Guinness World Record

Woah! Finally it has been certified that the record has been set by Mozilla for the most downloaded software in 24 hours - From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and better Web. I was one of them too

India had a total of 489,596 downloads, this is a huge number of Indians using the best browser on earth.

If you did download Firefox 3 on that day, get a personalized certificate for yourself at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/certificate_form

Attempting a World Record

A mission to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy. Can you do it, give it a try: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord pledge today.

There are 4851 people from India who have pledged so far, I am in those lucky ones

tweet tweet

I have been recently  fascinated by a new social networking service, Twitter. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application.

I am simply hooked on to it, so much so that I have installed a Firefox Extension for posting my tweets from the address bar of my favorite browser.

See me tweet: http://twitter.com/mloclam

We Dont need no Reservation

Yesterday the Supreme Court of India passed a landmark judgment regarding the reservations in education system. Though the battle against the reservation system has been lurking for a year now, followed by the much publicized protests and angry demonstrations across the country.

So now there is a 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in central education institutions including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The Supreme Court ruled but also maintained that the “creamy layer” (details below) among the backwards would not get reservation.

According to Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan “Reservation is one of the tools used to preserve essence of equality so that disadvantaged groups can be brought to the forefront of civil life.”

In simple terms: The Apex Court upheld Article 15(5) that was inserted through the 93rd amendment, as well as the Central Education Institutions (Reserve Admission) Act. The amendment allowed reservations in all education institutions, including private colleges. Currently we have 27% quota for OBCs, 17% is reserved for SCs, and 7.5% for STs. The total reservation is now a whopping 49.5%.

What is the Creamy Layer?

Children of the following wont benefit.. for now…

• Servicing and past Presidents, Vice Presidents, Supreme Court judges and High Court judges.
• Class I and II officers of Central and State Services and Public Sector Units.
• Colonels and above in Army and equivalent posts in Navy, Air Force.
• Doctors, Lawyers, Industrialists.
• People owning agricultural land above a certain limit.
• Those who earn over Rs. 2.5 lakh annually.

I feel that the reservations if any should be at the School level and not above that as it kills the competitive spirit of education.

Taare Zameen Par

The film, Taare Zameen Par (तारे ज़मीन पर) directed by Aamir Khan is about a 8 year old dyslexic child Ishann Awasthi (Darsheel Safary) who finds it difficult to read or write correctly or for that matter perform any such activities normal to children of his age and inevitably has to bear the brunt of his parents, teachers & other people he interacts with but his world is filled with magical creatures and thoughts that give him company his parents unable to realize his disorder send him to a boarding school where the child retreats into a self imposed exile and has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family. In comes Aamir Khan the temporary art teacher who encourages them to extend their boundaries of thought and imaginations and shows special interest in finding out the difficulty of Ishaan with time, patience and care he helps Ishaan find himself. And that’s the synopsis of the movie.

But more than the script it’s the way minute emotions are captured the way the audience is made to peer into a child’s mind and its own mechanisms.

The movie is laden with powerful scenes that will give you moist eyes.

And to complement the film’s excellent theme there’s the superbly crafted n maturely executed visual effects and animation to go with it. Top notch performance by all the actors, Darsheel Safary steals the limelight from the seasoned actors here

Another thing that needs a special mention is Aamir’s directing skills, he brilliantly captures the child’s world, the obsession of noticing minute things and finding beauty in them. The relationship between parents and children is also captured beautifully. One more thing here, the class toppers are not shown as arrogant. Elder brothers are not bullies but caring and protective.

So go ahead and catch the movie. One thing for sure, this is going to be a part of my DVD collection.

Batti Bandh Gul

Batti Bandh is an entirely voluntary event taking place on the 15th of December between 7:30 & 8:30 p.m. This event is aimed at requesting all of Mumbai to stand up for a cause that is greater than all of us. All you need to do is switch off lights and appliances in your home, shop, office, school, college or anywhere you are for 1 hour to take a stand against global warming. Just 1 hour.

This was supposed to be a voluntary event, but not for us in Vasai, it turned out to be a forced Load Shedding schedule with the current lost from 5:30in the evening to 8:30 at night that coincided with the campaign. So in terms, we managed to be a part of the campaign.

But what was the actual cause of the campaign? Regions in Maharashtra still face power cuts under the pretext of Load Shedding while Mumbai continues to shine in all its glitter. I am not jealous of the status that Mumbai is getting - It is a global city and it deserves to shine. But on the other hand, why should we suffer.

Earlier, there was Load Shedding scheduled only on Fridays, later as time progressed, the Fridays became alternate and then moving towards no Load Shedding at all. Then suddenly we started to have Load Shedding every single day.

What was the reason? The state dosent have enough electricity for all its people. How can we accept that when we can make day of night with huge lights.

Pray, please answer MSEB…

The Kite Runner

“The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini is one of those marvelous books that opens up our hearts and minds.

This book transports us to a very different time in the 1960’s. Amir and Hassan, friends, raised in the same household, but in different worlds. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, and Hassan is the son of the servant, Hazara. There may be a difference in the lives they led, but they became fast friends. Amir would learn to read and Hassan would not. Amir would have the most beautiful toys and particularly kites, and Hassan would be able to help Amir play with the toys and run (fly) his kite. Amir was the spolied son, Hassan was the intelligent and intuitive servant’s son. Their lives would intertwine even when separated.

The reader is blown from the last days of Kabul’s monarchy — salad days in which the boys lives’ are occupied with school, welcome snows, American cowboy movies and neighborhood bullies — into the atrocities of the Taliban, which turned the boys’ green playing fields red with blood.

When the Russian army invaded, Amir and his father fled to the United States, California. Amir grew up in a different land, but with the same Afghanistan culture. He and his father became close. Amir married, went to college, all the while wondering what happened to his childhood friend, the one he betrayed.

As time marched on, Amir lost his father to cancer and was summoned to Pakistan to meet with an old family friend. This turns out to be a life renewing event. Amir searches for news of his friend, Hassan. The search takes him back to Afghanistan, to an orphanage, a meeting with a member of the Taliban, a search for his lost city and culture and for a prize he will cherish, for the truth and for the life he regains.

This is a gritty book, the beauty and violence of this country, Afghanistan, comes to life. The customs and food and smells of the city; the desolation of life and the loss of the country to madmen who are running it with only their imagined vulgar needs and wealth in mind that destroys a culture so varied and rich.

This unusually eloquent story is also about the fragile relationship fathers and sons, humans and their gods, men and their countries.

We can imagine we are there, and we can share in the sights, the smells, the utter disregard for human life. But we can never know what these people have lost. A book, I will cherish reading again and again, so will you.

PS: The Kite Runner - the movie is up for release on the 14th of December, 2007. Needless to say, I’ll watch it.

Woah!

“The warden threw a party in the county jail.
The prison band was there and they began to wail.
The band was jumpin and the joint began to swing.
You should’ve heard those knocked out jailbirds sing.
Let’s rock, everybody, lets rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancin to the jailhouse rock.”

Woke me up from my sleep, I found my mobile phone singing in Elvis’ voice, I picked it up and answered the call.
“Wake up, you sleepy log… kitna soyega (how much would you sleep)… mera kaam karna hai na (you have to do my work)…” blurted my friend, I was not in a mood to listen to him at this moment, I had just woken and my eyes felt weak towards the sunlight pouring down the window in my room.
“That is to be done on Tuesday, tomorrow; the bank is closed on Mondays…” I gave him a dose of his own medicine.
“Oh hello. Today is Tuesday and if you don’t do this right now, you would not be able to finish it in time and would be late for work” he retorted back.
“What the hell”, I snapped back, “Today is Monday and I am on leave today and FYI, I am going back to sleep” I was just about to cut the call when he started laughing out loud.
“Dude, this is no April fool joke, I am damn serious, today is Monday and I am going back to sleep, if you wish to laugh your minds off it, you are welcome to do that, bye” and I angrily cut the call.
I looked at the date come on my mobile phone screen; it showed 11-Sep-07. I wondered what was wrong, why is my phone showing a date in the future… nervously I crawled out of the bedroom and into the living room to switch on the TV, I scanned for the news channel, it too showed the 11th of September, 2007 and were showing a re-run on the 9/11 bombings. I was out of my mind at that point of time, wondering what was happening, totally confused, I called in my cousin to confirm what I was experiencing, was that a dream or a reality, she told me the same thing, it was the 11th of September, 2007 a Tuesday and not Monday as I claimed to be.

Freak, I lost an entire day, I have no recollection of the day prior to this, a day was completely deleted from my life and that too my 24th birthday! I just sat there on the couch wondering was it still a dream or what was happening to me. How could I loose a day? How come? I was confused. I realized that the only thing that would actually solve this is trying to recollect all that happened before I went off to sleep… happy with that realization, I sat down on the couch trying to remember my last memory, but my memory kept failing me, I simply couldn’t make out any thing that could cause such a huge calamity, I felt like loosing my 24th year of existence that to on my birthday! Surely friends and relatives must have met me on that day, called in or sent sms wishes to me, frantically I grabbed my phone, it was the new one I purchased last night I thought, or was it the night before, my other mind was trying to live in the present while one part firmly believed that it was indeed Monday and people are playing very dirty tricks on me, but then my reasoning mind said that my near and dear ones can play such tricks but what about the TV channels, they are no friend of you. So frantically I searched for any call records or sms’s that might have been through my cell phone, there were no entries for the day, it seemed that the date 10th September, 2007 was vanished from the world and my mobile phone. For once I felt that I was going mad, but then suddenly I tried to recollect what I had done on the Sunday evening.

So, I met a few of my friends in the evening at around 7 – 7:30, and then I had gone to that mobile shop to find out if the phone that I wanted had arrived in the shop, the shopkeeper told me that it was on the way and was expected sometime soon, relieved I walked back home and started preparations for the dinner that I was treating my family to. We were going to this restaurant for the first time and we were made to wait as all the tables were full. After around half an hour we were led to a small table that catered for four and we sumptuously ate the food served there. On the way back home, I went in to the mobile shop to find out if the phone had arrived, the shopkeeper felt relieved on seeing me. He said that he tried once too many times to call me and let me know that the phone had come in. he gave me the phone, just the one that I wanted, I was happy, so were my parents and my brother, who would now get to use my current phone for which he has been longing for long now.

I then purchased the phone using my debit card and got back home. I then used my brother’s SIM card in my current phone and entered all my contacts into the new phone, carefully not making any mistakes; this took me quite some time enough for me to realize that I had a decent number of contacts on my cell phone, so once I had entered the last of the contact I set the alarm for me to get up early and go to the church for mass. And I slept.

That was all that I could remember, and no further, suddenly I was woken by Elvis asking me to do some Jailhouse Rock. I still wondered what went wrong, how did I end up loosing an entire day and that to an important day like my birthday. So I sat down frustrated and had a look at the time, it was almost time for me to get ready to go to work, but some how the feeling of missing an entire day was not settling in to me. I called up my colleague and told her that there might be a chance that I might not be in office today, she resented and told me that she had faced a lot of hardships yesterday when I was not in office and she counted on me coming to office today to solve some pending issues. I said that I’d definitely try to be in office today then, just would be a little late. I told her as I was coming to terms of this unusual feeling that had taken over me.

Just then my friend again called and I told him the entire story about loosing a complete day, he laughed at my story and told me that I would make a very good story writer, “Don’t you remember that we were at your place in the evening, you lazed around all day doing nothing at all!” I told him that I tried to remember it all but just couldn’t. He then told me to forget all about it and get to work as it was already getting late.

I am wanting to finish off this, I need some suggestions, please let me know if you have any. Let me tell you that this is actually a dream that I had on Monday and was wondering what it would be like to loose an entire day of your life… and that too your birthday!

Wiki-fying Manickpur

This was a long time due, posting Manickpur on the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia. Well now, Manickpur officially has been wikified! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manickpur is the link to be clicked to view this effort.

For this, I just used up one of my Saturdays to compile all the information I had from various sources that I had dug up during making the website, then it was all a case of just putting all the information together and putting it online on Wikipedia. The information for this was collected over a period of time working my way through various newsletters and translating them where necessary and also talking to various priests who have served Manickpur Parish along with some elderly people from Manickpur.

Believe me it was tough, just to understand how content is inserted into this encyclopedia took me a day, with all the various tags and special characters meaning different sets of formatting.

Then I found a special page from Wikipedia, that had all the cheats to edit this encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet. This page has the basics that are needed. Just follow this and you’ll never go wrong.

Over this weekend, I managed to insert even more things in the Manickpur Wiki, added an Infobox to showcase the Geographical coordinates, Time zone etc and also inserted some images relating to Manickpur.

Just a gentle reminder the link to click is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manickpur

Back Home

So finally after a tiresome 13 hour journey from Dublin to Frankfurt and finally landing at Mumbai. Lufthansa treated me very well, the food was fantastic but there was a serious shortage of leg space. I being a little on the taller side felt a lot cramped to sit in those seats in the 747 jumbo jet. There was also an obvious difference with my experience with Swiss that the in flight screen was a large common one right in the front, as in the Swiss plane, this was behind the seat rest, so individual screens.

Again the in flight entertainment had a great movie to be watched
‘Pursuit of Happyness‘. I was impressed with the story and the screenplay with really superb acting by both Will Smith and his real son Jaden Christopher Syre Smith. For now I can say that Will Smith can act and his son is a real Oscar winner. The story touched my heart and the main aim that is portrayed in the movie that happiness is always chased for and you will never find happiness unless it is striven for.

As I reached the Mumbai Airport, I already began to feel the heat, it was 30 degrees C with heavy rains that lashed just before we landed. I quickly went through the necessary immigration and custom checks before I spotted my parents waiting for me. I ran towards them only to be brought to a halt by my brother and friend. Soon mom and dad were there and the first thing from mom’s mouth, “You appear to have lost weight.” Quickly I asked them to get on the road and get some wind blowing in my face, I was already wet with perspiration.

We came to Manickpur in about an hours time only to find out that there is no electricity across the village. The shedding was from 09:30pm and now it was almost 3:30am and still no sign of the electricity. I took a cold shower and sat on the swing in the gallery only then I felt relief.

I was not in a mood to sleep even after a tiresome journey just because of the sheer euphoria of getting back home. Anyways I did catch up on some sleep before getting over to places I wanted to visit and was back home in the evening when my fiends caught up on me.