What they are doing is decreasing import duties, or making nil import duties so imports cost less, and banning or reducing some exports so more of goods are left within the country for indians to use.

While this might sound good measures for those who think "increase supply to meet demand and prices will reduce", it beats the idea that india has to be more richer to be self-sustaining and to absorb the costs of inflation and a growing economy... .because when you stop exports, you stop fund flow into india from other countries through trade.. and when you encourage imports, you increase the fund flow OUT of india to other countries in trade.

So, the government is technically just stopping India's growth or controlling the growth thinking that is what will bring down inflation.

There are a million ways to handle inflation financially, and I am surprised the "intelligence" of the ministers in the government can think of only two, one as discussed above, and two: to go beg all companies and industries to reduce their profit margins and bring down inflation.. which is actually the government's job and not the industry's or the company's.

This simply shows how much control the government has on the market and the economy of the country, that they have to beg the industry's or just stop the country's growth.. It is like either this extreme low level decisions, or that extreme high-level decisions to stop growth which is only done in case of emergencies.

By far it simply looks like we got a huge bunch lazy cats who don't want to spend time finding ways to solve problems, which is what governing is all about.

Next time, you pray to god, pray that god give some "intelligence" to all those ministers in the government to think more than talking more.. and do more than reacting to media more..

And Hence, in India, all big companies like Tata, Airtel, etc., and big industries like cement, banking, etc., are allowed to cost their products any high, looting money from people, and finally government will take a measure where all these companies push the money to people outside the country by importing lots and lots of goods. Your money and my money doesn't get rotated in trade within India, but as soon as we know, it gets out of the country.

What is happening is so gruesome a murder to the economy of the country, that this is all going to blow up big issues for the future, or, as usually it happens, the issues get pushed under the carpet and huge huge amounts of farmer loans are erased from the books further, as if India earns all the money in that sector.. agriculture.

this is a website of an active sports accessories company. They have done it so nice and different, you will think real good animation films on websites are not real far from happening.

venom.spyder.com

Animating 2D or 3D characters is a painful process.. very much so that Sir Walt Disney is said to have taken many years to create the Mickey Mouse films, and also those were the days of traditional animation, where every frame of a scene is painted or drawn on paper.

If you even have worked on softwares like photoshop or corel draw like a hobby to drawing or designing something, you know how much time and pain it is to even design a proper webpage.

So, after all that when you go and see a movie like "Finding Nemo", "Monsters Inc", or "Cars", you open your mouth and gape.

Because every single frame of the movie which plays only for 1/24th of a second (in digital filming there are 24 frames per second) , has the characters, the environment or background graphics, with color, texture.. and to add to the complexity, they have lighting and related object surface color and shadow variations.

To put it lighter, one frame of a scene in animation movies is equivalent to drawing what you see below on a computer or a sheet of paper with whatever tools you want on earth (except a copier and printer).

So, that explains how much work should be done to make a movie like what Pixar does .. and how much effort to be Pixar, because they are the best today.

Obviously for any animator their work is inspirations, and people look forward to learn from their experience. Knowing this Pixar has interestingly put-up a brief of their process of making animation films on their website. The page mentions only the core steps or milestones of the animation film making process, but that itself would overwhelm you.

Pixar - How We Do It

What I learnt New from their processes..
> The animators make the frames of a scene and have the animation as digitized sequences, but this is not the movie that gets released... what we see as a film is a video recording of the sequences played up on their computers.

> If in a scene, a character raises its hand, the animators probably create one or two steps of the action or only one or two frames of the scene and the computer generates the in-between frames that show the motion of the hand as a smooth one.. the animators of course fine tune these in-between frames manually as necessary.

This is one other major advantage digital animations have over traditional animations. The first advantage obviously being able to correct or modify the art work easily, instead of redrawing the whole thing on another paper again.

> They use server farms just like all big software enterprises do.. they use a bulk of machines (farms) to render each frame. Probably this means redrawing the background, the characters, the lighting, etc., all into a frame, or integrating every other teams work into the final output.

Pixar says, on an average each frame with such bulk of servers, takes about 6 hours to render, and some complex frames take up to 90 hours too.

Interesting bit of information they had on their website.

Related link:
Blend it... its easy to make 3D graphics yourself

And not many Indians seem to know or bother that many services like mobile services, internet services, web hosting services are costlier in India than even some developed countries. Not because the technology is difficult here, but because the market demand is huge here and if not jack they can always sell to some harry.

And when you don't get proper services, or importantly correct and proper bills, all you try to do is call up a customer service number and ask. But most customer service numbers in India are run by executives who are themselves less informed and are not well trained to answer questions properly.. and to add to it, you will cry over most of their English and their understanding of your questions in English.

First steps when u have a problem with an Indian company:

1.
If you can, ask the customer executive whether he knows your local language like Tamil, kannada or Telugu, etc., and explain him the problem politely. No, Shouting you should do only when they don't understand what you are saying and wasting your time more than 30 mins on the phone and also not transferring your call to a senior officer after your repeated request.

2.
If the customer executive puts you on hold, or says senior officer is busy can you wait, or says senior officer will call you later, .. simply say you are willing to wait how much ever time it takes and wait for about 20 mins and then they will put you on to a proper guy.
Why that long?
Well like said before.. indian market has high demand on all daily life services like what I mentioned.. so the companies sign-up too many customers and since india is a rising country, the companies are learning having a huge customer base. this might take another 5-10 years for companies to ripen up and provide proper services and help to customers, though they showcase today itself as if they have everything in place.

Thought waiting on hold is a pain both by patience and money spent on phone call, if you are complaining for a mobile service problem to your mobile operator through the same mobile phone, you will most definitely not charged for the call, and most often your calls to such phone numbers will be toll-free.. verify this before your call, so you know you can wait on the line without worries.

3.
Call centers misunderstand their trade. Customer care numbers are all call-centers and the executives there, most of them atleast are not there for solving your problems, but for just a temporary job. so the executives at the first level of the call will try exciting things like cutting off the call if you shout, or putting you on hold and cutting off after 10 minutes.

If you survive through that, and call repeatedly, you will talk to some manager after sometime, and the manager will really most often resolve your complaint like a breeze... make sure you tell him that he take some effort to train his subordinates on the information on handling this complaint, so no other customer or not you again have to wait so long for a useful answer.

4.
Yes, If nothing helps.. or if you are frustrated beyond your limits, you raise a consumer complaint.

This below link will help you understand how to raise a consumer complaint in india, even provide you some links to find addresses of consumer redressal forums and courts near you.
ICRPC: Consumer Guidance for Filing Consumer Complaint with Consumer Court in India

I took you through these steps so long rather than telling you how you can raise a consumer complaint in court, because the process of making a case and submitting it to court and getting a resolution is for obvious reasons much much time-consuming than even the number of hours you are put on hold on a customer care call.

Also, you might be interested in website based consumer complaint forums.. like mouthshut.com, your own blog(if you are a popular blogger), or many other websites you can search from our favority on the dot search engine google.com

Finally, for more information on consumer redressal forums and processes, there are many useful links that will come up in a google search for "consumer india" or "consumer complaint india"

Important end note:
All the best.. but DONT give up.. or become tolerant to problems with services provided by indian companies or even indian government. There are always forums for redressal.. just because some people like us ignore the process because of laziness or willingness to spend the time seeing not much benefits off the result, we are encouraging the "bad service is not bad" attitude with indian companies, government and people.

Remember, more than you, your complaint and your struggle to resolve it is going to help future consumers from not having the same problem or at least not the same bad way like you had to go through.

Yes, there are lot of problems in the country with growth and attitude in some sectors, that is at the very early stages of change.. call center services for example, agriculture for example. But, comparing what we have today with how we were 10 years back in a few industry sectors, it is quite a *Show* off growth.

And the growth has been a strong curve in Chennai.

The banking sector revamping from zero ATMs to countless ATMs of every bank in every street corner, the technology space out-growing expectations & growth targets year-on-year, the talent market being flooded with more and more skilled and attitudinal people, the quality of movies, TV programmes, the salary packet sizes these days, the retail market boom, everything just multiplying every other day.

You just sit idle doing nothing for a day in Chennai, you feel little strange and slightly left out, the very next day. I do. Though I don't sit idle for a whole day, I do feel a growing urge day by day seeing things changing around me, right from roads to buildings to new successful companies cropping up everywhere.

If you want to feel the same way, there's an easier way, rather than sitting idle at home... If you are in chennai, all you have to do is visit sathyam theatre complex every weekend, and you will see something about the theatre's infrastructure changed. They keep modifying things regularly. Rather than the theatre management being responsible for the changes, it is demand that makes them alter to people's needs and business's values.

It is this quick change and related process that is so interesting to note, happening in places where a decade ago change was not a managed process.

We all know that all our Indian TV channels, for popularity's sake, copy blockbuster Television program formats from the west, like "Who wants to be a millionaire", "Dancing with the stars", etc.,
But the interesting part is.. the tamil versions of the programmes have brought about a change in the way Chennaiites see society, their inhibitions towards protecting culture, their spending patterns, interests in dance / music, opening up to the outside world and accepting the goods of an open society... everything is changing slowly. Though we Chennaiites are accepting all these changes, we don't seem to be in a hurry and we are carefully and selectively working up the change.

Also, Chennaiite parents are known to pester children on studies and giving zero or less importance to co-curricular activities, sports etc., With figures of successful Indian sportsmen increasing by the day, and the way these television programmes make the other activities and careers rewarding as well, a sudden spurt in interest towards co-curricular activities and sports is seen, and children are learning people skills and life skills because of the open society. The already rich talent market is going to be super-rich in another 5 years in Chennai...because Chennai has always been a conservative society.

All these changes around me are so attractive to notice, that I am losing a lot of free time trying to.. understand.. admire.. how and why the changes are happening and what triggers it to happen quick.

A few months back I read in a blog (I forgot which one) that the United States government has changed its definition of India from a "Developing country" to "Transforming country". That acknowledges India's growth internationally.

The scene of the goat moaning in pain and beating its legs and waving its head with eyes almost popping out in the fear of dying is something that I still can't seem to forget.

After I became an adult I had the maturity to push it to my family that I am no more eating meat or eggs. Slowly it happened that my people at home felt similarly uncomfortable about the meat they eat, also because they were having one person at home(me) who was running out of the house with excuses whenever meat was on the dinner table.

I also had another reason to quit non-veg.. the vegetarian and junk food industry grew with a lot of options, some of them even kind of replacing tastes that you get with meat. So sticking to my decision was easy for me. and its more easier nowadays with the options you have.

My parents and family slowly moved to be pure vegetarian even disliking the smell of eggs .. partly because we had pets.. from dogs to fishes and birds. We still do have a cute pet dog, and a nice big aquarium at home. These animals showered so much love on us, and we got so attached, that we kind of became so sensitive towards animals. We would have tears in eyes whenever some TV channel does a special story on animals being tortured and killed for meat.

I am not sure whether we can argue and stop the world from consuming non-vegetarian foods.. and I don't believe that it is possible or feasible for human kind to do away with meat because humans by evolution consumed meat always. You can't change something that was historically created...at-least not by showing videos or talking sympathetically, and definitely not in a few years.

But, if you are a non-vegetarian..and you love non-veg foods, and sometimes thought that you can take more of meat for it is tasty tasty and kindles excitement, you should see videos in the youtube.com link below...and make a decision about reducing your meat intake or at least not increasing it.

You tube - meet your meat videos

By this article, I am not trying to put pressure on non-vegetarians just because I have given up meat.. or try demonize the meat industry or people who earn their money with that industry,

but, inturn, I am ignoring everything happening around me, around everywhere, and think of those animals from their point of view of existence.

Like us, they too would have dreams of playing over the grass, munching some, and running around some, or at-least if not all that, to just die gracefully, without dying like in war with all that pain and butchering scenes in front of their eyes.

Think.

Chinese are menacing and warning every other neighbouring country that they adjust to their interests and keep quiet... taking advantage of their position as being Asia's largest country.

Their current project is to acquire Tibet wholly, and they have already done that by pushing an overwhelming number of troops into every part of Tibet and destroying protests by the Tibetan people.

Being a veto power in the United Nations, China made sure Tibet never got its membership to UN. Because if it does, its like all UN countries have accepted Tibet as a country..and any reaction to threats to a UN member country will be supported by the UN, which would then spoil the Chinese dream.

Also, Chinese pressure forced the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet to leave China and come to Dharmasala, India on exile. Tibet is self-ruled and its parliament-on-exile is run from India even today. This is the only instance I know where a government of a state is in another country on exile.

All this Chinese have been doing for years.. but recently the Chinese expansion project is very aggressive.

Now, while entire Tibet is protesting the takeover by china, none of the UN veto countries are talking anything about it, for china itself is a veto power.. and all veto power countries use their power to get away with all these nasty jobs, as much as the US is getting away with Afganisthan, Iraq and Iran.

India is the latest now, who is listening to everything Chinese say. Poor India is unable to help Tibetans, India having had such weak-hearted, not-so-bold prime ministers like Atal behari vajpayee, and now Dr. Manmohan sign.

China even condemned the visit by Indian prime minister to an Indian state 'Arunachal pradesh', saying Arunachal pradesh is Chinese territory.

All these territories are considered disputed territories and have a history wherein the Chinese never signed or agreed to any border agreements and Chinese say they have 'Suzerainty' over all these territories...simply meaning that the territories as autonomous territories within China.

Below links have details on the border disputes/resolutions Chinese have/had with their neighbours on the territories
Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Hongkong, Taiwan

Chumby plays only internet radio, and accepts an wi-fi internet connection as input source. This chumby is still evolving, and so it doesn't yet have the neccessary stuff to play radio out of the box, it needs either a comp, or, any music device with an USB-out, wi-fi broadband.

Don't ask me more.. checkout the chumby site yourself. I don't have a chumby.. but I have already added that to my wishlist.

If you have unlimited bandwidth broadband.. and you have your wi-fi 'ON' all the time.. you should have chumby. It will keep you nice company.

And what not.. like a mobile device, you can use its touchscreen and browse some web I suppose.

For the tricky part, of finding new, free, good radio sources on the internet, chumby supports shoutcast radio servers.. and hence you will have more than 20,000(and growing) of those online free radio broadcasts to choose and play. .. and for this you would love somaFM.com .. they are AD-free.. so you will hear only music.. no DJ voices or commercial breaks.

Getting out of an inspiring movie like 'The pursuit of Happyness' or 'Yuva (Tamil)', I would dream of doing something in my life to achieve what the lead roles in these movies seem to achieve in close to 2 hours. And when I plan to do it, I realize I got a truckload of problems, no patience, no money, no resources, no contacts, no that and no this. So much would broil over in my head, I simply think this is not something I can do, and sit and wonder when and where am I going to be successful.

I get 101 ideas to work on, to make a business, to make a company, to make some money to make more money, and all that, but with every idea there seems to be certain need of time, money, resources, which I just misunderstand as zero always, and try to think I can complete projects in nothing more than 8 hrs of a day, even if it be a sunday with lot of distraction of TV programmes, or a friday when a lot of seemingly good movies get released.

I am not a movie buff, but movies are the only things that motivated me after college.

If you don't work in a salaried job, probably you would also have had such occassions where you think you need a break.. from yourself.

This is where I get reminded of a lot of things I have read somewhere, or known from some source, that every idea has a nascent stage, the beginning of things where you get to know the idea more and know what all the idea wants to drink and how long it will take to become big, take shape, and give you back what you wanted it to.. like money or happiness. Even relationships have a nascent stage...where you break-up - patch-up, break-up and again patch-up, but were you make sure NOT to give-up.

The nascent stage of an idea:

Ideas are sparks.. they ignite, but take time to develop.
Be it a big company CMD with a lot of bucks, or be it a small guy on the street, I learn that both will take the same time to realize an idea that they have.. but, if, and only if they wait for it to happen and waiting doesn't mean.. just .. standing and waiting.. but working towards something, or atleast working on something else for the time being.

Some people give up when things take time, and taking time in a business means taking time to make profit, have a return on investment(ROI) and all.

These things are best understood in financial terms.. Short-term and Long-term.

Becoming rich, Making an Achievement or accomplishing something in life, developing and realizing an idea, why, even having a nice and happy family, are all long-term processes. They just can't happen quick like in films. Whatever money you have, your money can only pressurize the idea to happen.. What makes ideas reality is your constant effort on it, and patience.

Except for financial goals, money cannot be used as a resource to accompolish any long-term goal. You need to invest a lot of Time, a lot of brainstorming, and pull in enough resources now and then to develop on, to gradually allow your idea to grow.

If you remember old cartoons, the bulb glowing off above your head is just representation of a spark of idea. The realization and efforts take longer and are not represented in motivating movies or cartoons or even your favorite professor's speech...because putting all that straight is actually "de-motivating".

The nascent stage of an idea.. is a spark.. if you get it, be happy and work on it whenever possible. You will reach there.

My school's caption line said it all "Efforts never fail"... so put your efforts, invest some time, for your ideas are your babies which will need time to grow.

Now my worry is off.. and I am back to work.

For me, the results sound like the pakistanis have voted the most safe government... if it will be formed that is.. with two rival parties joining hands against all odds for democracy's sake. One party that of Mr.Nawaz sharif, and the other of late Benazir Bhutto's, now headed by her husband Asif Zardari.

Pakistanis have indeed decided things this time. Whoever assasinated Benazir Bhutto would now realize their plan to achieve instability in pakistan "back-fired" as was expected.

Photo source: 'The Hindu' newspaper in india.. shown here only for a representation.

News source: Opposition parties sweep polls in Pakistan

We all know of the way Americans consider themselves and the rest of the world.. yes, they consider everyone else the "rest of the world". as if the world was a big platter with Americans as the main dish.

Yesterday(or today if I am right) kosovo got freedom .. it became a Nation. While I was reading something on that.. I landed up on some crazy things only Americans can do calling it interestingly "for world peace". What you see below is America's largest military camp(since the vietnam) outside of America.. in kosovo.

Well Americans are not just stupid enough to build military bases outside of their country.. but also build very large bases outside their country.. and of course.. that's for world peace.

Camp BondSteel

The camp is called bondsteel. and there are about 7000 soldiers or more in the camp .. yea for world peace.. To any dumb fellow, it would be obvious that having 7000 troops at a place itself calls for war, not peace.. anyway, we are talking about Americans here.. not just dumb fellows.

Dick Cheney who served as defence secretary during the senior Bush administration granted a company 'Brown and Root Services' a big military contract in 1992 .. and later on became the CEO of the company for 5 years in a goodwill exchange offer from that company. no not joking. It all happens in America. Now, the part we are interested in is, Dick Cheney comes back as US Vice President in junior Bush administration and grants a lot (read loot) of defence projects including development of camp BondSteel.

The company 'Brown and Root Services' did a good job.. and that's why the landscape is so lovely in the above picture. For electronic engineers like me, can compare it to seeing a well laid out printed circuit board. It doesn't look real.. it looks extraordinarily perfectly developed site. What we are interested in knowing here is the money the company made. They made a whopping amount in developing this project, because in kosovo, in the area where the site is located they only had to pay $1 - $3 per hour of labour to the locals and that is considered very good compensation as the local economy which is 80% unemployed was almost entirely dependent just on agriculture-oriented jobs until bondsteel.

To read more on this crazy money and power stuff you can read the below links.
1. Camp Bond-steel in Kosovo - Hanna's blog
2. Remarks to United States Troops at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo - George W. Bush - Transcript

Notice to Indians:
In the second link, there's a part of transcript of American president Bush's remarks to troops in Camp BondSteel where he says something like the Americans are indeed controlling world peace "from kosovo to kashmir" ... whoopy.. yea, kashmir he says.. both kosovo and kashmir are not in America and looks like Americans have hell a lot of free time to tackle things outside their country (as they have completed managing their country enough).. and so Mr.Bush addresses the troops saying their involvement and sacrifice is required for world peace from kosovo to kashmir.

This person Bush, he is definitely very funny when he speaks, because he, I think, is one American President who often stupidly assumes he has done a lot to the world(oh, may be in line of hitler) and thinks he is not just responsible for America but the world itself. Good grief.. God save America(save the world too).

End Note:
Anyways, all this is something that happened in 2002, I just read that blog now..
Although, it was an interesting pass-time read... and imagine how interesting Americans should be now in 2008, if until 2002 itself was such interesting.

But then, can you improve your English with help from the web??

A nice effort from BBC.CO.UK on their website has a page where people can try to learn English accent and words or meaning everyday along with hearing the news for the day.

This small thing done everyday, could easily help improve people's command over understanding or speaking the English language.

Click below link to see a new item with links to learn English. The speakers read the news a little slower than it is read on BBC television.. and there's a separate section on pronouncing words where they pronounce every word slowly first and then to speed as in the news.

China snow - from learning English news item

The Learning English site on BBC.CO.UK

kudos, to BBC webmasters for the idea.

They are promoting the importance of millets as staple food, trying to revive the millet-based-food varieties, and importantly suggest the nutritive and health advantages of replacing millet-based foods in place of junk food in your diet.

Attend it if you will be in chennai, If I am right, its a free-for-all fest, but you can Call 94440 07649 for food passes and find out.

The event is organized by some socially excited citizens, many of whom happen to be bloggers and orkutters .. so its also about network-ing, and you can expect to meet cool folks.

And its happening not far from the city, at prime-spot Shastri nagar, Adyar.

Well.. for the people like me.. here's some help:
1. What are millets.. sounds like bullets/billets

General links:
2. A national institute of nutrition paper on food grains and millets
3. Sorghum and millets in human nutrition - FAO document
4. Millet recipes 1
5. Recipes - like millet balls, millet casseroles..

Other than that, that site of barista was a good read... may be because I like them a little too much. I love the saffron orangish color barista gives to its outlets.. and their ambience all done to some simple perfection to the volume of the music (so it doesnt disturb your conversation), to the position of the TV (so it doesnt distract you if you dont want to watch it), to their mild air-conditioned ambience (so you dont feel that you are some place different than where you can talk freely), etc.,

I thought barista was a multinational coffee chain.. reading through the site, I found its first outlet was in new delhi and it covered all over india's major cities.. and atleast one outlet in all important cities. In chennai they have a lot of outlets, what even inside Taj coromandel hotel you have a barista outlet.

For the drink.. I am not an experimentor at coffee, neither a coffee-addict though I love the coffee whenever I drink it... and at Barista or elsewhere I either just take a normal filter coffee or a cappucino.

If you want to make your cappucino(yes you get cappucino coffee mixes at supermarkets to try) barista style.. then try this old post

*Note - by British.. I mean the british until 1940's.. we know that today's britain and its people are much different and trustable.