Multiple PIN for Debit Card

This post is thanks to one more mail in my Inbox for 'Enter your ATM PIN in reverse to alert police', which is a hoax and can't be implemented even if its kind of useful. But here is what Banks can do to provide a little more security, or say more flexibility via ATM card.

Account holders can have option of creating one or more 'partition' in their bank account. This partition is like sub-account to the main account. People can decide how much money they want to put in one or more such account partition. Each such partition will have a separate ATM-PIN.

Now partitions are protected by different PIN but the account is same and any of the partition can be used by the same and single ATM card. Depending on the password you enter or disclose to somebody, only one of the partition is compromised.

So if you are at knife edge, you can show the robber only few Rupees left in your 'account'. Or accidentally show to your boss to remind the pending appraisal !

Image Source: capl@washjeff.edu

A morning of horror

It isn’t like, I don’t like taking bath. Nor that I have anything against cleanliness.

But a cold water bath on a cloudy morning in Bangalore ???? And wait, what about all that ‘Go Green’ stuff. I am trying to actually save water here. Is that too much to ask ?

So I cried. Tried hiding under dirty clothes. Stuck myself with bed corner.
Nevertheless it was scheduled time of bath and the lady of the house won’t let me go away without it.

I could have tried giving, 'it-hurts' look, huh. Guess its too complex expression for my face.

Final Laugh

I got a company on the vegetarian-front on my last visit to china. To have discussion on non-veg vs veg food is always endless, sometimes funny and never satisfying.

Once we were having dinner with chinese colleagues and it started again. Me and my friend were the only fighters from veg-front.

Chinese colleague: "so you dont eat non vegetarian food ?"
Me: "no."
Cc: "not even chicken ?"
Me: "NO ! it IS considered non vegetarian."
Cc: "ohhh" (and continued on his chicken tikka)
(3-4 minutes pause and some other discussion)
another Cc: "so why dont you eat chicken? You dont like it?"
My-bro-in-arms: "oh yes i like chicken!"
(i was like 'huh dude ! What are you doing??')
He continued: "in fact i love chicken, and thats why i dont eat them."

:)

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Correction

Yesterday a colleague of mine and I were discussing deep philosophy about life. I was trying to remember some joke to relax him. He was referring to some mistakes he thought he had done in past, which is still affecting his life.

Cut to a story I remembered.

There was a ship sailing. It was destined to reach Chennai in India. The captain was a very wise and old man. A freshman sailor was also in the crew, who was given responsibility of keeping the close eye on ship's direction at night, when most of the crew would retire to sleep. He was told to use the compass to do his job, and any change was to be reported to captain immediately.

Few weeks later, the ship reached near the land. Captain observed that it wasnt Chennai exactly. They found later it wasnt India at all. They had reached Sri Lanka. Immediately captain ordered entire crew on the deck. And started to find the cause of such enormous mistake. When he finished most of the crew with questioning, he suddenly remembered the fresh sailor for the night duty. He went to him and asked, "Was there any change in the needle of the compass?"
The sailor said, "No". Captain asked again, "Wasnt there even a small change in the needle direction?"

"Oh Yes", sailor remembered, "But it was just a fraction. It was not even changed to next smallest degree mark in the compass."

"Son, that small fraction has cost us more than 500 miles. Had you reported me that fraction of change in direction we would have corrected it the next day. Even it was small at the time in the direction of our destination, in the due time now you see, has put us far far away from our destination."

Back to our discussion, isnt it that we ignore small change which may distract us from our original destination? Since we ignore, we dont plan to correct it at proper time. And by the time we realize we might have reached Sri Lankan shores.

I love short stories, it takes away pain of consoling friends !

.

20 January

Someone said,
"Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock."

We are listening the alarm from 3 years, may the long sweet dream be longer, full of madness, love.

And as far as alarm is concerned, we have found the snooze button !

Happy Anniversary Dear !*

.

*I hate pink color.

Take it easy

Found a nice post by Pritish Nandi in ToI hardcopy. Here is the link for 'softcopy'. Worth reading.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/extraordinaryissue/entry/taking-it-easy

Hope you will enjoy the New Year !

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

 

New Folder

How many "New Folder" do you have in your system?

Does it indicate we are not efficient in managing data in our system?

I've got 8. How many you've got ?

Try searching !

She was She

My Love,

This is the first time in our 10 years of life together that I have picked up a pen to write to you. And that too now, when we are no longer together. We spent ten long years together! Very few such relations last so long these days. And I am glad we did.

I still remember the day when I first saw you. I was with my father in the market. And you were standing in that big store of our town. I didn’t know what you were looking at, but you were looking straight in one direction undisturbed by the gazes of almost everyone who were passing from there. That image of yours was captured in my heart forever. From the moment I laid my eyes on you, I was sure that you were the one. Soon I came to know that you were a relative of that big store owner. And I started planning to de-relate you from him and make you a part of my family. I was not sure if you even noticed me then, but was sure you would someday soon. From that day I started praying God every night to roll the things in our favor.

When I first mentioned you at home, not everybody was happy. Papa was OK but mom was reluctant. May be she was hesitated by the thought of expenditure for our possible union especially when she came to know that the big store owner was your relative. But slowly I was able to convince her. Rest of the arrangements with your parents went very smoothly. And to my parent’s and somewhat mine surprise, the store owner uncle played a very positive role for that. Do you remember during all these days we could manage to meet only at the store and I didn’t know much about you. I was very curious but there was no way. The store owner uncle (I really keep forgetting his name. You know that I am weak at all this) would not allow you to come out with me.

Finally after 2 months the day came, when you became part of our family. God had really rolled out the things pretty fast. You remember how my mom and sister welcomed you. How that Shweta auntie and other neighbors were peeping in to have a look at you. They couldn't believe the amount we spent on the event. (My mom kept telling them.) But there you were, entering our home with me as gorgeous as you were when I first saw you. May be more.

In those few days I was not sure whether I was living my life with you or roaming in some dreamland. We couldn't go out to some far place immediately, but we made it by going on long rides everyday in the evening. Do you remember we used to go visit my friends and I am sure many of them were jealous of you being with me. And sometimes I enjoyed that.

We both were young and had to make it in our life. I had to travel to this new city far away from our home. I promised to get you there as soon as possible. But that soon came only after 2 years. You never complained. Many times I couldn't go out with you despite promises, because of my new job. Every evening when I got back from work, I would find you as I left you in the morning, smiling. Many times I promised myself to go for a short ride with you after dinner every night, but like many of my other promises they never got fulfilled.

They say you realize someone's value, after someone leaves you. I don't know about others, but that's exactly what has happened to me. Now that you are not with me, and this time I think forever, I miss you a lot. A lot. I know now it’s too late from my side to save the relation, but dear bicycle I miss you a lot. I know you might not have been willing to depart from me, but its God’s will. May be the person who stole you from my home needs you more than I do. I hope and am confident that you will serve your new master well. Give me a smile if you see me somewhere on the road. You are my first love and will always remain.

*Based on a true incident.

2 States

This Sunday I bought the "2 States: The Story of My Marriage" the new book by Chetan Bhagat. I was expecting better from him this time compared to his last two misadventures, but to my surprise the book was much much better !

Yes, one sort of sequel to his first book, this book is full of dialoguebaji, real life experience that you dont put in words but Chetan Bhagat can, a very little masala(this was the expectation anyway!), exploration on Tamil vs Punjabi culture, what the big banks have to offer at workplace, etc etc.

The story starts when an IIMA boy, Krish, falls in love with an extra ordinary beautiful IIMA girl Ananya(extra ordinary by IIMA standards). Krish is son of a retired Punjabi armyman and hardcore punjabi housewife. Ananya is from a Purest of Pure Iyer Brahmin cast in Tamilnadu.

Dont care about the end, whether it is happy ending or sad ending. Chetan has made sure that the path upto the ending is exciting. (Read:its not the destination that matters, its the journey.) Its the story of the same boy who has his stunts during IITD in 'Five Point Someone' and is now participating in the second at IIMA. Arguably the story line resembles Chetan's own life, as his real life wife Anusha is from Tamilnadu and himself from Delhi.

Overall its a very good book. I would give 4.5 out of 5 to this.*

*About the rating trust-ability of my rating, 'Five point someone' has been given 5/5, 'One night @ call centre': 3/5 and 'Three Mistakes': 2.5/5.

Diwali Photographer

After the digital camera has made it very easy to shoot as many pictures as you want with almost no expense, I realized that I too have a 'hobby' for photography. Adding to this, many of my friends asked me how I took one of the photo I posted on orkut.

Result is this post.


Here is how:

To take the photo you need: one candle, one sparkler, one digital camera and one person to take the picture (provided that you want to be in the photo rather than taking it.)

For the camera setting, keep the camera in shutter-priority mode and make the shutter speed low. For the above photo it was 1/4 second.

Now light the sparkler in the middle. (The usual practice is to light at the tip, but we need double ring effect, right?) This will cause the sparkler to have 2 burning ends starting from middle and going away from eachother.

Now band the metal end of the sparkler a little so that it is easy to 'rotate' the sparkler in your hand. Now rotate it and ask the camera man to take few pictures. Select the best of them to show your friends.

Few more photos taken during diwali vacation.

Wadali Brothers

2 weeks before we were watching 'Lil Champs' on Zee TV, (one of the rare program that me and my wife can manage to watch together). On 29th August, the guests were Wadali Brothers. In the end, they sang one of theri best song, "Tu Maane ya Na Maane dildara" and it was a superb show.
I searched on youtube and here is the result for those who like Sufi.
There is no real video. A song embedded with image to be put on youtube I guess. Anyway enjoy the song!

New Launch

Two weeks ago I started a new blog to put the content for reading which I liked from net or fwd emails. My idea was to put everything that I like to read including quotes, stories, jokes anything for reading. But so far most of the items have been only good jokes.

I decided to put a post everyday(only on working days!), and so far I have not missed any day starting from 5th June. Lets hope everybody get their daily dose of good read regularly.

Cheers.