So Little, yet magical

A plate of paani puri over the road side, fresh smell of mud when it has just started to drizzle, Watching the rain washed sky,The smell of a new book, The early morning sun, A long drive on my bike, Experiments in the kitchen. Scribbling in my blog, A walk in the evening. The breeze on the terrace. All these are little things, yet they are so magical to me. It rained yesterday and I could feel all these little things. Everything in life is temporary. Darkness of the night; or a bright day. Even sunrise is temporary; so is sunset.So if things are going good, enjoy it because it won't last forever. And if things are going bad, don't worry. Because it won't last forever either. Everything passes by. Its up to you to either choose to laugh it off and move on..or whine and become bitter.

IPL Saga

This IPL drama is getting into my head. Cricket was once called a gentleman’s game. IPL has taken it to the new level. Cheer girls, Bollywood, movie stars, entertainment and what not, every masala added to it made it  more spicy and yummy. Indians have always loved cricket.  And IPL has cashed in big time on the cricket frenzy by transforming the game into more of a commercial enterprise than a pure sporting event. It doesn’t matter about the result of the match, and whether it is fixed or not fixed. It is generating the cash, and it is raising the eyebrows of many. Money is always the centre of attraction in India and so is with these news channels and their ROI from their capitalistic setup. They always focus on events like IPL or filmfare awards more than anything else because that’s what boosts their TRP’s.  Big reason why people spend time on things like IPL is very simple; while they are connected to any such event there are in dream-land.There is this interesting piece article, a simple one yet thought provoking.   The news channels are more interested in churning news for raising eyeballs than for providing information. Its not just about IPL, any popular news event like Hollywood/Bollywood movie, marriage of a big star, reality show like Rakhi ka Swayamvar” , dalit girl with communal riots, terrorism (bomb-blast) etc. We will show our loyalty to IPL and all such news channels and their rubbish news and still watch it and tweet about it. Dear 24 hr news channels, Keep fooling us.We don't mind being fooled.

Some Random news

When IPL is almost coming to an end, I was wondering why this time there is no controversy. In IPL 1st season  it was that slap by harbhajan to Sreesanth that created the news, in IPL 2nd season  it was the fake IPL player blog about Kolkata Knight riders which created sensation. Now in IPL 3rd season it is that tweet by Lalit Modi which made Sashi Taroor to resign from his ministry. My favourite team(DC) reached Semis again this time, and Kolkata and Delhi missed out of semis though both the teams ended with a high note. IPL is no more about cricket, its just about business. I personally liked this article and mainly this note.

Shashi Tharoor says he has no financial dealings with the Kochi IPL franchise. I believe him. I don't question either his honesty or his personal life but was it really worth a minister's time and effort to help out a group of businessmen?

At the end of the day this is not about any individual but about the nexus of sports, business, and politics. Lalit Modi has raised questions; like it or not, answers must be forthcoming.

Finally there is some justice done with the Jessica Lal case. Though the justice is delayed for about 10 years, the justice is delivered. Her soul will indeed rest in peace now. SC confirms Manu’s life sentence: What about that spineless wimp, Shayan Munshi? How can he get away scot free in this case?

 

Sania got married breaking the heart of one of my class mates for the 2nd time. He is into depression now and not speaking to me much these days. He says I declined all my matches for her and now he is not getting any better matches. Sania says, She married a person, not a Pakistani.

“I wasn’t marrying a Pakistani. I was marrying a person I liked and he was marrying a person. It didn’t matter if he (Shoaib) was from Timbuktu. He could have been from anywhere,” Sania (23) said.

I am glad I am not a Timbaktu, Otherwise I’d be terribly offended by this.

 

One more accident today close to our office campus, 3rd in a month’s time. All 3 were bike guys, I should soon move to a car now. Though I am careful driver, but I do speed some times. It's really difficult to predict uncertainties in Hyderabad traffic. I strongly feel driving slowly and straight is always better option, we cannot control others driving and nobody will complain even if you are late by 5 mins or so.

Indiblogger Team in Hindu

We are in news, for a good one though. Thanks to Aziz for the news paper scan. You could find our group photograph, I am giving some weird expressions though.

Facebook : Welcome to Virtual Real world

We all use facebook, which is a very popular social media network. We all feel its a great place to network with friends. How many of us think we felt really connected when we had few friends across the streets than hundreds across the Social Media World. How many of us feel that remembering birthdays wasn’t that hard, whereas now even a reminder on facebook wasn’t that strong enough. Facebook has become such an addiction to all of us, that we now spend hours & hours, just over the home page. Forget about the addictive games like Farmvillie, Mafia wars etc..Status updates of your friends throwing light on their personal lives, their latest pictures showing their real world is so entertaining and engrossing.Farmville is an addictive game application found in facebook. There does not seem to be an on-line game as engaging as Farmville that provides a real farm context so that people can play and learn. Wierd is the World, Welcome to Facebook, A virtual real world.

 

Microsoft Kin

Microsoft announced yet another Windows phone based device called Kin. Don’t get confused with Windows Phone 7. Windows Phone based != Windows Phone 7. While Windows Phone 7 is a multipurpose phone for a broad set of consumers, KIN is for a generation of people that live to be connected to their friends and their family. So you could say that KIN is a new Windows Phone experience created for a unique set of socially connected consumers.

There are two devices at launch - Kin 1 and Kin 2. The Kin 2 has a larger screen, keyboard, 8GB vs 5 in Kin1, 8 megapixels vs 5 and can shoot HD video. QWERTY physical keyboard in both.  Both are mainly focused on photos and sharing. It has an inbuilt flash support which makes it more interesting.

KIN delivers breakthroughs throughout the product such as the Loop, the Spot, and the Studio:

Kin Loop - a 'hub'-like thing which shows real-time info on your phone from FB/twitter/your social network

Kin Spot - a sharing app into which you can drag (into a neat little drag circle) bookmarks,contacts, locations, etc and then share it.

KIN Studio –The KIN Studio is your KIN phone on the web.  Everything you create on your phone – messages, contacts, photos, videos – is also stored in the cloud and accessible from any web browser.

Visit http://www.kin.com for more details.  More details

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/12/microsoft-kin-ui-walkthrough/

We Blog, Therefore We Are

Univercell Hyderabad Indibloggers Meet.

We Blog, Therefore We Are

Those were the words I first saw, when I entered the meeting hall of the blogger’s meet. I saw a bunch of people with big smiling faces wearing black T-Shirts, warmly welcoming you for the meet. As we were registering for the meet, his/her Indiblogger profile pic, along with his/her name got listed on that big screen under ‘Arrivals‘. Tweets tagged with #indihyd were streaming over the big screen live. It all started with the video on how Hitler wanted to attend this indiblogger meet and how his blog has been rejected for the same. I am glad my blog was accepted for this event. only about 150 blogs were accepted for the event. The indiblogger team introduced themselves and then came the Hall of Fame event, where each blogger introduces himself in 30 secs. Its lot of fun to hear from different people, why they blog and what they blog about. I saw around 4 bloggers who were close to 60 years, but are very confident and passionate about blogging. And I also saw an old lady, who writes about recipes, who wants to make cooking easier for young people. It was so sweet of her husband to say that, I accompanied her because I am a good husband. There was a mix of bloggers who write about wide variety of categories, about food & recipes, Software technologies, about free lancing, about entrepreneurship, college students, poetry, nostalgic moments, non sense(yeah some ppl said that) and more. After the hall of fame session, came the activity session where all were given a big chart with a tag on it, so that we can sling it to our neck with the chart in our back and people can write comments on it!! It was fun going and meeting new people asking them to write comments, advertising your blog and taking their blog urls. But what delighted me most, was when I stood up and introduced myself and said I work for microsoft, in windows team, a couple of people wrote comments on my back saying , “Windows Made me, What I am today. Thanks to you guys.” , “Win 7 Ultimate rocks”. They made my day. Its not we, Its you guys who are rockstars. Then came the quizzing session, where riyaz came up with some interesting questions. I knew the answers only to few questions.Then the interesting part of the agenda came up, which is high tea with some yummy snacks. On the Menu were, Dahi wada, Burgers and gulab jamoons which were delicious. I shamelessly had tea followed by coffee in quick succession. The meeting concluded with a group photo and distribution of T-Shirts. I met Deepa, while I am almost ready to leave the session. She has got some real taste and a wonderful poetess too. Check out some of her poems here. We exchanged our numbers, promised to stay in touch and there comes the end. It was an enriching experience meeting new bloggers all over from Hyderabad. I got some new friends as well. All kudos to Indiblogger team. It was Brilliantly Organized and superbly executed. I would love to attend it again next time, If I am still in Hyderabad. If I missed anything, You could find the overall summation at Garima’s blog here

War and Movies, Naxalism and Terrorism

It’s very disturbing to see such videos, innocent civilians being victim of the war. Today morning when I came to office, the first thing I saw was this video which turned out to be a very sad one. I watched lot of war movies about US armies and Iraq,, but I always assumed that such stuff happens only in movies. But it turned out that this really happens in Iraq. Also, videos are confirmed by Pentagon, these were shot by US Army.

 

NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/middleeast/06baghdad.html?ref=global-home

Full uncensored Videos on: http://www.collateralmurder.com/

MSNBC discussion on the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d3SHumK2UY

CNN Report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMCNHC84Y04

 

Here army at least had a suspicion that this group was having AK-47 and got 16 of them off. Terrorists or naxals or whosoever cowardly carries out attacks on civilians where more than 70-80 die, do not have this ‘benefit of doubt’ too. 72 CRPF men killed in deadliest Maoist strike yesterday, which is equal to that nastiest terrorist attack that happened on India. Daily bomb-blasts in our country, and naxal attacks, other terrorist acts are no different than this collateral murder or whatever the news channels and human rights personnel call them. 

http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/apr/06/paramilitary-men-killed-in-dantewada-ambush.htm

 

Should we still believe that, Naxals don’t kill innocent people. Isn’t it that same as the above where the army is trying to showcase their reactions. Naxalism is born to safe guard down trodden people who are robbed by landlords.  Terrorism is heavily used in negative context to refer to terrorize people to achieve their selfish motives.  The motivation behind terrorism is majorly achieving their objectives by creating terror in people, governments or group (a community for example).

 

Off late Naxalism has lost it's major objective and became a fight against government in turn on police.  It got to an extent where it is almost impossible (except that internally originated and externally originated) to distinguish these two. Its sad that human civilization has not  progressed much from primitive one and still believes in wars, terror and killing people. They are not just fighting with governments/police/military they are waging a war even on people.

Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto, the fiery poet-journalist niece of slain former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, visited India to promote her book Songs of Blood and Sword. She appeared in an interview with NDTV(Barkha Dutt). Though the interview is 45 mins long it is worth every bit.

 

She reveals details about her aunt as a two sided person(as a politician and an aunt). What strike me most is with the ease she quoted the following lines.

I don’t believe in birth-right politics. I don’t think, nor have I ever thought, that my name qualifies me for anything.

I’m political, my writing is political, I’m active in political causes. I’ve always been interested in politics — but this very idea of eastern politics of dynasty, I don’t think breeds affection. I think it is an entitled, dangerous system. It doesn’t enhance engagement in politics. It doesn’t help participatory democracy

She is absolutely charming with her good looks and glossy aura.

Hyderabad riots

An year back, Hyderabad was all about development, later the tragic death of YSR, followed by floods, then Telangana issue and now Hyderabad riots. Looks like it is sliding back to some stone age, all back to 1990’s. The curfew has been implemented and extended for almost 3 days. The volatile situation in Hyderabad is reaching to new heights with these riots, its very hurting to see your home state in this situation. Its very evident that a situation of this sort will happen right from the start of Telangana agitation back in December. This could just be another political trick, to confuse people whether Hyderabad needs to part of Telangana or as a separate state by creating communal unrest in the city. Shops & Schools were closed and only Temples in very few places are open in view of Hanuman Jayanthi. Police issued shoot at site orders in 17 police stations (South Zone), Bus services has been cancelled and No vehicle movement was allowed in between Musheerabad vicinity and exit RTC X roads. People both minority and the majority should act sensibly and work for establishing peace in the city. No god believer (Muslim or Hindu) can hurt any human’s interest as its against preaching's of religion. We can never be a religious person when we are not a good human in the first case.