3 Questions

I had the opportunity to take 3 weeks off, first time since I started working, to India. With all the excitement, I went to India and I think I had a good time there, meeting family and friends. On the way to India, I took a stop over in Singapore and met up with a couple of very good friends. Needless to say, I had a blast of a time there.

I met up with a lot of people in India and had a really really good time. There were three questions that were asked almost by everyone.
In no specific order
1. Obama has told this and that about outsourcing. What is the impact to India in general and what is the impact to you in specific?
2. Are you here to get married?! (Why is all this trips to India associated with marriage?!!!)
3. Is there any racial discrimination in US (as in Oz!!!)

For all the above questions, I did not have a definitive answer well atleast for the second questions. For the other two questions, I had some idea - after being in US for close to two years.

p.s: do not plan anything for the trip. Go with an open mind. You will enjoy more.

p.p.s: the hate part of the trip – SRK-SENA and the Mumbai manos thing. All the news channels were filled with this crap.

Science of motivation

Tere Mere Beach Mein!

Tere Mere Beach Mein - before you get shocked, this post is not about what you think!

I was trying to kill time on Saturday night after coming from an Onam Celebration which was boring to hell; apart from the fact that the food was really very good!

I happen to stumble upon the videos of new program on Star Plus called Tere Mere Beach Mein hosted by the Director/Choreographer Farah Khan.

Initially, as I was seeing the videos on Youtube, I was thinking this is another chat show where they come, talk crap and go - which is the case in many of the chat shows - a case in this is Koffee with Karan! But as I came to the last part of the program featuring Priyanka Chopra and Vijender Singh, Farah called a boy who was just 15 years old. He had ran away from his home and landed in Mumbai. The rest of the story and what happened in this show can be seen in the below video.



If this sort of good deed is carried upon in all the episodes, then this program will surely make history of sorts and I hope they continue doing such good deeds.

-L

Cost of Heatlhcare

This is just a random post and is small!
---
A MRI of the head to find out if there is a cyst in the ear cost USD 1860! The health insurance covers most of that cost and I had to pay only USD 45. Imagine if a person who is not having insurance had to go for this MRI!

I am not sure how much this MRI would cost in India, But, I am really happy that India has not yet come under the grip of Managed HealthCare!

-L

Times!

Seven years ago, on this day, we stepped into a world of opportunities’ known as PSG tech little knowing what was ahead of us. We were welcomed by a greater speaker - forgot his name - but was a great speech to begin the college life.

My brother had come to drop me off in the college and was surprised to see Phalgun unpack his things. He has got a mini house for him starting from body powder to pickles to cricket kit.

Seven years on, things has changed a lot. From being immature to mature; from being irresponsible to responsible; from difficult to understand to understanding and so on.

There was times when we used to spend hours and hours chatting/SMSing/talking with friends.

People used to pick up the call before even the first ring completes, reply back to the SMS as soon as it is in the inbox, reply back to the ping as soon as you hear the sound. There were days when we used to chat with a person who was sitting two or three benches way.

But once after the college, we have become so busy that we do not have time for all these things. When you call a friend, we are greeted by his/her voice, but a recorded one stating that he/she is not available to pick the call, please leave a message! or no response at all. People have become busy and they have got different priorities. And after that comes a time when you finally call after a long time and you realize that you have nothing at all to talk! People just keep asking "what else"...”aparam" and so on! The same case goes with chat/pings. People are held up and find no time to reply and once they find time to reply, they have nothing to chat about!

We were living on SMS in college. Cricket match scores, forwards, late night kadalai etc... The number of words per min was something close to 100 (my guess) but now i think it has reduced to say 20 words per min. I am not even using SMS now!

Apart from the priorities, people are spread out - far and wide and there are changes to life around them. Some have got married, busy with their marriage life; some are studying, busy with the academic life; some are working in the same place since they got out of the college and work has taken them to different parts of the world. People really have got no time for the old times or should I say no time to think about the old times.

But i sincerely hope that when i meet my friends personally, for the old times sake, talk a lot and keep in touch going forward.

Cheers!

Same news.. but different take

I was going thru the Google news when I came across the two links. Google news crawls the net, collects and collates the news related to the same topic or the news item. For example, India’s warm up game against Pakistan will be collected and group under the same group

Effectively, the both the links are talking about the same press conference which was held after the India’s warm up game against Pakistan in the run up to the T20 World Cup in England.

It is essentially the same news, but the take on the news by the each other is entirely different.

Read this

http://www.cricinfo.com/wt202009/content/story/407474.html

and then read this

http://cricket.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/t20articleshow/4618722.cms

Welcome to the world of sensitizing the news!

NBA