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I just got my hair cut… waaaaaaaaa :( (

Long hair doesnt suit me. So, I'm going to stay the short haired guy. Chi chi, too bad some things you like dont suit you.

Animals live enviable lives on the streets of Delhi. The people here take good care of them.

Cows are fed freely with rotis and stuff and are treated with respect. That is understandable. It is a feature of the Aryan culture here.

But I just spotted a woman feeding street dogs with kulfis! Not one dog but three dogs. Not one kulfi but three to four kulfis, as they asked for more! I've grown jealous. Someone treat me a chocobar! Waaaaaaa :(

No wonder the dogs have grown as arrogant as they are now in Delhi. They're an absolute menace. They shit and pee everywhere. So do the cows. As such, streets in residential areas in Delhi are strewn with little bumps of cow and dog shit. The dogs bark at anyone and at any time, as they wish and they're as good a source of sound pollution as automobiles are.

I dont blame them. They're dogs and that's how they behave but the people… one would expect them to try and relieve their streets of this menace but that's not the case. They love their cows and dogs so much, treat them with ice cream etc. Maybe they deserve their dog bites and dog shit lined streets.

You're never free from power cuts, in even its capital city and arguably its best city.

To hell with the Exam.

To hell with everything.

I dont care. 

Computer spam is much better. You can block the email addresses from which you get too many unwanted emails. You can select all the unwanted emails by ticking the boxes against them and delete them all at one go.

That's not the case with mobile spam. To delete one unwanted message, you have to do all this – press "Menu", navigate to "Messages", press "Messages", navigate to "Inbox", press "Inbox", open the message (which takes a moment is modern phones), press "Options", navigate to "Delete", press "Delete", the next screen will ask "Are you sure you want to delete this message?", you select "Yes" and huh… there it ends.

Now, consider a situation (my situation) in which you'd get three to four useless messages (buy this, download that ringtone, participate in this contest, download that wallpaper and similar shit) from the service provider (AirTel). When the message comes, you'd just read it once and exit the window.

But the problem arises when after some days, your message inbox will be nearing its capacity. So you'll have to delete some messages. If you delete only some messages, you'll have to keep deleting some every time a new batch of messages arrive. So, you'd prefer to delete all of them at at once. But interspersed here and there between the unwanted messages are "wanted" messages that you'd like to retain. What to do? You'll be forced to delete all those unwanted messages one by one. Considering that most mobiles (Nokia 3120) hold a maximum of 160 messages, atleast 110 to 120 of them will be unwanted (my case).

You'll be set up on an annoying project of deleting upto 20 or 30 messages going by the above procedure. There's no method of dealing with this menace other than that procedure.

But there is a procedure to deal with mobile spam of a different kind – the kind in which the service provider actually calls you (this is a far more annoying kind) and presents the same options as in the sms kind. Of course, the voice is automated.

If you cut the call immediately after receiving, you're saving them a lot of money (I'm assuming the cost for the air time forms a part of their balance sheet). Instead, you should just receive the call, put the phone aside and leave it like that, till the call ends, which happens after about three minutes in my case. The advantage of this method is:

Suppose they call X number of people per day. Let the maximum duration of each call be Y minutes. Let the actual duration of the call be Z minutes (most people just cut the call in the first 5 seconds). So, the total maximum duration of the calls per day is XY. Similarly, the total actual duration is XZ.

Now, by applying the above method, you'll be forcing AirTel to spend XY minutes daily calling people instead of XZ. Suppose each call costs Rs. 0.50 for AirTel. You'd be forcing them to spend Rs. 0.50 * XY daily. Otherwise, if you cut the call in the first 5 or 10 seconds or whatever, AirTel would need to spend only Rs. 0.50 * XZ daily. So, you'd save them S = Rs. 0.50 X(Y – Z) per day by doing so. Counterattack! Do not let them save that amount. Let them pay for their unwanted nonsense.

Let us apply the above formula to a probable situation. AirTel has a subscriber base of about 15 million in India. Suppose AirTel calls 1 lakh people in all per day. X = 1,00,000. Let the maximum duration of a call, Y = 3 minutes. Let the actual duration be 5 seconds i.e., Z = 1/12 minutes (definitely there will be people who'll be taking such calls well but let's ignore them in this study for they constitute a minority).

Now, S = 0.50 * 1,00,000 * (3 – 1/12) = Rs. 1,04,165.00.

Let us round it to Rs. 1 lakh – which is a substantial amount. In a month, this would become Rs. 30 lakh. Over a year, Rs. 1 lakh * 365 = Rs. 365 lakh = $800,000.00 (approx.) – not a small amount – considerable damage!

Just stats I know and AirTel wouldnt be foolish enough to spend such an amount on advertising but still, you are making them pay something extra.

Thanks to Living Journey, now you can see my blogroll and a few other links.
The About pages are empty. I'll fill them when I have time. I'm onto 18-hour days.

When my dad and my grandpa came here, they got me a parcel of rava laddus (a rava laddu is a kind of sweet) made by my grandma. I ate them all in super quick time and was deeply saddened after they got finished. So, I asked for a fresh dispatch. This time, it was my uncle who played the courier.

Aeroplanes can do strange things – spill ink from a fountain pen, block your ears etc. (ok, ok, I was never on a plane but I was taught these things happen in school). The plane in which my uncle travelled did something stranger – all the rava laddus fused together and formed a big, jumbo, "super rava laddu". It got solidified. There was no way I could redivide it into their earlier avatars.

So, I have to hold the whole thing and then eat. It weighs almost a kilo. When scaled down, my eating resembles Jerry Mouse eating a large chunk of cheese.

Anyway.. few things in life are more pleasurable than eating something made by mom or grandma. So, while you "Hmmmpf!" with jealousy and wonder why I wrote this post at this hour, I'll continue eating my "super rava laddu". Too bad you cant share. :D

Old fart, Sunil Gavaskar, is seemingly shocked with players complaining about the tough schedule these days. This is what he has to say: "I can't see the problem, these players are turning out for their countries, it's an honour to represent your country. I would be willing to sweat 365 days in a year for India."

Yeah right! I'd really like to see him play for 365 days a year! He has played cricket decades ago, when the schedules were much freer. It is easy for someone like him to sit in the commentary box, sip Pepsi and make such stupid comments. Players are not robots. They have families and other things in their lives. Oh, of course, you'd expect such comments from someone who goes on preaching the "converting ones into twos and twos into threes" funda, as if the others never knew about it and were waiting for him to say so.

Also, Gavaskar is one of those who argues vehemently against sledging. Here though, he does a complete U-turn: "In a competitive situation, we will always get the odd incident; I think that's part of the game. I really don't think it's anything to be too worried about." Sounds more like Steve "Sledging" Waugh eh? That's not Gavaskar for me.

So, how are we doing? How was the journey?

Btw, you may leave comments on this template. I shall decide whether to change it or not based on simple majority (democracy you see).

Over the past two days, Bangalore witnessed an event which is hard to describe logically.

What happened?

*7 deaths – 6 civilians killed in police firing and 1 policeman beaten to death by an angry mob.

*150 policemen injured.

*60 civilians injured.

*3 petrol bunks, 6 lorries, 12 buses, 3 autorickshaws, 20 cars and 54 two-wheelers of civilians and 7 vans, 3 cars, 5 jeeps and 4 motorcycles of police were set on fire.

*563 arrests.

*A lot of intangibles damaged, which includes the image that Bangalore and its people have not only in India but also outside.

Reason?

Famous Kannada actor Rajkumar died of cardiac arrest. Nobody killed him

Now, I said it is hard to describe what link there is between the death of one man of cardiac arrest and whatever happened that I mentioned above.

Various reasons were cited however. One of them – antisocial elements having a gala time. Jane Galt(link from Amit Verma's blog) has an explanation of the recent Paris riots, which is quite convincing and can probably be applied aptly to the situation in Bangalore too. Still, Bangalore is not Paris in the sense there are no immigrant black Muslims who have been experiencing racial discrimination for decades in Bangalore.

This is really annoying. I wish I can get hold of one of those who perpetrated the violence. I would probably smash his head with a blunt weapon and throw him to the hungry street dogs near my room. He'll then get to know how it feels to die.

If Paritala Ravi was brutally murdered and violence erupted, it is easy to understand. But this? No, I cant. Seven people lost their lives and over 200 got injured just because a few inebriated idiots wanted to have some fun. How worse can it get?

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