social networking

After resisting for a long long time, I have finally got bitten by the social networking bug. I am now trying to resurrect my facebook account by actually putting in some updates and connecting to friends. I also created a twitter account www.twitter.com/chinmayalbal

Lets see how long the new infection lasts ;-)

22K crore!!! that's lot

Quick Q - how many zero's in 22000 crores? Let me think .. 1 crore is 10^7 i.e 10000000. So 22000 crores is 22,000,000,0000. Whew .. can't count it with 10 fingers.

This is the money that BBMP wants to spend making some random flyovers and elevated roads all around the city. In the end, we will be left with no trees and a lot of short sighted, badly planned grey concrete blocks around the city, directly blowing smoke into the properties around the elevated roads. Not to mention the fact, that if this ambitious project takes off, we will have to endure excrutiating pain on our roads due to the construction and blockages. This is in addition to the already clogged roads due to Namma Metro.

So the question everybody is asking, will this grand plan complement the Metro rail project or will it jostle with the metro for attention, space and the money that is being allocated? We need some clear direction, plans and transperancy from the government in this regard

Appalling low voter turnout

Bangalore North, Central and South constituencies which boast of probably the highest literacy percentage in the whole country saw a voter turnout of less than 50%. This is appalling and downright disappointing.

Folks, we will have ourselves to blame if some random jerk comes to power and screws up the already broken system we have.

New species found

On a recent trip to Nagarhole, while on the morning safari, we did not have a single sighting even after a couple of hours of drive. Folks in the jeep were getting impatient and literally jumped in joy when we saw a "jungle fowl" - only to realize that we were on the outskirts of a village and we had "sighted" a rooster. Then we spotted a man who was doing some household cleaning and the conversation that followed

Santanu - "look a man doing work at home"
Subbu - "What do you call a man doing work at home?"
Chinmay - "homo domestica??"
Subbu - "What do you call a bachelor then?"
Santanu - "homo foresta?"

It happens only in India

Fake Padma awardee

Tickles my funny bone :-)

The Poonch Encounter

The Poonch Encounter has entered the 8th day without any breakthrough. The terrorists are still resisting our army inspite of a big push. I am obviously unaware of the ground realities, but a burning question in my mind is why is the army not using helicopter gun ships to wipe out the militants?

Also, why is there so little coverage in our media to this encounter? It has been reduced to a footnote in both the print and TV media. Is this because it is not happening in some remote jungle and because there are no VIPs caught in the crossfire?

Awesome Engineering Feat

Absolutely amazing read - Before the levees break

The kind of effort Dutch engineers are putting into keeping the sea water from flooding their coastal cities is a marvelous engineering achievement. Makes economic sense too, since according to the article "The half of the country that is below sea level—including the area behind these dunes—generates about 65 percent of its GDP. That's nearly $450 billion a year."

The planning and resources that are being spent on the feat is absolutely awe inspiring.