अर्ज किया है.....

बेझुदी ले गई कहा हमको
देरसे इंतजार है अपना

(Forwarded)

Have a nice weekend Folks! :-)

आयुष्यावर बोलू काही

रविवारी संध्याकाळी ७ वाजता झी मराठीवर 'आयुष्यावर बोलू काही' पाहू शकाल. तसंच आज रात्री १० वाजता एनडीटीव्ही गुड टाईम्सवर 'इंडियाज मोस्ट हॉन्टेड' पहायला विसरू नका. :-)

Soem more sites for a rainy day

http://blog.footnote.com/
http://www.stevespangler.com/
http://bnhsenvis.nic.in/

Sites for a rainy day

This is more like a note to myself. I came across these sites on one of the pages in Knowledge magazine. They look interesting so I am saving the links here. Hope I will one day find time to check these out.

http://www.earthshots.org
http://www.bit.ly/historylessons
http://www.kew.org
http://www.conservation.org
http://www.webofstories.com
http://www.foodtimeline.org

Drop me a line in case you check them out first :-)

Dear God! Not Again! First they told us that the world's merry-go-round is coming to a full stop, come 21 December, 2012. Now the deadline has been shifted to - May 21, 2011. Yep, that's tomorrow. Couldn't they have done this number-crunching earlier? I mean what are the world's supercomputers for? I could have at least made a trip to Ladakh. I guess I will have to die without ever tasting the Baked Alaska at Gaylord's :-)

Oh, look at it this way - if the world really comes to an end tomorrow, we will all be in it together.- you, I, our families, friends, neighbors and of course, ISI, all the terrorists from Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah etc etc. :-) Finally, time to get an answer to questions such as "Is there life after death?" and "Is there God?". That reminds me, I must locate my copy of the The Book Of The Dead! :-)

And if the world stays intact come Sunday, well, then we can hope that it stays intact come 22nd December, 2012 :-)

Well, just in case I don't see you again, here's wishing you all "A Happy Afterlife"! :-)

Sometimes I wonder how we used to manage before the Net. It seems next to impossible. Let me tell you what happened. Yesterday night I finished off reading BBC Knowledge Magazine's issue that I had bought from Landmark. One of the articles mentioned how King Frederick of Sweden died after having a hearty meal, which, apart from lobster and caviar, had about 14 helpings of a dessert known as Semla. Intrigued, I searched on the net. I got all the information that I could have possibly wanted, and definitely more than what I needed, about the sweet dish. But I before I could digest (!) it all, I came across another new word "Shrove Monday" which led me to "Ash Wednesday". So I read a bit about these 2 days.

I had to summon up every ounce of the self-restraint that I have to avoid finding out more about Ture Sventon. :-)

Please stand up for the National Anthem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWQOm3iQmlA

Have you ever had the pleasure of cleaning up a mailbox? If you haven't, let me tell you that it is not an easy task. I should know because I tried it yesterday.

I started with the oldest mails first, obviously thinking that it would be easy to get rid of them. Turns out that was a big mistake. Most of these emails contain stories or beautiful pictures - something that I didn't really have a heart to purge - notwithstanding the fact that the next time I look at them could well be 5 years from now.

Some mails are from people who have long since moved out of my life. If I were to write to them today, I wonder if they will even be able to recall who I am. Silly as it may sound, I couldn't delete these mails either - God only knows why since it is very unlikely that I will ever write to them again.

The remaining mails are from people who have somehow managed to remain friends with me even today :-) I know why I will keep these mails - for the sheer pleasure of forwarding these to them one day with a "Do you remember this mail?". There is one mail which contains a long discussion about Project management, there is another one with similar detailed discussion about whether to go for direct investment into stocks or not and then there is one which talks about one song that remains favorite to this day :-)

Of course, in the end I did manage to purge some mails - long forgotten job postings, communication from mutual funds and assorted mails from banks! I think I will not attempt another "spring-cleaning" for the next one month at least :-)

I have been dead against investing in ULIPs since I started taking personal finance seriously. But recently my financial advisor mentioned LIC's Samridhi Plus - despite knowing fully well my view's about ULIPs. Since I had some spare time at my disposal today, I decided to do some research on the net about this product. I found 2 articles worth reading and am posting them here for my reference as well as for anyone who happens to pass by:

http://ranjanvarma.com/lics-samridhi-plus/
http://www.tflindia.in/2011/03/lic-samridhi-plus-review-invest.html

Just a nagging doubt....am I a classic case of "Confirmation Bias"?

अपने सपनोंको कभी ये मत बताओ के आपकी तकलीफ कितनी बड़ी है
अपनी तकलीफको ये बताओ के आपके सपने कितने बड़े है

Have a great evening, folks!

At the end of each of the articles in BBC Knowledge, there were links to some interesting sites related to that article. I am bookmarking some of them here so I can visit them sometime in future:

bit.ly/roguewave - this one is about the rogue waves
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie - The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
http://arndt-photo.de/ - Wildlife photography

India's Most Haunted

"India's Most Haunted" has started airing from Friday 13th May onwards. I am sure they wouldn't have found a more auspicious occasion. :-)

I have always loved watching "Ghost Hunters International" starting with their "We are not here to hurt you" down to the "Good Job Man" backslapping at the end of each one-hour episode. Maybe that's why the half-an-hour episode of "India's Most Haunted" seemed a bit short in comparison.

Rocky and Mayur used almost the same gadgets like motion sensors, EMF recorders, EVP recorders and infra-red cameras as in GHI. This first episode was shot in Delhi's Jamali-Kamali where the duo claims to have experienced the paranormal about 20 years back. They talked about it at the beginning of the episode. There were some short chats with the locals who talked about sightings. And then the duo actually went to the same place that they had visited 2 decades ago.

I know the program should not be judged based solely on one episode. But I think they would do well to shoot more at the supposedly 'haunted' locations. A brief about the place and the experiences of the locals should not consume more than 5-8 minutes. And if the location is outdoors, the use of motion detectors should be restricted as the place could have any number of creatures that are residents of the "normal" world - like rats or monkeys. Oh, and please screen out the locals who talk about "ladies in white", "sound of the payal" and "howling dogs". That's the stuff that Indian horror movies are made out of. :-)

This program can be seen on NDTV Good Times on Fridays at 10pm. Repeat telecast is on Saturdays 6:30pm and Sundays 11pm.

I guess it was a case of premature celebration. I had almost made it to the isle where magazines are stacked - congratulating myself for once more making it out of Landmark without buying a single book. But fate had something else in store for me. I caught sight of a magazine which had this printed in big bold letters - 'Does God Exist?'. I must confess I would have turned back if I had not noticed that the magazine was BBC Knowledge. When I picked it up, I noticed that there were more articles on Egyptian's Book of The Dead as well as the extinct species of the bird Dodo. This was too much to resist and so I bought the book.

I have so far managed to read that article titled 'Does God Exist?'. Frankly, I am disappointed. I know, it wouldn't have contained any concrete proof because if anyone had found anything like that, there would surely have been a breaking news by now. But somehow, the discussion seemed rather incomplete. I loved the articles on Book of The Dead and Dodo though.

So, all in all, I am in two minds as far as subscribing to this magazine goes. Maybe I will try another issue before making up my mind about it.