Happy New Year 2012

Another new year dawns on us. 2011 was another interesting year with a lot of things happening. (Ofcourse 365 days in a year is quite sufficient for all sort of events). Each year brings ups and downs which leads us in having amazing set of memories and experiences. Hope 2012 brings another amazing set of experiences, hopefully good ones

Breaking Laziness

 It's seems like ages since I have posted on the blog.Trying to break into the habit of writing. Working out on what to post. Still getting things cleared out within my head (Getting a clear picture).

Throwing into Dustbin

I was returning home and a couple of people walking before me were having some flyers in their hands. After reading they dropped it onto road and footpath while the dustbin was just a few steps away. What was strange was that they were not the only people doing so and the road & footpath looked like a mess.

Flyers are a way of advertisement for any business establishment - big or small. The only best thing I like about flyers is that they are made of Recycled papers. Any shop, market, clinic, restaurant and even individuals use these flyers for advertisements. They are distributed on the roads, infront of ones house, masjids, churches, markets etc...

I remember another incident on Brigade road Bangalore quite a while ago. I was walking with my friend Silv3rStag and we had just finished eating a sandwitch. We have a habit of dropping the sandwitch wraps or any kind of paper into a dustbin but in this case couldn't find one. We had to walk upto a restaurant and drop it into a dustbin available there. Recently when I dropped by on Brigade road, I found that dustbins were placed at every few meters. The logo on the dustbin was of McDonald's. So finally when McDonald's recently opened its Brigade branch, it was the only one which thought of putting dustbins throughout the Brigade road compared to the old and existing brand names. Also Brigade road has a shopping association which make major decisions with regard to lighting and decorations on that road and hadn't thought about it.

People need to put a little more effort to keep their own surroundings and environment clean. People need to think of how they pay so much attention to their homes as compared to the surroundings.

New year's frenzy

It's been a week since we entered the year of 2008. New year's eve has always been a time for people to revel so major amounts of celebrations like partying, fireworks, drinks and many more are on people's mind. Preparations are made many days in advance for that one night were everyone shows up as the next day is a holiday throughout the world. People actually need no reason for revelling, but new year's eve provides one such moment.

Since the start of this new year, the newspapers have been filled with news of the eve night problems like molestation and harassment cases in various cities. The status of law and order in any of the cities and metros is something everyone is aware of. Also the amount of alcohol consumption during the eve night is enough for people to have absence of inhibition which leads to many problems. Even narcotic drugs are been used in a lot of party circuits.

This trend of new year bash will only be increasing over the years. A lot of improvement is required towards law and order, party handling, crowd control/management ad many more. Then only things might turn out better for the party animals. Anyway, I still donot understand the need for a new years eve party. When my friends want to have a get together, then we just have it. We don't need a particular date at the end of the year to have one, we just have it at any given weekend or so.

Long break...

It's been around 4 months since I last posted. It could be that I was busy with a lot of things on my mind or just the plain old laziness getting to me. I am pretty sure that the latter is always been the case with me. This last quarter of 2007 has really made me lazy. I had a lot that I wanted to post but kept on letting it go. Any how, I hope with the start of the new year I will be able to keep posting. Now I am getting redundant with the message I am trying to convey.

Dirty Politics

Since the time of Caesar in Rome, (This is from my memory, it is possible that politics existed way before this time) politics has played a major role. Be it a dictatorship or democracy, or be it a person in power or a person being overthrown, politics has played its part. With modern politics being played in almost all the countries of the world, one gets to see the competition between candidates trying to get the seat of power.

Every person keeps an eye on an election nowadays. When the presidential election in the United States of America takes places, not only the 250 million American voting population keep an eye on that election, but the rest of the world is also busy keeping track of it, irrespective of the time difference (be it Eastern Standard Time, or GMT or IST).

Now when we talk about the Indian Elections, that will be an unending topic of discussion. Let me come to the point. A president's position in India is a nominal position, which doesnot give any powers related to the passing of the laws but atleast is a powerful position to be recognised. In the last 60 years many great people have been presidents of India. But now the current national parties like the BJP and Congress and many others have put forth 2 candidates for the president's position. Worst is when all these parties start to play DIRTY POLITICS by slandering the images of opponent candidates. I agree that people have dark pasts which haunts them for the rest of their lives. This doesnot justify what each of the parties are doing. They are working really hard to create a damaging image of the opponent's candidate, which is degrading on the parties point of view.

Finally when either one of the candidates become the President of India, the image of the president will be thrashed. This will remain for the next 5 years, as the parties donot realise that spoiling the image for winning an election is not the only time it will be used. Every other country in the world will correlate that image with whomever becomes the president. Therefore giving a bad name to India.

May passes by

This month came and went by without me writing any posts on this blog. I can't complain about being busy as it just takes some time to update a post. But still i have kept myself busy this month by finishing up some things that have been pending for quite a while. Also with the sudden thundershowers observed in Bangalore led to my internet connection getting disconnected for a couple of days. Therefore forcing me to keep my thoughts away from the internet.

This month my friend has been writing heavy amounts of posts on his blog. He is an amazing guy who finds a lot of interesting info on the internet. If any of the information on his blog doesn't help you then atleast it will be worthwhile for gaining knowledge from it. He is a major Google and Linux fan. I would suggest you to give this a try: Stumbles of a Stag. Also another try to his wordpress blog: A Stag's weblog.

New Blog related to Quotes

Just made a new blog related to interesting quotes I come across. They can be in reality or from a Movie, Anime, Actors, Ordinary people or anything. As long as they are interesting and worth something to read and remember, they will be available on the blog. Hope you all will give it a chance. Just give it a quick peek.

Quotable Quotes --> Click This.

CBSE board exams commences

New month begins and lots of things are happening including the start of the CBSE board exams. Brings back some good memories like writing my boards, can't say that the exams were always great but the memories were great.

Over 5 lakh students are writing the 12th CBSE board exams while 7 lakh students are getting prepared to write their 10th CBSE board. With a lot of changes happening every year related to the exam patterns and comfort for the students. Now 15 minutes before the exam begins, the students get the question paper so that they can go through it. This helps them in making up there mind for answering the optional questions. I guess as time moves forward the board will try many more moves to ease the mind of the students.

Time Flies...

It's been a month since I wrote a post. It's funny as I have plenty to write but have been lazy. Lots of things have happened so far. I am not talking about the world news just other things. I visited the Aero India 2007 show which took place in Bangalore. I will write some details in another post.

As for Bangalore, now some changes are being seen as the road widening project and re-tarring of the roads are taking place all over. These are the visible changes, just hope that the condition of these roads last for some time. As for the Metro Rail, I just see signboards placed around Bangalore without much changes. Let's hope that the year 2007 turns out good for Bangalore.

A year has passed

It's amazing to know that a year has passed since I started my blog. I have really enjoyed about writing anything and everything that I come across. Time flies I guess because I don't feel like its been that long since I started blogging.

Another year has passed as I grew a year older just some time back. I am still in Bangalore and the climate here is still pleasant while the city has grown in population and also in area (As in today's newspaper they mention about Greater Bangalore being officially announced making Bangalore bigger).

After a week of new year

Lots of stuff happened with the beginning of the new year. Saddam Hussein's death sentence which was carried out at the end of last year has made quite a news. The new Iraqi government along with the help of the US and its allies wanted Saddam dead so early. This punishment was an easy way out for Saddam. He was tried only for some of the crimes. He was not accounted for all the injustices he had done in his life. Also hanging him on an auspicious Muslim day is not the right thing. Out of all the days in a year, they had to hang him on that one day.

Lots of other news like 2006 was named the year of Mergers in the business world (With Arcelor-Mittal merger being the main topic). Who knows this year could also be a year of mergers. I use Hutch network on my cell phone and I have been hearing about the competition that is taking place to attain the 4th largest network in India.

The CAS (Conditional Access System) boxes are to be used starting with this year in the Metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. But what can we say when people have started to take their own connections with Dish TV and TataSky. While the smaller cities are using the cable connections with many channels disappearing and reappearing due to the payments not paid by the local cable network operator. What a way to watch things.

This year is also contains a lot of holidays as people have been calculating it. Number of holidays in a year usually remain same. The only difference is that most of the holidays this year fall on weekdays and not on a Sunday. Hope people are already making plans.

What a beginning...

What a beginning has this been for many people. Having a 3 day weekend, then a four working day before another weekend shows up. Apart from the classic parties that people attended on New Year's eve, I think the rest of us were sleeping or atleast watching TV.

There are quite number of shows coming on the TV to keep people busy. Otherwise just pick up a novel and start reading which should keep one busy. This year Bakrid falls on January 1st, so celebrations will keep going on.

Bad condition of some Highways

A few days ago I made a road trip from Bangalore to Mangalore. The route taken was National Highway 48 (NH-48). The amount of time taken to get out of Bangalore itself was amazing. Once on the two way highway, the ride was smooth when passing Hassan. But the moment we reached Shaklespur Ghat were the road goes downhill all the way for 40 kms was a horrible experience. The quality of the road was so bad that people needed to go a 20 kmph. Lots of potholes, forget potholes... I would say the roads would be missing from the middle as the whole Base layer of the road was destroyed. At every small distance you will find some truck or the other on the side of the road having problems with the tyres or axles. I guess if I had known earlier about the bad conditions of the road, I might have flown to Mangalore or atleast taken an alternate route. I am sure lots of transport companies have been suffering because of that section of the highway. The government should start spending some time fixing up the essential highways.

Performance of Shatabdi Trains

These are the train tickets from Bangalore to Katpadi and back. I had gone to visit my college VIT and had taken Shatabdi Express.

The only thing I needed to understand was why the prices varied as the distance was same. For Shatabdi, the place from where the ticket is purchased is also taken into consideration. Anyways Shatabdi services are good, as the whole train is A/C and has Chair car and Executive chair class only. Food is provided accordingly, like breakfast for the morning trains and dinner for the night train. Drinking water bottles are also provided which are kept cold. The new features introduced were the announcement of the upcoming stations over the speakers which have been provided in each car. This has helped a lot for passengers. Also people have been using the Mobile Charging sockets a lot as you can find them crowded, who knows the railway people might have to put up more sockets.

Finally the only thing I can say about the travelling experience by Shatabdi is that it was good and nice experience. I guess the trains still have lot of competition with the airline industry but still the railways have not been making any loses.

Fancy inauguration

This weekend presented me an opportunity to see some fancy inauguration of a new showroom opposite to the backside of Forum (KFC side). This happened specifically on Saturday evening when I dropped into Forum for a snack and found loud music and laser lights being projected at Forum from the new showroom called @HOME. The green laser lights reminded me of J.Lo's video "Waiting for tonight" and it would have been a really intentional coincidence if they were playing the same song. This showroom is a 4 storey building with furnitures on display and the laser projectors were on the roof-top pointing towards the people in Forum. The music was pretty loud as it could be heard even inside Forum. This style of inauguration did succeed as I could see a lot of people outside Forum and many checking out the showroom. I wasn't expecting this kind of pulicity in India but then again if it doesn't happen in Bangalore then where else will it take place first.

Nuclear Power Generation

This topic comes late but at a time when everyone around the world is worried about power generation and especially Nuclear Power generation. With any other kind of Energy source no country in the world has problems except taking the above mentioned. Sanctions, negotiations, treats to economically isolate and others words and phrases are being brought into the picture.

First of all what right does one country have on another to decide who should utilise some kind of resource or not. This becomes a dictatorship only but with the country taking the place not a person. India's power generation through Nuclear is hardly 5-10% but does India need to answer USA for whether it is using for Military or Power generation. Does USA disclose whether they are using Nuclear for Military or Power generation. USA has millions of documents which are classified and are related to nuclear weapons. It posses so many nuclear weapons that can destroy the world over. Then who gives USA the power to question any other country until it solves its own problem.

India whereas should learn that for 5-10% power generation through nuclear should not make it bend before any country. It has been busy trying to purchase fuel for the power stations which has been provided by Russia. First policy of Power-generation is that the source should be available then only should the project be considered. We are on such cross-roads that we need to purchase nuclear fuel for power stations. It sounds like what the Maharashtra government has done with ENRON. They made a power plant which runs on some kind of synthetic fuel which by the way led to the price of power generation go upto Rs 8/unit. So the whole ENRON company went bankrupt and Maharastra government suffered.

What the whole point here is that first of all we have to weigh our options. We need not bend before any country for listening to them as long as we are using our own resources for our own benefits. This point is not valid for our country itself but for all others in the world.

Authenticity of CVs by Googling

An article in the Times of India March 27th, 2006 talked about people applying for jobs through CVs are now being scrutinised by search engines like Google and Yahoo through their prospective employers. This has come as a concern for job-seekers as many informations which are not related to the work are seen and checked out by the prospective employers and these influence their decision in hiring them. Many people have already been rejected due to this.

The problem is that job-seekers are worried that whatever will pop-up in the search engines will result in deciding their future even if it were true or not. Also their are somethings which are personal to people and should not be taken into consideration while hiring for a job.

Now the employeers are finding this useful as they think that knowing the person better for a job is important and then again while searching one can come across their blogs which give a lot of insight into a person's characteristics. As one person stated, "With google you can check a person's CV, but ofthen you want to find out what makes them tick, dig behind the CV and see whether they will fit culturally withing the organisation."

Alternative power - Wind Energy

This is another type of energy which is not much publicised due to many factors. The amount of intial investment is very large and also the requirement of wind to flow throughout the year in the same place is very less. Also the cost of maintenance is high as the blades of the windmill is to be really taken care off. Usually installation of these are done on large scale to cut down on the overall costs of the windmill. When many number of such windmills are put then they are known as wind farms. With wind farms, production of power is done on large scale to meet the power demands.

Currently in India those places which have a very good possibility of having winds flowing throughout the year are taken into consideration. Tamil Nadu state is one of the best locations were winds flow throughtout the year. This state produces 60% of the total wind power produced in India. It' s current status is 1600 MW and is planned to increase by double soon. These quantities of power donot contribute much to the national power generation but it is way better than burning that much fossil fuel to gain that energy. Sooner or later better renewable energy will be taken into consideration.

Better ways to perfect and gain more from these wind energies are still underway. Hopefully in the future better solutions can be found for harnessing wind energy. Also lately offshore wind energy farms are being made. These are in experimental stages to check out the after effects of such projects to the surroundings and environment. Example like conditions where ships or boats colliding with the windmills; also effects seen by birds and fishes on these windmills have to be seen and determined. But this could be another future prospect if we are running out of land. Even there is 20-40% more wind energy detected in the sea compared to the land.

Let's see the round about figures for the height of the windmills and blade sizes with the amount of power produced. A Windmill with 3 blades are attached at 120 degrees are taken into consideration. The height of the windmill is from the ground to the center of the blade joints. The following will give the data (these windmills should be set up at good wind flowing locations) :

• Height is 100 feet & blade length is 12 feet. Power 10KW.
• Height is 132 feet & length is 66 feet. Power 500 KW.
• Height is 262 feet & length is 135 feet. Power 1650 KW.

Status of Solar Energy

I was going through an article in 'The Hindu' regarding solar energy. Its main focus was to use solar energy for street lights and also how to use it in homes to cut down on the electric bills and power problems. The main reason about power cuts is that there is an overload somewhere, that is somebody is using excessive power some place. Hence, we ourselves are slightly a reason for the power cuts. So we have to work on the problem.

It is estimated that nearly 5 lakh homes in Bangalore city consume 3 Million units of power everyday between 6 am & 9 am for water heating alone. If just 20% of the households in Bangalore switch to solar energy to heat water, about 150 MW of power will be saved during peak hours everyday. Also 75% of total expenditure of Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) goes into keeping streetlights glowing. (Courtesy to Metro Plus, the Hindu, March 20, 2006)

Water heaters are a good investment in a long run. Intially the cost will be heavy than an electric water geyser but then again we need not pay any electric bills for the water heater. The life time of a water heater is also long. So intial investment is everything. In Bangalore itself there are more than 50 companies dealing in solar water heater and will install it in 2 days period. This is just one example.

In many new types of Solar energy experimentation, a solar furnace has been created. But in this instead of Solar cells, concave mirrors are used to divert the sunlight to a single point like pointing to a top of a tower. This way large scale temperatures can be attained. One such example can be seen in France.

This is the future, where we need to use clean source of energy and sunlight is in abundance, so more practical use should be implemented. This way we can meet the demand of power generation that keeps on rising. More things like solar heaters should be implemented for human use.