The New India

Well, here is an eye-opening article. For the people outside India, at current forex rate, 1 crore Indian Rupees is roughly equivalent to USD $250,783 (see at today's rate here). That's a lot of money, in any country. People are no longer hesitant to talk in millions of dollars.

With rupee appreciating the way it has been, it is hurting the indian economy. Though, these people may be justified in asking for huge sums of money, the gap is widening fast. Quoting above article, 

Noted economist Y K Alagh puts it in perspective when he says, “It’s the hype that counts. This is definitely a post liberalisation phenomena. But the stark difference between the haves and have nots is worrisome. Thousands of people are getting crores and crores of people are only getting thousands. That’s the irony.”

This is definitely a big warning. It is irony that huge population of India (~ 25% or 287 million people or roughly equal to population of USA) still lives on less than a dollar a day.

What?

I am feeling the need to write something, anything... Nothing on mind right now... Actually a lot on mind but since most of that is confidential, nothing is left to share as of now... weather has been crazy here in Bismarck. Yup, that is where I am in case I forget to mention about it, at latitude 46.78 and Longitude -100.75 in a small city. I have learned that Maza in this state is the smallest city in USA! Now I suddenly feel that I'm a BIG city :)

The Trick Shot...

What an elaborate setup and trick shot... Well, not really a trick shot in this but domino setup is well designed...

Airtel Broadband

Aise hi, did some connection testing of internet connection at my home. Here are the results. All tests I ran from various sites gave the results between 200 - 270 kbps. Pick your favourite. Looks good enough for me. My typical use is surfing, emails, and occasional downloads. Emails are the biggest as I connect to office servers. And of course, all those auto updates that keep downloading every alternate day.

Have been using Airtel for last 1.5 years and I haven't faced much problems with their service. It is a bit expensive for the speed they provide but reliability is better. In last 7 years of using non-dialup connections, this is so far the most reliable. And dial-ups earlier to that were not reliable and pretty expensive. I hope it remains as good.

Will upgrade to higher speed only if they give in same price. Can't pay anymore than what I'm paying them now, which is Rs 999 + taxes (US$25 + taxes) per month. Yes, downloads are unlimited.

Seeing Is Believing - The Sydney Test

I hadn't been following cricket since India performances are not something worth spending my time on. Lately, this controversy after Sydney test caused me to check back on how a significant part of my country's economy is doing. After watching this video on youtube, I was shocked... ok, not so much. The most comments on this video are in bad taste but nothing can take away what happened on the field.

I personally feel that a lot of decisions do go against India and fellow countries in Indian sub-continent - Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Australia has been playing good cricket but they are not great on human scale. Honestly, I don't expect them to be. There is lot at stake - lots of money. In cut-throat competition, nobody wants to be at losing end. If we expect Australian players to walk, we are dreaming.

It is more disturbing to see the level of umpiring falling to such a low. The technology is here. We can have a complete match without the human umpires. Why do we still need them. It does not take away much time away from cricket that people seem to think. Why can't balls be fitted with sensors that will tell if it is bounced? Technology is cheap and available - we have kids' toys that glow when bounced off the ground.

If that sounds impossible, just have more umpires on ground (virtually), separate for no-ball, stumping, LBW etc.

Cricket is a big money game. It is high time, this money be spent on betterment of technology and better umpires rather than just being paid to players.