LETTER FROM SRI. ABDUL KALAM

Letter to Every Indian

Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why? We are the first in milk production. We are number one in Remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat. We are the second largest producer of rice. Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit.. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters. I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news. In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign T.Vs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is.. She replied: I want to live in a developed India . For her, you and I will have to build this developed India . You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation. YOU say that our government is inefficient. YOU say that our laws are too old. YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage. YOU say that the phones don't work, the railways are a joke. The airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination. YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits. YOU say, say and say.. What do YOU do about it? Take a person on his way to Singapore . Give him a name - 'YOURS'. Give him a face - 'YOURS'. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground links as they are.. You pay $5 (approx. Rs.. 60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU come back to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity… In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai .. YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs..650) a month to, 'see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else.'YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, 'Jaanta hai main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost.' YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand .. Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo ? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston ??? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India ? In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan .. Will the Indian citizen do that here?' He's right. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms. We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public. When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child! and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? 'It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry.' So who's going to change the system? What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbours, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr.Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away. Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England . When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money. Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too….. I am echoing J. F. Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians….. 'ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY' Lets do what India needs from us. Thank you, Dr. Abdul Kalam

Let's stop Swine Flu

Let's Stop Swine Flu

AH1N1 Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza virus that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza, but most outbreaks occur during the late fall and winter months in humans. Symptoms of Swine Flu: v  Fever v  Muscle Aches v  Lethargy v  Coughing v   Head Ache v  Sore Throat v  Runny Nose v  Nausea v  Vomiting v  Diarrhea v  Lack Of Appetite What You Can Do To Prevent Swine Flu: ü  Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you Cough or Sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it. ü  Wash your hand often with soap and water, especially after you cough and sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective. ü  Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.

Does language express thought

DOES LANGUAGE EXPRESS THOUGHT OR DOES IT MERELY SUCCEED IN EXPOSING THE UNREFLECTIVE CHARACTER OF THOUGHT?

HERE IS HOW MARK TWAIN HAD RESPONDED TO THAT UNASKED QUESTION:

“WHEN I WAS A BOY OF FOURTEEN, MY FATHER WAS SO IGNORANT I COULD HARDLY STAND TO HAVE THE OLD MAN AROUND.BUT WHEN I GOT TO BE TWENTYONE , I WAS ASTONISHED AT HOW MUCH HE HAD LEARNED IN SEVEN YEARS”

MARK TWAIN


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Taken from a groupmail

How to make relevance to the future

I was wondering what will happen to all the blogs, pictures, websites and all our internet fingerprints after 500/600 years from now. I am sure there will technology changes may be internet version 10 or 15. And some companies go bankrupt and close their hostings etc. etc. but internet as such is going to hold data (at least some of it) from its early beginings. 

Now the questions will be:

1. Will our generation data be considered of historical signifance?
2. Will future generations take same effort, like we preserve things in physical world like pyramids, eiffel tower and old temples etc. etc. ?
3. Do you think any body would want to see these pages/information like we see all world war movies?
4. What should we do to make relevance to the future generations, who do not have any thing in common with us. Not the same technology problems, not the same economic and political problems, not the same financial problems. May be everything might be administred by machines and humans have nothing to do physically.

Its a strange thought came into mind this morning. 

Beat Jet lag

read this in natural solutions magzine: Researches show that fasting before flying to far land helps you beat jet lag completely. Reasons why this would work is generally our body is aware of our eat,sleep and wake up cycle. One of the ways it knows is our internal body clock (circadian rhythm) taking help of day light. 

When you skip meals, food driven kicks takes over your circadian clock. It take 12 to 16 hours of fasting to spart this reaction. Our body has the ability to override and reset the primary clock to new time zone simply by faking it out with food.

Is there a better way?

One year wedding anniversary was celebrated yesterday. I always thought it is very difficult take a day off from a busy schedule of final exams and important deadlines.... as always I proved this theory wrong by doing nothing related to work for one entire day. "Where were we?" yes, we were discussing about our one year wedding anniversary.  

You know me, I always start early for these kind of things. I started celebrating the anniversary by adding/revitalizing our wedding website http://manjunathwedsmaya.googlepages.com, creating family albums, album for my wife and so on. What comes to my mind next is "What do we do on that day?" After performing bruteforce of all possible ideas, experiences from recent eloborate thanks giving dinner experiences (believe me it was pain cooking thanks giving dinner all day long) I have decided not to cook, not to work and just spend time with my wife.

To my surprise the anniversary day celebrations started early (even before my schedule started) at 12:00AM in the midnight. My wife presented me an amazing gift for the day. I kind off was way behind in choosing the right gift. You can over come late by being latest (popular telugu dialog: lateuga vochina latestuga vostha). We shared gifts and thanks with cold star bucks frappochino and chocolate brownie cake, fell asleep at 2 in the night. Too many phone calls, greetings and wishes in the morning. After elaborate dress changes and photo shoots in the morning we decided to have brunch. 

We visited this amazing Italian resutrant to try new things. With appatizers, juices (sweet cold ice tea for me), main course italian food(I try not to explain for better good) and chocholate chip bread pudding which is really good, proved to be one of expensive ways of having breakfast in Pittsburgh. Thats when we headed of to movies with popcorn and coke.

Nothing can seperate me and the IMDB in making right decisions when it comes to movies. So about this movie I prefer not differ much with imdb

"When a couple tries to fly away from their family for Christmas, as they do every year, their fun turns around when all flights have been canceled. Now they have to go to four houses to celebrate Christmas while going through memories they don't want to go into and suprises they can't handle while they have to use a safe word to get out of situations"

I almost felt like one of the characters representing me before marriage. It was lot fun with loads of popcorn and drinks in hand. Lot more fun if you watching movies with the one.

After elaborate fun at movie we started walking through the beautiful waterfront shops in snow with chirstmas music in background made me think about serendipity of life. 

Its never too cold for a good ice cream especially my favorite banana icecream with almods and coconut at cold stone creamery.Just when we got tired of the window shopping at expensive boutiques and barnes. We have decided to sit for a while. Thats when we decided to sit in movies one more time. Only place to sit alone is to visit the nearest theater. 

Once again you guessed it right, when it comes to movies nothing comes in between me and the IMDB we have visited sequel of THE MADAGASCAR also starring my favorite "Ben Stiller as (Alex),Chris Rock (Marty) and the hero of friends David Schwimmer (Melman)". Is the best way to connect with kid inside.  I proved it right one other theory of mine which worked well yesterday was "You can never get bored of a movie if you have enough pop corn and coke in hand". 

Anyways it was not at all painful to wait for the cab in the bar drinking some (sweet and cold ice tea) taking pictures at the color ful christmas trees, waiting did count for the quality time you can spend.

The end the style is what matters most, nothing can beat the italian brunch unless it an Indian dinner.  Apolozies for the waitresses shaking hand, we could not get the image with better clarity.  As you can see with a good view of the road and too many dosas, mango lassi, we forgot to realize that there is thin line between eating and stuffing especially when you lost in the conversation. That was the final and another expensive way of spending the evening.

I almost forgot about the cab driver, who entertained us with wierd single and american marriage theory. Anyways, with a quick recap and a sound sleep I woke up in the morning today with full body pains and loads of assignments to submit.

How to loose in chess over and over again?

I have created dashboards where I added soo many gadjets, technology allows us to do many things. So I added games, youtube, chats, and every thing I needed for passive/active entertainment. One of them unfortunately is the chess. It was good initially when you are winning. So evil me comes alive and wants to increase the ratings. Next thing to do is register, this is the night mare. You keep playing with bigshots for easy rankings, obviously you loose.

So if you want to loose in chess over and over again just play it.  It is okay if you loose, learn how to win over a period of time.  Moral of the story is you can win game one at a time.