02 March 2009

India - a paradox

The paradox that is India:

1. Reebok is #1 in India while Nike is #2. Totally opposite to sales in other countries.

2. Similarly Pepsi is #1 in India while Coca Cola comes at #2. I guess it is due to the first mover advantage - Pepsi was first to enter the market after economic liberalisation started.

3. India is the only country in the World where McDonalds does not offer a Big Mac. Due to cultural reasons.

4. There are more mobile users than fixed line telecom subscribers.

5. The most popular social networking site is not Facebook but Orkut.

6. There are 22 official languages (many sites still list it as 18).

7. Majority of people are Hindus and Muslims make up 13.4%. However, this makes it the country with the 2nd largest population of Muslims in the World after Indonesia.

That's all I can think of for now.

27 February 2009

Does Google control my life?


I couldn't resist the title.

A couple of minutes ago, I had a panic attack as I couldn't open Google mail on my browser. The reason is that it's nearly 2 am and I am going through a draft of a book chapter I am writing with my supervisor. I am really sleepy and I am meeting her at 11am tomorrow, and I really needed to go through the reviewer's feedback to see whether I have covered all the points.

I had a similar problem yesterday and even though the problem was solved after restarting my computer, which may indicate that the problem is with my computer rather than with Google. However, it made me wonder whether I am being too dependent on Google.

I use my Google mail account to read my university mail, moderate my comments and also to read Twitter updates and Tweet (using Twitter Gadget). It's also linked to my Paypal, Amazon and eBay accounts. I also use the Google calender to manage my appointments which is shared and syncronised with my wife's. There are a few documents shared with friends via Google documents.

Besides that, I have most of my blogs hosted with Blogger (which is also owned by Google). And I am guessing that I am not the only one.

I shudder to think what would happen if Google were to shut down even for a day - there might be utter chaos in the World.

25 February 2009

Naomi Klein wins the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing

Attended the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing ceremony yesterday evening. It was a small affair compared to other award ceremonies I have attended but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the panellists.

The setting for the ceremony was Mead hall in the Warwick Arts Centre surrounded by some wacky art.

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Naomi Klien won the £50,000 award for her controversial book 'The Shock Doctrine'.

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The Shock Doctrine

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Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick's Professor Nigel Thrift addressing the audience

In this book, Naomi argues against the well accepted free market policies as given by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. She also talks about a group of people who profit when disasters occurs around the World, whom she refers to as "the shock doctors".

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Naomi accepting the prize

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Naomi posing for the cameras

I am really proud to have been involved in the initial judging panels. It was really a tough process considering the theme this year was "complexity" and the fact that it was cross-disciplinary open to substantial pieces of writing in the English language and in any genre or form. This includes translations from other languages.

Selecting the winner for this year went through several rounds and the longlist of 20 titles came out in December last year. The list was finally whittled down to a short-list of six international titles.

Was slightly surprised because both the cover design and the title on the Amazon.com site is slightly different from the one I have. It costs £9.99 at the University book store but I got it at a special price of only £7.99 and I had it autographed by the author as well.

You can now get this International bestseller from Amazon.com

24 February 2009

Trip to London Zoo

This was my second trip to the London Zoo. The first time was in 1982 on a school trip, along with my parents and sisters. That was around 26 years ago.

This was my son's first trip to a zoo and for his cousin, Noah as well.

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The zoo's just 1.8 miles away from my sister-in-laws house and driving there took only a couple of minutes. We made the mistake of not buying the tickets at the car park and had to stand in a massive queue. Fortunately they opened up few other counters and we were in soon.

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High five

I realise the Zoo is run by the Zoological Society of London, a charitable organisation but the tickets were really costly (£ 15.50 for adults and £12.50 for children above 3). Most of the animals were inside because of the cold and We didn't get to see the lions or the tapirs amongst others. I felt like we didn't get our moneys worth.

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pink rahil zoo
The pink girl

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Any way the kids enjoyed the trip. The highlight of the trip were the Gorillas who put on a show. However, my son liked the aquarium the most. He was fascinated with the colourful fishes.

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Here's the address:
ZSL London Zoo
Regent's Park
London NW1 4RY
ENGLAND

22 February 2009

Snowfall in Coventry 09 - more pics

Some more pics of snow in Coventry. This winter is said to be the worst in 18 years. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better as we had good sunshine the whole day.

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Building a snowman. Now that we have enough snow, I finally mastered the art of rolling a big snow ball.

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With my two darlings. The snow clothing we bought for a ski trip that didn't happen finally came in handy

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Snow on my car

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Our front door

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The street in front of our house

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Foot steps on the snow

15 February 2009

Facebook for birds

I came across this really interesting article on the BBC website, whereby males of a bird species called long-tailed manakins collaborate to make a particular mating spot "hot" to the female birds. One bird graciously bows out to the alpha bird but with the condition that they "inherit the mating site and become the alpha himself".

The article mentions the "Granita pact" also known as the Blair-Brown deal. Apparently, the birds in Costa Rica also have similar agreements.

It was quite funny when the way Dr McDonald of Wyoming University, describes the way Alpha males are selected. He calls it "Facebook for birds".

Read the article "Dance duet helps male birds mate".

11 February 2009

Top Entrecard droppers for Jan 09

Entrecards are a great way to drive traffic to your blog or site. I signed up with them sometime back and traffic to my blog has increased by several times.

Every month I will list down the top Entrecard users who dropped their card on my site the most.

Here is the top 10 list for this month:
  1. Blogging resource and make money online
  2. Life After Work
  3. a malaysian abroad
  4. Emila's Illustrated Blog
  5. Art By Paul Baines
  6. Doi Speaks
  7. Nested Universe
  8. Apple iPhone Blogger
  9. Buy-Tees.net T-Shirts
  10. josh q. public
Thanks a lot guys.

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