« Goto Swiss Tours Part I We reached Interlaken quite late – especially by Switzerland standards – I should confess that it was quite scary to reach the youth hostel there, as it was in one secluded part of the town, and we had to walk through a road almost in the woods to reach it from the nearest bus stop. We both are vegetarians and were well aware about the paucity of (vegetarian) edible food, so we had packed enough vegetables, wafers, bread and butter from Geneva for our survival. The hostel was well equipped, and we had a comfortable dinner and slept to rise early the next day! The train to take us to Jungfraujoch was to leave Interlaken by 8 AM, so we woke up early – in fact we were up early enough to have time to look around the location of the youth hostel. However, we got a little carried away, and got a bit late to catch our train. Fortunately, the platforms were quite low and we were able to jump our way to platform 2 to catch our train! The train had a guide, who told us

The CPIM government in West Bengal might have taken a leaf out from China ’s book Of development when it tried to force development in Nandigram. Like in China , Buddhababu wants India too to build SEZs on dead bodies of its own citizen – nothing wrong in it he thinks ; after all didn’t Stalin develop the Soviet through his oppressive methods? I think it is high time the communists in India realized that they are in a functioning democracy especially so in WB where they have been running a government for the past 30 years. In communism a group of intelligentsia sitting in the Politburo office far removed from the people can take a decision and implement it through any means it deems fit. But in Democracies, while the cabinet can take a decision far away from the people – it must sell it to the people before it can implement it. The ways of democracy are inclusive, made up of techniques like consensus building. Bengal is not the first state in India to be industrialized and t

No, I am not referring to India ’s batting performance against Bangladesh , I am referring to the ‘extra innings’ session hosted by Charu Sharma and Mandira ‘Cricket’ Bedi. It’s a lousy program and its current quality is worse than the ‘third umpire’ that used to appear on DD (with Krish Shrikant). When the studio came back after the first innings – the program director probably instructed the presenters to make the opening melodramatic by remaining silent for a few minutes. But instead of looking like shocked fans at a loss of words – both Charu and Mandira – looked more like lost presenters caught unawares by the camera! While the guests on the program are good – the presenters have been pretty ineffective in involving them properly. Add to it the nervous laughs of Ms Bedi that come right when the guest is trying to make an honest comment – the direction of the show sure does look very poor! Another lousy and artificial snippet on the World Cup telecast is the VISA advert – the

I have never actually written in detail about my trip to Switzerland. Today, as I was idly browsing through my Photos collected during the UK trip, I discovered that more than half of the collection came from my 5 day trip to Switzerland. Indeed, those 5 days were the most enjoyable part of my 6 month sojourn! Adventurous as it was, I guess it is important that this blog has some record of the trip! Hemant was already stationed in Geneva when I reached London, and so the idea of planning a Swiss trip together sprouted right away – just the dates were an issue. Soon, we had finalized dates around end of July and the planning for the trip started around mid July. Both of us did online researches about places to visit, Hemant also interacted with some colleagues in Geneva for the details. Our “tech savvy-ness” reached new heights when we used MS Powerpoint to document and discuss route maps, train timetables and tourist attractions. The result – by the time I was boarding the plane to Ge

आज से Blogger हिंदी (Hindi) में उपलब्ध हो गया है [ न्यूज़ Item ]। अब आप अंग्रेजी keyboard की मदद से हिंदी में टाईप कर सकते हैं! ये सुवीधा अभी पूरी तरह से develop नही हुई है, परंतु काफी अच्छी है। यदि आप इस पृष्ठ को Firefox में पढ़ रहे हैं, तो कुछ शब्द ठीक से दिखाई नहीं देंगे - जैसे की हिंदी (Hindi) और सुविधा। समस्या छोटा 'ई' लिखने/ पढने में होगी और अर्धाक्षर ठीक से नही दिखाई देंगे। मगर आशा है की यह सुवीधा जल्द ही सुधरेगी और भारत में लाखों हिंदी Bloggers को जन्म देगी। External Links (बाह्य तीर): Hindi में शब्द ढूँढने के लिए यहाँ जाइए Desktop Based Hindi editors के लिये कृपया यहाँ जाएं. Blogger कि मदद लेने के लिये यहाँ जाइये.

India is a true melting pot - and the language we speak are true representations of the same. In any given location, the way people speak (the dialect, the accent and vocabulary inclusive) is a wonderful mix of local, regional, national and even a bit of international influences. To take some examples: Bangalore lingo: "Enjoy Madi!" Mumbai lingo: "Its all over Akhha Mumbai yaar" Some International sprinkled in: "Dude! Hows life yaar?" All in all - India has been pretty successful in integrating its regional disparities with nationally pervasive trends and a bit of International lingo as well (thanks to its diaspora). The same has happened in terms of the numeral terminologies that we use. In India - even with the English media, we use terms like a 'lakh' (= hundred thousand) or a 'crore' (= ten million). But what is surprising is that beyond these, the media usually follows the international numeric term - billion. This is in spite of th

Every fortnight, a new Comic Strip is sent to the members of the Arbit Choudhury Yahoo Group .We also try and make the e-mail (which goes along) informative and interesting, while also updating fans with the latest milestones achieved by the venture. This fortnight we were announcing about Arbit Choudhury Comics hitting the 75th Comic Strip mark. So, one of us suggested using the term 'Diamond Jubilee' for the same. Somehow, I remembered that 75 is associated with Platinum and not Diamond - so I went to Google/ Wikipedia and did some research only to discover the confusing world of 'Jubilees'. I first discovered that Diamond Jubilee is associated with 60 years by the British standards. So, I checked if using 'Platinum' would be correct to discover further that 'Platinum Jubilee' is associated with 70 years by British usage and with 75 years by South Asian (Read: Indian) usage. However to add to the twist on Jubilees, in the US "Diamond Jubilee"

The US Census Bureau and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) has released a report that says thats the world's population aged 65 and above is growing by an unprecedented rate of 800,000 people a month. Italy is the world's 'oldest' country with 18% population above 65. Indeed, this was possibly the most significant difference even I had noted while traveling outside India. In India we are so used to seeing young people, that the site of large number of old people on the streets looks uncanny. In fact, in India, due to our culture of children supporting their parents - an old person is usually accompanied by another younger person thus blurring the general visibility of old people in public. Hence, when I saw old people, supported on walking sticks, wheelchairs and golf carts - not out for a walk but in the market, shopping all by themselves - it felt strange. I guess this is just one of the signs of an aging world. Many other, invisible signs are revealed by statist

"When faced by injustice, most people sulk - only few do something about it." Referred to Tiger Memon, the above quote might seem overly positive - but it is all the truth! And the movie Black Friday draws home this fact very tactfully that the Mumbai Bomb Blasts were nothing but a personal revenge by Tiger Memon for a personal loss he suffered during the '93 communal riots. Many suffered loss in the riots - in both communities - and while the ISI would have been overly eager to take advantage of the situation in India - it is people like Tiger who directed the anger of few into an incident as chilling as the Mumbai Bomb Blasts. I have always wondered as to why the underworld got involved into these bomb blasts which were linked to communal violence. The underworld in India, has been quite 'secular' to use a political term - composed of players from all communities and working for only one common goal - Money. In light of this fact, it hardly makes sense that the

Amazing graphic to illustrate the power of Microsoft ...