Yesterday I watched on TV a young man holding a placard which said:

Mr TERRORIST - I am alive, What else can you do?
Mr POLITICIAN - I am alive despite you.

I am a MUMBAIKAR

What a slap on the face of our dirty minded politicians!!

A Quote from MSN

S African commandos saved many lives at Taj Mumbai: The looming danger while six South African commandos were having dinner at a restaurant when terrorists struck Taj Mahal hotel came as a sudden challenge and they handled it with aplomb saving scores of persons from possible threat.

The lives of 150 fellow guests wee saved by the commandos through their presence of mind and skills to handle pressure situations.

The commandos accompanying the South African cricket team, who had come to participate the now-cancelled Champions League were at the hotel's top floor restaurant 'Souk' and quickly escorted all the 150 diners through the fire exit gate before any harms can befall on them.

"We were having dinner. When we heard the gun fire, we were told that two gangs were fighting in the lobby. We were particularly perturbed," a member of the South African commando team, Bob Nichols, said.

Nichols said on hearing of the sound of an explosion they sensed it was a terror attack and saw the terrorists were running around the hotel firing indiscriminately and exploding grenades.

"We realised that the area is not secured. We imagined that there is a good possibility that they (terrorists) may try to make their way to the top of the building where we are," he said.

Nichols said the team, after gathering information as much as they could from outside, decided to secure the area themselves.

"As there are a lots of glass (in the restaurant), it was difficult to secure. We found a conference room next door where there were lots of people. So we moved everybody from the restaurant to the conference room. We barricaded ourselves.

"We used whatever we could to block the doors, kept everybody away from the windows. We also told everybody who we were and explained them what we were doing..," he said.

Most popular quote doing rounds, post Lehman, AIG and Merrill fiasco -

" There are two sides to a Balance Sheet – “Left & the Right” - on the Left side there is nothing right.. and on the right side there is nothing left "

(Fwd received from one of my friends)

With the Tatas pulling out of Singur, West Bengal has been deprived of a great opportunity.
And I quote today's ET quoting Mamata Banerjee saying ' The decision to pull out of Singur is a joint gameplan of the Tatas and the Left Front government in West Bengal to malign my party'.
I don't know as to whether I should laugh or cry at the above statement.
As if the Left was not enough to contribute to the industrial backwardness of WB, now TMC has joined hands with them.
I simply pity the level of their narrow mindedness. Did they not learn anything from the governments of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka or Uttarakhand when they were welcoming Tatas with open arms? Didn't they ever realise what effect it would make to the economy of the state?
And this Singur event would definitely have a cascading effect.
Anyways, what Singur has lost, has been gained by some other place.
Singur, you really did not deserve the Tatas.

Sorry, my SMS didn't get through inspite of repeated attempts.
So here I am in Diary with a very personal request.
Auto experts on MS, please help me choose a car (in Mumbai).
I have on my radar Honda City Vtec, SX4, Hyundai Verna, Ford Fiesta 1.6S, Mitsubishi Cedia - all top end variants. Basically looking for driving and ride comfort, fuel efficiency,ergonomics, maximum safety fearures, spare parts and repair facilities availability at reasonable price. About usage, mostly city drives with long drives once or twice every 2 months. Would practically run for one month and stand still for the next month and so on because that corresponds to my work schedule.
For a man like me graduating from Maruti 800, all the above cars look excellent. But let me hear from long time users and experts please.

Many of us might not have heard about this young revolutionary. And those who have heard may not remember that on this day one hundred years ago he had attained martyrdom. I too, had till I saw it on today’s Times of India.

Can we imagine a boy packed with revolutionary ideas, devoted to fight against the Britishers at the age of 16 and hanged to death at the age of 19? That was Shaheed Khudiram Bose, who was born on 3rd Dec 1889 and hanged on 11th August 1908.

And it is said that he had Bhagwat Geeta in his hands and he was smiling as he was hanged. The crime he was caught for was killing two British ladies. In fact he alongwith Prafulla Chaki had aimed to assassinate Kingsford , the Calcutta Presidency Magistrate, by planting bombs at Muzaffarpur, but ended up killing the two British ladies alongwith their servant, by mistake.

I salute this great Martyr on this great day.

Mobile number portability, I feel, is a giant step towards increasing efficiency of our mobile operators. Although the efficiencies of our operators, especially in the metros, marginally differ from each other, there would be a lot lot of customers who are totally fed up with their existing operators, but are bound to them only because of fear of losing their numbers when they switch opeators. For such people, it would be a great achievement.
Next important thing that might bother some could be 'Portability at what cost'. If the cost turns out to be minimal, we would see huge switchovers.

Fictitious reviews cannot be checked. If it's essential for the reviews to be genuine, an elaborate mechanism would have to be devised and that would be time and energy consuming. Although it's difficult to judge whether a review is genuine or fake, ocassionally it becomes quite easy for an average MS reader by looking at the way they pour in. A look at the reviewer's profile and the date when the profile is created, provide enough evidence towards the same.
There is no immediate solution. If one profile is blacklisted or removed, another 10 would crop up. Yes, enough caution would have to exercised when we consider the product whose image has been inflated or deflated by way of such fictitious reviews.
Coming to reviews on MS I feel, most of the reviews published are genuine although most of the times, we cannot help the reviewer getting slightly biased/prejudiced. That's natural. This happens with our attitude towards our own children too; one of them would be more equal than the other; at least I honestly confess it.
So at the end of the day, it's our own judgement and our own market research that we have to hold on to, in order to come to a conclusion on whether to go for a certain product or not.MS reviews may not be able to set the guidelines even, in certain cases.

However I wish all reviews on MS be genuine and not concocted.

Here's a Fwd from one of my friends:

Dear IT Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a slow down in the overall performance, particularly in the flower, gifts and jewellery applications that had operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 un-installed many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, but installed undesirable programs such as Formula One 5.0, NBA 3.0 and World Cup 2.0.

And now Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and House Cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate Housewife

Reply:
Dear Desperate Housewife,

First keep in mind:
Boyfriend 5.0 is an entertainment package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Try entering the command C:\ I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME and download
Tears 6.2 to install Guilt 3.0.

If all works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

But remember, overuse can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Late Night Teh Tarik 6.1.

Late Night 6.1 is a very bad program that will create SnoringLoudly.wav files.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-Law 1.0 or reinstall another
Boyfriend program. These are not supported applications and will crash
Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have a limited
memory and cannot learn new applications quickly.

You might consider additional software to improve memory and performance. I personally recommend Hot Tasty Food 3.0 and Tongkat Ali 6.9.

Good Luck,
IT Support

Freedom of Speech and Expression - A Fundamental Right in the Indian Democracy.
We are exercising this right to the maximum extent.
What we say and write - makes sense or doesn't - is the botheration of the one who is hearing or reading; More so when our identity is not known or is partially known. The theory of "Who can harm me" reigns.
Fictitious Reviews - How do we find them out?
Reviews meant for one thing going under another heading - pulling down or pushing up the overall rating. Like someone dissatisfied with some Maruti dealer, writing a negative review on one of the cars from the Maruti stable.
Leave them to the Site Admin? Do they do the moral policing?
Or is it we who should speak up? Again exercising the same Freedom.
I know there would be questions like 'Who are you to say so'.
That's the way.We move on.
Didn't make sense?