Terror strikes Pune !!

Saturday was a normal weekend for me. After some good cricket practice, I headed over to have some sumptuous lunch at the coconut grove. It was followed up with some donuts at Donut Magic in Koregaon Park. I went back home at around 5:15 and passed by the north main road. Who would have known what lied ahead ?

When I heard the news about the bomb blast in German Bakery in Pune, I was horrified, saddened, disgusted to see the visuals. It was a grim reminder that life is such a gift, but can be taken away in a minute. The only question that came to my mind was that Why was Pune targetted ? Its such a peace loving city. There's never been any communal riots in the city, never has there been any other forms of protests.

I can go one and talk about the Pune spirit just like the mumbai spirit. Yes at one level, people will go on with their lives and put this behind. But on a far more deeper level, I feel there has been some considerable mental scars put by this bomb blast.

In a couple of weeks, ppl will forget about this and talk about "how I was there ?", "How I love that place - the german bakery?",etc. We don't want peace protests or marches. The crux of the issue is why was this place bombed ? What is it that these terrorists want that we're not willing to give ? Can this be solved by dialogue? I truly believe that there is no true evil in the society.. its just that some people are flawed. I truly believe through peaceful dialogue and understanding, almost any issue can be solved.

Till then, let the city recover

The power of social media ...

Today a friend of my wife's needed B-ve blood urgently. Getting rare blood type donor's can really be difficult. It means calling thousands of friends, sending emails, sending postings ... but the message only reaches within your social circle.

Today I found out the power of twitter. I tweeted the message that I needed bloodgroup b-ve. Within a matter of seconds, lots of people; many who I / they don't follow; spread the message. This was really heart-warming to see human kindness at its best. In the process, I also truly realized the power of social media and twitter in particular.

In this case twitter was a total #win or a #megawin

Gym, tweets and pads ....

Alright first of all, Happy New Year to all my non-existent readers. Its been a good start to the year so far, where i've managed to do nothing of note.

So whats with the subject. Well for starters I've decided to gym longer and harder. I need to lose some flab... after losing 15 kgs, i've plateau'd at the same weight for over 2 years. My aim is to lose fat, and gain more muscle. I think i need to first change my diet, and control the booze... I'm already on it, and hopefully by the second half of the year, I should see results.

Tweets - Well its been over a year where i've been actively tweeting.. its been a great experience where I've met new friends. Learnt things that I wouldn't have. Tracked news faster than I've ever have. You people should try it ...

Pads - Well thats the iPad i'm talking about and definitely not something that ladies need once a month. Okay enough of that joke already. So iPad is a pretty good devide. Although I would not purchase it and here's why
1) Poor internet speeds in India - With 16,32 or 64GB, i'm looking at lot of online real estate. Frankly the speeds in India are not good enough to work with clouds.
2) No Multi-tasking - I like multi tasking. Even when i'm working, I have a page where I tweet, check my facebook updates, view RSS feeds, check cricket scores, chat with friends, listed to music and of course do work. Even at Home, I do the same thing. Therefore I need a hardware which just lets me do that.
3) Typing : Looking at the demo at the keynote speech, it seemed like typing a lot of stuff on the iPad is not a lot of fun.

Basically those are some of the grouses that i have. On the postive side for 499$ - 829$, this is a great thing to have. With such a large touch screen, some of the apps that can be built for it are phenomenal. I'm not much of a reader of books, but reading on the iPad is going to be a lot more fun. So overall I think iPad is going to do well, but I'm still not sold on it.

As for Pads, India played bangladesh and frankly I thought they didn't win any match with authority. So being no.1 isn't going to last long if thats the way they place. The real test is going to be against the south-africans next week.

Bye for now, Its time to hit the gym.

Maharashtra Elections ... Urban divide

I was intrigued a lot by the election results today from Maharashtra. I was wondering how could a party that hasn't done much get elected to a 3rd term. INC-NCP look to get around 144 and BJP-SS might get 90, and MNS might get 13 seats.

One of the reasons that I wondered why this could have happened was because of totally unorganized opposition. SS is squarely blaming MNS for the big division.So there were many reasons. I went to the http://eciresults.ap.nic.in/Constituencywise.htm and decided to analyse the results.

So I broke down the results into urban and rural constituency. For urban constituencies, I focussed on Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Thane, Kalyan, Bhiwandi, Nashik, Aurangabad, etc. These totalled about 75 out of 288 constituences. What I found was indeed startling :
With the way the results panned out, Congress was the leading party with 25 seats, NCP with 8, BJP with 13, SS with 11, and MNS with 11. Independents with 4 and SP with 3.
Therefore UPA gets 34, NDA 24, MNS 11, Rest 7
So if MNS had combined with NDA, NDA would have been 35 with UPA at 34. Well thats with basic arithmetic.

What I hadn't bargained for was that MNS has damaged BJP-SS in atleast 15 seats. So if MNS wasn't there, and we assume that bulk of the MNS vote would go to SS+, then the results would have been:
INC -15, NCP -3, BJP-19,SS-17, MNS-14,IND-4,SP-3.
i.e. UPA - 18, NDA-50, IND-4, and SP-3.

Therefore MNS did damage the chances of SS+ in the urban areas of maharashtra in atleast 15 places. What was more shocking is that if this was the case, NCP would have no place in mumbai (the 3 they get are in Airoli, and Pune) and the independents and SP would have won no matter what.
What would have this meant to the total figures.
Congress+NCP = 144-(15) = 129
BJP+SS+MNS = 90+13(MNS)+(15)=128

Wow .... so MNS did dent the chances of SS-BJP coming back to power.
Well this was just the urban vote....
How did the rural maharashtra vote ? Did SS's drubbing in Marathwada make the ultimate difference... find out more tomorrow when I analyze the rural vote..

Time to sleep ...

What a day I had planned, and what happened ?

I had planned to get up at 5:30 a.m. and come back from office by 4, and then just chill out at home..

Instead I got up at 5:30 a.m. alright, did my gym session on time, and even reached office by 9.
But then work began .. and boy how did it begin ... I was at office till around 8. And came home , and I am still working .. and finally now I get time to blog. I've been working for around 7 odd years, and have put in an average of 45 - 50 hrs per week .. it sounds like so much ... But then I realise out of the last 8 years (which is 2920 days), i've worked around 866 days so thats like 29% work. The remaining 30-35% I spent sleeping. So what the fuck have I been doing with the remaining 40% of my life all these days ?

That pretty much sums up my life or anyone's life. You work your ass / study for 30% of your life, sleep the rest of the 30% .. but what about the rest.

I know sleep more, watch TV, movies, sports, smoke weed, drink crazy .. go figure...

Swine flu continues ...

So its seems there are already 10 deaths reported by swine flu in the city as I speak. Thats really unfortunate .. Whats even unfortunate is that the deaths don't have a name..

I feel that the peak of this virus should come soon (in the coming couple of weeks). Its a combination of the virus dying, and people taking plenty of precaution that will bring about this. Its paranoia thats happening in the city right now , and I think it will take a few months for the city to recover from this.

What concerns me more is the swine flu spreading to poorer areas of the country, and causing even more deaths. I hope that it doesn't happen

Swine flu attacks !

Okay .. so Pune recorded the first swine flu related death this week. It was sad to hear that a 14 year old girl died due to the swine flu. But whats sadder is the paranoaia surrounding the flu.

Everywhere I go in the city, people are talking about the swine flu. Is this called awareness of the disease or is this panic ? 120 people (mostly students) have contracted the virus, but it seems like the entire city is down with the flu. All you read in the morning newspapers is about the swine flu. Many people have adviced me not to go to theaters and malls because of the pandemic. Once again 120 people in a 5 million have got swine flu .. and its a pandemic. 122 cases of dengue fever till the first august, but nobody cares. The point is that everyone in the world is eventually going to get the swine flu, and will not even know if they got it.

There are states which have released advisories asking people not to go to Pune or Satara unless absolutely necessary.. yet they are okay if you go to the US/Mexico or even Europe. Thats called creating panic. Once again 120 cases in 5 million ... there's a good chance this thing will subside in the next few weeks.

But whats next ? Donkey flu ? Gorilla Flu ? or the Rhino Flu ??