The Games for the Dead

Well, my grandfather died recently and the incident has shown me a characteristic of people that I had not noticed earlier.
We are scared of death. This is very evident in the WAY we treat the dead. We have elaborate funerals and a whole lot of rituals. One ritual involves "feeding" the dead things they liked to eat when they were alive. The ridiculous thing is that my grandfather was never a fan of food. He would eat almost anything that was given to him. He was a man with little desires. He never cared about people remembering him after his death. All he cared about was his family. He always wanted to have a simple funeral, with very little fuss so that his family would not be troubled by his death.

Alas, this was not to be. We, the living, thought that the dead man didn't know of what it was to be dead. We thought that we knew more about how to treat the dead than he did. The funeral was as elaborate as ever. The rituals still continue, and somewhere in the heavens, my grandfather is looking on disapprovingly, preparing to reprimand us when we meet him.

Ubuntu.....

I've switched to Ubuntu now and use windows only for gaming. The funny thing about it is that I find Ubuntu a lot simpler to use than windows. I'm a seasoned windows user who has been dealing with BOSD's and frozen screens for many years, but still, I find even a buggy Ubuntu session better than a relatively bug-free windows session. Let me elaborate......

I work with Ubuntu 7.04 aka Feisty Fawn. After 6.10, I had created a wish-list of what I wanted in the next version of Ubuntu - and surprise, surprise - 7.04 has included everything on the wish-list along with a few features I wanted, but never really mentioned. I run Ubuntu with beryl, with the effects at maximum. I just love it. I can create a presentation in one workspace while checking my mail on another. What's more, I can see both at the same time thanks to the 'skydome'. Personally, I find that openoffice.org beats MS-Office any day. It is reinforced by the fact that while presentations created on Office 2003 have problems when editing on Office XP, there are no such problems if you do it with OO.o, though 2003 is just a cosmetic change over XP.
Now to the windows programs. As I type this, my anti-virus has piped up and told me that it has updated itself. To make matters worse, windows has just realised that I have shortcuts on the desktop that I won't use. It has popped up a bubble asking me to click it if I want to clean the shortcuts. Why does this bloody bugger of windows not understand that it is MY desktop and I will keep it the way I want it.......
Unubutu is nice and quiet in comparison. It does pop up a balloon if updates are available, but all in all, it's a much more pleasurable experience.

So KUDOS UBUNTU!!!!!

???

I didn't write a title for this post because I just wasn't sure what title to put. This post is about the recent decision of the Maharashtra Government to ban sex-education from the syllabus.
The very fact that the subject was banned is bad enough but the way the decision was taken makes it even worse. The incident exposes the hooliganism that has taken over Indian politics. Burning books in the Assembly is definitely not a way to protest, is it? It is also, perhaps, the best example of something that I had realized a long time ago. Indian parents shirk from responsibility. It happened when many TV channels were taken off air for showing content deemed inappropriate for children. It is the parents who should be responsible for what their wards watch and not the TV channel. Here, children are denied knowledge of sex just because the adults are to shy. What else should you expect other than a rise in sexual crimes? Adults are perverts and they expect their children to be the same. If they get knowledge about the way their body functions they would be disillusioned about a whole lot of things. It would destroy many prejudices on which this current social structure is based.
I usually try to avoid such a direct assault in my posts but this incident has really made me blow my lid. I wonder do these people want. Do they want the next generation to die of AIDS...?

The 'Co-operation' Begins....

Following some serious protests by the public, the MSEB has finally decided to review its load-shedding policy. The plan is that if the general public manage to reduce the use of electricity, there will be no power-cuts. Talk about grabbing the bull by its horns. The stupidest part of this plan is that though it would solve a part of the problem, it will not go away completely unless there is an increase in the supply and reduction in what the company likes to call "distributive losses" or, in the lay-man's term, electricity theft.

A Thanks To The Electricity Board

The 'Power Crisis' in Maharashtra has become more severe. The load-shedding time has been increased and people like my parents are rejoicing. Why? Well, because now I am spending less time on the PC and more time with my books. I am happy too. I never knew that there were so many things that you can do without electricity. I now exercise more regularly. I go out for treks and I have even learnt to sleep among mosquitoes. I will always be grateful to the MSEB for bringing me out of my shell.

The MSEB has liberated us from the clutches of electricity while they have sacrificed themselves to the 'demon'. The MSEB engineers are forcing themselves to use electricity by turning on the air conditioners and all the electrical appliances they can find at their offices while they have freed us poor souls from the misery of the use of such appliances. They have even forced the demon on the malls and multiplexes. But, as a compensation, they charge them at a lesser rate.

Even though the whole world is succumbing to electricity, I thank the MSEB for keeping us from it(though I would like it if they would not charge us extra for their efforts), and hope that they will be (un)able to continue their good work.

The View Down Here

The view down here is quite 'extra'-ordinary. Why, you may ask. Well, because everything down here is very ordinary with its share of 'extras'. What extras? That is a rather difficult question to answer because though everything here seems extra-ordinary, to be really able to separate the 'extra' seems to be a very difficult task. For example: The road is being repaired, which is ordinary. To see the road be in a very repairable condition two days after the 'repairs' are completed seems out of the ordinary at first glance.But wait! The same thing is happening everytime the road is repaired. Now that makes it ordinary, doesn't it???

I have not even started with it and it has succeded in confusing me, but I'm sure I will find a better example soon.