S - N - O - O - K - E - D

A Religion without Superstitions?

2007-03-28T01:31:00.000-04:00

I went to Triambakswar (a place near Nasik) last weekend, indeed a 'Holy' place.
Peace of mind, sparsely populated, No beggars, a rarity in all these 'teerth sthals'.
Oh, I forgot to tell u what made me visit that place.. well it was none other than my MOM.
Yeah, she is visiting me these days and as always she is a loyal devotee of all the gods in India.
Personally, I believe in Religion, have a neutral opinion about god and I definitely hate superstitions, which unfortunately my MOM is too fond of. So, all this started when some greedy Pundit informed her of some puja to be performed, that too in Nasik, to avoid some unforeseen bad luck to me. I really do not know the details as I was least interested, but, surprisingly the details of the same are not known to anyone except the Pundit.
The whole thing was a nightmare, I had to sit for like 4hrs in a Puja. The only good part about the whole thing was 'Hawan' which happened towards the end. I just love pouring 'Ghee' into the fire and chanting 'Swaha'.
As I said earlier, religion is important to be a part of the society in which we live. It is also important to know about one's religion, but I don't think it is necessary to follow all the superstitious beliefs of the same.
Unfortunately, the superstitions are a part of any religion and I think there is no religion in the world which has none.

back again !

2005-10-12T02:52:00.000-04:00

So I have been out of the blogging world for over a month now! I was getting e-mails from my fellow bloggers asking about my whereabouts etc. am sorry guys but I was engrossed with a lot of things after returning back to India.

Anyways, on my whereabouts I am currently in Chennai and hopefully should move to Pune by this month end. Let’s see what Pune holds for me and I am hoping it would be a good change.

I have missed out on a lot of things in the blogosphere but I intend to catch up very soon.

Came across this unusual resignation by some Indian blogger, ironically this guy is also named Gaurav! Check it out!

http://gauravsabnis.blogspot.com/2005/10/update.html

Journey

2005-09-09T02:21:00.000-04:00

Philly -> Cleveland -> LA -> Taipei -> Singapore -> Chennai

long journey...good flight...bad company...pretty airhostess...excellent service...bad food...good drinks...sleepless nights..no idea about timezone...i sleep its dark and i wake up its still dark...singapore pilots are too fast and we reach Taipai early, get unwanted 2 hrs to kill in Taipei ... no food, deserted airport...no eye-tonic around :(

10hrs transit time in Singapore, Visa refused cannot go out, look around see some laptop space..plugin check some mails, blog blog..feel too grumpy to write anything...mind clogged due to jet lag...play some NFS undeground...complete some more levels...feel sleepy.. try to sleep, no luck :(.... go to the longue ..pretty imressive...80 inch TV very nice...still 5 hrs to kill ..fortunately F1 is on....Schumacher loses again ... Alonso is second wohooo !..time to board...no good girls in flight :(
reach Chennai ... catch a cab ..asks me 400 bucks ..get on, no strength to argue...get to the hotel sleep ...wondering if i can make it to work the next morning..

In transit - Singapore

2005-09-04T01:49:00.000-04:00

Wait time 10 hrs !!

damnn ...i hate this journey from US to India ..takes bloody soo long

But Singapore airport is reall nice, I am blogging from there.. its soo comfortable out here u wont believe it.. US airports sucks bug time in front of it...this airport is all technology savvy.. took me less than 5 min to find a place to hook up my computer and be online

but I don't know what to do for 10 hrs !!

Back to home again.

2005-09-02T12:14:00.000-04:00

Travelling back to India today (Sept 2)

Don't know when will I blog again, takes time to settle down in a new place..don't even know where will that be ...may be Chennai/Pune/Bangalore....wherever it is I just hope it isn't too long

till next time ...

Hidden Rules of Customer Service.

2005-08-29T14:07:00.000-04:00

Call for new Connection - wait time 30 sec
Call for change in service - wait time 1 min
Call for move - wait time 10 min
Call for termination - wait time 1 hr !
Call for complaints - wait time > 1 hr, the call ends abruptly most of the times.

it sucks !

The God strikes back again

2005-08-24T14:47:00.000-04:00

---> Google Talk <---

I still have to see how it works, sadly I cannot connect to the google server from work :(
I heard it's only for Gmail users, If someone wants a gmail invite ask me.

Cheerio !!

-- First Look --

Google-talk is NAKED and that's what I love about it.

The good:
* No smileys (ohh I hate them)
* No emoticons
* No Avatars (what purpose do they serve anyways ??)
* No skins
* No unneccessary font colors/types
* I can install and connect it from my office [although there is no-one in my friends list ;-)]

The bad:
* No voice conferencing
* No offline messaging
* No file sharing (helpful sometimes)

But apparently it looks like Google is inclined to go into the VOIP market rather than the instant messaging.
An article by Forbes mentions what google could be upto "Imagine searching on Google for details about a local restaurant and calling for reservations without leaving your search results page."

hmmmm...Sounds interesting.

Google is God

2005-08-23T09:05:00.000-04:00

Pioneers in many things, these guys simply rule. Not only Google comes up with great ideas but it implements those ideas in a way of its own. "Ease of use" is what comes first into my mind when I think of any Google product.

Ofcourse search engine has been their Forte but they didn't stop there. Google revolutionized(at least I believe that) the e-mail when yahoo/hotmail ruled the industry. Google changed the way maps worked by introducing "satellite images".
Blogger - which most of us use, is also a Google product, although they bought it from a small company.

You name it and I believe Google will be working on it. If you have not looked into Google labs, I would suggest you to do so. It is a repository of all the projects they are working on.

Their recent release Google Desktop 2 is one of a kind too. Right from the installation which took like 1 min (I have never seen anything being installed so fast in my laptop) to the ease of use.

Rumors are Google is gearing up to release and instant messenger too, if that's true Yahoo, Hotmail staff and most importantly Google fans would be waiting eagerly to see what Google has to offer.

"If I can operate Google, I can find anything... Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too."

Hence Google is God !

Aamir Khan blogs ?

2005-08-18T18:30:00.000-04:00

Going through oficial website of Mangal Pandey - The Rising I found that they are promoting a blog by the Indian superstar Aamir Khaan,
I am sure this is a publicity stunt, first of all Aamir khan wont have time to blog and secondly even if he has time he wont blog as mangal pandey. :)
But then on second thoughts who knows may be it's really Aamir responding to all the comments on the blog, after all he is known to do things "differently".

Anyways whatever the reason be, it just proves that blogging has indeed become a very powerful means of communication between people and slowly becoming part of day 2 day lives

Swatantrata Diwas

2005-08-15T16:50:00.000-04:00

Happy Independence Day everyone !

Only 58 years and we have acheived a lot, many things have changed, India is progressing each year, but, somehow the following news statement never changes:

"Speaking on the occasion, the Prime Minister said peace talks with Pakistan had achieved some success, but urged Islamabad to end its alleged support for Islamic militants in Kashmir."

I hope this changes soon too.

Stuff to check out -

* A very very comprehensive list on Indian Bloggers around the planet.
These guyz have seriously some data.
I don't see any possible use of that except for spammers, but it is some good amount of data.

2005-08-12T14:42:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

google earth

Super Mario Bros.

2005-08-11T17:26:00.000-04:00

I was going through IGN's Top 100 Games of all times and was really delighted to find Super Mario as the No#1 game.
I don't know how many of you here are game enthusiasts but I bet most of the Guys would have played "Super Mario".
I was in Class 8 when I started playing the game, it also was the first video game I played and was crazy about it. All I could think the whole day was the game.

Every day I would eagerly wait for 5 p.m. to go to the nearest video game shop. This infamous "video game shop" used to be a clumsy grocery store with 2 machines and a bunch of guys hovering around it, those days you could find such shop in nearly all neighborhoods.

As soon as the clock struck 5, I would rush on my bicycle to the game shop, on the way my friends used to join me, the timing was impeccable.
It was 50 Paisa per game, and we had 3 lives per game. Now we would aim to end the game at first shot, there were 3 reasons for that:
1) it was a matter of prestige, since many guys would be watching us play.
2) Because of more demand and less supply, the wait time for next game was too high.
3) We never had much cash <<-- the real reason :)

It was real fun, people who have experienced it would know what I am talking about. I still enjoy playing games on my computer/Xbox these days but the thrill is not the same.

Song of the Week

2005-08-09T14:49:00.000-04:00

Where is the love... - by BEP

Download here

I have listened to this song many times before, but today morning I was kinda upset and was listening to it when I suddenly realised how beautiful the lyrics were.

A part of it goes on like this:

If you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And if you hatin you're bound to get irate
Yeah madness is what you demonstrate
And that's exactly how anger works and operates
You gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can you practice what you preach
or Would you turn the other cheek?
Father Father Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?

How so true are the first 3 lines!
and ofcourse the remaining ones.

Listening to it I just totally forgot about the trivial things I was upset about.
This is my song of the week.

agnostic

2005-08-08T13:17:00.000-04:00

AGNOSTICISM: UNCERTAINTY ABOUT WHETHER GOD EXISTS

Definition of Agnostic:
Agnosticism is a concept, not a religion. It is a belief related to the existence or non-existence of God.

An agnostic is a person who feels that God's existence can neither be proved nor disproved, on the basis of current evidence. Agnostics note that some theologians and philosophers have tried to to prove, for millennia, that God exists. Others have attempted to prove that God does not exist. Agnostics feel that neither side has convincingly succeeded at their task.

Are they Theists? No, because Agnostics do not believe in a God, or a Goddess, or in multiple Gods, or multiple Goddesses or in a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses.

An agnostic usually holds the question of the existence of God open, pending the arrival of more evidence. They are willing to change their belief if some solid evidence or logical proof is found in the future.

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what you see is not always true !!

2005-08-04T17:07:00.000-04:00

guy making out with hot chick..

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errrr.......

Road signs.

2005-08-02T16:45:00.000-04:00

OMG - Spammers in blog world

2005-07-28T11:38:00.000-04:00

phew!!
I thought they were limited to chat, games, or e-mails.
but no shit... I was furious to see one of the spammers/bots commenting on my posts.

The comment was "you seem to be a cool person, come visit my blog".
I went to the blog and it was apparent from the profile that she was a bot, it had links to porn sites etc......u are dead meant if u click one of those links at work.

the hillarous part was that people actually went to the spammers blog and commented there!!!
"thanks for visiting my blog" , "you have a nice blog too" etc ..LMAO

I wish all these Spammers die clicking those porn links and burn in hell.

New Look

2005-07-27T16:42:00.000-04:00

Yeah!! my blog has a new look and I love it.

what do you guyz think ?

Alcohol = 90% Vol

2005-07-25T14:00:00.000-04:00

Thats my blood today.

what else can I expect after
3 Tequilla shots
5 Beers
3 Vodka (on the Rocks)
and countless Marlboro Lights
over a period of 5 hrs.
I was drunk, drunk enough to puke on the train station.

What was the occasion? meeting old friends and getting drunk after a loong time.. the last time I remember was like a month before my vacations, that makes it 3 months in all.

It will take a while, right now the only thing in my mind is ZZZZzzzzzz....
No more Boozing for a loong time...I hope...

So long...till I wake up.

My Top 5.

2005-07-20T15:51:00.000-04:00

Songs:
~~~~~~
These days...
1) Don't Phunk with my heart - BEP.
2) Nachh Balliye - Bunty aur Bublee.
3) Rock the Party - Bombay Rockers.
4) Riders on the Storm (Fredwreck Remix) - featuring Snoop Dog.
5) Where is the love - BEP.

Long time...
1) November Rain - G n' R.
2) Nothing else Matter - Metallica.
3) Sweet Child 0' mine - G n' R.
4) Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes.
5) Let's get it started - BEP.

All time...
1) November Rain - G n' R
2) Numb - Linkin park
3) Sweet Child O' Mine - G n' R
4) O' Sanam - Lucky Ali
5) Nahin Samne - Taal

Bands:
~~~~~~
1) Guns n' Roses.
2) Linkin Park.
3) The Doors.
4) Black Eyed Peas(BEP).
5) Metallica.

Why do we Pray?

2005-07-11T11:18:00.000-04:00

Some thoughts might not make sense, but they do cross my mind from time to time.

1) Is there really something supernatural?? and if there is does anyone knows if it really wants to be prayed.
2) Do we pray because we are scared? scared of the consequences which could happen if we dont pray.
3) Is it for peace of mind, and for that matter what is peace of mind, if peace of mind is the very fact that if I pray I would not be doomed then it again boils down to point 2. How many people do pray for actual peace of mind ??
4) Why eould stand for 3-4 days in queue to get a glimpse of God, some people say its because of peace of mind.. but what peace of mind can u really get after being so much tired? is it the fact that people think since they are taking so much pains to get to the place, their prayers will be listened and they wont be doomed.. to me it again boils down to point 2
5) Isn't Just being a good person enough? Does praying actually wash away your bad deeds ? What about people who dont pray, but spend their lives doing good deeds?

Bottomline - it's all good as long as these things are not thrust into someone.

I am sure a lot of people will have similar questions or even more. I am not sure if I am looking for answers for these.

I just wonder sometime if all this and many other things makes sense ???

36 hrs of travel!!! - Wish me luck.

2005-05-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Ok today is the penultimate day before my trip starts.
All set to go @ 10pm EST on May 19th 2005.
Since I am totally free today, I thought will share some more insights on my trip with you guyz. :D

Here is a route map my flight takes:

(Click on the image for larger view)

That sums up to 17 hrs of Air time, without any delays (which is impossible).
It would have been ok if that was it, but, I have to travel more than that, which scares the shit out of me.

My complete itinerary will be:
Philly --> New york --> London --> Kuwait --> New Delhi --> Dehradun

2 + 7 + 6 + 4 + 7 = 26hrs of travel (Bus + Air + cab)

It gets worst if I include the wait time between each interchange.
roughly it will be around 36 hrs.
36 HOURS !!!
I wish there was faster way , I seriously think it's high time mankind made some more significant advances in travel? :-P

For the time being I need to think ways to kill time during those 36hrs, any suggestions?

Let the Countdown begin.

2005-05-15T22:20:00.000-04:00

Check out the countdown on left hand side of my blog :D

I am excited to go back.
All packed and ready to go *Wide Grin*

ПИВО

2005-05-13T22:13:00.001-04:00

Don't bother about the title it just means "Beer" in russian :-P

One of my colleagues gifted me a bottle of authentic russian beer today, which inspired me to write something about Russian beers, infact as I write I am having that :-P

Beer has been my all time fav drink..nothing like a chilled bottle of beer after the day's work (or no work) :D

Russian beers I believe are peculiar, Unlike other beers these are numbered from 0 - 10, with 0 being non-alchoholic while 10 strongest. So higher number means more high :D, I like that simple and nice.
What I am having is "Baltika 4 - Dark Beer". Pretty smooth I must say:D...my Russian colleague who gifted me the beer, told that one of the No#10 beer is equivalent to like 4 vodka pegs, I can't wait to try that one *Grin*

Here are some more details if anyone is interested ;)

Baltika 0 - Non-Alcoholic
Strength <0.5%abv
Gravity 10%

Baltika 1 - Light
Strength 4.4%abv
Gravity 11%

Baltika 2 - Party Mix
Cherry (2.8% abv, 12.7% gravity)
Lemon (2.3% abv, 11.2% gravity)
Orange (4% abv, 13.4% gravity)
Coffee (2.8% abv, 12.6% gravity)

Baltika 3 - Classic
Strength 5.2%abv
Gravity 15%

Baltika 4 - Original Dark
Strength 5.2%abv
Gravity 15%

Baltika 5 - Gold
Strength 5.3%abv
Gravity 12%

Baltika 6 - Porter
Strength 7.0%abv
Gravity 17%

Baltika 7 - Export
Strength 5.4%abv
Gravity 12.5%

Baltika 8 - Wheat
Strength 5.0%abv
Gravity 12.5%

Baltika 9 - Strong
Strength 8.0%abv
Gravity 16.5%

Baltika 10 - Jubilee
Strength 5.2%abv
Gravity 13%

Reality Check

2005-05-12T11:46:00.000-04:00

-- 2:00 PM --

Ok Check this cool search engine - a combination of Yahoo and Google
smart move (:-D]
http://yagoohoogle.com/

-- 12:50 PM --

Reality TV is the only thing I watch these days on TV (other than sports)
Here is a list of programs I have seen till date:
- Apprentice (Season 1,2 and 3)
- Survivor
- Rebel Billionaire
- Fear Factor
- The Bachelorette (this was horrible)
- The Amazing race
- American Idol (watched only once)

I know there are a couple of programs being aired in India, recently I heard there was program called "Indian Idol" :) a big hit, someone also told me that Apprentice is being aired there these days? not sure how it is doing ?
I believe the producers Apprentice realised if they didn't do that soon, someone in India will launch a Desi version of it with Big B saying in his deep voice "hayin... you are fired", * ha ha *

One of my wildest dream is to conceptualize/produce a reality show myself.. lekin uske liye I need to be a billionaire :-P.

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DON'T PANIC !!!

2005-05-11T14:18:00.000-04:00

I was waiting for the movie "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" ever since I heard its in making, finally got a change to watch it yesterday.

Was disappointed and re-disappointed (if that is a word), the movie was not able to bring in the humour the actual book has. The characters were actually good representation of what is in the book, but I believe director was not able to show the vast imagination captured in the book, maybe because most of the parts in the book are told by the guide and he did not have the freedom to do that due to shortage of time or maybe it was just a poor direction...who knows!

Nevertheless I enjoyed parts of it since I had read the book but my friends who went along with me (on my suggestion) hated it .. ha ha .. shit happens :)

Anyways, Check this out! pretty cool, the red button below I guess fits the title.

Click below ! :)

The-Big-Red-Button.swf

Credit Card Prank.

2005-05-10T13:46:00.000-04:00

Well I am indeed bored at office right now, but, what else to do my manager is not giving me any work since I am going on vacation next week *Wide Grin*

Anyways while browsing today found this prank site called "www.zug.com"
This guy keeps on playing various real life pranks, the one I have posted below I found coolest.

Ever wondered if someone actually verifies what you sign on the receipt?? Well this guy tried it out, I dont know if its true but pretty funny :)

Check it out urself http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/ (read both the parts)

First and test post

2005-05-09T11:59:00.000-04:00

Ehooo !! finally created my own blog.

Test
Test
Test

I guess it works :D