with the nature

Last weekend I relaxed in a jungle. A scenic place to go among the mountain region. The place is kind of cut of from the rest of the world, as it tucks itself within a valley well gaurded by hill ranges in all direction.

Our stay was quite comfortable in a small cottage. We went around for sight-seeing and spotted few rare animals including a young cheetah. Other common inhabitants to spot there were deer, bison, elephants, monkeys, peacock etc. The night safari was the height of all. A large tusker chased our vehicle! It was standing in the side of the road and when we tried crossing, it gave a thundering trumpet and a chase.

Since my friend spared his cottage there (for a reduced rent), the trip became cheaper.

When I left the city

I had a palacial house, married to a beautiful wife, amassing wealth. However, life was boring. Somehow things became monotonous. Events that were interesting in the past started soring out. I was contemplating about moving away from this life.

Slowly the thought precipitated. Now came the dilemma. What should do with all my luxury cars, should I distribute among friends or leave them in streets? Also, the weapons .. the glorious collection, powerful ones, that saved my life many times and helped to cross scores ... do I return to the shop or can I take selected few when I am migrating?

Will I be coming back? Should I make provision to allow me to resume back to the same status where I am?

This departure somehow reminds me about death. It is so close and comparable. I guess even before I die, I am going to worry about all these artifacts the same way I am doing now.

With such silent and painful manner, I left millions of dollars with torncity and returned to normal life.

Toolkit for sale

Power Maxx Tool set of 12 pieces model.

Very handy assorted instrument to help household activities.

• Bought : one month back
• Condition : hardly used; as good as new
• selling price: Rs 425 (slightly negotiable)
• Reason of selling: Upgrading to higher end toolbox

Here is the list of items available.

• torchlight


• electrical tester


• hammer


• plier


• measurement tape


• adjustable spanner


• adjustable plier


• Thread seal tape


• Flat screw driver


• Star screw driver


• knife


• Tool kit box

More sale
Also, the following set of drivers are available for Rs 100.
Four handle of various size; each one can fit a star or flat type driver. So, we have 8 drivers for Rs 100.

Using large numbers

The numbering system has reached trillions and centillion (which is 10^303).
In India we dont follow millions & billions, instead we go for lakhs and crores. However, we are for left behind without words for larger numbers. Already politicians had crossed thousand crore scams and more. It is time to coin words.

Instead of inventing new words, we can go through the Ancient words and see if they can be re-used, just like lakhs and crores.

Here are the words from Ancient India.
10 ^ 0      eAkam
10 ^ 1      dasha
10 ^ 2      shatham
10 ^ 3      sahasram
10 ^ 4      ayutham
10 ^ 5      laksham
10 ^ 6      niyutham
10 ^ 7      koti           <- this is the crore stuff
10 ^ 8      arbudham
10 ^ 9      vrundham
10 ^ 10     karva
10 ^ 11     nikarva
10 ^ 12     shanga           <- trillion
10 ^ 13     pathrama
10 ^ 14     sAgara
10 ^ 15     anthyam        <- quadrillion
10 ^ 16     mathyam
10 ^ 17     parArdham

These numeric words are preserved in a sanskrit poem.

story of tata broadband

The slogan I would suggest for tata broadband internet connection is, "works smooth; cancel registration upon failure".

I had observed the above functioning for the past couple of months. When there is a problem, there is limited response. The customer care reps are clueless. Repeated call to them are futile. Tickets raised go wasted.

At times, even raising tickets are blocked!! I get either busy tone or continuous ringing. Whereas in normal circumstances, the call should be directed to an automatic phone menu. I doubt that the customer care "switches off" their receiving mode when there are lots of complain.

Anyway, I got an alternate connection to the tata guys. Let us see how they both function. Hope they dont sync up to fail.

Book: The Circle of Innovation

Happen to pick this book written by Tom Peters. It is quite interesting.

Many useful tips on thinking in the direction towards new dimension, unfolds our thoughts for a better way of living. Very nice way of illustrating the danger of clinching to old ideas and the benefit of taking risk into new arena.

Thou the book is more than 10 years old, the ideas are still fresh for these days.

More than the above, the unusual fonts, random pictures, etc etc made the book easy to read.

GA's marriage reception

GA invited us for his reception. We all planned to attend around 7pm. As per the plan, KS to pick me. He reached 40 mins after the agreed meeting time. Still then I was standing at a busy junction and admiring the natural resources of the city. KS asked me the venue and I was stareing blank. I thought he will be knowing. By then LN called for the venue. We asked him to check with RN. Seems like RN came to know about the reception only after LN called.

I came up with the idea of dialing GA's mobile. I was sure that someone else wil b holding the phone while GA is busy at the stage. My guess was correct. GA's brother answered the phone and gave us the direction.

That saved the day for all of our unplanned, unorganized friends!

airtel saga

Still the airtel is behind me with their greedy tongue. Here is what happened before.

There was no response from the company inspite of 8 emails. Phone calls were answered without any conclusions. Their standard response was that someone from the concerned dept will be calling me. Needless to say, that never occured.

After consulting with a lawyer friend, I drafted a 'professional' letter. Sent it through courier. In two days I got an acknowledgement .. at last! However the message was the usual one. Seems like the concerned dept will contact me in two days; that was four days ago.

Anyway, let me wait for one more month to see if they are making any move.

Mahjongg

I had increased the phase of playing Mahjongg game from Moraff. Quite addictive one. The idea is simple. A collection of tiles are piled up in the screen. Each titles have colorful images and symbols. We have to click the titles having the same image. Few rules for clicking a tiles like - tiles have to in the corner and no other tile should be above this one. Aim of the game is to clear all the tiles from the board.

After repetitive playing, it occurred to me that I was able to get the images I was looking for and I am able to get only those I was looking. Thou few tiles might be in prominent position, which were clickabe, I seldom located them. I read this idea elsewhere in a management book saying, we will get what we look for and hence we ought to set our goals clearly.

Insurance policy benefitors

I do have this opinion about life insurance: why do I need it? If I die, why should I worry about the current kith and kin? (my wife also shares similar idea). Only when we think at the family level, it starts making sense. We feel uncomfortable to think about our family in a financial difficulty in the absence of the bread winner. That is exactly the emotional blackmailing weapon used by the insurance agents.

I used to think why the government, (atleast the Indian govt) is encouraging insurance. They give lots of tax rebate and other benefits. May be it will be a headache for govt when the income of a family is totally cut (ie, when a single person is the sole person earning in the family). If such insurances are not encouraged, govt will have to take the headache of providing plans for widows and kids.

Tool kit

My long time goal was met last weekend. I got a tool kit for house use. The kit has trivial things like screw drivers, pliers, hammer etc placed in a neat box. Quite handy set of instrument, got the power by holding it.

It is a magic tool kit box - just in a day, many of the nitty-griddy problems at home vanished. I was able to split the phone line into two, assemble a book shelf, fix the cot. May be I worked on them with initial enthu, let us see how things go.

Dodging airtel

Inspite of repeated request to cancel the number, airtel sent the monthly bill (for the month I didn't use the number and surrendered the same). I didnt want to waste time in going behind them to revert it. I have automatic payment of airtel bills through my bank account. I tried to stop that but the bank ppl insisted on getting a letter from airtel for closure.

I emptied the bank account and waited for the fun. During the monthly bill cycle, airtel tried to take money from my account. It was fun watching the disappointment in its face. However, the bank has placed a penalty of Rs 200 since the account was empty when the automatic service tried to retrieve money.

Now I am in the process of closing the bank account as I no longer need it. Let us see what airtel is upto.

Romance

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.

Olden
In all parts of the world, people had their local version of erotica and other pornographic materials. Based on movies, we get an impression that there were special villas for the big shots which had erotic paintings and statues. The Indian version of erotica or the sex guide, Kamasutra, rules till date. Most of the temples of India which are 1000+ years old have nude images and sculpture with sexual positions (hmmm .. are these possible to do? I dare not to try).

Modern
Do you know what drives the internet boom? Porno. Any new technology is put to test by applying on the porno sites. Even better, the porno sites drives the technology by demanding new features. World wide these sites have a good customer base. It would be interesting to find if there were any contribution by porno movies in improving the technology behind flim industry,vcr, dvd etc.

Dont assume that I am totally corrupt and hence I am stating the above. I rarely go to those sites.


If you could think any more fantasies, please place them in the comments.

Good service

The wireless mouse had some issue. It didnt function. I tried replacing the batteries. That didnt help, moreover the keyboard also stopped working. Different combinations of pressing those reset/sync up buttons failed to bring them live.

Monday morning I called up the person running Krishna Computer Care, the place where I bought the computer and accessories. He told he is busy today and he can send technician the next day. As it is not a pressing issue, I agreed for it.

The surprise came in by afternoon. Technicians arrived inspite of rain, and fixed the keyboard problem.

It was very nice of them and I felt happy.

Lousy airtel

Pathetic service from airtel - that is the simple way of summarizing their service.

4th June 7 is the date when I raised a request to close a mobile number. They acknowledged and after few days a lady called and suggested that I can retain the account by transferring to a new number in different city. She went on trying for that and each day I call she would promise at the end of the day things will be fixed.

As things didnt move any further, I gave up there. Now they had started sending bills for the time when I didnt use the connection.

Phone calls and mails to them are of no use. Planning to dump the bill and see what they come up with. Will keep sending them mails and keep them as evidence of correspondence from my side.

Most beautiful

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.

Olden
"Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful, fairest girl in the world?" The quest to find beauty is time immemorial. Guys had different tastes. Girls tried everything possible to meet the requirement placed by the guys.
In ancient China composed a poem with a line describing the feet of a girl so small to a particular flower. For thousands of years, that became a standard. From childhood the feet of the girls are crushed to miniature size just to make sure that they are upto the beauty standard. The western world has a dynamic interest and quite seasonal. There are times when busty babes are the rage and so the girls enlarge their bosom with some kind of silicon stuff; something like the stress ball we keep at office to squeeze. At other times, flat chest, tom boyish girls are preferred. I dont know if there are operations for this. (my wife, dont ask me how I know these. You will be disappointed to know that these are not of practical knowledge, but stuff I had read).


Modern
If a garage is not suitable for any useful purpose, it is rented out for a beauty parlour. I always wanted to see what is inside. But the board with Aishwarya says only women and kids are allowed.


Alright, after meeting the most beautiful, what else but - romance!!

whizz kid

happened to interact with a smart kid, around 10 yr old. Thou he is visiting from gulf country, he didnt have those 'nri look'. He was quite casual and enjoyed his stay; and even liked the sambar, papad etc.

The kid was flaring with questions and they were quite thought provoking. The current country where he is, he is been placed in a school based on Indian syllabus. With such background, he is trying to understand the education system, why people need to study, which subject will be easy, how to find if a subject wil be easy for me or not ...

Hope our education system will not ruin the thinking of such kids.

sudoku in real life

Just came a thought in the early morning. That was about sudoku. Many times I had wondered if there is any utility out of playing this game. It strike at me about the usage. Yes, I feel that sudoku has resemblance of resource allocation algorithm.

For example, let us take a college department. There will be batches of students, courses and staff. We need to prepare a time table that would allot staff for different classes. Constraints like staff skill set to handle courses, or unavailability of staff/rooms for a specific time.

What is to do with sudoku? I see the same kind of allocation, conflict resolution, meeting criteria etc.

The same kind of problem is addressed at different places like industries, traffic regulation, loan sanction process, etc etc

getting into a schedule

What is running in my mind is to bit more organize my day to day activity. Wanted to do things on time, like monthly payments, project deadlines, etc.

I am doing a minuscule amount of exercise. That too not very regular. Wanted to improve the quality and quantity. Reading pattern is slightly ok, but can be done better.

Also thinking about social activities like study group, satsang, volunteer group etc. Will try to do in small manner, one at a time.

Job satisfaction

My wife is going through rough times at her work space. She is trying to balance different factors and get a suitable environment to strive.

If job satisfaction is the thing most of us look for, what is it made of? How do we get that stuff?

Had gone through couple of books in this subject and they talk about being independent, able to align what is expected out of you with what you like doing, and many other similar stuff.

This is quite interesting topic as when an employee feels positive about the env, it will boost the productivity.