Shyam's Blog

Me writing a blog on 27th Dec 3:30AM. No sleep? Something wrong? Jet lag? 'yes' to all such questions. I slept from 4pm to 9pm last evening and am not getting any sleep now. I am too hungry - feels like I have missed my lunch today! Don't forget, the day for me is now starting at 9pm or so. This is something like Nehru's dialog - "When the whole world sleeps, India awakes." When everyone is fast asleep I am here online writing. My recommendation to everyone who visit India for their wedding - please come 10 days in advance and get rid of jet lag. From my current experience, I am not able to catch up with time. When I see people running, I feel, "Why are they all running?". When I am running, the feeling is visa-versa. Yesterday's 'navagraha hOma' and other rituals were really laborious. If people think that that is just a pre-match practise session (and real match will be more tiring), in the real match on 28th, like Russel Peter's di...

Feels interesting to write a blog standing in a Free Internet place here in Singapore. Journey from SLC to LA was short, but the start was typical movie type. It is worth writing one more blog. LA to Tokyo was 12 hours - during which I watched 4 movies - First, I started with Shivaji: The Boss, next was 1/2 of Japanese movie which I got bored. Third, I started, Gandhi My Father - another boring movie. Next one was Heyy Baby. By the time I pressed 'start', I was fast asleep. I don't remember seeing anything. All I know is the last scene/song when I woke up. After this movie-time, I pushed to TV Documentaries - First was Planet Earth's "Sesonal Forests" and then, "Ganges", finally, "Live for Longer". All the three were really good and informative. The "Ganges" documentary showed the places to visit to get a good look at Ganges - Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Prayag, etc. These places are so beautiful! In "Live for ...

Watched this movie today. This is a 1980 movie about one group of tribe in African forest who have not seen the modern world, come across a coke bottle. They are fascinated with that bottle and use it for everything. Slowly, they start to fight for that bottle - soon they realize that that bottle was sent by God to create evil. They decide to throw it away by sending one guy to the 'end of the earth' to discard it. This guy comes across the modern world and the story ends in a happy way! One thing narrator mentions, "Man created things to make life easier. It has in turn made life more complicated." So true it is!

   

What does that number mean? Check your credit card. If it starts with a '3' it is Amex, if with '4' it is Visa and if '5' it is Mastercard. There are many other rules to create a 16(or 15) digit number. What is it with the Stripe on the back of the card? It functions like a audio tape which stores magnetic data. One thing to keep in mind - Never take your card near a powerful magnet (such as demagnetizers in electronic stores). You may lose the data. How do credit card companies make money? You don't want to know them all, Do you? They are really smart people, smarter than customers for sure. Else, how can they run the business on your money? The money they handle is YOUR money. All you get back from them is facility of 'no need to carry cash'. Firstly, lets talk about US market. Sources say, US credit card debt is around $2.5 trillion. Nearly 1 billion credit cards were issued in US in the year 2006 alone. These numbers surely gives an estimate as t...