

Signing off now, and good luck India.

The US media is at its hypocritical best again.

The title of this post may sound absurd to most of you guys, but I was compelled to write this note after reading the said article online.

Well it all started when some gujarati association decided to invite the Chief Minister of the state who happens to be Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi, did not wanted to be in the news for any wrong reasons, so he asked for a initial confirmation from the ministry of states affairs whether he will be granted a visa. He said, he would confirm his attendance only after receiving a written assurance that his visa application would not be declined, or else he is happy to address the dinner summit via video conferencing.

That is a very good calculated step by a diplomat, to avoid farce situations like in 2005. In response to this, the Human rights activists in US, filed a petition with the Homeland security, to make sure, his visa application is not granted, keeping in mind the Gujarat Riots during early years of this decade.

By no means I condone what happened, because loss of life is always condemned irrespective of caste-creed-religion or region.

The above said petition is in staunch contrast to what happens in US daily. US and UK attacked Iraq in pretext of WMDs which they have failed to find till date. No leaders have been yet brought to charges for any inhumane acts that were carried out in Abu gharib jails in Afghanistan. Millions of people have been displaced, and thousands have lost their lives, during these years of war in Middle East, but no human right association seems to care.

One company which was closely related to Osama bin Laden, was allowed to bid for a contract to build a memorial in place of WTC towers. Many radical muslim leaders have been allowed to move freely between UK and USA, and no one seems to bother. Queen of England, have been in authority, when slavery and apertheid was carried out, but still no one cares when the office decline to issue an apology for all that was done.

There have been clearly no human rights movement when millions of people were killed in Burma, or China. No human rights activists have came forward to file a petition for ban on the olympics in China.

So my question is why target just one man? But then after a bit of thought, I realised these facts.

The annual growth rate of Indian economy has been outstanding, and they have been less and less reliant on the US market every year. Long gone are the days, when India used to survive on the cheap labour market. Indian IT companies have started competing on quality labour with quality output to the foreign companies. Most of the clientele now confirms, the decision to do business with India, is not just cost driven, but the attitude of the Indian staff.

Funneling down this Gujarat has lately seen the onset of IT companies, which historically used to have base only in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and other metros. The point to be noted here is that the companies are not shifting base, but are expanding, so Gujarat is essentially capturing new markets for India.

Gujarat has been attracting the largest FIIs in last few years amongst those from USA. Also when Narendra Modi urged the people from Gujarat who have now settled down in US and are doing well, to invest in their mother land back in 2005, people realised their duty, and money started to flow.

This is not just a case of one state in India, but most of the NRIs are financing major schemes throughout the nation. So the opposition of this was bound to happen in the first world. Remember English media cried foul when County league cricketers left England for more lucrative IPL and ICL tournaments.

Coming back to the point, Narendra Modi, has proved himself as an excellent orator, and a public charmer. Even though he was denied a visa in 2005, he managed to succeed in what he called a mission to raise awareness of Gujarat as an investment destination amongst non resident gujaratis.

So when history was bound to repeat itself, the media is already speculating if Narendra Modi draws investment in huge proportions especially when the markets are on the verge of recession. The US media does not want an Indian diplomat to come to their soil, and drive away their investments, so they have started the same thing in whatever pretext they get.

Mind well, Narendra Modi has been elected by the people of Gujarat who the US human rights claim to be the victim. I suggest George Bush or Tony Blair (Should be Gordon Brown now!) stand an election of US president and let people of Iraq and Afghanistan vote for them and decide for themselves, whether they need to deny visa for an indian diplomat!!!

What is it being an international student in UK especially London - Part 2

Welcome to the second issue of the series. After I wrote my last entry, I realised that this topic is quite vast, to cover over few blog entries. And also, over the last few weeks, the traffic on my site has kept on increasing, so I was forced to have some new and better content for the site. For those of you who don't know, I started to develop a site www.web-geeks.co.uk in january 2008, and planned to make the site live by the end of april, which unfortunately could'nt do it.
I am not being lazy, or careless, but it just turned out to be quite a busy work schedule, which might be obvious from the number of blog entries during those months. But the project I was working on, is set to go live next week, and would be having some extra time working on my site from then onwards. So I would be able to get it live ASAP. The user interactivity would not be live for quite a while, but you can drop me an email, or communicate through this blog.
As for this topic, I am going to start a new section on my site, so would be redirecting you guys to the new section, which would contain quite a lot of information about studying abroad, and some help in UK and a lot of useful information about London and it's suburbs.
So till then keep reading everything else on this blog!

What is it being an international student in UK, especially London!

I knew this post was coming down the lane. Actually I was planning to write it way back in January, but just got away with it. Okay here is a brief history of why I am writing this blog entry. I came to London to do my masters in computing from University of Greenwich. Since I graduated back in 2006, I have been receiving lots of mails, from prospective students about how it is to study and stay in London. Initially I replied their questions on a one to one basis, but then I thought it is too much of efforts, and it would be better for everyone if I just write something at this place. So if some one asks me anything, I can direct their questions to this blog, which could be a one stop reference point for future students.
Okay then, first thing first. The moment you take a decision to study in UK in a university, make it very sure in your mind, it is going to be a costly affair. The education in UK at a higher level is one of the costliest around the world, but quality has its price. Most of the time people compare being a student in US and the same here, but it is not fair. The masters in US is for two years, which you are suppose to complete in UK in just one year over two semesters. Also while you are studying in the second semester, you have to start working on your project and/or dissertations.
So the point here is even though it is very costly to study and maintain yourself, it is virtually impossible to do a part time job and sustain your self. In best case, you will be able to work and manage your petty expenses, but if you think of paying your fees on your own, then London or frankly speaking UK is not the right option.
And then coming to the job scenario, we as Indians, are hard working lot, and this quality is highly appreciated in London. You should be thankful to your predecessors over here, and make sure you maintain the legacy. But then getting a job is not that easy, as you have to manage to cut the red tape at all the junctions, starting from getting your national insurance card, to opening a bank account, to getting your term times sorted from the university or college. This is not to discourage you here, but just to make sure, you realise the pitfalls before you actually step in.
That is the story of once you arrive here, but what should you do before that? Firstly do not trust your immigration consultant for whatever he says. There have been numerous occasions, when students paid a huge sum of fees, only to discover that the college does not exist over here. Not only you loose your money, it is illegal to stay in UK on a student visa in such case. So do check before hand. British Library or British Embassy near your home should be a perfect friend in such a case. If still in doubt, visit http://www.direct.gov and find out whether the college or university is authorised to take an international student on that particular course. You would be saving yourself a big shock by doing this check before hand.
Once you applied and received your admission and visa, plan for accommodation. Most of the universities has international student office, which help student find accommodation, if you wish not to stay on campus. For me, campus accommodation is the best option, as you make lots of friends from different cultures, and enjoy the most of the student life. The first thing you do as you join the university is get registered with a local GP and get a bank account. Abrupt changes in climate does take a toll on your body, and you don't want to stay in troubled water without NHS registration. Once that is done, visit the student rep, and ask him how should you start up things. One advantage of living in campus accommodation, is that you can attend student parties in the student union bar, yes you read it correctly. Apparently beer and chicken tikka masala has been woven very deep into the British fabric.
I guess this is a pretty long entry. I would write the next entry as to how to go about searching jobs, and surviving the home sickness. Till then keep reading and visiting.

Indian Railway, where are we going!

These weekend, I had a discussion with few of my friends, who were students of business, and they were quite mesmerized by the turn around of Indian Railways. Being a son of a railway employee, I was quite interested in anything related to railways.

Well it turned out to be quite a real life enactment of the movie Guru. One could only wonder of how one small step could turn into such a giant change in the Indian economy. This post is my view of what Lalu as a minister did to catalyse this change.
Since the independence, majority of the nationalised institutions have been used by the government to increase their vote bank. Starting from rationing the fuel, reservations in the jobs, production in factories, and even railways. Every year, the railway minister used to discontinue few trains, and start a few others, extend some networks, and prune it from somewhere else. Though the reasons given were administrative efficiency, and maintainability, most of the time it were populist decisions based on regionalism.

When Lalu prasad yadav, joined the cabinet of the congress government, it was assumed by the media, that railway is going bihar way. But one good decision by Lalu, to allow the chairman of Indian Railway make decisions, and suggest some administrative changes, turned out to be blessing in disguise.

The first change came in the budget. Every year, the fares have been increasing, without major upgrades in the facilities for the passengers. Even the safety and security have been overlooked many a times. The first budget was viewed in this context of being populist. But the railway introduced some major changes in ticketing policy.

The on-the-spot ticketing system also known as tatkal, where a passenger has to pay a premium to get a confirmed seat on the last moment, was expanded to most of the trains. Also the maximum seats available in a train was increased. This turned out to be a welcome step, as passenger were already paying premium (read as bribe) to the hooligans, who occupied the seat by force, and then illegally sold them off. Now those money could be diverted to the railways, which would then be utilised in upgrading the infrastructure.

The second major change was the introduction of private partnership. Even though steering away from the privatisation of railways, the Railway board, started to contract off certain, tasks such as maintenance of stations, parking facilities at station based on long term lease contract. The biggest advantage of this was the introduction of job insecurity. Being a government employee, kind of insures your job in India, but working for a private contractor, each and every employee and their deeds were accounted for. This reduced the loss of manpower, and efficiency of the team increased manifold.

The third major change was leasing out the unused railway properties for further development. Historically, railways had owned quite a handsome amount of property everywhere in India. The first good use of this property was introduced in Mumbai, in last decade, when it was leased to farmers, who could set up small farms producing vegetables in kitchen garden size farms. These scheme was rolled out to major cities, and towns. Though the financial gain was minimal, but the unemployed entrepreneurs got some food for thought.

The next was commercialising the railway property. Historically, all the stations had a small lodging facility inside the station building, which was mostly unused as no one actually knew about it. The trial of creating shopping mall sort of facilities has been sanctioned at few stations this year. This would make the station more lively, and would roll in more revenues for the railways.
The railways has proposed a dedicated freight network, which would include special tracks which would be only used by freight trains, and the later would be able to avoid the passenger traffic, and hence would reduce the time of delivery. This means more freight contracts resulting in more money.

Even though Lalu has not attended a business school, or been to Harvard or Cambridge, he just let loose his imagination, and thought of some wonderful revenue generating ideas. Like the movie Guru, a simple man, who is being always considered as illiterate and idiot, one who is always mocked up by the media, has just achieved something that many could not even dream of.

By the way those of you who don't know, Lalu yadav, is a Law gradate from Patna University, and did pass his exams before he was sworn in as a CM, so should be genuine!

Sri sri Londonishwar does it again

Sorry friends for not uploading the pics and videos of the London Rathyatra on sunday itself. London summer, when it is windy, does knock me down by the hayfever. This is again surprising as I have been living around trees and plants for all my childhood, and never had pollen allergy, but I must confess, the pollens out here have the effect on me.

So before the blog goes somewhere else, I should revert back to the Rathyatra. Well I had planned to cover the Rathyatra from the start, but as it turned out, one of my friends had a puja in the Shrinathji Haveli from 12 - 1, and so I only managed to reach the Rathyatra on its destination, the Trafalgar square.

As I said in my last post, the met had predicted a wet afternoon, but it turned out to be a clear blue sky with a temperature of 21 degrees C. So the Jagganath prabhu did shower the blessings on the devotees for a wonderful afternoon.
I had a chance to record few performances by the devotees from Venezuala, who had composed the songs and music by themselves. It was a nice fusion with Hindi/Sanskrit/English words, with Latin American and Soul music.

I had taken these pics of the prabhu in his full glory, on the rath watching over all the devotees, and showering the blessings.
As compared to last year, the crowd was not that tremendous, but considering that it was a religious function, it was significant. One could not compare the crowd gathering on the Diwali on London festival, with such events, as DIL is organised by Mayor of London, and is an event which is supported by the Jains, Hindus, and Sikhs; whereas the Rathyatra is being organised by ISKCON, which is just an organisation that believes in Hindu ideologies.
Well I guess, I would write another blog entry on this topic someother day, but for now I would let you guys enjoy the photos and the video of the wonderful performance.

Signing off and Hari Bol to all devotees.

It is almost an year since I wrote my first blog entry....

Well honestly it's not; but I wrote the first blog entry about the Lord Jagannath Rath yatra in london last year. Here it is again a month earlier this year. Last year, many of my friends complained, about not taking enough pictures of the procession, and the function. Guess what, I am going to get some pictures, and some videos as well. This is going to be a tough test on my cam, as I have not used it since I bought it six months ago! I did try to shoot some christmas fun on the streets of london, but turned out I am not that good at handling the camera, but will try a bit harder this time round. Hopefully, for you guys, it will be a better quality thing this time.

By the way, the met has a forecast of heavy rain during parts of the sunday, so there is a probability of the day ruined by the rain. But if my memory does'nt betrays me, this happened last year as well, but Lord Jagannath managed to drive away the clouds, and it was a bright sunny day at Trafalgar square. And again the met has failed to predict the correct weather forecast for atleast last couple of weeks, so I wont be putting my money in there, but will be holding out a coat in case, they manage to do it this time.

Another event worth visiting this weekend would be the Ramayana at the British Library. I have been planning to visit the library since the day I landed in London, as I was mesmerized by the site which claims the huge collection of the books. I have been always put down, by being alone to go out; as it turns out, I dont have many friends out in London, who are interested in visiting museums and libraries instead of shopping trips! But my uni friend Viral, has volunteered to accompany me to the exhibition, so I think I might have found a museum buddy. But in any case, my sis is to shift back to London once she is done with her uni, so I would have a permanent company to all museums in london.Good times ahead!

And finally before signing off, keep visiting for photos and videos of london rath yatra.

I am back again

The month of May saw me working really hard on the CMS project. I did not realize the extent, until today, when I actually figured out, I have not been to the gym since a month or so; and I completely missed to write a single blog entry for the month of may! How odd is that?
Well the project is due to go live by the end of these week, but a sudden power failure in the office building saw us doing nothing at all for the entire morning. It was only at 2PM that our boss figured out that the servers are not going to be restored until sometime late evening, we just might have to kill the rest of the day. So he asked us if we wanted to go home. I mean, how good it would have been if he said that as soon as the engineer told him his approximate time of arrival!
By the way, for all those who are still trying to figure out what happened as to an entire office block was without power supply in the business district of London, I dont have a clue as to what really went wrong, but the initial speculations suggests, that a fuse blew off due to a power surge last night. If it were India, someone would have volunteered and restored the fuse till the engineer came and had a close inspection, but then we are in a developed world!!!
So this gave me some time to blog. One update that I really want to communicate is my trip to India. I did have a word with my manager, and it seems he is fine with my holidays. The dates are not yet fixed, but will book the tickets when they are cheapest starting from 19th of December to 30th of December. For any further details, keep checking this page!

Why would you want to even taste this?

A gourmet coffee blended from animal droppings is being sold at a London department store for £50 per cup.

Jamaican Blue Mountain and the Kopi Luwak bean are used to create Caffe Raro which is thought to be the most expensive cup of coffee in the world.

Kopi Luwak beans are eaten, then passed, by the cat-like Asian palm civet, and sell for £324 a kilogram.

All profits from sales of the coffee at Peter Jones in Sloane Square in April will go to Macmillan Cancer Support.

Ripest berries

Asian palm civets, which live in the foliage of plantations across south-east Asia, are said to pick the best and ripest coffee berries.

Enzymes in their digestive system break down the flesh of the fruit before the animals expel the bean.

The beans are then collected from the plantation floor by workers who wash away the dung and roast them.

David Cooper, who created the blend, said: "These rare coffees have been slowly hand roasted for around 12 minutes to ensure that we maximise the potential of each coffee.

"The final roast colour is quite dark to ensure that the espresso is perfect for a smooth latte or cappuccino."

And finally for those who think this is a joke, visit the site of the store, that sells them http://www.peterjones.co.uk

Fattest Day of the year

I had something worth while to read today morning. Usually the morning journeys to work are pretty boring, as the news papers are just verbose elaboration of what I watched on BBC breakfast while enjoying my porridge. Most of the time though, I am seriously not interested in the news, the reason most of the time is the British way of representing the news.
But today morning one headline caught my attention. The metro said statistically today "the second day of the April" is the fattest day of the year! I was compelled to read further. The reasons stated for so called results were

• Christmas is well past, and you no longer feel the guilt of stashing up those calories during the feasts.
• Summer days are still couple of months away, and hence you dont really visualize yourself in the beach gear, and hence dont mind the delay in getting rid of those fats.
• The financial year is just past, and most of us has received some kind of bonus or appraisals.

Well for me the reasons, seems to be quite justified, but are not encouraging for people like me, who seriously are keeping up with the health regime. I also found couple of more reasons not quoted in the article, which are as follows.

• All the gym offers usually run through until end of march, so this is the period, when the membership fees rise for those really interested in keeping the fitness schedule on the road.
• The financial year just commences, and hence those who did not get better appraisals, or the more aspirational lot of the office venture into greener pastures, so hell lot of leaving lunches and leaving drinks.
• The clocks have just gone an hour early, so body clock is still confused, and you dont really get up early to get yourself healthy pack-lunch, and survive on whatever junk food you can place your hand on during the buzy lunch hours.
• This is the time of year, when I have most of the marriages to attend, so almost every weekend, I have a wedding to attend , and not to mention those calory ladden Indian dishes to savour (by the way this implies to all those Indian friends).
• If you carefully look around, most of the superstores have fantastic offers going around especially chocolates, which they didnt manage to sell during easter, or if the easter is not yet arrived they have promotions for easter eggs and lots of chocolates.

So I do not blame on any individual, for quitting their efforts on this day. By the way is it a co-incidence, that I missed my shopping turn yesterday, and hence did not have anything to make my lunch today. So think am going to have a pub lunch today! But before you write me off, I am going to burn those calories in the gym tonight definitely!

And I thought my name "Rasesh" is quite unique

I used to believe that I have quite a unique name, untill today. Since my school days, I only knew of one person apart from me who had the same name, and he was a chap who lived near my place, and fortunately he did not have exactly the same name. His name was "Rasesh Shah" and mine "Rasesh Dave".

Today morning just out of curiosity, I googled my name trying to find where exactly my baby site, and my blog fares. Surprisingly, even the query "Rasesh Dave London" did not get my sites or blog on the first page of the results, although all the entries that came as a result were either my posts on other blogs, or my contact details on the social networking sites. This prompted me to further trim down the query to just "Rasesh Dave". Again this resulted in my site coming at about 9th position.

Quite content with the result, the final blow came when I typed in just "Rasesh". Wow, I did not find a single mention of me in the first 13 pages! Google statistics suggest, that people do not go beyond 3rd page for the organic search results, so I pretty much can imagine now, the trouble my friends might be facing to locate me in the world wide web!

So I have tried to increase the chances of my name coming a bit further up that previous results, by keyword spamming in this blog. I just hope it works!

By the way for all those of you who are new to the field of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), this might serve as a classic example of how to enhance the site ratings with keyword spamming, which is not necessarily same as keyword littering. Also if you think of helping me improve the ratings, please give me a link on your blog to my site "http://www.web-geeks.co.uk", and I will reciprocate the favour!

Back to Internet, and Back to blogging!

This has been an eternal wait, it seems. Even though it just took 10 days (10 working days; to be specific) for the O2 to start the broadband services, it did seem ages.
So I received the email from them that my services have been started, so all I need to do is go home, plug in the router/modem they have sent me in, run a CD and it should be ready to roll out!
So the next blog post would be coming out from the new O2 broadband service! Meanwhile don't forget to hit my upcoming site http://www.web-geeks.co.uk.
Any suggestions are welcome, and will try to keep on improving the contents and lay out for the site.

Life without internet!

Well, don't get shocked with the title, it's actually living in a house with no internet access!

It started down last week, when I was thinking of shopping around for a better deal in broadband, and the best deal I could have got was from o2, my mobile provider. When I rang them up, they said, I need to have a BT line in order to access their broadband services, and hence I had to transfer my telephone line as well.

Just out of curiosity, I asked, how long it takes to port over the broadband, and they said, 4-5 working days! Well, that should not be a problem for guy like me, who has internet access in the office (apart from certain sites :P though). Then I contacted BT, that I need to port my telephone line from Bulldog DSL back to BT, to which they said that it will take about 11 days to port over. This is to provide the existing provider substantial amount of notice, wherein they can pretend, they have better service, by offering the customer discounts, or freebies. Bulldog did exactly the same, and they offered me a straight 30% off on my existing invoice amount, if I stayed with them.

But because I will be having a better deal from my new provider, and have been facing blackouts from Bulldog, I just decided not to accept the offer. Then I called up O2, to inform them that my telephone line will be taken over by BT on 13th of this month, so I would like them to kick start my new services sometime then. I was expecting that they take the early notice, to minimize the down time and may be able to provide me the broadband asap.

Now comes the tricky bit. O2 can only start the process, after they see that the line is a BT line on their system, which would not have been the case till 13th of March! So they asked me to call back on 13th of march. I called up on 13th just to know, that their system sometimes takes time to get updated, and it might take upto 24 hours to get the fresh(!) date from BT.

So called up on 14th, and the gentleman kindly did take all the details off me, and placed my order. The estimated date for the start of my broadband service was given as 25th of March! What???

The reason given by the O2 support staff was as follows. Basically they need to pull out the network cable from the BT router and plug it in the O2 router at the local telephone exchange, which astonishingly is about 5 minutes walk from my place! To do this job of say 1 minute maximum, they need to apply for the appointment with the BT exchange support manager. He will give a tentative slots of appointments, which needs to be matched with availability of the O2 network engineers. This date has also to take into consideration the time it takes for the O2 to ship the free Wireless router (which I was ready to sacrifice, for getting an earlier date).
So this comes down to about 12 days of internet blackout at my place, and hence all my schedules of making the site live by the end of March are shattered to pieces!

I just imagine, what did people do before internet?

Richest Man in the world

They say United we stand, Divided we fall; this proverb has to be believed now, as the list of richest man on the earth is set to roll out by Forbes. Going through the list, I saw the huge amount of injustice prevailing in the world. I dont say, that people must not be rich, nor do I support communism, but just a thought crossed my mind, that if all these people in the top, adopted a small country, in Africa, Latin America, or any other small poor community, and work for the betterment of the society, will the world not be a better place to live.
I mean, I have been seeing the ads from the charity organisation saying £5 given to them goes a long way to improve the life of someone in the third world, and here we sit talking in billions. I do acknowledge that the people on the top are working with charities, and donating millions of $$, but something is wrong somewhere, as the life stays the same for the poor, and the rich.
If you eradicate the poverty from the African states, the violence would automatically stop, and that would result in reduced threats to the so called civilized world. That would be money well spent, I guess!
I would be editing the post tomorrow, as I have a day off into the week end, so check back for some serious stuff as well.

Blu-ray Discs are here to stay!

This weekend saw speculations in the international market, that the HD-DVD giant Toshiba is planning to scrap the production of the HD DVD format.

The firm has said that it was still reviewing its business strategy, and there have been absolutely no decision about the format, but the market specialist claims, after the defection of major hollywood studios to back the blu-ray format, the decision has to be made; sooner or later!

It all started last month just after christmas, when Warner Brothers decided to join the blu-ray wagon, for its future productions. So if you think of the business, there are only two significant names Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures who patronise HD DVD. But with the market moving away, they will apparantely have to switch as well!

So to sum it up, Blu-Ray is here to stay!

यह मेरी पहली हिन्दी ब्लोग पोस्ट है। मुझे नही पता कि अभी क्या लिखना चाहिऐ , परन्तु यह तो तय है कि यह मेरी आखरी हिन्दी पोस्ट नही होगी।
धन्यवाद।

What does India really need?

This question has been haunting me since quite a long time now. If you consider the potentials of the people, the vast geographic diversities, the inherent industrial opportunities, and above all, the historical inheritence, you see, no other country can rival India. But still something has been lacking in true essence.
I can still wish, there was a certain individual like Mohandas Gandhi, who could just get the Indians on their feet by a statement. I do know that he was just a mortal, and had committed quite serious errors, the price of which Indians are still paying and probably keep on paying for atleast half the next century.
Then suddenly one person comes to my thought, who can be just as charismatic and influential as he could be, and again he hails from the same land of Gujarat. No bonus marks for guessing his name, and that is Narendra Modi.
Just like Gandhi, he might have had an errorneous past, but then he does command a significant influence over the state of Gujarat, neighbour states, and to an extent even in the Parliament of India.
Talking about what India needs, I strongly believe India needs a leader like Modi, who with his eloquent speech, and charismatic personality, deliver what the upcoming generation wants. The next gen does not really care about hinduism or islam or christianity, but they want an environment in which they have opportunities and resources to prove their mattle. I remember those congress days when every election saw the motto of "Garibi Hatao", but no one dared to deliver.
India does not need reservations, or free seats, or bonuses; but what the people need is a true implementation of the natural law of selection. If you have the intuition, or calibre to succeed, there should be no bonds to prevent you from doing so. Reservation is one of those swords, which can cut by both the sides. Just because the upper cast in past did not leave a way for the others to prosper, it would be unfair to do the same to their present generation.
The ideal solution to the problem would be to encourage more educational institutions to open allowing access to more children. Instead making more victims, why not create more opportunities. Just because a section of society cannot get into main stream, why not broaden the horizon and expand the main stream to include those.
But again, as being known as a developing nation since past few decades, even though India has maintained one of the highest GDP ratio, throughout the world, we the Indians are used to the politics being played on us. But while my visit back home, I saw a completely different picture as compared to what the western media depicts.
I saw express highways, which lets you zoom at a speed of 80kmph, and cuts down the time and fuel consumption. I saw the new road development in Vadodara, and Ahmedabad, two of the biggest cities in Gujarat; and the efficiency of the beurocratic world was amazing. The banks have shed their usual lethargic image, and you can see everyone really busy, in the work and not over the phone! The railway station have become clean, safe, and more approachable.
This is just the tale of two cities, and I am confident, that the slogan given by the Gujarat government "Swarnim Gujarat" would prove what a person, with the support of his fellow citizens, can achieve.
But as Robert Frost said in the last century, Narendra Modi (can be applied to everyone to be honest), should believe in the following words:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
and miles to go before I sleep.

Instant Icecreams for kids!

The following is the recipe to make a sugary caramel syrup. It takes about 20 minutes to make this, or alternatively you can buy this from any super store. Whenever you need to serve soft ice-cream, get the whipped cream out of the fridge, put it in a cup, and decorate with the caramel syrup. You can ask the kids to either mix it thoroughly or just have it like strawberry sauce on vanilla ice-cream.
This has been my one of the favourite dessert, especially at those times, when you dont have anything around apart from a lump of jaggery or a spoon full of sugar.

Caramel Syrup:
Ingredients:

Large Stainless Steel Pot

2 Cups White Sugar

2 Cups Water

1/4 cup Corn Syrup

1/4 cup Maltose (Optional)

1/4 cup light caramel (Optional)
Steps:

1. In a pot, combine 2 cups sugar, 1 cup of water, and 1/4 cup Corn
Syrup. Reserve the other cup of water for later. Turn your stove to
“medium high.”

2. Bring the mixture to boil and place a lid on the pot for two
minutes. This will allow the steam created during boiling to wash the
sides of the pot.

3. Remove the lid and continue cooking until the sugar turns dark
amber / red. This will take about 10 to 15 minutes. When the sugar goes
from a golden colour to dark amber/red, it will happen very quickly, so
don’t leave the pot unattended.

4. If you notice that areas of sugar are turning darker quicker than
others, this means your heat is uneven underneath the pot. You can
rotate the pot to balance this out, or very gently swirl the sugar.

5. As the temperature approaches 195°C (about 400°F) have the lid to
the pot, two oven mitts and the reserved cup of water ready.

6. Once sugar has reached the temperature, or proper colour, remove
the pot from the heat and add the cup of water quickly and place the
lid over the pot. CAUTION! Adding water to hot sugar results in a lot
of sputtering and steaming. The steam and flying blobs of hot sugar can
burn, so use your oven mitts and stay back once you add the water.

7. Once the volcanic reaction has subsided, you can start stirring
the mixture. This will help dissolve the clumps of undissolved caramel.
The temperature of this liquid is still very hot!

8. Upon cooling to about 65°C you can add 1/4 cup of Maltose Sugar
(Maltodextrin) and stir until dissolved. This will help give the syrup
a thicker consistency the results in a silky texture when added to
drink. You can get maltodextrin at any home brew or wine making shop.

9. The light caramel syrup can be added to give your dark caramel a
sweeter taste. If the caramel has been over cooked, this will help
balance out the flavour. If you find the dark caramel syrup to have an
adequate level of sweetness you can skip it. Light caramel syrup is
made the same way as the dark version but you only cook it until it’s a
medium amber colour.

10. Store caramel syrup in glass bottle

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Unfair rules from London Underground (tfl)

In the heat of mass promoting the oyster cards, Tfl forgot to iron out some serious issues which does hit them quite hard financially. One such issue is allowing to terminate the journey with negative balance on your oyster card.
I have seen lots of visitors in London who do not pay for the last journey in the city, and leave the city with negative balance on the card. I agree, that trains do not allow to commence a new journey, but if that is the last journey who cares. Same is true for monthly oyster cards. If you buy a monthly pass, you get an oyster for free, that is without any security deposit! So every month you accumulate oysters, and then have free journeys throughout london for once!
These are the losses if tfl can override, will save quite a handsome amount of money, and the honest commuters might be spared a fare rise next year! Because I am a software developer, I can say, it wont be that difficult to change the current system, to include this minor changes!

Mayor Ken, are you listening?

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