Half Knowledge

One of my friend in Mumbai is very enthusiastic for issues of national integrity. Often he gets involved in teaching Hindi to people who can't speak it. And most of the times he finds enough 'students'. One day one of his student was asked to show what he learned by few of his friends-cum-colleagues. Now since the student was new on Hindi learnings, he came up with the best he could,

“दिव्या भारती की ख़ुदकुशी की गयी थी |"

(English Translation: Divya Bharti was suicide-ed!)

Future Car Pool Station (CPS)

Here is a new Car Pooling Concept which tries to solve traditional car pooling problems (what if one of partners is late? What if one of partners is not coming at all? What if one of partners is asking to wait? What if the car owner is not going to office today? How to share the money precisely?). You are going to read a future billionaire’s new blog post. Be attentive before reading further!

You leave from your office in your car. You drive to CPS-12, the nearest Car Pool Station numbered 12. You enter the station and swipe your CPC or Car Pool Card at the entrance gate. The machine at the entrance gate reads your information. The machine knows where exactly you are going after office, (Here is the catch, but leave it aside now!) that is to your home. Now it calculates the route, from the station to your home. Now it opens list of people who at that time are present in the CPS-12. These people are not the station employees but normal commuters. Each commuter has one CPC. While entering the station they have to swipe the card the way you did. The CPS computer will then know, where each passenger wants to go. Now the computer lists out the people whose destination is on your way. It picks the 3 commuters who can be accommodated in your car. By the time you reach a special platform just outside the waiting lounge, you will find the 3 people already waiting for you, thanks to the CPS’s instant mobile message system. At the platform they again swipe their ‘prepaid’ CPC to a special machine who deducts some amount based on their destination. Then before starting the journey, you also swipe your card at the machine, which will credit some amount based on the number commuters you are carrying. You get out of the CPS and drive towards your home dropping the 3 commuters on your way.

Wohow! its over. its simple.

You save on car running cost by sharing.
They save money and time.
We save the environment.

Any takers?

Not a hero

In a movie scene the lead actor, who is playing a firefighter, explains his 11 year old how to use the complex looking emergency equipment to come out their burning house. His talent was expressed the way he communicated to his daughter to operate the equipment. Of course, his experience as a firefighter made it a little easier for him. Cries of the child, nicely shot fire scene and thrilling music; the end makes the actor a Hero.

 

What will I reply to my daughter on phone, should she be in some trouble related to my profession. "Oh dear, dont panic. Its not that difficult. press ALT+CTRL+Delete buttons on your keyboard twice and you are out of that trouble." ?

 

Makes me hero ? Not even close.

 

:(

Space Invaders

From last few months, my laptop is giving warning of little space left in my hard disk.

A detail investigation revealed that the culprit is a large number of photos. First round of rescue happened by giving some of the photos the death sentence. (dafa charso do ke tahet saja-e-maut)

Even after that the health of hard disk didn’t improve much. A more detailed investigation gave more clues.

Most of the images were holding size of 2 to 3 megabytes. A cost-cutting strategy was being forced upon the photos. This outsourcing  task was given to tools like Picasa, Microsoft office picture manager, since I am not the expert in more professional tools.

None gave me the desired result.

Then I tried the college-time old technique to reduce the size. I opened the image in MS Paint and just saved it! Bingo. The size reduced by almost 70%. I tried with different photos. Each time the result was anywhere from 60% to 85%.

Its working, but is not efficient. I have to open each file and save it again, consuming around 8-10 seconds per photo. Considering the large number of images I am holding, it’s not looking practical.

 

I want tool to do the mass-killing of the used space. Google searched gave me some tool. But either it was demo version showing a big watermark in my photos or simple “image resizer”.

Anyone knows any solution for this ?

 

Until the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ is found, the single shot diet plan will continue.  

 

Seriously Ill

Hrudaya, my x-team mate is suffering from serious illness. He’s been here in China from last 10 months. Now most of his colleagues returned to India, he has virtually no one to talk to all the day from last one and half month. He stays in the next room to mine at hotel. So I got to talk to him sometimes in a week when both of us have come back from office early.

Today he said, “saala, bore hote hote bhi bore ho gaya hoon.”

 

The great gyan ki baat.

Anyway, lagta hai kal se apoon ko usko daily dose dena padega.

HalfWorld Conspiracy

One of the time pass here in China is to get together in somebody’s room after office and share all the mitha-mitha experience of the day. The experience mostly centered around conversations with Chinese colleagues. Here is one.

 

One of our teammate had come from Shenzhen to our place Nanjing from last 2 weeks. His Chinese colleague-cum-friend(let’s call him John) was asking him to visit Nanjing Memorial Hall, which was built in remembrance of Japanese Invasion and massacre in 1937. This friend of mine could not go in the weekends. Next Monday he faced the question why he had not visited the place from John.

John again explained him how to reach there. And even offered to go with him in case it is difficult for Abhijit to go alone!

Abhijit could not understand why John was so enthusiastic for him to visit the place, so he directly asked John. Here is John’s explanation in his words(Well almost).

 

"You see. The place is very nice but not so famous. I ask everybody to go there. You specially go. You go without forget. You see, if all Chinese and Indian people have seen the place, Means half the world has seen the place."

 

Aaila! The guy has a vision.

 

Vegetarian Chicken

I, being a vegetarian, have many times received requests to taste chicken with argument that it’s a vegetarian chicken. They are joking of course.

 

Last weekend we visited Shanghai Jade Buddha Temple. Me and my wife were among few vegetarians in our group. My wife spotted a sign board “Vegetarian Restaurant”.

 

Now to understand the emotions we felt at that time, imagine this: You are in a country where people don’t distinguish food by Vegetarian Food or Non-vegetarian food. Food is food. You are eating rice and some sabji (with no masala.  No salt. No nothing. Only boiled vegetables). Now you are roaming in some city from the morning and its almost afternoon and you haven’t taken anything other than pulpy orange gulps. Now you are in the sacred place of Buddha temple, and there is Vegetarian Restaurant signboard! Just part of the temple itself.

 

Sometimes some things can’t be expressed in words. For me this was one of the times and things.

 

We decided to have lunch at the restaurant immediately after we are done with the temple.(I even suggested to have lunch first and then continue for temple, which was rejected even before I finish the sentence.) The pakka non-veggies in our group also got ready to accompany us. May be Buddha had his magic on these guys.

 

After finishing the temple visit,

we took chairs on the restaurant.

Got the menu.

Saw the menu.

Got shock of lifetime.

Took some photos.

Left the place.

 

 

 

 

Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.

New Year Sankalp

1.       Finish my old (last year’s, last to last year’s and last to last to last year’s) Sankalp(s)

2.       Keep one resolution secret from everyone until its achieved. This gotta work! Learned from Sayesha