OK.. so after a long (unintended) hiatus I am back and this time I am blogging from Mumbai, India. First things first.. it feels good to be back, to be with your own people and to enjoy some time with family and friends. I will now try and blog regularly, again depends on the volume of work I have to finish. But as of now.. all I want to say is Life is Good.

The world cup excitement is getting to me lately.. It sucks that most Americans are not into football aka ‘soccer’, the only game which excites the people world over. I just wish I was in Germany right now.. supporting ENGLAND.

NSA now wants to eavesdrop on social networking sites like myspace, friendster and the WEB in general, this includes your emails. What it means is, NSA will have a whole of information about a lot of people who are posting their information online. Is there no privacy left in this country? First the Patriot Act, then NSA spying on the phone calls of people and now the web. Some people will argue that I should not worry since I dont have anything to hide. But what they dont realise is, all this data is shared by all the other agencies. So tomorrow if you and your girlfriend breakup, the NSA will probably have a record of that until the next 20 years if not more. And if something happens to your girlfriend or if you said something in rage which you didn’t mean to, then good luck getting yourself out of the legal mess. This is just one example. There could be so many things which I would not want the government to know or rather the government does not need to know. What happens in my house is my business and not the government’s. The funny and the sad part is people will not even protest as their fundamental right of free living is being slowly taken away from them; all in the name of national security. I guess this country is no longer the land of the free. You are only free as much as the government allows you to be.

I was watching Good Will Hunting and heard this interesting monologue, which I find to be somewhat true.

“Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll give it a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Send in the marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number was called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some guy from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the job interviews, which sucks ’cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.”

This is an amazing Gujju + English rap song. This story of two brothers, one who emigrates to America and the other who prefers to remain in his native land, is presented as a dialogue that spans both time and place. This heated discussion strives to capture the essence of the immigrant experience: the reconciliation of old and new within a constant struggle to regain balance.

The video has english subtitles for those who do not understand Gujju.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvp.video.google.com%2Fvideodownload%3Fversion%3D0%26secureurl%3DvgAAAG7ggqAHSiJjpW0D3w4aYTXA9QUNwc5jH_efXYkcg1WLIqe9ryK1uGJFS6gEHcuazr2MWpYePpoP4S2ZxghvDx9nG0DpiHYL7VZTEqSSFxmUGlExIsPZFpZjCuXZwBAzpU4vASDUK_I4CtFDJsLCXBXWUT1aKkQXEwPRoJ8LR8nCFXdj2l-_CIME4E5hM4M1FryOHJ6d6VX-fKZ_lvHnxV0DHGb_BFhXGATs_qpIgkgYPnfm8QHE15T9bsaVVaBMxg%26sigh%3D6BxcMCh2TPo8x4oi3weW0OdWGh8%26begin%3D0%26len%3D248133%26docid%3D2067414872887893921&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer%3Fapp%3Dvss%26contentid%3D3bd09b84dae5afb2%26second%3D5%26itag%3Dw320%26urlcreated%3D1149170176%26sigh%3Du9UjKEYX_Lpu2x8i2AJUy1EarTQ&playerId=2067414872887893921

Some level of craziness.

I also found an interesting article about United States and Soccer.

Just read this piece of news, India has the most number of Aids cases. There are an estimated 5.7 million people in India with Aids. Time to make sex education compulsory in schools?

I have been reading quite a bit of this controversary on the net and still dont understand what the fuss is all about. I dont think what Aamir is saying is wrong. The people displaced by this project have to be rehabilated. The problem with all the government policies when it comes to rehabilitation is they displace people first, and then expect people to find temporary shelters for themselves and then finally they decide to build houses for the displaced people. This is just wrong. Before the government displaces people, adequate effort must be made to rehabilate effected people.

The same thing applies to the quota policy. The government says we will add more seats and also improve the infrastructure. Why doesn’t the governement do the latter first and then decide to apply the quotas. I am totally against the quota system. If the government wants quotas, there should be quotas at primary education level, so everyone when they come out of 10th or 12th are at the same level. Having quotas for undergraduate and post-graduation levels is just not justified. I understand that some people really need the quotas to get into the system, but then my message for them is if you are good enough you will make it no matter with or w/o quotas. I hope that government listens to the students and does not implement this policy. My support goes to the students in this battle and I hope they emerge victorious.

MYTH: Women understand relationships; men don’t.

TRUTH: This myth is perpetuated by women, pussy-whipped men, and psychiatrists. If women truly understood relationships… that is, if they understood relationships with men… then we wouldn’t have a 45% divorce rate. Maybe back in the pioneer days women understood relationships. These days, they have coffee with their girlfriends, talk about “men”, examine and dissect relationships, study interpersonal dynamics, talk, talk, talk about what works and what doesn’t, then go out and perfectly screw up their next relationship. I know. I’ve watched it happen from the sidelines.

Women spend more time analyzing relationships; they talk about them incessantly, and in doing so discover more truths than men know. However, all of this talk in a vacuum also means that their heads are filled with more bullshit and myth than are men’s. The combination of superior insight and copious nonsense puts them right back where we are. Men tend to see what’s going on in a relationship more clearly, but have no idea how to express what they see or what to do about it. Women would probably know what to do about it if they could only see it as it truly is, instead of through a fog of preconception.

The other big difference between the sexes is that women are absolutely certain that they know what is going on, whereas men make no such claim. The last man who claimed to have his own radical theories about relationships was Freud, and nobody pays any attention to him any more. It is women’s ideas about relationships and why they do or don’t work that have been imported lock, stock, and barrel into the field of psychiatry. Most male therapists you’ll meet are basically honorary women with university degrees, and as such they don’t really understand relationships either.

Read the full article here.