This bit of statistic appeared in todays newspaper (Gulf Times, published in Doha, Qatar):
The Indian expatriate population in Qatar has soared to a staggering 419096 (as of 31 July), more than double the number of local people.
Note that this takes into account only the Indian population here, not that of all the other nations.
Wow. The Qataris are a minority in their own nation!!
Remember this post, about the project called ‘Under Development’?
Well, I did manage to be at the exhibition after all… and I loved it! The story it wanted to tell was told brilliantly, the photos were meaningful, were for the most part good photos in their own right, and said a lot of things (all through the photos) that do not manage to see the light of printing presses.
Well done, Citizens’ Initiative!
I also learnt about some other initiatives that they are undertaking, but perhaps they will be better placed to discuss them at length. I will congratulate them, though, for their effort at making a difference.
Well, I’d started learning the guitar at some point, but stopped midway (well, not exactly midway, as I stopped barely a year and a half after I’d started) - for two reasons… well, two major ones, at least.
One, I didn’t find enough time to practice all the chords that my instructor asked me to learn. As with everything else, it’s pretty simple to learn the guitar: just practice, practice, practice. And I was putting in a lot of time at the JU Photography Club (well, in some instances, even more time than I could afford), so the ‘fall guy’ so to say was the guitar, ‘coz, well, there was nothing else to ‘fall’.
Two, I got really frustrated at the amount of information that I was expected to remember, and the amount of information that apparently had not much ‘logic’ at all! I did not know if there was any basis in ‘defining’ the major scales, I did not know how chords ‘progressed’… heck, I did not know much at all, and I had no apparent way to find out the logic behind it.
Anyhow, time has passed, and I’ve satisfied myself with occasionally (mostly on others’ guitars, now that I’m away from home and hence away from my guitar) trying to play with unpracticed fingers the odd tunes I’d learnt as a novice.
Finally, over the past few days, I decided to give the guitar another shot - this time on my own. To my help came the usual saviour - Google, and I’ve managed to find a nifty website (www.freeguitarcourse.com - do check it out if you’re a guitar enthusiast) that has my interest back on the guitar again. Finally, it seems there’s all the logic in the world in the apparent mayhem that I had found earlier!! So all’s well in the world again, and once again I can get back to playing some tunes and chords.
All I need to do now is get my hands on a guitar. And find some definite slots of time to do some practicing.
Hm. Easier said than done?
My dad was cleaning out some of his old stuff, and among all the unwanted papers was a small newspaper clipping that he had kept. Here’s what the clipping said, verbatim:
Hullabaloo over H
I landed at the Los Angeles airport on June 7, 2005 on an Air India flight. I was 82, and though in good shape, I thought my request for a wheelchair would save me carrying my hand baggage to the immigration desk. My name is Jai Dev Bajaj. I discovered that Mexicans pronounce J as H like San Jose is pronounced “San Hosey”. A dark and buxom Mexican lady pushed my wheel chair and shouted at the gate: “This, Sir, is the wheelchair for Haidev Bahaha!”
To my good luck, a friend of mine from my Lahore Government College days, Jeevan Lal Ahuja, had come to meet me at the airport. He advised me: “Don’t take the Mexican twisted-tongue pronounciation seriously. They call me Heaven Lal Ahuha.”
(Courtesy: Jai Dev Bajaj, Pathankot)
I cannot ascertain when or in which newspaper this was published; no such details were there on the small clipping.
Update: New info from Dad - the above piece appeared in The Telegraph published from Kolkata, in Khushwant Singh’s column that appears every Saturday. The date still remains unknown, though!
If you are in Kolkata, or you plan to be there over the next week, may I bring to your attention a photography exhibition organised by a group that calls itself the ‘Citizens Initiative’. I am, of course, not involved with this venture in any way, but I have a friend who is, and this post is to honor a request to let more people know about the exhibition.
Here’s part of an email that I received about this:
“As some of you may be aware of, we, a bunch of students, researchers and teachers (mostly from JU) have been working with the people in Singur for the last 5 months. We call ourselves the Citizens’ Initiative. We have extensively documented through photographs the lives of the people in Singur and how it has been affected by the Tata Motors factory. To this end, we are organising a photo exhibition at Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre from 27th June to 2nd July.
Neither is the Citizens’ Initiative a commercial organisation nor are we doing anything for personal aesthetics/ pleasure (and all that, you know). The entire point of the photo exhibition is to make people aware of Singur and how development for some affects the rest. We want as many people to watch the photos and be aware of the situation as possible.
…
The photographers are Amrita Dhar, Insiya Poonawala and Joyraj Bhattacharya.”
Tell me how you liked the exhibition (I myself won’t be in Kolkata in time)!
Update: Please see the comments section for more details.
Finally watched Chak De! India today.
I’d heard for a long time that it’s a good film, yes, but more - that here was a film that focussed on a sport other than cricket; surprise, surprise even more, here was a film that focussed for a change on women’s sport in India.
Yes, it’s about all of these. But in the end, it’s about neither of these. Not Hockey. Not Women’s Sports.
It’s about playing for your team, and putting the team above everything else.
And yes - it’s a wonderful film indeed.
About my last post, where I argued that Firefox should in fact be quite open to use by businesses, here’s another post that I found, as a counter-argument.
What say?
I came across this review and comparison of Internet Explorer and Firefox, on occasion of Firefox 3 being launched.
The review starts off by asking whether Firefox can displace IE as “the browser of choice”, and concludes by claiming that it does not. After describing for over the majority of the write-up the features that give Firefox a definite advantage over IE, it argues that Firefox lags in performance. Here goes:
Reviewers opened a few really graphics-intensive sites in both browsers. And what is more graphics-intensive then sites aimed at children? Time to load was tested in both browsers for Disney’s Web site, and the Nickelodeon channel’s site. Opening www.nick.com, IE took 10 seconds to fully load, Mozilla took 20. Loading the home page for Disney.com; IE was 21 seconds to load and Mozilla was 46 seconds.
The browsers were also tested against http://www.papervision3d.org/, a site that uses Adobe (NSDQ:ADBE)’s Flashplayer. IE 8 had no problems loading and navigating through the site. Mozilla took almost a minute to load and then continuously froze while navigating. The application eventually crashed. In the business environment, performance of a browser usually has an edge over features and customizations, especially since users are usually limited by usage policy as to what they can or can’t do in a browser anyway. If performance issues consist with Firefox, it will probably not be feasible for most businesses to migrate from IE which come bundled with the OS anyway.
Hm. Two issues, I have with this report.
1. Browser of choice? Hm… I wonder. As the writer says, IE comes bundled with the OS (MS Windows), and I’d say Firefox is the browser of choice only for those who are computer savvy enough to make that choice. For the rest, Internet Explorer is often the de-facto vehicle to the internet, and in some extreme cases even “the button that takes you to the internet”. Would you call that ‘choice’?
2. Firefox is inferior to IE when it comes to pages with Flash content, and high graphics content. Fine. How exactly does it make Firefox lower in performance? I’d heard flash content is actually suppressed in a lot of places where bandwidth is an issue. More, how many businesses use content where Flash is critical? Pages with large graphics content… for businesses? The author herself says childrens’ pages use the most graphics, doesn’t she?
Finally, this same report confirms that Firefox is better against malware and viruses, and even integrates with the anti-virus in Windows Vista to contain viruses in downloads. Don’t these qualities make it better suited for businesses?
At the outset, this post is entirely thanks to The Examined Life, one of the blogs that I happen to frequent.
1. This post (I refer to the passage quoted, not the plea about signing the petition). The link mentioned in the post is broken; instead, use this link to validate the passage quoted. You’re looking for, in particular, Chapter V, the second passage in Item 40, even though the rest of the report can be a good read as well.
2. This news item.
I am not sure I agree with the judgement on Pt. Nehru in the first link, though, and neither do I question Nehru’s reasons when I know nothing, really, about the facts of world politics.
But as The Examined Life questions, One Good Turn Deserves Another? You judge!
Firefox is launching a new version, Firefox 3.0 on June 17th. Being a Firefox user for some time now, I can highly recommend that you use Firefox. Also, I have personally used the beta versions of Firefox 3.0, and I can vouch for the fact that it is indeed faster than previous versions, as promised by the developers.
Regarding this new Firefox version, do have a look at their attempt at a World Record. Firefox 3.0 is attempting to have the largest number of downloads in the space of 24hrs, and they request that you download the lastest 3.0 version on June 17, the day it is launched.
I will encourage you to use Firefox anyway, and since you will need to download it anyway, why not do it on June 17, and help Firefox out a little bit?
And did I mention (if you didn’t know already) that Firefox is free? Happy surfing!
