Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Chak De!

Victory for Team India!. What a way to bring back the lost glory in Indian cricket. Win the world cup after 24 years. What more!. Win it in the same year in which we were shown exit early in the waorld cup (Another format). No comments on the T20 World Cup final match as every one knows about that. We got the result we wanted for which we waited for years. Team India has finally come out of the tag 'Chokers'. Now there is long line up of matches coming. Hopefully with the confidence gained, Team India give us more to cheer.

Interestingly, it's glorious period for Indian sports. India emerged as champions of Asian Hockey, India won Nehru cup in football recently, India is winning in Chess, Billiards and more. The Chak De! factor is truly rocking for India. Hope to see India in new heights in all aspects in near future.

Friday, September 21, 2007

And started a friendship

I am an engineer. I had shown traces of this skill when i was a kid. i don't remember, but my grandpa used to say i had once pressed all the buttons of his tape recorder together. Well, no wonder my dad did not bought tape recorder till i was little older. The time was about to come.

My Grandpa hated TV. He used to scold us always we might damage our eyes watching TV continuously. He cared a lot for us. i remembered him once telling me to be careful of this new virus ( computer virus). He had heard from Radio that this virus is spreading fast across all the computers.

Well, back to our main story. I was waiting for the tape recorder to arrive. My grandpa had given me the good news. Dad and grandpa will get new tape recorder for our house. The night before i would have dreamt of switching on the tape and WOW so many buttons to play around with. Finally it came. I rushed towards that and searched everywhere. There are no buttons at all. What will i play with this boring thing. After some explanation from my dad i realised it was radio. I was not happy at all. Soon it was decided to return the radio and buy a tape recorder. Couple of days later, the tape recorder came. I thought this is what i call a real player. Yeah there are many buttons to play around with. Boy i loved the 'pause' button. So easy to press. I had been given freedom to play with that button. More over it listens to us. Press and let it be in that state as long as u want. Not like 'fwd' or 'rev' button which used to come back to it's original state with a huge thud when they get tired. For me pause button was never tiring warrior. There was one more interesting button called 'record'. Boy! it was so hard to press. I complained my dad that this machine is not good. i can not press record button at all. Even my dad tried to press that and failed. So far he had seen record button (usually) as part of play button (there used to be a small red button for record which used to be part of play button in some corner). dad applied little more pressure on the record button. Suddenly!. I never thought 'play' and 'record' used to hate each other. As soon my dad pressed 'record' with force, with a huge thud the play button jumped from it's place and fell on the ground. 'Record' kicked 'play' out of the tape recorder. Wow! i said 'record' will be my friend. Dad inserted the button back to it's place. I felt bad for 'play' also was angry with shop keeper who sold us defective tape recorder. Next day the shop keeper explained us that 'record' and 'play' are not enemies but are very close friends. We had to press them together.


The tape recorder was very strong. It dodged all my attacks successfully. Not even a single time it complained to my dad. it became my close friend. A friend who plays music and sings whenever i wanted. He was even a good mimic. sometimes he used to mimic the songs which i sang ( !!????!!**%). This is how a new friendship between me and my ex-tape recorder started.

Monday, September 03, 2007

These changed the way men live - 1

What were the amazing inventions/discoveries made by humans?. There are thousands of onventions and discoveries made, but some changed the way people live . Here is my attempt to lis such discoveries which changed the people's lives.

1. Fire : Go back to Human history few thousand years back. Man was living in caves. say some where during the stone age. There is an interesting story about the fire that i read some where. Once while cave men were hunting an animal, it accidently fell in fire ( may be forest fire ). They pulled out the animal which was cooked now and found it tasty to eat. Before that he would have thought fire is dangerous now he discovered a way to make use of the same fire. of course fire gives heat which helped men to get rid of cold. And then he found out there are multiple advantages by fire when it is controlled. Man eventually discovered many things which can done using fire which mad him enter age of industry. of course he discovered he can hurt some one with the fire. . Man used the same fire power to attack his neighbour which started then and has not stopped yet.

2. Wheel : Ancient man led nomadic life used to migrate from place to place on his foot. eventually he learned to tame some animals like horses and donkeys and used them to travel from one place to another. Horses and Donkeys became means of transport for him. But something was missing. only one or two people can travel on a horse back. Perhaps initially he built a wooden plan which can carry few people and made horses drag the plank, but turned out to be tiresome for horses and time consuming as well. Then came 'Wheel'. Discovery of wheel scores more points than discovery of fire. the reason , Fire is natural phenomenon. Ancient man might have seen forest fire and used it. but was there any natural wheel ?. we find very minute number of instances in nature which resembles wheels. may be rolling stone from a mountain. may be that inspired man to use stones wheels and later it got evolved . stone wheels were replaced by wooden and finally metal wheels took over. got a cushion of rubber which were eventually filled with air. Today the use of wheel is seen everywhere. even in machine parts. There would be hardly any day one spends with out seeing a single wheel.


Coming up : likes of TV, Mobile Phone, Internet.

Million Dollar ??

While i was in Bristol , this was one of the day we went out for lunch. Had a very good day at office till then. had a great lunch and the person who had come with me was in a merry mood. we chatted with the guy who served us food through out the time we were there. best conversation was yet to come. just before paying the bill, the restaurent guy came and asked "do you want anything else sir". as said earlier, the person who had come with me was in a very good mood. he decided to make us all laugh. he said " we would like to have a million dollars" but the guy who served perhaps did not heard peoperly what he said. with out any change in expression, he replied " we do not have anything like that here sir " :-)