Its just an Ad.....

These four classified ads appeared in a local newspaper on four consecutive days. The last three hopelessly trying to correct the first day's mistake.

MONDAY:

For sale - SK Shah has a sewing machine for sale. Phone 2555-0707 after 7PM and ask for Mrs Mani who lives with him cheap.

TUESDAY:

Notice: We regret having erred in SK Shah's ad yesterday. It should have read,

"One sewing machine for sale cheap. Phone 2555-0707 and ask for Mrs Mani, who lives with him after 7PM."

WEDNESDAY:

Notice: SK Shah has informed us that he has received several annoying telephone calls because of the error we made in the classified ad yesterday. The ad stands correct as follows:

"For sale - SK Shah has a sewing machine for sale. Cheap. Phone 2555-0707 after 7PM and ask for Mrs Mani who loves with him."

THURSDAY:

Notice: I, SK Shah, have no sewing machine for sale. I smashed it. Don't call 2555-0707 as I have had the phone disconnected. I have not been carrying on with Mrs Mani. Until yesterday, she was my housekeeper but she quit.

Quick Exercise for the Mind

Carry out this test; it's quite bizarre......
Just follow the instructions as quickly as possible but only one question at a time. Do not carry on reading the following questions before you finish the previous one.

You do NOT need to write the answers OR remember them - just do it using your mind.

You'll be surprised by the result.

How much is:

15+6


3+56


89+2


12+53


75+26


25+52

63+32


I know! Calculations are hard work but this is the real thing!



Come on a few more.


123+5


QUICK! THINK ABOUT A TOOL AND A COLOR!



You have just thought about a red hammer, haven't you?


If this is not the case, you are among the people who have a "different" if not "abnormal" mind. Most folks answer a "red hammer" while doing this exercise.

If you do not believe this, pass it around and you'll see.

My Israel visit.....

Last weekend I went for a trip to Eilat which is the southern most (almost) part of Israel. Surrounded by Jordan and Egypt ... the borders are really close ..
U can enjoy different water sports like paragliding, sailing, surfing , scuba diving etc...

Eilat is also famous for the marine life there ... u can see all kinds of corals and underwater life in the red sea.
There is a very good underwater observatory...

Israel....

Presently I am on a visit to Israel, and it has a lot of spots to visit....
A view near the hotel

here's a cool pic of a water fall at yahudia natural reserve in north east of israel.

and a beautiful view of bahai gardens at Haifa

Guy!!!

Letters of Kids to God

Very cute letters............... These are actual letters that kids have written to God. This was done in a Sunday School class and were too cute to miss.

Dear God... Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't you just keep the ones you have now?

Dear God... Who draws the lines around the countries?

Dear God... I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that okay?

Dear God... Thank you for my baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.

Dear God... It rained for our whole vacation and is my father mad! He said some things about you that people are not supposed to say, but hope you will not hurt him anyway.

Dear God... Please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up.

Dear God... If we come back as something, please don't let me be Jennifer because I hate her.

Dear God... I want to be just like my daddy when I get big, but not with so much hair all over.

Dear God... I think about you sometimes, even when I'm not praying.

Dear God... I bet it is very hard for you to love all the people in the world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it.

Dear God... Of all the people who worked for you, I like Noah and David the best.

Dear God... If you watch me in church Sunday, I'll show you my new shoes.

Dear God... I do not think anybody could be a better God. Well, I just want you to know that I am not just saying this because you are God already.

Dear God... I didn't think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday. That was cool!

The Way to get Educated

This is a mail by first year NITIE ( one of the leading Institutes for Management education in India) student:

O yes dear! Degrees do differ a lot. Engineering keeps us busy with Kirchoff¡¦s laws, Laplace transformations, Distribution curves blah blah blah. Sadly, we never use them on anything beyond pieces of paper. In contrast, a MBA is an excursion to reality; a confrontation with hideous facts.

Dear friends, in my 7 months of MBA education so far, I¡¦ve come across plenty of quite-disturbing truths. Each of these has a potential to stir a thinking mind. I wanted to document some of those and share them with you.
I hope you can spare a few minutes for them.

@ My first lesson was like a ¡¥wake up¡¦ alarm. Without ever realising it
I¡¦ve always lived on foreign brands. Right from the Farex which my mom
fed me many moons ago to the Reeboks I now wear; from the Colgate with
which I begin my day, to the Mortein which burns after I fall asleep,
hardly anything is Indian. Ditto for you.

¡§Wah Wah Globalisation¡¨ some might utter. But go a step below that
rhetoric and you¡¦ll notice the fact that we don¡¦t have a single truly
global brand of our own except Kamasutra and Yoga. Why?

I¡¦ve identified some of the culprits. It¡¦s us ¡V the so called best
B-schools of the country. We slog day and night dreaming to be picked up
by the Goldman Sachs¡¦, McKinseys, E&Ys and other blue chip companies. We
follow the system too soon, forgetting to question it when required.
Perhaps we need a Munnabhai MBA who can think different. And until that
happens we will continue to eulogise dynasties like Tatas, Birlas et al,
but never see an entrepreneurial genius like a FedEx, a Dell or a Google.

@*@ The next time you come across the ubiquitous blue coloured Parachute
Coconut Oil dabba, notice it carefully. Though majority uses it as hair
oil, it never mentions ¡¥hair oil¡¦ on the package. That brings us to our
next lesson -Play with the rulebook. It pays.

Edible products are exempted from excise duty and also enjoy benefits on
sales tax. Therefore Marico/HLL officially promote their Coconut Oil
brands as edible products ONLY. By doing this they avoid paying excise
duty (16%) which maximises their profits.

@*@ Now some trade news. I assume you know that 95% of India¡¦s trade
happens through sea. We have 12 major ports in India. As per the last
Indian Ports report these 12 ports have TOGETHER handled 287.6 million
tonnes of cargo in fiscal 2001-02, which is lesser than a single Singapore
port (325.6 million tonnes) or a single Rotterdam port (320 million
tonnes).

Now you¡¦ll easily agree that we indeed contribute less than 1% to total
world trade.

@*@ Manufacturing has lost its pride. Today a Babulal & Sons manufactures
the goods, a Ghanshyamji Brothers Ltd packages it and then passes it to a
Nike/HLL. These guys offer it to you with the w-i-d-e-s-t artificial smile
and rob you off thousands in the name of ¡¥customer delight¡¦ and other
concocted management jargons.

You might think the profit pie is shared equally between all partners.
Take this. ..

There are many small enterprises in Bombay who manufacture toothbrushes
and sell it to the big FMCG companies for anything between Rs.1.75 to Rs
4. These toothbrushes are then ¡¥brandedised¡¦ and sent to primary market
with a price tag ranging between Rs 11 to Rs 20. Can you visualise the
easy profits after removing the advertising and distribution costs? It¡¦s
whopping!! Btw, this toothbrush market is alone worth Rs 2000 crores in
India.

@*@ Does price of a good always reflect ¡¥added value¡¦ inside it? Or is
the poor ignorant customer paying for something else? Let data answer this
question.

Most premium goods use raw materials which are imported. They pass through
our ports which are grossly inefficient. The importers have to make a
freight payment which is a proportion of the total import value. The world
total freight payment is 6.2%. In India the figure is a terrifying 12%.
This obviously gets added to the basic price.
Also, we are always over-staffed. Mumbai port alone has 23, 600+
employees. Their salaries and wages amount to 77% of its operational
earnings.

Who pays for these inefficiencies? The customer of course!!

@*@ After several years of deliberation a good thing is finally happing in
Indian Taxation System ¡V implementation of VAT. A little reading revealed
some interesting facts. VAT was first introduced in Morocco (1962) and is
being currently used in about 120 nations. In spite of many advantages
like general reduction in prices this bill faced huge resistance from many
traders. Guess why?

Because VAT mandates complete transparency. It requires traders to
maintain records of the transactions they make. Simply put, it makes pay
their income taxes which they have been evading since ages.

@*@ How urban are our cities? Does urbanisation mean constructing
commercial centers, malls, theme parks or iMax theatres? What about
sanitation, public health, transport? Forget the cities, why can¡¦t we
ever ¡¥urbanise¡¦ an Indian? Why do men treat this country like an
open-air toilet?

This is my first stay in Bombay and I¡¦m enjoying the love-hate
relationship with it. This city is the true microcosm of India. I¡¦ve seen
grandeur which can make any middle class guy gape. I¡¦ve also seen gauns
(villages) right here which made me chuckle. You¡¦ll be surprised to know
that in a mega-city like Bombay the distribution of kerosene still happens
through bullock carts. Yes, bullock driven carts fº Click this link.

http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=272755265&key=ZsBHPr&pos=0

@*@ India got independence in 1947. Israel, a year later, in 1948. In the
last 50 odd years they have fought more wars than us. Had more bitter
enemies (Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria) than just China and
Pakistan. Terrorism never let them breathe peacefully. Add to it severe
shortages of water, land and capital.

Today, they are irrefutably more advanced than us in most departments. We
take their help in Agricutute (drip irrigation), Weather (artificial
rain), Defence (Phalcons, Tavor rifles) and even peacetime reconnaissance
(advanced UAVs).

Where did we go wrong?

@*@ Lemme end this list with that fact which pushed me into writing this
mail. Every year, the World Bank comes out with a compendium ¡¥World
Development Indicators¡¦ which has rankings of all nations on various
parameters.

The 2004 edition of the same has the World income map on its inside cover.
The map pictorially categorises 210 nations into 4 slots ¡V Low income,
Low middle income, Upper middle income and High income. Guess where we
stand?

Low income; alongside nations like Ethiopia, Rwanda, Togo, Cameroon, Sudan
and other no-so-glorious names. How does it feel? Doesn¡¦t it feel worse
than losing the World Cup finals to Australia?

My dear reader, I can go on like this forever, but I¡¦ll stop here. I hope
you have got the gist of what I¡¦m trying to say. It will be a shame if
you think my sole purpose was to criticise or mock the system. NO. I am as
much a part of it as anybody else. My only motive was to make you aware of
the malaise around us. To make you ¡¥think¡¦ over some basic issues. God
willing, one of us will probably solve a few of those.

A departing note ¡V A country as great as India cannot be judged solely on
a few hiccups like mentioned above. Agreed, these are some aspects which
make us feel uncomfortable. But the fact that this nation braves to fight
this cancer is what makes us all proud. On some other day, I¡¦ll tell you
about innovative projects like Tripura¡¦s Rubber Parks or mighty moves
like the Iran-Pak-India pipeline, Kochi¡¦s Hybrid Port etc which have the
potential to affect even the last common man.

Before I sign out, I¡¦d like to thank my college for making me capable enuff to write this mail.

Praveen Gattu
First Year, PGDIM
National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE)
Mumbai.
(praveenk.im11@nitie.edu)

PS: This mail is going to a lot of people from diverse fields. I¡¦d love
to know the ¡¥weak-links¡¦ in your part of the system. Thanks.

Vaidik Tradition - A commentry

This is an article written by my uncle ..... he's a preacher for vaidic tradition and feels that its the oldest on this earth and holds answers to most of the queries of present....
He wrote this in hindi and is translated to english by my aunt Priyamvada kolhatkar.
Long but worth reading article.

A commentary on Hinduism
(With a definition of Islam)

Dr. Ishwar Chandra Karkare

This matter is not just a thousand or lakhs of years ago. It is a crore years old matter. You may or may not believe, may even ridicule but the tradition meant here is really a crore years old. The oldest tradition, culture and a system of life meant here is called vaidic tradition.

Vid means to know and vaidic menas after acknowledging - to line life that way. The same tradition was then called Sanatan, then Aryan and Dravid. And then the same was called Hinduisim from this only Jani and Baudh cults came later on. And from the same, from the only wisdom and scientific tradition, from the oldest and yet the most modern and highest Aryan and Hindu tradition two different cults took birth. They are known as Christianity and Islam.

San means to move forward towards wisdom and Atan means everlasting everyday. And so Aryan and Dravid tradition was called Sanatan Dharma. Then came the word Hindu. "Hinsa Duriyate Chittam" means "One who becomes sad because of violence is a Hindu." He may or may not have faith in God, may or may not pray to Allah but who is non-violent in real sense of the word Hindu. He may not then belong to any cult.

Now we should find out the meaning of Dharma. A cow will even die of hunger bit will not eat meat. A tiger will prefer to die of hunger but will not consume grass. The Dharma of a cow is to eat grass and that of a tiger to eat his kill. This is the meaning of Dharma. "Dharyati iti dharma", the nature borne by oneself is his Dharma. Dharma does not mean religion. Dharma does not mean Hindu, Muslim or Christian. Dharma of a teacher is to teach, that of a student is to learn. Dharma of a road is to give way to pedestrian and vehicles' traffic. These days people build temple, Mosque or chapel on roads. That is not fair. Human Dharma is to love and oblige. There is no other Dharma better than these. Thus we see that Hinduism is not a religion. It is not a cult, but it is a way of living, one which climbs on the top of Himalayas and declares "Live and let live", You can not create so you have to right to kill.

A few thousand years ago this Hindu tradition was the only one teaching formless God, Love and piety. Tolerance was and still main declaration. Worship of idols started after Gautam Buddha.

The word Krishna changes to Keshto in Bengal and to Karsan in Gujrat. Similarly it changed to Krist-Christ in Europe. Neeti changed to Nity. And so the yogi who taught Krishnaneeti there, became Christ. And Krishnaneeti became Christianity just by a different way of pronunciation.

Then is the same vaidic tradition one more yogi took birth. He was a shepherd doing meditation under a tree. Gibral (Gibrial) appeared before him. This gibrial is mentioned in Vedas also. He used to sing hymns during meditation and someone used to write those. The collection of these hymns is called Kuraan. And its prophet is known as Mohammad Paigambar. This happened 1400 years ago. As it was mentioned earlier Vaidic Tradition is a crore years old. Vedas were already written. At that time there was only one language 'Sanskrit'. The stories told by Christ have their origin in the epic 'Mahabharata';2000 years old. And those 1400 years old stories told by Mohammad Paigambar also have their origin in the same one and only 'Vaidic tradition'. Even the words 'Kuraan', 'Musalmaan' and Allah are from original single language Sanskrit. One by one we will see that, Kuru means to do and aan means to get, the highest yogi stage. Kuru + aan = Kuraan. Slaam is a Sanskrit word which means peace. Aa means of a great quality. This Aa changed to Ee. As 'Aadtyawaar' became 'Eitwaar', Abraham became Ibrahim, etc. Thus Islaam means who lives in a high quality peace. One who is not in Islam is 'Kaafir', kill him. It means that kill the person who is not peaceful. But because of ignorance, the meaning of kaafir is perverted. Simple, innocent people are killed just because they are idol worshippers. Human mind is created in such a way that he can not worship formless God, he needs some or the other form. If not an idol it becomes a Mosque. Then to insist on mosque is in opposition of formless worship. Islam agreed with the formless worship of Vaidic tradition, but did not accept tolerance. And so they started violence. Hindu view of life accepted formless as well as idol worship with tolerance and so did not resort to violence. Next is the word Musalmaan. Meaning: Mu means no/not, Sa means to move, Al means God, Iman means faith. In trying conditions also, whose implicit faith in God is not shattered, is Muslalmaan. Today's Muslims must understand the real meaning of Islam and Musalmaan and practice it, otherwise this world will trade on way of violence and will be destroyed. Allah is also a Sanskrit word: Amm -> Amma, Akk -> Akka, All -> Alla and Ha means the greatest. Amma and Akka mean mother. Thus the word Allah means the greatest mother. Jagat janani. They take the name Allah, recite it and torture the mother (woman), this is ignorance and this is irony.

In the original Vaidic tradition many Saints, yogi, Paigambar (Pag means foot, amber means the one whose foot is in the sky.) described by Hinduism but they never did idol worship or of any book. It is a pity that later on they started worshipping of either saint or a book. Sam means similar, pradaay means to give. So the word Sampradaay or cult means have faith in only one saint or Yogi, a bible or a kuraan. And so the Muslim cult started. And they lost faith in unity of all and they turned communal. Hinduism is not a cult. It is a system of living. It has accepted all under its wings; including monistic and agonist, worshipper of formless as well as of idol. It is a scientific fact that our body (our teeth and intestines) are not suitable for non-vegetarian food. So Hindus don't eat it. It is cause of many diseases as well. Islam also mentions non-violence. Kuraan says "Don't move on earth quarrelling others." As Arabia didn't have water, no agriculture, they were forced to eat meat. Because of shortage of water they used to do vaju (washing hands and feet from one pot), taking bath only once a week. This was not religion; it was only an adjustment according to the circumstances. As days were hot and nights were cool, they used to worship setting sun and love moon and stars. This is not a religion, not even a way of living. It was just an adjustment.

Now is the time to understand the meaning of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian as one and to behave accordingly. To become a real Hindu is to be a real non-violence follower. Now is the time to live in peace; to be a real Muslim is to have faith in God. To be a real Jaini means Gnyani (In Sanskrit 'Dnya' is called 'Jya'). To a real Baudh means Buddhiwan (intelligent) To be a real Sikh means to become a real disciple of Guru. To become real Christian means to follow Krishnaneeti.

Only by colouring our clothes, our outer appearance, saffron, green or red will be of no use. Let us colour our inside with the colour of love and charity. Then only we will be called real religious.

Om sahana vavatu, sahananu bhunaktu
Sahaveeryam karavav hai, Tejaswimam vadhit mastu
Mam vid vishar hai, om shanty shanti shanty.

(Lets all join together in becoming bright, and not in envying others)

Breakfast at Tiffany's?

I really like this song having some plain simple lyrics:


you say that we've got nothing in common
No common ground to start from
And we're falling apart
You'll say the world has come between us
Our lives have come between us
But I know you just dont care


And I said "What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?"
She said, "I think I remember the film,
And as I recall, I think we both kinda liked it."
And I said, "Well, thats the one thing we've got."


I see you - the only one who knew me,
And now your eyes see through me
I guess I was wrong
So what now? It's plain to see we're over,
And I hate when things are over -
When so much is left undone.

-- Deep Blue Something

Calvin and Hobbes are the Best

yesterday i was browsing thru the net looking for some comics and incidently found a web page dedicated to calvin and hobbes. It had 25 best calvin strips of author's choice.
I got introduced to calvin when one of my colleague forwarded me a mail having some of his comic strips... they were mind boggling, really amazing. After that i became an avid fan of calvin...looking out for whatever i could get of him. The creator Mr walterson has trapped the mind of a very clever boy who loves his toy tiger (hobbes) very much and has his own way of looking at the world as any other child .... im sure we in our childhood did some of these ..

just have a look at the strips and u'll get to know who/how calvin is..

http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinhobbes.htm

Room Service

Recently purchased "Room Service - Bryan Adams". Has superb collection of songs, especially Flying, Nowhere Fast and Open Road are my favs. Bryan Adams as usual is at its best when it comes to lyrics.
As a bonus, a DVD of his Japan tour is free with pack and has four song videos from live concert there.

For more reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002ZMIE4/104-2321175-3887166?v=glance