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Ganpati festival will start in a couple of days. Probably the most important festival in Maharashtra, it is special to me too. The reason is Modak! :) This is the time I get to eat lot of Modaks. It was in NCST canteen I have had my first Modak. I still remember the delicious ones made by Birje (Birje is the most popular person in NCST, an excellent cook) kept for consumption in the canteen. This season's target is to eat 50 of them :) |
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The picture is clear. We don't have to live with a hung parliament. Manmohan Singh is going to lead another UPA government. Good thing is that it is going to be without the remote control by left. Also, Lalu, Paswan etc are down with no power to bargain. Lets hope for a council of ministers with a minimum number of stupid personalities in it! |
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Tata Nano is here at last! A small, cute car, as cheap as Bajaj auto rickshaw! Probably there was no other model in the recent history of Indian automobile industry that created this much buzz, hope, and controversy. I see it as a landmark from more than one angle. Another brave innovation from Tata stable: Tatas have created a number of things which others thought not feasible then. There were not many people to support J.N. Tata when he ventured to create a world class research institute (IISc) and a steel company (Tata Steel) in India. Most of the people did not think that a commercial airlines is viable in India, when J.R.D. Tata started one. We have seen many industry leaders ridiculing Ratan Tata when he revealed that he has a dream of producing 1 Lakh car! Yesterday he stated - "A promise is a promise. Base model of Tata Nano will be sold at ex-factory price of Rs. 1 Lakh." A new bench mark set for the valuation of automobiles: We have seen how Air Deccan made air travel affordable for the masses. We heard Sunil Mittal cribbing about BSNL/MTNL's decision to make mobile phone incoming calls free, saying how it forced his company to follow suit loosing lot of money. But today, Baharti Airtel makes huge profit even with free incoming call. Virgin mobile even pays 10 paise for every incoming call! Now Bajaj may not be able to sell a package containing a small engine, 3 small wheels, and some metal for more than Rs 1 Lakh. But we would be able to buy a good enough car for that amount! A victory over dirty politics in India: People like Mamata Banerjee can delay progress. But they cannot stop it! Poor man can pollute too: There were environmentalists opposing Nano saying affordable cars will lead to large number of people using private transport, and hence increased pollution. Its as simple as this - if you have lot of money, you can use a large sedan or SUV and pollute as much as you can. But don't let the poor pollute! I do believe that we should look to reduce pollution. But not by denying the lower class these privileges. Congratulations the Nano team. Disclaimer : When you read this post, you might want to remind yourself that I am a Tata employee! :) |
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Not because we are going to elect the same old stupid politicians. But because it involves lot of spending! The government, political parties, political leaders, and many others are going to spend lot of money. Unlike many other stimulus measures, a considerable portion of this spending will reach grass-root levels. A major part of it may be black money. But circulation of black money is also good during economic slowdown. |
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We are playing Holi this evening here. But the NCST junglee Holi remains to be the best! Wish you a very happy and colourful Holi.
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Everywhere we see news and discussions about economic slowdown and credit crunch. Analysts say nobody (no banks, mutual funds, general public etc) has enough liquidity. Where have all the money disappeared? |
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When I went to Google Groups home page (for the first time), there was this suggestion by Google for me Suggested for You And "show more" gave - Show more... Google is really smart! ;) |
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We all should be happy that Indian cricket team is out of the world cup.Wondering why? Read on... If Indian team had entered super-8 round, there would have been at least 6 more matches that they would play. Considering that a match takes around 8 hours, a viewer would spend around 50 hours watching Indian team's super-8 round matches. If, on average, 10% of Indians watch Indian team's world cup matches, 500 crore man hours would be spent in watching the matches! Whats the cost? Lets take Rs 50 per man hour; It comes to a whopping Rs 25000 crore! Not much less than half of what Tata paid for Corus! Even if you have some other numbers for number of viewers and cost per hour, you can see that the "saving" is significant. Also saved are the kids having board exams :) |
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Its feedback time here. Today we all received student feedback on our individual performance as faculty members for the FPGDST course. Its important as falling faculty standards are also held responsible for poor performance by NCSTians lately. One gets feedback on various aspects of teaching - preparedness, communication ability, speed of teaching, response to queries, etc - with a rating (excellent / very good / good / average / below average). Students also comment on the faculty member's teaching style and give suggestions for improvement. A very useful exercise; thanks to Sasi and Srinivas Rao. - Joju |
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5 years in NCST, and in Mumbai. It was on October 10th 2001, I joined the KBCS division of NCST as a Staff Scientist. When I look back, there are lot of good things that happened, and some not-so-good things. The good - finding someone special to share my life with, opportunity to have IIT education, working with great colleagues and boss, etc. And the not-so-good - less than expected professional growth, delay in promotions and hence low salary growth, etc. There may be many other items in either of these categories, which I am not able to think of quickly. Anyways, these 5 years have been full of excitement, enjoyment, enlightenment, extrication, and sometimes frustration! :) Don't know if I will have another 5 years in NCST! Thanks to all those who made these years memorable :)
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Our canteen served me a special pav (for those who are not familiar with pav, its a bread like object) today. It looked like a normal one. Only when I opened (or cut into pieces) it before eating, I realised that its a special pav! It was stuffed with a "delicious" item. A worm was lying in peace inside pav! Couple of centimeters in length, black in color. I returned the "treasure" to canteen officials with "worm" regards. I have been skeptical/unhappy about the way "pav makers" handle pav. Its difficult to eat it if you see how they carry it. Don't even think how they would be making it!. No more pav eating, my decision. |
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The terror this time is in the town of terror. A place notorious for communal riots, open support for terror attacks, seizure of large volumes of explosives, Bangladeshi infiltration ... No wonder Malegaon was selected by the agents of terror. When they failed to erupt communal violence in Mumbai, they naturally wanted to try with the "other side". And with highly militant population, Malegaon was the best candidate! |
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For the first time, midsem timetable looks so very nice! :) ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [Mtech2] Autumn Midsem TT-06 From: "S Vijayalaxmi" <slakshmi@cse.iitb.ac.in> Date: Tue, August 29, 2006 4:51 pm To: all@cse.iitb.ac.in ---------------------------------------- The following TT is also available at this URL:"http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~ttc/aum Thanks slakshmi Department of Compter Science and Engineering Mid-Sem (Autumn) Examination Time Table 2006 29.08.06 +--------------------------------------- Lata Pople, Vasant Z, Salil B, Vidhyadhar K Attendants: Solanki, Gaikwad (Abhiram Ranade) Time Table Co-ordinator ________________________________________ Mtech2 mailing list Mtech2@bhim.cse.iitb.ac.in http://bhim.cse.iitb.ac.in/mailman/list |
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I have resumed cooking couple of weeks back. Have been preparing "evaluation versions" of sambar, kaalan, avial etc. Yesterday's creation was superb! I liked it a lot. It was too tasty. It was more like avial than kaalan. As the food was getting ready by 8 PM, I was thinking of having the food after a bath. But the seducing smell of the avial/kaalan made me eat it as soon as it was ready:) After finishing the food, I put my hand in the kadai (in which I prepared the dish) and licked the hand, many times :)
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After suggestions for washing machine model, now I need your suggestions for a refrigerator model. Looking for a 200+ ltr one. Yes, I bought 2 LG fully automatic washing machines - one in Kerala and the other here. |
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Four of us, "proud" users of celeron machines at Kharghar are at last saying bye to those machines. - Joju |
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A man of extreme intelligence, of simplicity, of great vision... [enough for a party ;) ] Wishing him a very happy birthday and many happy returns of the day.
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Its not only NCSTians have this feeling. I felt very nice when Prof. Dhamdhere told me "I call it NCST only. I don't like CDAC much" :)
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nostalgic
hopeful