January 28, 2005

Some Sardar Jokes that a friend forwarded...no offence to anyone..

* Ek dost ne sardar se poocha "yaar tu hamesha foreign channel
kyon
dekhta rehta."
Sardar "yaar kuch bijli unki bhi kharcha hone do."

*4 hightech sardar inventions:
---Waterproof towel
---Solar powered torch
---Book on how to read
---Pedal powered wheel chair.

* Why did sardar cut the sides of the capsule before taking it?
Guess
what
---To avoid side effect!!!

* Man:sardarji where were u born?
sardarji: punjab.
man: which part.
Sardar: oye part part kya kar raha hai, whole body is born in
punjab".

* Lawyer to sardar: Gita pe haath laga kar kaho ke
---Sardar :yeh kya, sita pe haath lagaya to court me bulaiya. ab
fir gita pe haath.

* Ek teacher ne sardar se puchha
"akal badhi ya bhais "
Sardar bola "sir pehle date of birth to batao".

* Why was sardarji writing the exam near the door
coz it was an entrance exam.

* Banta's son:dad there is some one on the door 2 collect donations
for a
swimming pool.
Banta: give him a glass of water.

* Santa:I am a proud sardar, my son is in medical college.
Banta: really what is he studying?
santa: he is not studying they r studying him.

January 27, 2005

Awesome stunt by the army corps Posted by Hello

January 26, 2005

Republic Day...Mera Bharat Mahan !!!!

Wish you all a very Happy Republic Day !!!! Its that time of the year in India when all the public places are decorated with indian flags and all public offices have a flag hoisting ceremony. My dad works for Hindustan Petroleum so we used to attend two flag hoisting ceremonies per year (the other for Independence Day):):)

As a kid I used to be excited when either Republic day or Independence day were nearing as that was the only time I could go to see my Dad's office...when I was in Visakhapatnam all of us (kids) used to go to the office attend the ceremony eat a lot of sweets, saw the refinery and Dad's work place and came back to the colony immediately as there was another function there. After the function there used to be a traditional cricket match of the Uncles which used to be a big deal and it was a packed house to see the game....when I moved to Mumbai the routine didnt change much for the first couple of years but as I got older I stopped going to my dad's office and I used to only attend the ceremony at the colony....all of us used to wait for the formalities to finish so that we could eat (how we change with age) !!!!!!!!! after the flag hoisting we used to have either a soccer match (independence day)/ crikcet match (Rep Day)...we used to change the sport becoz of monsoon...we used to have fun playing those matches as they were always competitive and we used to play...Youngsters Vs Uncles (only cricket)....ofcourse we used to win...during the Indepedence day celebrations we used to play soccer forming two teams among us...it was great fun as lot of people used to watch it....that time one more reason for some people to play was to impress girls. Some of my friends were "linked" or teased with some girls name so whenever he scored we used shout from the field the girls name and in response that girls friends also used to shout his name....so it was all fun...the best part of soccer in monsoon was the soggy field...Keechad...we used to luv playing...but my mom wasnt excited as the clothes used to be dirty (next to trashing level) everyday:)....we used to name the two teams..."Tigers" and "Lions"...the tigers team used to wear striped shirts...that reminds me...one of my friends had asked "should we wear strips and come???"...all of us had burst out laughing and we still tease that guy with that incident...

All fun apart...the best part abt the Replublic day or independence day that i used to like are the Songs played and the Parade on the TV....the parade used to be awesome..I miss that now:(:(....it was great to see all the states represented and all the armed forces perform.....it was exciting to watch the tanks, soldiers on foot and horses etc...I think that is one of the few times when Indian Army is shown on TV....the Guys who work day and night and risk their lives for our comfort only get mentioned in news as being severly injured or dead....thats sad as the Army in this country gets a lot of attention. I used to feel that the soldiers always had low profile or coverage when they should have been shown as symbols of strength and determination.....but anyways....it was fun to see these guys on TV in their uniforms...

The songs that are played on both the days are awesome!!!!! They are very very touching....I have always liked the patriotic songs and some songs still give me a strange feeling inside...I cant describe the feeling....but its a great feeling...I guess thats why one of my friends wrote on her blog "You can take a man (or a woman, for that matter) out of India, but you can never take India out of a man (or a woman)."....

My favorite song is "Aye Mere watan ke Logon"...that song still gives me jitters and makes the hair on my hand stand whenever I lister to it....the lyrics are brilliant and the voice brings forward the sacrificies the soldiers have made for the freedom and well being of India...

January 18, 2005

Cold Weather......

The past couple of days have been very very cold....yesterday it was 9 deg F during the day!!!!!!!!! it felt much colder as we had wind chill too:(:(.... Over the weekend it snowed a lot but it didnt matter as we (Amruteshwar and I) watched 14hrs of football coverage!!!!!!!!!!!!! All we did was watch the Steelers beat Jets, Falcons beat Rams, Eagles beat VIkings and the disastrous rout of the Colts at New England.....we watched the games at my place on studrday and at his place on Sunday....we felt soo tired after watching the games:):) I had to go in early to the Gym so that i can work out and burn the extra calories I put on while wtching the game.

The cold weather doesnt help in anyway either as it keeps u indoors and all u want to do is lie down on the couch/bed cuddled up in the COmforter and watch movies sipping coffee/hot chocholate. Sindhu had made garma garam Pakode for us on saturday so it was more comfy.

The waether had been so bad that the doors of my car have frozen and so have the locks....I tried dropping off a friend home late Friday night after the Sankranthi get toegtehr and she couldnt get out of the car from her side.....we tried for abt 5-10 mins and finally gave up....I got out of my seat and pushed the seat back so that he could get out from my side:):)...quite an adventure to just drop somebody home:)

that night we had lots of fun....we had a pot-luc gettogether for Sankranthi (Pongal)...we had kofta Curry(Nisha), Fried rice(sindhu), Raitha and Plain rice (Renu), Aloo Mutter and Sambhar(Bindu) and Chakra Pongal for prasad by urs truly....I had expreimented with the recipe for the first time so I had to make a lot of adjustments especially to the quantity if gudd (jagerry) taht had to be put in the Pongal....in the end it was a success and people liked it....then we had "online aarti" we logged onto music india online and played "Om Jai Jagdish" from there, it was total TP as no one new the aarti.....all this was more fun for the new girl that had ceom from India the Previous night:):)....Kumar, our expert cook, wasnt happy as he was informed in the last moment so couldnt cook anything....we were glad as people appreciated our cooking for once...else he gets the accolades all the time:):)...all in all we had a good time and played risk and watched the clipping of Russell Peters that I had posted abt a week ago...

January 14, 2005

Semester About to Start ......

As usual the Holidays end very quickly and the long Semester of Studies and research lie ahead....I felt these holidays have come and gone very very soon and I never felt as if I was on a break...as I had a standard routine...Get up at 8 or 8:30...go to the lab by 9:15...work till 12:30...eat lunch...work again from 1:00 to 5:15 or so....come home...have a cup of coffee with Sindhu and by 6:15 go to the Gym...come back by 8:00 (it closes at 8 during the break)...cook if its my cooking turn...watch a movie...if mood permits study or work on some lab stuff and go to bed by 1:30 - 2:00 am...and get up again in the morning....

its been like that for the past 3-4 weeks since the Fall semester ended...the only bright side of it is the Gym...I run for abt 3-4 miles and play TT Mon-wed and play Badminton thurday-Sun...for the past couple of days I have been playing Racquetball ... aahhh it feels good as its been abt 7-8 months since I last played racquetball...the last time was in May when i played the Final of the Kent State Tournament...wow...that was long time ago...my game has deteriorated from couple of years ago when i won the Bronze in the Nationals......I have not been able to finish off points and I am making a lot of mistakes....I guess its just lack of practice...

back to studies...the otehr day I was having a conversation with my friends abt the studies in the US and in India....though India is supposed to have an overall better quality of education...the proof is the number of Indians that are in the US....but I feel we have more of the theoretical knowledge than the practical knowledge..

back home in India students are pressurized in the 10th and 12th standards as if it would be the end of their world if they didnt get high percentages....common give the m a break..they are human beings tooo....

I had been thru that situation so i can testify the mental strain the students go thru. My parents have never pressurized me to study...I am very very thankful to them for that... they kind of understood that if they let me study as I wanted and when i wanted I did much better than they making me sit in a room and asking me to study...thats why I was allowed to play Badminton and cricket even during exams when my friends werent even allowed to leave the house...my neighbour even disconnected Cable TV so that his kid would study....for one whole year their family was without TV as it would be a distraction to the child...thats ridiculous...if he/she can be distracted so much that they would be neglecting their studies then something is really wrong there...

The standard routine for a 10th or 12th Grade student in India...is very very scary....they just do one thing...study, study and study again. the students are encourages to reproduce the whole text book...and the practice that the teachers would cut points for not writing as it is from the textbook is just adding fuel to this crazy practice of mugging up books and reproducing them without actually understanding them. I mean I know people who can just cram any number of pages given to them and they just continued that into Engineering where its simply not possible to cram the whole textbook...but i know some people who have done that and have also been successful...these are the guys with tremendous memory capacity...hats off to them

we were asked to give as many exams as possible thru-out the year so that we will be ready and will not hesitate when we see a question in the final exam....we were so used to writing answers to the same questions over and over again that sometimes i used to wonder if there is any difference between a 12th grade student and a Robot ???

the worst part is the chaos after the results...if u want to get into engineering u need to get mind boggling percentages in Maths, Physics and Chemistry (PCM) and if u want to get into Medicine then its Biology, Physics and Chemistry (PCB).

In Bombay it was a practice to get admission into an engineering college based on ur 12th grade marks in PCM, in other states they have a separate entrance exam for that..now thats case in Bombay too. if u want a free seat (abt Rs. 6000 a year) in a good college then u needed to get atleast 94%....else u will have to settle either for a below average college or a payment seat (Rs.50,000 per yr).....all this apart from the individual college fees, books etc. I had a 94.66 % and my rank in mumbai was 618 !!!!!!!! can u believe that ???? are we machines???? what else are we supposed to do???

my friend go 94.66 tooo but his rank was 750 ....confused???? well my aggregate total was higher (languages included)...so u not only need to score in PCM but u need to do well even in otehr subjects...in short u have to memorize text books of all the subjects and then also make time to learn the english grammer and not make any mistakes in that too....great!!!!!!!!!!!!

during the admission process I found out something else...the Quota system....yeah thats right...there is a quota for some sections of the community... I used to think why wasnt i born in that community???

There was 50% reservation for the Scheduled caste/Scheduled tribe....the supposedly economically backward classes...my foot...a couple of guys that I knew in college got admission in that quota and came to the college in a Car of their own !!!!!!!!! and I (and my other friends) was supposed to be from an advanced caste or economically strong setion of the community so we travelled by buses!!!!!!!! and worse our fees abt Rs.10,000 per yr (free seat) and their's was Rs.100...yeah thats right just hundred rupees...$2.00 for the whole year....

then there is Girls quota abt 30%, NRI quota, Defence Quota, free fighter's quota, out of state quota, management quota, sports quota etc......so normal guys like me had abt 10% of the seats to fight for...example if all of Bombay had 5000 engg seats we were eligible only for 500 and all the people that were in the above quotas were again eligible for these 500 also....great....why not just say...guys (not girls) from other castes just stop studying for engg and medicine and get into other fields or worse look out for jobs in a mechanic shop....I dont even want to get started abt the Caste system...its ridiculous....the way it was intended to function and the way we are using it currently.

anyways.....some positive light...I knew some peopel from the backward castes that were good students...they never tried to get in with the quota system...they used to always work hard and only take the seat that they would get by merit....that takes a lot of courage and determination as u will be tempted to take up a seat in a good college if u went into the quota....but they were satisfied with the seat in the average or just above average colleges as they earned those seats....I resepected the m a lot for their stand....

all this just shows something....that education system in India for engineering /Medicine or any other field needs to be reformed so that students can have a well rounded personality...thats one more reason why we have only 2 bronze medals and a silver medal to show in the past 5 olympics.....

January 12, 2005

Graduation Day....A big day for Sindhu :) Posted by Hello

Russell Peters......

I have been hearing about this brilliant stand up comedian...Russell Peters for sometime now...all my friends keep saying that his work is brilliant so when I got this forward from my friend i decided to watch it...try this link.. http://rack1.nethosters.com/~charles/russell/russell.ram...
if it doesnt run from the link...copy and paste the link in Real Player...

Its a 45 min video of his performance....watch it when U have some free time...trust me u wont be disappointed!!!!!!!! it was a hilarious experience.....he was spontaneous and very creative....

He mocked a lot of accents and cultures....but not in the wrong way....it all flowed in the spirit of fun....he mocked the Chinese, South Africans, Jamaicans, Indians, Canadians, Americans.....name them...but it was too goood.

His facial expressions and his gestures were very good too...he seemed to be at ease pulling off alll the situations that came up....the crowd was in a laugh riot....the last time I laughed so much was in the "Johnny Lever Live"....when I was in my 11th Grade....abt 9 yrs ago....that was probably the best comedy performance I have ever seen....with Russell coming pretty close to that.....

January 05, 2005

Some more links and sites that accept credit cards

Thanks to a friend who noticed that i had most of the contacts as address and not sites which accept credit cards as they are more convenient for people to donate as they may not want to go thru the hassle of mailing a check...so here are some sites that accepts all the major credit cards...

https://secure.unicef.ca/forms/emergency_page.html

http://pay.hindu.com/thrfpay/thrfpay.jsp

https://www.ashanet.org/donate/tsunami-relief-donation.php

http://www.thousa.org/donate.html

Some more sources that are helping the victims:

Tsunami Relief Fund-ACF
First Merit Bank
106 S. Main St. TOW80
Akron.OH 44308

US Fund for UNICEF
General Emergency Fund
333 E. 38th St.
New York, NY 10016
800-486-4233
www.unicefusa.org

Salvation Army
South Asia Relief Fund
615 Slaters Lane
P.O. Box 269
Alexandria, V.A. 22313
800-725-2769

Action Against Hunger
247 W. 38th St. Suite 1201
New York, NY 10018.
212-967-7800
www.actionagainsthunger.org

Americares
88 Hamilton Ave.
Stanford CT 06902
800-486-4357

American Friends Services
Committee Crises Fund
1501 Cherry St.
Philadelphia, PA 19102
888-588-2372
www.afsc.org

American Jewish World Service
45 W. 36th St., 10th floor
New York, NY 10018
www.jdc.org

January 03, 2005

Aid for the Tsunami Victims.....


If u are looking for an organization to donate money/clothing/medicine/food in aid for the vicitms of Tsunami...here is a listing of some organizations that I have been able to put together:

Prime Minister's National Relief Fund Embassy of India
Attn: Head of Chancery
2107 Massachusetts Avenue,
NW Washington, DC 20008
Website: http://pmindia.nic.in/relief.htm

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Website: http://www.unicef.org/index.html
Press Release: http://www.unicef.org/media/media_24630.html
Donate Online: http://www.unicef.org/support/index.html OR
https://secure.unicef.ca/forms/emergency_page.html


Southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's Relief Fund
Website: http://www.tn.gov.in/misc/cmprf2003.htm
Press Release: http://www.tn.gov.in/pressrelease/pr281204/pr281204-1.htm

The Hindu Newspaper Relief Fund
Website: http://www.hindu.com
Press Release: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/nic/0035/index.htm
Donate Online: http://pay.hindu.com/thrfpay/thrfpay.jsp

The Times of India Newspaper Relief Fund
Website: http://www.timesrelieffund.com
Donate Online: http://www.timesrelieffund.com/donate.htm

ASHA
Website: http://www.ashanet.org
Press Release: http://www.ashanet.org/index.php?page=tsunami-relief
Donate Online: https://www.ashanet.org/donate/tsunami-relief-donation.php

Sri Lankan Tamils in Ohio and surrounding regions are collection funds for the victims. Please send the checks to

International Relief Foundation
P. O. Box 20691
Columbus, OH 43220
Attn: Sugu Suguness or Ranjan Manoranjan

It's an organization registered with the IRS and contributions are tax deductible. 100% of the funds raised will be sent for relief efforts in the North and East.

****************************************

The Tamil Health Organization also collecting funds -- Please see the following.

* Through our secure online Paypal system:
http://www.thousa.org/donate.html

* By direct debit facility into IMHO account

(please contact our Treasurer, Dr. Rajam Theventhiran at theva406@aol.com or 718-987 2687; Dr. Raguraj at ragumd@hotmail.com or 410-638 6729; or myself at thambit@aol.com or 513-891 2748)
* Mail in a check to:
P. O. Box 901, Bel Air, MD 21014-0901, USA.
(please make check payable to IMHO)

In addition to that Tamil Health Organization is requesting the following.

1. Collecting medical supplies in your local hospital like IVF, IV sets, antibiotics, antidiarrheals, vaccinations (Cholera, Typhoid, Hepatitis A and Tetanus toxoid/vaccine), etc. Every one in USA and rest of the world knows about the disaster, therefore it may be easier to get help from non-SL sources. We're sending a cargo container to SL.

2. Providing medical services to the affected people. If you can fly to Katunayake airport, then we can arrange for your transportation to affected areas and lodging. We've 18 doctors traveling to NE on Jan 15 and Jan 22, 2005. We need doctors/volunteers to travel in February 2005.

- Please contact Thavam at thambit@aol.com or 513-891-2748


You can also help by contributing to the following organization


Tamils Rehabilitation Organization
517 Old Town Road, Cumberland, Maryland 21502

Ilankai Tamil Sangam, USA
PO Box 46, Maryknoll, NY 10545

All the organizations are Registered Charitable Organizations in the USA - 501 (c) (3) under the United States Internal Revenue Service code.