Times Global Village

Past week for me could be termed "work hard ,party harder" because thats how it has been. Two office parties, a movie, Global village trip (snaps) and today its gonna be a pizza party at office :D Had been hearing about this Global Village since long and really wanted to go there. Its located between Delhi and Noida. Infact it is on one side of DND flyway which connects Delhi to Noida. And that is what makes going there from Noida a little pain taking and awkward too. Ever imagined going to Punjab from Delhi via Madhya Pradesh having to take a U-turn and then traveling almost the same distance back ? Off course its an exaggeration but this is how you get to the Times Global Village from Noida. You start from Noida, cross the DND toll bridge (5 kms), drive all the way till aashram in Delhi(another 2-3 kms) until you find the first cut on the divider, then take a U-turn and drive back to reach the destination.

But it was worth the effort. The place has been built over a huge area. Its basically an exhibition of crafts and consumer goods from various countries like South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Pakistan, UK, China, Arab, Thailand and many more. There are models of Taj Mahal, Twin towers, Egyptian Pyramid and the Sphynx, Roman Colosseum, Eiffel Tower which are an attraction of the place. And there are too many food stalls with cuisines from various parts of India. Things are a little expensive there but not everyday do we get a chance to experience so much.

We made sure we had seen each and every section of the world and it was fun to roam around. We had Neembu paani, Aam panna and Matar kulche for the starters. Then roamed around and I bought a nice gift for my brother from one of the shops. We also had kesar kulfi and I tried Tom Yon Gong soup which is a special Thai preparation. It was awesome !! We had dinner at the "Murthal ke paraanthe" and then "Bihari tikka with paraantha" at the pakistani food stall. Finally we had "baraf ka gola" (chuski) which was a delight in itself.

A kewl evening !!

Monkey Trouble

I got ready for the office pretty early today. As soon as I opened the house door to the stairway, two monkeys (well built) were lying just 4 steps down. Seeing me one of them pretended to attack me. I closed the door immediately. Then started what I'll call "Bandar bhagao abhiyaan" which lasted for about 20-25 minutes. Many of you would have heard the "saam-daam-dand-bhed" technique. I first tried the "saam" method where I tried to talk to them. lolsss. Yes I actually talked to them and told them to go to the terrace. Pointed to the terrace with my hand and strangely one of them even went up. But the other one was not willing to move and was charging towards me time and again so had to resort to the "dand" technique. Finally brought the tennis bat and seeing that in my hand the monkey immediately ran upwards. I was'nt sure how many steps away they were from the door still so asked Saurabh to give me cover while I move downstairs. Saurabh stood at the door with the tennis bat till I left the house :) It was more of fun than any trouble actually.

A new day ..

Not everyday feels like a new day. Its only when the previous day had a lot many things and you just wanted the day to pass, the next morning is a welcome relief. Yesterday was one such day. Slogged at the office till 9:30 pm, had a task to be finished which is almost done but then, "almost" is never "complete". On my walk back called three of my friends. None of them was near their cell. Its dinner time but even after knowing everything it irritated me more. Anyway, reached home, had dinner and went for a long walk. Must have walked 3-4 kms and when I came back I was feeling good. Then fixed the mosquito net over my bed finally and for the first time I had an uninterrupted sound sleep. Woke up early and feeling all charged up to get on with today.

New albums added

Check out the new albums !!

Broadband to go free in 2 yrs

Broadband to go free in 2 yrs
JOJI THOMAS PHILIP
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007 02:00:26 AM]

NEW DELHI: The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.

You have heard of free municipal broadband — many cities in the US have drenched themselves in wireless broadband connectivity which is freely accessible to residents. The idea is to boost economic activity in general. The government of India plans to achieve free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second across the country, with a similar goal. Senior government officials expect to be able to achieve this goal spending only a portion of the corpus of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).

All telecom operators contribute 5% of their revenues every year to USOF. It is estimated that the unutilized sum from the USOF has touched Rs 9,194.12 crore by March, 2007-end.

The current technological trend is for voice calls also to shift to the internet, using voice over internet protocol (VOIP). The quality of VOIP calls, patchy to start off with, has been improving steadily over the years and by 2009, is likely to be as good as current analogue calls that establish a circuit between the calling and called parties. When that happens, revenue streams from calls would dry up and telecom companies would need to develop value-added applications to make money from the connectivity they provide for free or virtually free.

The department of telecom (DoT) will be taking a series of steps to make its plans for free broadband a reality. These include, using the USOF to set an extensive optic cable network across the country, opening up the long-distance sectors to further competition, allowing free and fair access to cable landing stations, permitting the resale of bandwidth, setting up web hosting facilities within the country and asking all internet service providers to connect to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).

With international bandwidth rates in India being between two-to-five times higher than the global standards, the DoT will also go all out to break the monopoly of existing national and international distance players in a bid to induce cut throat competition in this sector. “India has only a handful of NLD/ILD operators while small countries such as Singapore and Taiwan have over 30 and 60 long distance operators respectively.

Accupressure points on the foot

Dunno how effective it is but from what I have heard from others, IT DOES HELP. The picture below shows which point to press on your foot to get relief from pain in different parts of the body.