Written circa January 2003 Wars for long have been thought to be as bad omen. And every time somebody mentions War, pictures of mass destruction hover in front of our eyes. But history tells us that wars have traditionally been the powerhouse of technological revolution. The recent most world war, that is the Second World War, is the most flamboyant example of the above fact. Robert B. Young at the Stanford research institute studied the span of time between the first commercial appearance of a new electrical appliance and at the time the industry manufacturing it reaches a peak production of the item. Young found that for a group appliances introduced in the United States before 1920, including the vacuum cleaner, the electric range and the refrigerator, the average Span between introduction and peak production was 34 years.  But for the group that appeared in 1939-59 period, including the electric frying pan, television and washer and dryer combination, the Span was only eight year...

Just glance through the songs of RNBDJ and you can get a reasonable whiff of what lays inside the movie. Many hailed SRK as lucky when Yash Raj movies gave him his big break in Dar and subsequent super-stardom in DDLJ. But this time round, I must say Yash Raj is lucky to have SRK on their side to end their failed year at a successful note. If RNBDJ has pulled crowds to multiplexes, it’s only because of SRK - whether it is his performance in this movie or his overall aura which keeps audiences glued to screens across the globe - but SRK definitely is the only good thing which happened to RNBDJ [ Most reviews also say so]. The story is not a believable one, especially because of the speed with which the plot setting is breezed through (the bus crash and subsequent marriage). While the script is good, the scriptingstyle is too clichéd (well is it the first time someone has created a song parodying old bollywood cinema?) I didn’t expect Aditya Chopra would copy so blatantly and not even ...

As I have said earlier , writing is an old hobby of mine, much older than this blog. So a couple of days back as I was cleaning my old documents I discovered texts which I wrote during my engineering days when I did not have a PC, leave alone having this blog space to publish them. I thought why not post them here on my blog now. I am starting with those which are already typed and ready (other which are handwritten will need more time). Here's the first write up in that series: Future shock [written circa 2002-2003 at Age-21] In his book Future Shock , Alvin Toffler talks to accelerated pace of change and describes how men/women, youth, children and even animals are being or will enter paroxysms or orgies of withdrawal from the society due to future shock. He paints a horrible, dangerous and frightening picture of the seemingly insane society of tomorrow. He goes on giving instances to prove that the rate of rate of change is on the unending increase and how biologically and psych...

I have been restraining myself from making any blog post on the Mumbai Terror drama since the past 24 hours - but its gone on for too long now for me to keep it low ... First things first - I think its essential that our ministers take moral responsibility of what has happened. The two Home Ministers in specific - Shivraj Patil (India) and RR Patil (Maharashtra) should show some sense of morality by resigning. Why - you would ask .. well the lesser said about their performance and attitudes in such situations - the better. Next - all our intelligence and security agencies (including Defense forces, Coast Guard, and IB/RAW) must take it up on them to identify where their systems failed when these kids with guns were running their mock-sessions to take Mumbai under siege. Then - we must take some stern action against the organizations who have been involved. Laskhar, we know now operates out of Muzaffarabad in PoK - what is stopping us from taking a US-like approach and bombing their hid...

Yeah! That’s what I have been doing in the past 3 days – having spent all nights on Train berths rather than any beds.  I left Mumbai on Aug-Kranti Rajdhani on Friday evening for Delhi, reached Delhi at 11 AM on Saturday. Milind had come up to pick me up from Nizamuddin railway station. On our way, I marveled at the well developed road infrastructure in New Delhi – the underpasses, overpasses, the big 8’s and big O’s creating a seamless flow of traffic at the junctions and crossovers. I stayed at to AshiMil’s place in Gurgaon for the day. This was my first visit to Gurgaon and I should say I was impressed - wide roads, huge open spaces, humongous buildings and malls and good road connectivity to New Delhi. If the development here is managed well, it may as well end up becoming the Shanghai of India (blowing Mumbai’s dreams!). Some essentials which they need to do: Expedite the metro connectivity to Delhi Decongest the internal road traffic (create multilevel flyovers, underpasses and o...

Here’s what I have been doing since August this year (and expected to do till Dec): 8-Aug Received Car delivery 9-Aug Went to Pune on first drive itself 15-Aug Getting used to driving to office everyday 22-Aug Work on new version of www.arbitmba.com 29-Aug Went to Lonavala with friends; came back and worked on remaining pieces of ArbitMBA new version 3-Sep 5-Sep Ganesh Chaturthi - went to Madh Island; after the gruelling weekend in Lonavla Release of www.arbitmba.com 12-Sep Went home for Ganesh Visarjan 19-Sep 26-Sep 3-Oct 10-Oct 17-Oct Mad race at work - with multiple assignment's on head, working Saturday's and Sunday's But also stole visits to - (Not Just) Jazz By the Bay, Bandra Reclamation, St. Mary's Church on weekends 24-Oct Went home for Diwali 31-Oct @ home post Diwali 7-Nov 14-Nov Rush to complete current project@work - working Saturday's, Visits to Inorbit over weekend 21-Nov Tentative plan to visit Khetan's marriage 28-Nov Might go to Pune if Mom...

I would not be too far from reality if I said that internet is my food and cellphones are my drinks. Yeah .. I am constantly using one of these two things - whether I am at work, at home, or on a vacation. So its particularly painful when my cellphone breaks down   And so it was even more troublesome when this time my phone's keypad went bad and after 15-20 days of enduring it, and trying to get it repaired/replaced, I was told that it was beyond repair. So finally, I decided to spend some more moolah on another phone ....  I bought a fully loaded HTC Touch ( P3000 ) - Windows Mobile, 64MB memory, 2.8" touch-screen, 2 Megapixel Camera. What I am going to use most if the internet and To Do list features. The battery seems ok - runs 2 days flat without any problems. Tried the Google Maps app for starters - and 'twas awwsome. So that takes my cellphone tally to 3 .. my previous 2 phones being Nokia 2865 LG RD2130  Post inspiration : Shubham  

For those who drive an LPG powered vehicle in Mumbai - here  is a list of all Auto LPG Station in Mumbai. Also check out my homepage  http://whoisnikhil.googlepages.com  :-)

Lot of analysis and discussions are going on across the internet and media about the current meltdown, the way out of it. Lots of conspiracy theories have popped up and quite a lot of economists have discussed opposing theories. Check out the two videos below for example: I personally believe there is too much simplification of the issue in most media discussions. What is happening is not a result of simple economic theories, nor the result of pure political manipulation at the international level.  There is too much of a mix of US domestic policies vs. US and Europe's international economic policies and India-China's sudden rise and emergence as global "cheap" goods and services destinations (and resulting loss of low value jobs in the developed economies).  Add the large scale immigration of Africans to Europe, Mexicans to US (Indian immigration to US is mostly skilled jobs and far too less in no to become a factor though), and thus the loss of low value jobs for na...