September 2007 Archives

A sudden thought.. and I was wondering where all these human beings I come across came from. It started after I saw the usual thing that irritates me while I am driving.. seeing somebody spit on the road with all the ignorance they can show to keeping the city/place clean.

After cribbing to myself over it for few minutes, I landed up thinking about evolution of human beings. Yea, I know I am wasting lot of time thinking over a lot of things.. too much of the time.. but for now, this thought I think is worth sharing.

Born in Africa:
Most of us know or have read somewhere that the human species emerged from Africa. Many findings and researches on the species and evolution of life on earth, have only confirmed this, times too many.

Some interesting questions come up.. which we probably don't seem to ponder over much:

Does Africa look like the cradle of the earth..
Has mankind(including women) done "anything" interesting to the birthplace of us all.

Some of us take extraordinary measures to keep the birth place of our gods and goddesses, or the birthplace of our religious beliefs in great shape and with all sacred-ness attached.

What have human done with Africa.

SouthAfrica is a great place.. that's fine.
But what we see in at least the rest of africa is not like anything respected as the birthplace of human species.. it only looks the other way.. like the butchering place of human species.. take Darfur.. take Rwanda..

Is it then always like.. migration takes off the love you have for your starting point? I haven't migrated much, so I don't know.. but looks like migrations not only take off love, it just detaches you from the original world. Its like we shifted from Earth to Mars, and ignored about back home, because we consider it somebody else's place.

Migration does a lot to people.. thanks to that fairer skin some of us have, only because our species moved to colder parts of earth. But this shift in migration has changed a lot more, a lot in how people live, and how they see different parts of the Earth.

To the American president, America is the world.. and the other part.. is called the "Rest of the world". I think most American president's have famously used the 'Rest of the world' thing in all their speeches.. at least their election campaign speeches.

The Genographic project:
Not geo-graphic.. but geno-graphic.
The national geographic channel.. has this project.. studying the migration of human species from genes... genes that are voluntarily donated from people around the world.

Anybody(human.. :o) is welcome to donate.. if you want to, you can sign-up on their website, buy a gene kit, which you will use to extract a small sample of blood from your body and send it with your details, your immediate parent details, and your place of stay or migration history from however high the family chain you can remember.. if you wish to, you can send your details anonymously without your name or exact street address and all.

They will take a few months.. and send you back a gene map of your evolution(by email only).. with details particularly stating how you came to where you are... from Africa.. of course, they have their disclaimers of the accuracy of the map because it is simply based on the number of donor samples they receive from around the globe. Also, they add your gene mapping to the world's gene mapping they are creating.

Off track:
For now.. I think I remembered the song 'Born in Africa' by Dr.Alban.. one of my favorites years back. These days, probably Dr.Alban is too old for the music industry and he doesn't seem to release anything.. My other favorite of Alban's was.. "It's my life".

If you are coming to chennai.. or trying to understand the forecast for weather in chennai.. then do yourself some good in checking weather.com or any source other than chennai meteorological department.. or sometimes read that as dont believe any of india's met departments itself.

All those lazy idiots in chennai's MET dept, will do anything to remain lazy nuts at work forever. And it is better we all started using google Earth or weather.com for weather stuff.

Yesterday, there was this 30 mins of rain with good winds and in some places it even rained ice pellets it seems. When asked, the met dept people lazily told media that they recorded nothing except a few cms of rain. To repeated questions of the nature of the rain and stuff, all they got is 'we didnt record anything'.

I even see some simple people interested to find out why it rained suddenly and google for it or ask people about it.. but met dept, hah.. they are happily sleeping noticing nothing. Who will ask.. its a government job.. and may be they will one day even say, "you still don't use google earth for these things".. Atleast if they didn't record anything, they could have always said, something like this... we are trying to understand reports from places.. but for now, we have not recorded anything since in the places where we have our weather monitoring units there wasn't anything other than rain...or whatever.

I remember .. after tsunami struck south india, a news channel (i think NDTV) did a casual interview of indian space research organization's chairman then.. and trickily the host pulled a slappy last question where she asked.. "you say you have all these satellites.. mostly weather satellites or imagery satellites..and have more plans / research stuff.. but what good was all this if you couldn't make a warning even 5 minutes before the tsunami.. or you didn't even record a tsunami". For which, the man stupidly smiled and had no useful answer.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chariman and Managing Director of Bharti Group was on DD in an interview. This was my first of Sunil Mittal's interview.. and perspective of things.

Like all entrepreneurs, he was too inspiring.. with each answer. The interview host wasn't great.. and DD's was a lousy interview set.. and so the only thing bright and interesting on the interview was sunil.

I knew only today that Sunil has a political background.. his father being a workaholic politician, first with punjab government, then at the national politics, and later at the UN level. His mother a caring, motivating punjabi house-wife.

Things he said (not in any particular order):

Like all children, inevitably, sunil had his parents influence at the age of schooling or college.. his father had a minimum 16-hr work cycle.. and he shared less with his father because he was busy, but admirable for his workaholic nature. His mom was very motivating and would always ensure things that were neccessary to bring up her children well and to make them successful in their careers later.

Sunil wears a ruby, and he does believe that everything is controlled by the laws of the universe, and there are cosmic forces and things like the ruby in his finger could influence the cosmic force. In his younger days he had a small humble one due to his wallet that time, and now only that the size has become bigger.

When it comes to business, he admires Sam walson, founder of walmart, a lot.. for it was a lot of hard-work for a lot many years of sam walson that walmart is what it is today.. and also for the reason that sam walson's ideals and view of business are very much like what sunil himself believed.

When asked about whether he is happy with the governments in india.. and their attitude towards growth and problems and whether they should do more.... he said he is little both ways.. good is done.. but whether all six cylinders are firing.. then the answer is no. A lot more has to be done.. and importantly if india had to shine, it also has to lift lower-strata of people who are not in sync with the growth today.. Sunil believes that india cannot shine with just 15% of people growing.. but we should fire all six cylinders and all strata of people have to grow.

He said, he was fortunate, and current generation of people are all fortunate, to witness the kind of development and transformation that has happened in India in last 10 years alone.. in that india has moved from socialistic economy to enabling economy (he doesn't use capitalistic economy).. and that an enabling economy has encouraged industries and sectors, enabled people to earn more, consume more.. and hence this kind of growth.

He said he was happy to have been successful with bharti group.. and that from humble beginnings, today they are household names in india with airtel and b-Tel services... and they are looking forward to being successful in new ventures like horticulture.

Bharti is into horticulture.. for opening an avenue in exporting lot of fresh produce from the country abroad.. and said its happening and should take quite sometime, because we still dont have cold-storage chains (for protecting food/produce), neither we have airports in all those villages, or nearby, which are rich in agriculture.

For the question, whether he was trying to mint money from agriculture as much as with his tele-communication enterprise, he said.. money making is there.. but for now it is simply for the sake of opening avenues in that industry and making a transformation there.. now we cant make money because like in all businesses, you have to burn a lot of money even to get to the region where you might have the thought of success..let alone success happening.

For his thought on the reason for getting into horticulture.. he says..
We were discussing about new ventures into other areas .. after having tasted success with our tele-communications business and having made it considerably stable and sustainable over the years..
and the immediate thought that came to us was agricultural produce.. india is blessed with a lot of irrigation, sunshine.. (he said something about india being the worlds 2nd best in sunshine and stuff like that.. but i forgot now i think).. and we have more than 60 million people involved in the agriculture of land.. and there is a huge potential here.. very promising.

For his thought on sharing any philosophy with viewers, he said..
the difference between doing what you like, and liking what you do is as simple as being superbly successful or having an average performance. and india is a country where many parents force their children into a career and the children start getting to like what they do, rather than doing what they like.
he said.. if you have the luxury of doing what you like, as against liking what you do.. "Go for it"

He also shared that in western countries.. children get out and live alone and learn life after they are 18.. no matter how much ever rich their parents are, they live separate after 18.. and thats in a way what makes them all driven and have better attitude. In india, the case is different, and we have to grow our own way, and find and grow attitude within people, and the transformation that has happened in the last decade is very promising.

There was more. that he said.. or shared.. which was inspiring.. but i think i have listed what was the core of the interview. After typing this.. i wish i had shared something about all those interviews, speeches that had inspired me also here in blogs.. may be i will later start a TV channel and only telecast interviews.. hah.. what an (i)dea.

This is an old one.. was searcing for it today and found images and steps in a website.

ok. do you want your cappucino to look like above. Here's how

Wow.. chennaiist ran an interesting post on a tamil columnist Jasmine Ramesh..

While the post is a small interview they had with the writer, the portion that interested me was about a question the writer once raised with kalam and what kalam had replied for that.

I quote this from chennaiist:

Question: I'd asked him why professionally successful people like him don't care too much about their appearances.

Answer Sir APJ Adbul Kalam - the former (and the most favorite) president of india, gave:
"Once, soon after the successful launch of an Indian satellite, I'd gone to meet the then Prime Minister, Mrs.Indira Gandhi. Owing to the late working hours and tension, I'd gone in a crumpled and dirty attire. The watchman refused to let me in saying I was not dressed fit enough to meet the PM. The PM came personally and told the watchman-'He wears the clothes of victory! What can be better than that?' and welcomed me in. From that day, I decided that a man is what his nature and achievement is!"

"Clothes of Victory"
That's something I hear for the first time.. and think will relish knowing this for a long time to come.

As far as I read or as I can remember, this thing doesn't appear in kalam's biography "Wings of Fire" too (if i am right).

Parcel delivery from space, experiment attempted:

Imagine you are kid in a high-rise residential apartment, say on the 13th floor.. and you wanted to deliver a box parcel to your friend in the 4th floor. As a kid you would probably tie the box to a long rope and slowly drop it near the 4th floor where your friend picks it up.. (and ofcourse you make sure you get back the rope)

This same thing was tried recently by a russian space mission where they wanted to test a parcel delivery from a spacecraft 500km away from earth.. What was planned is like this: They had a spherical capsule for the parcel.. tied to a tether (fiber rope) which they planned to drop towards earth.. since at space the parcel is assumed zero weight the rope only had to be a holder rather than a carrier for the weight. .. once within a space where there's considerable gravitational pull from the earth, they wanted to release the rope from the spacecraft, so that the capsule entered earth by the gravitational pull and once inside earth's atmosphere it would parachute to ground or water.

Some 500 students all over the world were preparing the experiment which went on board a russian unmanned space vehicle. The vehicle which itself was an experiment.. being an unmanned vehicle, was carrying a few other experiments like this parcel thing.

Since the spacecraft was 500km away, the rope had to be atleast some percentage of that to stretch the parcel towards earth's gravity.. so the rope was 30km long (probably wound into a coil placed inside the spacecraft).

Also, once the rope is uncoiled to its full length stretching the parcel down, there was a plan to swing the vehicle in such a way that while releasing the rope the parcel at the end of it, due to the swing, would have some momentum to move faster towards the earth(otherwise it had the risk of losing track to any other planet's gravitational pull).

Unfortunately.. while performing this test, the rope probably failed unwinding or uncoiling after about 8.2 kms of unwinding... probably got stuck.. they had to cut down the rope without having 30km of it deployed and so the experiment was a failure.

But the attempt was interesting to learn about. This test was to find out whether this could be a low cost method of transfering heavy cargo or equipment back to earth from future space missions, rather than spending all that fuel and cost to have a space vehicle like 'space shuttle' carry cargo back to earth.

I was amazed at the idea.. Imagine, a whopping 30km long rope hanging from a space vehicle trying to release a parcel back to earth.

Other things I was amazed about:
> That the rope or tether used was half-a-millimeter thick.. just (.5mm).. obviously, otherwise how would have they got 30km of it coiled in a vehicle.
> They made the rope with a material called Dyneema which they say is the world's most strongest fibre.. also used by kite surfers.

What I probably wondered or didn't like was:
> Why did they require more than 500 students to design or plan this.. 500 is a very large number. I doubt whether all 500 students participated actively in the project, or whether they all just subscribed to it like subscribing to some yahoo group.
> Also, it would have taken a hell a lot of time with so much people, to agree upon all the design components for this experiment.

Links:
PDF document on the experiment

Analysts have been even thinking of tethered satellite stuff.. satellites connected to another by tether.. read about this here.

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NASA's two kids in mars have a happy life:

It has been three years and NASA's mars rover machines, the SPIRIT and the OPPORTUNITY are still listening to commands from earth and are actively researching the martian soil further, sending photographs,etc.,

The machines originally designed only with a plan to make sure they sustain atleast 90 days on Mars, now living up to 3 years, and recently surviving a 6-week long huge dust storm without being disconnected from communications with earth, is all great news for the team behind it.

It seems the controllers on earth stations for the two machines, did a great job during the dust storm, in ensuring that whatever possible was switched off on the machines(except communications with earth of course) to make them use less power because during the dust storm the machines don't receive enough sunlight to generate electricity through their solar panels.

Last month, NASA has sent another machine to mars.. the PHOENIX.. (launched August 2007 from earth), and the travel would take so long that PHOENIX would reach mars only in May 2008.

Imagine! if mars had water and they decided to send a few people up there.. it would be a 9 month travel.. in all the darkness of space, with all unfriendly things around.. and further, in zero gravity.

he he.. I have a list of friends who I want to nominate for such a travel.. :o)

Links:
Mars exploration details

Image sources:
NASA.gov, esa.int, spacetoday.org

Had a good laugh at the first joke here

No its not teacher's day today.. but I am writing this post so late.. yea, I seem to always write delayed posts especially because I am probably not specifically a writer who can get used to writing stuff because there's this occasion or something.

I think some discussions with friends at cry.org volunteer meet-ups, have got my head rolling on some thoughts on education, standards of education in India, and what quality of teachers we have at schools, etc.,

While I am probably a 51% pessimist, and would love to use another opportunity to critique the system like it is most often in my posts, this one is for good teachers I have seen, who have inspired me to see things differently.

My favorite subjects at school were simply the ones taught by my favorite teachers at school.. I tend to believe it is so for everyone, that they start having a liking a subject if that subject's teacher is very kind, inspiring and motivating apart from being a good, communicative teacher.

And my most hated subject was zoology, its not that I don't like animals or anything, but because my zoology teacher always found interesting ways to harass me or humiliate me in front of the class because my scores were extra-ordinarily low in her subject.. probably she strangely thought that all her humiliation was going to improve my interest towards the subject.

Botany (and biology later) were my all-time favorites because of my botany teacher at school.. who went great extents to teach the subject more lively and innovatively.. For that, she would go all extent around the city, to find some plants or animals and bring them to the class to show us live what is 'moss' or, how an owl's eyes really looked, or how a rat goes to sleep long hours after smelling some chloroform.
She would give us interesting homework.. "catch a cockroach".. she would even explain where we can find cockroaches at home... how to catch them by their antennas.. how to pack them alive in polythene packs... and bring them to class the next day. the next day morning, even before school starts everyone would be trying to show-off their designer cockroaches and start exaggerating about why their cockroach find is more looky and fashionable and brave than what other people have caught. All that discussion would trigger a great interest to wait wait and wait eagerly till the botany class happens in the evening.
A few minutes after the class starts, we would all be doing the most obvious thing, tearing a leg or antenna from our cockroaches and counting how many segments are there as per the diagram on board.. Obviously you could hear girl screams from the 10th standard biology lab in our school every wednesday at 1pm.. (it is AVM school vadapalani chennai if you want to check out.. but i don't know whether they still do it so interesting even today.. or whether that inspiring teacher still works there).. even some boys faint, let alone girls.
Unfortunately, my interests were more to computers later, and I didn't specialize in biology in 11th or 12th.. otherwise I could have killed more rats, cockroaches, and all that. I heard many years back that one of the guys got very inspired and became a professional snake catcher... i dont know whether it was a rumour.

Physics:
My physics teacher was a young man in his 20's and he was one of the non-english teachers who spoke good, clear english. Before every physics class, two students would go and bring something from the physics lab into the class, and the teacher would follow. "So, what are we going to see today" was the surprise.. most often he would bring some boring shiny ball tied to a long string and let it oscillate from his table and ask us watch it.. "the pendulum and oscillations changed a lot in physics" he would say.. what! this string and the ball changed everything.. this man is nuts I would think.. until I learnt about oscillators and more science and more equipment in electronics at college.
Once, while he was teaching and writing the word 'parallelogram' on the board, he forgot whether it was single or double 'l'... (today we can dismiss such things as not a mistake, because we have American and British spellings always to justify mistakes). this spell check thingy caught him un-awares, and he was probably slightly embarrassed that he forgot the spelling.. for that one student even got excited and pulled the chalk out of the physics master's hand and added one more 'l' to the word to the laughter of the class.. 'Sir' was ok with that.. but probably he planned all day until next class to talk something about it.
The next day, the first thing he told in the physics class was.. a story of newton's real life, and how newton made small small mistakes in real life.. we all listened to the interesting story without realizing why he was telling us the story.. after the story, he said.. "this is how big people forget small things often.. " with a grin on his face depicting that he was a big shot like newton and forgetting two 'l's for that word was ok. everyone had a good laugh.. and many of us particularly admired his way of smartly justifying the previous day's joke on him.

There were quite a few teachers like this.. and quite a few teachers who would do nothing but read out from books or small bits of paper they made notes on. Similar experiences at college too.

Probably these experiences got me interested in teaching.. though I have not particularly been a teacher anywhere except for the 3 or 4 classes I enjoyed taking at my previous employment.. but unfortunately on programming and technologies.. not my favorite subjects.

Whenever I hear some interesting story or experience of a teacher.. or a student saying or blogging about his/her teacher, I tune in and start imagining the story.

Today, I was reading this friend's blog who has posted something on her experience with students.. which was touchy.

Western education system:
How can I end this post without comparisons with the western systems of education:

I have different perceptions about quality of education in other countries, and they keep changing simply because I have never visited (leave alone living in) a different country. But, the idea of schooling / education or the grade system or the syllabi, taken anything, I always have an unanimous feeling that the west's school system is best organized.. in terms of all that.. and importantly the policies and the education system itself.

The best thing I have heard about American schooling is, it seems they even recognize grades from home-schooling under certain conditions, which means students could study from home and still be eligible to apply to colleges when they are ready.. Imagine! .. if we had a proper system like that in India, it would mean, any child can study from home itself even if he/she is poor or cannot travel far for school, or doesn't have to quit education itself just because his/her poor parents find work in a different place away from school every few months. The kid, could still study from home, take up tests at centers, and still be eligible for college if only he/she had the drive and motivation to do so.

That would be interesting.

"Indians.. they always complain about their country.. blame each other.. and you waste a lot of time talking.. ".. was what I have read in blogs by foreigners, in reaction to debates and talk we host on our TV channels and news mags in india.

While I have read/heard a lot about this "indian attitude" thing as perceived by foreigners, especially from the US and UK, I never had any doubt they were wrong.. it was all real facts that I have seen living in this country.

Today, a conversation was triggered on an yahoo group I am part of.. as a cry.org volunteer. Thanks for vijay of that group who posted some information on a TV programme he found interesting on LokSabha TV where there was a speech by the chief editor of 'The Hindu's rural affairs section P.sainath.

It seems whenever the Parliament is not in session, the channel telecasts this programme at 4:30 pm. Many experts come and talk on diverse topics.

Considering Lok sabha TV is not some interesting, commercial, popular, channel.. if you by any accident have it on your TV (only in india), may be you can tune in on such programmes.. schedules are at: http://164.100.24.208/ls/lstv/dailyschedule.aspx

So, today, there was this programme.
Parliamentary Lecture Series - Featuring lectures by eminent experts to Parliamentarians... P.Sainath speaks on “The Farm Crisis: Why have more than a lakh farmers ended their lives in India”, followed by a Q&A interaction with Members of Parliament

I quote the summary.. of what Mr.P.sainath spoke.

"India's NREGA(national rural employment guarantee act) ensures 100 days of work with a minimum pay of Rs. 60 per day... whereas the diary subsidies in the USA is like $3 per day per cow(for all 365 days). Which is equal to Rs. 120 per day! Sainath remarked that the dream of every Indian farmer is to be born as an American cow!

Sainath noted that with Government continuously withdrawing bank operations from rural India, the farmers struggled hard for a debt of just Rs. 8000 at a decent interest rate last year. Whereas when he went home in urban India, he got a advertisement letter from a bank which was willing to give him loan for a luxury car at 6% without collateral!"

My opinion on this speech:

Mr.P.Sainath.. is known for saying things like "indian farmers are dreaming to be born in somalia... better than india.." and now, "indian farmers are dreaming of becoming US cows which have a subsidy of US$ 3 per day" is great. He is a magsaysay award winner for 2007.. and sure he is energitic.

It is so surprising that he is still with that immature line that we hear very often.. where we translate some counrty's cost of things and compare which country is better.. Economical comparison is not any indicator of a healthy life.. and economy has a different movement.. so this comparison is so immature.. I think japanese yen is much low priced than indian rupees, does that mean japanese farmers should come and live in india. interesting statements.

regarding P.Sainath's examples and speech: He complains all the time.. many people just do that unfortunately, and only blame it on this and that and whatever.. it would be great if he sometimes talks with some insight on how to correct problems or what is the reality.. i dont know whether he did.. but if he didnt, he missed a great opportunity to tell parlimentarians ways to correct issues rather than just say "US cow is better than indians.. or somalia is better than india" and stuff like that.

United states of america .. as far as my geography is.. is 3 times bigger than india by land.. and has just over 350 million people.. while india has 2 billion and growing strong .. it means US has to struggle a lot lesser than india to use its resources, taxes and everything properly and distribute it properly.

unfortunately every person in this country called an expert says population is this country's strength.. just because it can get more engineers and graduates (who we again sell to US and UK)..doesn't mean it is our strength. our population is what is eating away all resources which could have been well organized if only we had a controllable population.. so comparing US cows with indians is so unfortunate... i hope sainath coupled that description with some speech on giving reasons and suggestions for improvement also.

regarding somalia.. their story is also something similar.

I read in somebody's biography(i think jrd tata's) that population growth was extraordinary during indira gandhi's period and she realized late how it was or could become a problem.. and that's why in her period... they did so much talk and tried reforms on population control. whatever we have today in population control.. much of it was just started then.

New age tamil cinema music directors they are called.. many of them like harris jayraj, yuvan shankar raja.. and some oldies like deva, all had or have or with all possibility will have copied song tunes in their albums.

I was devastated some years back when I realized the music score for all songs in the film Mugavari by Deva, were just a copy of all songs in the entire album of backstreet boys. I don't how he lived with it.. but wouldn't it pain everytime you hear that song you created copying something else. what you earn money for so much of copying..

just because backstreet boys aren't going to sue somebody copying their records in chennai.. doesn't mean it is happily getting away.

They give reasons these days like "i am remixing it", or "its not a copy, but inspired by that song".. and all that.

Being genuinely inspired is different.. everyone learns their tricks of trade from somebody's else's work or book or on inspiration and admiration for someone or their stuff. But just reproducing the exact same thing is not what you should happily do.

The thing is, it lets the listeners happiness go out of them as soon as they realize it was a copycat. There's this secret set of music directors in tamilnadu i think, who consider some amount of music as open source.

Copying requires skill.. i don't know, but i tend to believe that atleast in music it needs real skill to reproduce what you hear.. so if that kind of skill is there to copy backstreet boys and make its tamil music a success then why not get to tune your own.

Not that deva, or harris or yuvan produce only copies.. 80% of their work is personal creativity.. or at least I will assume so until I listen to some similar tune from an oldie english or punjabi or hindi song.

yuvan transformed the international hit "who let the dogs out" to "enga area ulla varathe" for the film pudupettai.

Today I heard a punjabi song which is exactly what yuvan has reproduced in his latest hit in the film 'chennai 6000028'.. the song that goes 'jalsa pannu da.. gilma kaatu da'.. or whatever.

The irony is.. even the bits and pieces of auxilliary musical instruments in the song at places were exactly there in the punjabi song.

Even some film directors do this.. copying scene ideas from popular films.. as far as I remember director selvaraghavan.. his first hit kadhal konden itself had almost all scenes (except songs ofcourse) lifted from a collection of many english films with the psycho concept.. particularly the climax was lifted from an english film called 'Good son'.. the original had a mom holding her son and a friend's son hanging from a cliff to both her hands, and lets go her bad son at the end.

Many startup programmers in software, do this same thing.. no not letting go sons. :o)
but Googling.. they google for a particular logic of code, a task they are asked to program for a software, and copy it from some website to use it in their development.. and we nuts have to pay them high costs for doing the google thing. Thing is, atleast if they understand what they are copying and can handle errors or convert them to fit the slight differences in our actual requirements it would be great. These guys will particularly fight and argue a lot that some implementation is not possible because they don't know about the code they copied and can't change a thing because if it screws up they have to confess to plagiarism.

I only remember how, one NRI girl in the USA (from harvard i think) was a few months back caught for plagiarism for her successful best selling book.. she was internationally humiliated by the media everywhere, because she was paid hight for that book. She later accepted to plagiarism and returned the money her publisher paid her for the book.. which was close to half-a-million US$.. imagine.. happily copying some portions of work even if somebody is ready to pay that much of money.. and happily enjoying their moment of fame until embarrassingly getting caught.

Probably this is a concept indian kids are forced to inherit by parents and teachers when they are at school.. mugging up stuff and reproducing it on examinations is what 90% of children do in schools.. i did too, except for physics, biology and english. not many teachers teach with interest of driving the knowledge and understanding of the subject to the students.

and the effects of it.. yuvan shankar raja grows up to copy an english song.

This was a totally fabulous dance reality show on Sony entertainment in 2006.. (but I got to see it only now), which was retelecast on SAB TV recently... and I have been wanting to blog on it since then.

Jhalak dikhla ja, kindled the senses among other TV channels, and south indian channel Vijay TV did an equally popular show 'Jodi No.1', and many other channels are now catching up.

No wonder, the show's director was none other than the creator of kaun banega crorepathi siddarth basu (huh.. i never knew sony bought him over from star.. how did they). Siddarth is a programme format specialist for TV ever since the 90's when his quiz shows on Doordarshan created TV and movie stars out of the people who presented the quiz show 'CrossFire', which made the boring concept of crosswords extremely popular in india then. A dumbo myself then, it even triggered my interests in solving crossword puzzles.. and I think I did quite solve atleast 2 or 3 words in my daily newspaper.

Only problem with siddarth is.. all his shows are copy cats of international favorite TV shows from the west. Kaun banega crorepathi was copy of 'Who wants to be a millionaire'.. and jhalak dhikla ja was a copy of BBC's popular celebrity dance show 'Dancing with stars'.

Back to jhalak...
Jhalak showcased some surprise dancers alongwith professionals. Like many others, I never expected former cricketer Ajay jadeja to dance so good, leave alone chef sanjeev kapoor dancing. I personally couldn't bear sanjeev kapoor's steps, no wonder in a final dance sequence they made him dance with a cooking spoon. Ajay didn't make it to the finals of jhalak, but was really entertaining and good in his dance on the closing episode celebrations of the finals.

Judges were a special treat in their own way.. Director of black sanjay leela bansali, actor shilpa shetty, and producer-actor-dancer-director-and what not sweet bubbly Farha khan. At the closing ceremony, Farha did a sweet jig, and shilpa...she proved yet again she is the best when it comes to dancing.

The conversations between the judges and contestants, their energizing comments, their expression of disappointment, and importantly the shimmering disco lights.. all fine tuned and made perfect the already great dance reality show.

They very rightly said two things.
After 4-8 weeks of practice and committment, the two finalists Mona singh (of jassi jaisi koi nahin fame) and svetha ( a professional dancer) represented two important sides of dancing.. While svetha showcased extraordinary committment and perfection in the dance floor raising the bar for the finals, jassi (or mona) showed that to dance you only need to feel it and show grace in every step.

By points awarded by the judges over the entire show, out of the two finalists, svetha was the winner.. but as with any reality show, they opened up audience polling and after an hour of the final show and 8 weeks of the whole show, they declared mona singh the winner in audience votes and hence the winner who takes the jhalak trophy.

Towards the climax of the show, they did drag the announcement of the winner a little too much, but the winner mona singh with all her grace of accepting the award pulling the crying runner up svetha forcibly making her also hold it with her.. just compensated for any mistakes on the show.

At the final showdown, Ajay jadeja looked almost like he had fallen for mona singh.. but that is for the gossip club.

While, Mona singh and ajay jadeja must be already busy with bollywood offers, I am looking forward to jhalak 2. (Hey who asked that.. "other than TV and movies, are you doing any software consulting also from home harish?".. )

Pictures show:
mona singh with her dance partner,
mona singh as jassi in the TV soap (jassi jaisi koi nahin)
ajay jadeja with his partner..
and the finalists mona singh and svetha with their dance partners.

An European court has ruled against Microsoft Corporation, for unhealthy competition, and fined them Euro 497 million.. it is 497 millions.. my god. If Europe wants money, they can ask, not pull a company by its tail like this, just because courts are in control by politics.

I also have my things against Microsoft..and their competition tactics.. but this is too much. You know what the fine was for... For packaging windows media player along with their Windows operating systems.. it seems because of this, people are demotivated to not buy any other media players made by European companies (stupid companies who can't make one better than microsoft probably), and Europe can't help them any other way but this.

Once a friend of mine, equated this to selling cars without seats and with seats and accessories. Will you file a case immediately on the car company saying they are crushing seat manufacturing companies because they are packaging seats with the car.

I don't know.. but please don't try buying Microsoft software in Europe.. The villians, they first got IE out of the package, now windows media player.. and what not.. if you buy Windows XP from Europe I think all it will say is windows booted...nothing else might be there.

Yes, Microsoft has sometimes tried to take upperhand of pushing their technology variations away from what standards organizations standardize, calling it new features, or either they stop supporting some technology (like IE still throws an error when java on the webpage tries to close the window when you have logged out of java-enabled websites).

But, it is simply their operating system, their package, their product, they are packaging their products free of cost with it... so that customers as soon as they install the system, can listen to music, browse websites and all that.

You can give a ruling recommending them to allow stuff to be uninstallable.. for example in first versions of windows XP that was shipped, msn messenger cannot be uninstalled, it was installed without asking users whether they require that.. they later released a service pack which made msn uninstallable or installable on user's selections.

Fining 497 million Euros is like taking advantage and having a cunning delight in pulling Microsoft by their shoes and celebrating with the money they pay up.

-----------

While that news got my head popping for the harrasement Europe is showing towards Microsoft for wrong reasons, this other news got me wondering why Indian government agencies are all-out for wooing foreign indians leaving the people in india go unnoticed.

Sardar Patel award to be conferred on Sunita Williams

Sunita William no doubt has achieved a great milestone in her career.. but saying hey she is indian, i am proud..i am proud.. is like india begging for attention from around the world. The indian government bureaucrats are behaving very immatured in the way they ask for attention from the world.

First they organized pujas in temples and lined up school children on streets calling it a prayer for sunita's safe return, as if she and her crew were suffering and dying. Attention, attention .. they got even on BBC.. i was ashamed to see indian school children made to pessimistically pray for a proper landing of space shuttle to grab attention of world media for india.

All this looks like indians are vulnerable and pessimistic to the extreme extent. I don't buy the stuff that all those children really knew who sunita williams was and why they were asked to stand in lines and pray. It is bull shit methods of advertizing.

Now, sunita is visiting her place in gujarat.. probably she visited here before her being popular also. but now we want to cover the episode, give her a red carpet welcome. ok.. at least all that is fine, she deserves to be welcomed.. but giving her sardar patel award all of a sudden, is definitely an attention grabbing act. If they had genuine reasons, atleast they would have given the award quietly rather than promoting it on the press much before.

To Indian bureaucrats in the government:
Grow up guys.. there are much more sunitas and kalpanas in the country who you dont even care about, and we the people have to make a film like 'Chak de' to grab "your" attention to get you sponsor them playing for "your" country.
A little fund and a little optimistic talk on indian talent by you guys can do much better attention grabbing than running behind every foreign indian celebrity, right from Mittal, to sunita.

Softwares like moodle, hotchalk, are helping teachers, course authors, academicians and importantly, students, alike.

Slowly, internet and broadband are becoming a cannot-be-ignored delivery model for providing education.

For example, in the UK high speed broadband is free for public (probably with limits of bandwidth or other conditions).. and UK universities have all opened up for video conferenced regular classes which are also recorded and delivered so students can catchup later if they missed a class "in session". Imagine!! .. its not just class notes that you can catchup if you missed, but the entire class in session, who was saying what, who were all present and ofcourse if you bothered .. whatever the teacher was saying. :o)

My last employer used moodle for delivering assignments, conducting online tests, and announcing grading scores .. for their fresh graduate training programmes.

Good thing is.. you could catchup with your favorite courses even if you are a full-time student at a college... and you don't have to stress it, because it is delivered online without the headache or reading another bulk of study material, doing another set of assignments, etc., and if the delivery model of your course is mostly online, then the costs should ethically be low since it puts less requirements of time and resources on the course provider's side.

moodle.com and hotchalk.com guys have allowed their services to be entirely free, which keeps with the drive to transform education.

moodle is much more advanced than hotchalk, and is best downloaded, installed and maintained by the college admins.. to enable their teachers and students to use it. There are quite a few software people who provide services on this part, and charge a very simple monthly fee from the colleges that use their website's moodle installation.

hotchalk is for the startup teacher ..best for schools that want to try internet to deliver assignments and homework. It is quick and easy to use than moodle.. possibly because it doesn't have so many features like moodle, so eliminates complexity in the user-interface.

If you are curious on why is moodle powerful than hotchalk.

moodle is open-source.. for techies it means anybody can see the programs written for moodle, contribute to improve it or add more features, just like doing social work. If you are my kind, then you might like the people behind moodle.

and hotchalk is privately owned, and provided as a free service.

Actually, we shouldn't be comparing something as big as moodle, whose audience is much more than schools.. alongwith hotchalk whose audience is the simple teacher at your school next door. They address two different but important sets of.. the new term that I have slowly started using very often.. 'stake holders'.

"ha ha.. they raised the level with this one.. T4 is again going to be postponed for long", the first thing I told my friend after watching this movie the 'Transformers'. T4 is short for Terminator 4.. a movie they are planning/already making. Terminator series movies are the front-runner in anybody's mind on movies talking stories on robots of the future. Given the level and quality of movies being made with astonishing special effects or animation, much more than any other robot movie is expected generally of Terminator series movies whenever they are released.

Animation, and special effects.. are at new highs since 2005, be it 'Incredibles' or spiderman, or X-men III, or king kong... I can see a lot of adults more interested in these movies though their storylines are kid stuff.

People making them spend a lot to each and every detail in animations in these blockbusters.. Expressions importantly. Cartoon characters we used to call them.. because they are very obviously different in their expressions, and emotions. And watching Transformers, I was loving the way they show robots expressing pain, sacrifice, emotions.. and in quite a realistic way.

They also research some stuff and visionize where and what the technology of the future would allow robots of the features do... and even how they will reproduce.

People who love Electronic gadgets, even mobile phones.. will love Transformers I think.. you only would love more if you are the techy person.

And the tip on the movie's website is... "You haven't seen it all.. until you have seen it on IMAX". Also, there's a flash game on the movie @ transformersgame.com

In India:
Hrithik roshan jumping biiiig steps in Krish was promoted like the best animation sequence ever from India..a nothing at all sequence compared to what we see in English movies even from the 90's... Either we are still only having our own so called '3-D' movies which have characters looking like wooden dolls trying to make expressions.. or as recently read.. trying to make a simpler 2D animation movie with Tendulkar as the saviour of the world..

Long way to go for Indian animation.

I wonder sometimes, are we so lagging behind in creation or is it only that we are only now, slowly trying technology in movies away from the 6-song, 4-fight masala movie process. At least immediately, I believe we are weaker(compared to Hollywood) in our creative thoughts itself.. not just about technology or the money.

Some years back,

A relative's child I was trying to play with once asked me.. "Why are you having a moustache".. got me surprised and dumb unable to respond.... made me even keep away from kids and children for sometime.
If that question came today, I would probably just smile and find a changeover topic.

Back then,
I didn't like the idea of talking to people who are "strangers" or unknown to some extent.. "networking is important" everyone said.. but it didn't get into my head. May be the way I was brought up.. until I escaped to a greener patch.. Tumkur for college and hostel.. and even self-cooking experiments of how to make a sambar taste like a bad soup (Recipe will be shared on request :).

I used to think, what networking?, what to talk to people, and for what benefit or help.
yea dumbo.. kind of... to tell you my seniors at college ragged me just one way.. "poi pesu da".. and only after a slap I spoke to anybody...

Today it is a different thing.. I probably can talk (read reel out) non-stop for hours on something I know nothing about.

Blogs helped open up..

And before blogs.. it was
Films, conversation with office colleagues, taking sessions at office (which people would eagerly attend for that after lunch siesta.. especially getting a quick sleep at my sessions), and some humility of making mistakes or being unable to answer something..... even a couple of painful break-ups.

One of my offices took pains even trying and pressing me to handle my first client myself.. no, not on a project.. but to tour chennai with him and show him places.

Nice thing was, my office organized everything, except that I had to talk and keep him company.. I don't think I was afraid..only that I was not particularly a chatterbox or did I have anything interesting to tell somebody about me or my work.. this is what I always thought those days... "There's nothing to talk".

I and Tom.. so went around chennai that day.. and not just Tom, it was even my first time visiting Rajiv Gandhi's memorial, Egmore museum, and the whopping-ly great collection of old adorable gods and goddesses statues in the stone museum wing.

All my life until then I just ignored knowing about chennai, or visiting all these places.. This was changing my interest in chennai for the first times I think.

On the way, I saw how people would react to seeing Tom a foreigner carrying a live preview digicam (which was not common at that time in india).. how people liked to stare at him and ask "What's the time?" though they know it.. and Tom would smile and walk on.

We were in vandalur zoo.. unfortunate for me, we thought we will use the first public rest room in the zoo..nature's call. The rest room was very badly "un"maintained.. and Tom couldn't believe this was the state of the only zoo in chennai.. I had to pull out stuff like .. "that was probably the over used one.. inside there will be better rest rooms"... I think this was my first instance of trying diplomacy with a client outside of technical discussions.

Vandalur zoo was more disappointing in that there were only cages and cages in most parts of the zoo... I and Tom would search for animals, sometimes end up joking that they put this cage for that cockroach which was there running around the walls of the cage.

When we were in vandalur zoo.. on instance of seeing any animal or bird, Tom would flick out his cam and start shooting.. and I remember the long queue of people who immediately line up behind him seeing the shot in the preview screen on his cam("dei anga irukrathu ithula theriyudhu da").. some would go the extra bit to ask Tom to allow them hold his cam with their hands to see it.

These days..

I realized slow and late that if you are not good at networking with people, talking to people understanding your audience, .. and all that, you will just live life like a process. unable to enjoy it, or feel confident of doing bigger things.

You need people.. not just to watch a movie with.. not just to read the blog you write.. not just to befriend.. .but for living life itself...

(no not talking about life partner stuff.. but hmm. shaadi.com might like to use that sentence)

It dawned on me big and costly when I failed to secure one single project in my first 6 months of quitting cognizant and starting my own office from home. Its been a year few months now, many learnings.. many costly misgivings where I lost work because of a miscommunication.. or I got a work because the person liked the line I had for the day on my msn... sometimes working for people who are all talk and no payment kinds.. sometimes arguing with even good clients... later apologizing.. and things like that.

Initially, I was only becoming known for quitting a job at cognizant to start my own.. and with no big money in the bank. I remember my Exit interview at cognizant where my HR said "Yes.. thats what i am trying to understand.. ", when I told him, my father is not a rich man with whose money I was going to start..

I had this drive.. again reading from blogs of small and big entrepreneurs of how they started, and how they stressed that "you should not have options like returning to salaried employment if you fail.. because then you will not think what to do to not fail"... and readings like that.

and I am happy for having been successful to a basic level now that I am registering my own office and trying to expand.

Meeting people and sharing views is a major driving force for me.. and I relish the meet-ups for quite a few days after the meeting too.

Blogs
Blogging in a way encourages people to express their self with more narration... and imagine, what better way than knowing somebody through their writings. Also, blogs are popular because of the simple fact that everybody can talk as much as they want .. not like in meetings or get-to-gethers when not everybody gets a comfortable opportunity to talk and express all they have to.

The most good thing about blogs is,
for the writer,
it is the way you improve your writing to fit your audience.. which you might lack/not be able to correct when directly speaking to a live audience,
and,
for a reader,
the way the reader can be an anonymous listener.. to what is expressed in the blog, its comments section and all that, even without responding to it.

Meeting people
Meeting people and blogging probably should be used alternatively, if you are trying to enjoy both. Meeting real people makes the blogger write better, have real experiences rather than write movie reviews and news item reviews... and reading blogs can help one understand a person before and after meeting them, and you will love how your perception differs.

My recent meet-ups with CRY.org chennai volunteers .. over the past few months, have given me an enriching experience in meeting people, understanding different kinds of people's perspective of things. Just that I had to make an attempt to meet people... and it has added to so much of brainstorming and in future will also add to some social work I would be able to do.

After most of the meetings at CRY chennai office on sunday evenings.. I come out hungry and with a little headache.. .. you feel hungry when you think more.. and if you didn't eat and continued thinking, it gives an ache.. 'Food for thought' stuff I think.

I am an Airtel customer..

Oh I feel so unfortunate to put that as the first line here, because Airtel's customer service people are not skilled enough, neither are their technical system good.

For instance, if you raise a compalint, any complaint it be, they will send at least 6 sms after the complaint, ... and no no,..none of the sms will be anything useful to you. it wont say the status of the compalint or its resolution.. it will stupidly be message like "we hope you are happy with your interaction with us", "thank you for your interaction.. your complaint number is xxxxxx", "if you are satisfied with the answer send YES or NO to us".. and all such useless messages immediately after you raised the complaint and well before the service team actually gets back to you with any resolutions.

And then, you take the pain of clicking menus to delete all these junk messages.

I even raised complaints/suggestion with them to stop junking like that. The stupid personnel just said, "there is no way we can do that, but it is very useful for you to receive these messages"

I told him.. "i know what is useful for me.. you please take this as a suggestion to your IT dept if not as a complaint". He said he will and took it as a new interaction, and I got all the junkload of messages for that also.

My recommendation:
Don't expect common sense with these guys. (sometimes you must not even expect a resolution.. very often they close calls, a lot of them, indirectly saying it is not possible to correct it).
They just probably use a stupidly, badly created software system for complaints, and rather than improving that system, they are happily pushing that bad quality to customers who raise complaints.

Once, I got very irritated with the way the courier service airtel uses, throws my airtel bills on the lawn... and make me go searching and pick it. Ignorant at their best.. they mean they are very busy and can't bother to insert it into your letter box sticking on your gate.

And this courier guy was coming in odd timings so I could never catch him and tell him to do it properly. .. so I called customer service and told them this.

Not surprisingly, the customer service guy said, "for these things we can't take a complaint sir.. we don't have those options for selecting the type of complaint here".. they humiliated me a further more for calling them for a problem like this.

And after I insisted enough over about 45 mins, they got me on to a supervisor who took it as a complaint and took details of the region of my house to find out their courier service guy.

It didnt get resolved, I was out picking my bills again, or worser, the stupid person delivered my bills in somebodys house, and somebody's bill in my house. I went back to them, the customer service people, and asked them to change the options to email my bills.. they simply adviced me to do it online at their website... though i had taken the time to call, they wanted me to first try it there.

I did try... their website rocks.. rocks the negative way.
Nothing will work, and all information they provide regarding help documents or contact emails, will all point to the same intelligent thing... "the customer service team". The website will ask you to email complaints to 121@airtel.in, or something like that, but that email only gets automatically raised as a complaint with the stupid team. and again, all those junkloads of messages.

After a few attempts, I finally got my bill emailed. ha, great I thought.. but how can they help you so easy.. they are gods who read books like "101 one ways to screw your customer's happiness". The email had the bill as a pdf which was password protected.. security it seems so that nobody else reads the bill in MY mailbox.

The email message said, send "ebill pass" to xxxxx to get your password. :o) Can you imagine.. I cannot imagine any better stupid system.. I think they unanimously should be given the award for "worst automation system" for 4-5 years in a row.

And, yes, I sent "ebill pass" to get my password.. you know what.. i got an instant reply.. i eagerly opened to read the message, and it said, "thanks for your query,.. but we are unable to service you at this time.. try later" :o) ha ha..

You might think i am exaggerating things here.. you must be an airtel investor. But all these are true experiences I have had for the one year I am subscribed with them... these days, every time i think that i should contact customer service to find out something, i get doomed thinking of the process ahead.

If you thought.. "all these things are small problems.. happens with any company.. and i am only cribbing.. ".. then I am 100% sure you must be indian.. because that is normally indian attitude. we indians have an infinite quality to tolerate anything.

Anyways, after those experiences.. I have not had an instance where i should call them again.. until today.

This is what happened today..

Khul ja sim sim
I have a motorola v3i phone.. with airtel as my service provider.. (this time i dont want to start the line the bad way.. so i put motorola first).

Trying the phone's security settings... to set a sim password, i entered a wrong password once. and the phone said "SIM BLOCKED". usually this happens only in the third attempt.. blame it on the phone's software, or the sim card's make, or the service provider.. finally it is my phone connection that is screwed up.

I pray with Google and try to search information.. almost all websites said "contact service provider", and i really searched again because I couldn't imagine calling my service provider.

I call up Airtel, and the guy says he will give me something called a PUK number(Pin unlock key it means).. and i enter it when my phone asks for it.. I said,"It never asked, it just says SIM BLOCKED".. He started repeating the same theory again and gave me the PUK number and asked me to use it and solve it.

After more conversation explaining things, he said, "if it says SIM BLOCKED, it just means you have to take your vehicle and drive to airtel office, and ask for a duplicate SIM card and the problem is solved.."

The catch here was, Airtel charges 150 rupees for a duplicate SIM card, and all information on your old SIM card is possibly irrecoverable..

yes yes, I later found out that things are not that bad.. but this is the kind of information that the customer support guy had, and I told him how bad sense it is to make use of such things to earn money from customers, and how airtel should really do it the common sense way to help customers by providing all this security information during service registration rather than just giving registration receipt alone.

He took that as a complaint.. and gave me an interaction number. Junkload of messages arrive, as usual i delete them later.

I learnt from some friends that there are other service providers who were worser.. a friend once said "atleast he gave you the PUK number for free.. my provider asked me to come to his office, pay him 25 rupees and then tore a rough sheet of paper, wrote down the PUK number and gave it alongwith with a receipt for 25 rupees as service charges"

Hard nuts these companies are.. I prefer to use the term "Money mongers"... always and ever looking at everything as an opportunity to make money.. like the government always looks for ways to tax people.

No wonder why even though Airtel is so big in india, it has nothing outside india.. not even a scrap business. Only indians will sit silent and pay up .. for all that attitude and infinite tolerance we seem to have.

Ok.. no use talking about either.. indian people and indian companies.

The solution I found out from a website with more search was.

If you use motorola v3i, and it says SIM BLOCKED, then try this:

Before doing this, take the PUK number from your service provider. You can also change the PUK number to something you remember so that you don't have to call your wonderful service providers for it later if this happens again.

Unblock SIM pin code:
**05*PUK*newpin*newpin#

1. Key in **05*
2. Your phone will recognize that gsm code and ask you to enter puk code.
3. Enter puk code, and it will unblock your sim.
4. Type new 8 digit puk code. so that the change overwrites the provider set puk code with your new puk code. next time this happens you will enter your PUK code.

That's it.. about unlocking sim on your motorola mobile.
More gsm codes at: http://www.mobileshop.org/usertech/gsmcodes.htm

Icicidirect.com is an online trading website.. that is what most people know or think.

But icicidirect.com has well updated Market News, research reports, stock performance charts, live share prices from both Bombay(BSE) and NewDelhi(NSE) stock exchanges.

And all that is available for general public, not just subscribers.
It is a web portal... other than being an online trading website.

You can go to www.icicidirect.com
General public can use any tab/link other than the Login link which is for subscribers who have trading accounts with icicidirect.com

For example, you can learn about the company TATA TEA, by this navigation:

icicidirect.com > click on 'Research' link > click on 'my research' link in that page >
click on alphabet 'T' > and then on stock name TATTEA.

You will see information (this page) on the company right from its incorporation to what is news from the company today.

Excellent resource. Though the content is meant and targeted for investors or share traders, much of it can educate you on a lot of your favourite companies, like information on when they started, what is their growth, etc., and the content from this /other pages can collectively educate you on a considerable part of the entire business of the company itself.

Super Jumbo is Airbus's 600 and odd seater aircraft..the A380.

It is the world's largest, so large that its wings had to be very huge. And Wings were so huge that they had to be inclined up at an angle to be away from the ground.. and also have landing gears in the wings to take on the weight during landing and take-off.

It was unveiled in a celebrated, popular, test flight way back in 2005.. Since then, there had been many many purchase orders for the multi-billion dollar aircraft (one even from Kingfisher Airlines in India for delivery in 2010).

Singapore airlines was the first to order, and Emirates Airlines placed the largest order. The first plane was expected to be delivered to Singapore Airlines in 2006, but technical difficulties and delays forced the Airbus directors atleast a couple of time to discuss and announce delays in delivery timelines.. off by atleast one year every time.

The delays have been majorly due to employee attrition, staff strikes, parts or technology inaccessibilities etc., which are all popularly attributed to have been triggered by competitor Boeing to ground the A380 project seeing risks in trade. and also ofcourse..due to politics within the airline industry.

Good news is:
Whatever happened so far.. it looks like the Super Jumbo will fly commercially before this year end. Singapore Airlines expects to operationalize the A380 from this October.

While the airports used by Singapore Airlines had already made broader runways, bigger turnaround space, and broader parking bays all setup back in 2005-2006,...
very recently, Airbus did a tour to Singapore and trained ground staff in the airports, to handle the super jumbo.

The super jumbo concept has from 2005 caught up with movies too.. popularly with the movie 'Flight Plan' whose story completely happens inside a 600 seater, 3 floor aircraft.

Also, India's most popular Software company Infosys has been a technology partner for the A380 project at Airbus, delivering key software and technology components that were involved in the aircraft's design and development.

Links:
1. You can catch up with my earlier post back in 2005 on A380 with photos.
2. A380 official site
3. Infosys's 2005 press release on its participation in the project
4. Infosys's case-study paper on the project

Life at times shows how beautiful it is.. when you have your kids birthday, when you marry your girlfriend, when you see small kids playing in the green of a park having fun, and all that. .. oh wait.. life is beautiful always even if it is not your kids birthday, even if you don't marry your girlfriend, because all these don't make it ugly.. but why do we always say "life is beautiful" ONLY sometimes..

It is because we see the beauty only sometimes...only when we are happy.. only when we are satisfied. and other times we just see only what we want to see.

We have expectations of life, we have expectations of people, we have expectations on everything.. and so we most times don't like what IS there, and only sometimes see and like what IS there.

Yes, I can write that much of confusing lines.. but you should probably read them after watching this film "At First Sight". I loved it.. just like how much I loved "BLACK" as a movie.

The movie has an interesting story line..

A person who is blind gets to see the world after he is operated on, and loses his sight again after some time.

And it is based on a real life story.. narrated by a Doctor. So, imagine. I don't think there can be any better story on what is blindness, and how good it is to be able to see. If you were never blind before, you will start feeling the importance of your vision... or at least understand why blind people are not suffering but actually living just in a different manner.

Val Kilmer was great. You know what, I never knew this guy is the person they call val kilmer.. Yes, I liked the actor always, but always didn't know what his name was.. probably because he doesn't act in movies these days, and I am limited to watching his films on TV. I have always liked all his movies, he never feels like he is a stranger who is acting the role. He thoroughly lives the character.. or am I saying this about every actor I like (may be then, I like only actors who live the character)

And the new face Mira Sorvino (new for me), was excellent in her act. You would love Mira as much as val kilmer loves her in the film.. that engaging it is.

...And the director "Irwin Winkler"(new for me again..think i will like his other movies too).. shows such an engaging drama with so much thought and direction to the story that it feels like you know this couple who are in the film.

...And they end it like all those beautiful english movies, not showing val and mira get married... the end note when the movie is over, rescues your curiosity when it says this was based on a real life story and the actual couple got married and live in Atlanta, Georgia.

At First Sight, is not just about love, it is about trust, it is about vision, it is about how to see and accept things, and it is about seeing.. in the real "sense" of seeing.

While that could be another set of confusing words, I suggest, Watch the movie and read this post, you will see what I mean.. you will really "see".