A single minute that saved a life

After the incident, I had thought about writing a blog entry, but the lazy bum that I have been, I forgot about it completely. But anyways ... der aaye durust aaye :P

Finally after three years of continued efforts, I was going on my first ever date. How should I behave, what would be my first sentence ? Engrossed in these thoughts I noticed that a hundred meters from me, was standing an old man. He had a stick supporting his frame. Hop, hop, hop, he started jumping using the stick and his only leg, in an endeavour to cross the road. Suspicious, I slowed down a bit trying to let him pass. After just three hops, his stick got stuck, and he could no longer jump. Since he was already in a hurry to cross the road, he fell down. By this time, I had reached around six feet from the spot, and could see him already saying his last prayers. I stopped, pointing my headlight at him, so that he could at least try to move and other vehicles would see him there as well. Some microseconds passed, and I realized that he would never be able to move on his own. If I park my bike on the roadside, my bike would definitely be safe but there was a risk of someone in a speeding car to crush him to death. Since the bike was far more visible than the man lying on the road, without any second thoughts, I parked my bike in the middle of the road and walked upto him. After I helped him stand up, I noticed that the bike fomula had actually worked, there were some other localites who came forward to help, and told me that the old man was in an inebriated state. I would call that one minute as the most significant minute of my life. My instances worked at the right time.

Jaako raakhe saaiyaan maar sake na koye

Came across this post on Reuters ... A perfect example of the adage in hindi "Jaako raakhe saaiyaan maar sake an koye" :P ....


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A stillborn Israeli baby who was pronounced dead by doctors "came back to life" on Monday after spending hours in a hospital refrigerator.

The baby, weighing only 600 grams at birth, spent at least five hours inside one of the hospital's refrigerated storage units, before her parents, who had taken her to be buried, began noticing some movement.

"We unwrapped her and felt she was moving. We didn't believe it at first. Then she began holding my mother's hand, and then we saw her open her mouth," said 26-year-old Faiza Magdoub, the baby's mother.

The baby was pronounced dead several hours earlier, after doctors at Western Galilee hospital in northern Israel were forced to abort her mother's pregnancy because of internal bleeding. Magdoub was 23 weeks into her pregnancy.

"We don't know how to explain this, so when we don't know how to explain things in the medical world we call it a miracle, and this is probably what happened," hospital deputy director Moshe Daniel said.

The baby was then taken to the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit for further treatment, but doctors were not sure how long she will live.

Motti Ravid, a professor of internal medicine, told Israel's Channel 10 that the low temperature inside the cooler had slowed down the baby's metabolism and likely helped her survive.

(Writing by Avida Landau, Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Busy with meetings to an extent you can't say I do ??

Did you think you're too busy with the meetings that you can't even say "I do" to your fiancee ... try scheduling a couple of meetings in Sweden :) Came across this link at Reuters:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The Church of Sweden will carry out drive-in weddings lasting about seven minutes at a car rally next month in a bid to make marriage more accessible, it said on Thursday.

Undaunted by soaring fuel prices, 36 couples have applied to get married at a gathering of auto enthusiasts in Vasteras in central Sweden, said priest Jerker Asterlund, the scheme's initiator.

"Weddings are getting more and more commercialized and that is not something we have any interest in. We would like to make things simpler and more down to earth when people take the plunge and get married," he told Reuters.

"This is not just for fun, but also a way for the Church of Sweden to show we can take part in celebration and happiness and not just in crisis and catastrophes," he said.

The wedding ceremonies will be carried by 10 priests alongside the focal point of the auto gathering, a motorcade of 1950s and 1960s cars.

A gospel choir and a priest singing Elvis tunes will provide the soundtrack to the festivities, Asterlund said.

"We have added a bit of a Las Vegas touch to it and put up a huge red, neon sign which reads 'Get Married' so one can see it from afar and know where to turn off."

(Reporting by Niklas Pollard; Editing by Matthew Jones)

Crow power :)

Found this interesting article on reuters :

PATNA, India (Reuters) - Train services were disrupted in parts of eastern India for three hours after flocks of agitated crows snapped overhead powerlines when railway workers tried to clear their nests, officials said on Monday.

They said crows and ravens often flapped their wings so hard while fighting that they tripped railway powerlines in eastern Bihar state. To solve the problem, rail staff tried to clear nests built on overhead wires on Sunday.

But this agitated the birds so much and they flapped their wings so furiously that it caused a short-circuit.

"Suddenly there was a short-circuit and overhead wires snapped, disturbing the power lines which also affected the signaling system", railway official Satyendra Kumar told Reuters.

"We had to work for three hours to restore the power lines."

At least a dozen passenger trains were stranded while the nest clearing operation went on.

India's vast rail network carries more than 15 million people every day on some 7,000 passenger trains.

(Writing by Krittivas Mukherjee)


Bharat mata ki jai !!!

Finally, I'm in the news

Uaware of anything happening around the world, I was beginning to start my struggle with the code once again, when my routine task stuck me. How can i even start working without checking my emails and orkut account ?? I can't :) ... I came across a headline that said "Is our Indianness so fragile ? ... " Given the attractive headline, I couldn't resist going to the article to go through it. After a couple of lines, I started realising that I had read a similar article a couple of days back which talked about Sania Mirza insulting the National Flag by pointing her feet unknowingly towards it. I also realised that the author is quoting various people and talking about their views. I was in complete accord with almost all the points as I read, and was wondering whether I had also expressed the same views in my response. After every heading, I used to ponder if the author missed out my name. After a couple more lines, I got to the following:

Publicity stunt? Sania and Sachin were after all the flag bearers of the country and upheld its honour in the sporting arena. Mohan Jain from Helsinki, Chetan H. Shah in Gandhidham, Rahul Hari in Bangalore, Paul from Kochi, Shubham (Bhopal) and Nitish Garg in Chennai said the narrow-minded individuals who target them were only trying to get their two minutes in the spotlight.

Listening to the songs ?? Beware that the player stays well inside the pocket

Just came through this link on the register ... thought it worth a blog entry and just copy pasted :P the text ... Thanks to "the register"

An innocent Stoke-on-Trent garage mechanic enjoyed a spell in the cells after armed cops held him at gunpoint having mistaken his MP3 player for a pistol, the Daily Mail reports.

Darren Nixon, 28, was grooving to some tunes on his black 4GB Phillips on his way to catch a bus on 26 January "when a woman thought she saw him carrying a handgun and called the police".

He recounted: "I walked to the bus station. Obviously I didn't know this at the time but someone saw my MP3 player in my pocket and mistook it for a gun. The police found me on CCTV and followed me. I got on the bus and the police followed. I was listening to my music so I didn't really notice all the cars behind the bus.

"I got off and started walking home. I saw this cop gesture at me and at first I couldn't hear what he was saying. I turned the music off and they were telling me to put my hands up in the air. As I got closer I could see that two of the cops had guns. There were two police dogs there as well. I was searched at the scene then hauled off to the station and interviewed.

"I was really shocked when I saw the guns. They were pointing them right at me. It was a pretty scary experience. I had no idea what was going on."

Nixon was fingererprinted, swabbed for DNA and had his mugshot taken before being released. He added: "I wasn't happy at all about it. I didn't even really get a proper apology from the police. They just dropped me off at home and said a quick 'sorry for any inconvenience', and that was all I got from them, which I thought was pretty out of order.

"It happened really near to where I live, so anyone could have seen me getting arrested - it's a stain on my character. It was unreal - I had a completely clean record before this and have always been a law-abiding citizen."

A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police offered: "We received a report from a member of the public who had seen a male in the area who had appeared to pull a hand gun from a jacket pocket, grip it with both hands and aim it towards something.

"An operation was put in place and a man matching the description was detained. No weapon was found on him at the time but he was taken into custody on suspicion while the surrounding area where he had been was searched. These searches proved negative, so the man was released and taken home, as no further action was required."

The spokescopper concluded: "The description was extremely good and if that's the report we get we have to act quickly."

Competition increases

For the past couple of months I have been wondering why is it that once we guys like a girl, we start trying to compete with others of the same species to get the girl as a soul mate. If there's a good looking girl, there is always bound to be a long queue of suitors after her. If you want to stay out of the league, you can't call her up, since all the others in the queue have her phone number and keep frustrating her with the stupid phone calls. The internet gave us a nice medium to communicate named Instant Messaging, but well this is far worse than the phone calls. If someone has her phone number, he would definitely have her IM username. And it's free ... why not ping her on IM. This definitely results in N number of IM windows on your screen. Who do you reply to and who not. And the worst part is that you cannot say "go to hell" to your friends :( .

I once went through such a phase. Six IM windows on my screen !!! And behind the windows, was my workspace. Just made me think "Dude, I have a deadline to be met ... gimme a break".
Something similar happened while I was chatting with XYZ day before yesterday. While in college, she was always busy with N number of windows on her screen, and I always used to get frustrated with the delayed response, and left IM with her just to reduce the load that she would have faced. But now that we are out of college, she gets N number of phone calls in a day. N number of windows opened at any given time on her screen. As usual, I gave up again. Something that comes to my mind is to write an email or even a snail mail should be a good idea. But I always hate all these :(.

To add to my woes, Dhiraj forwarded me this link today:

It always appeared to me that girls always trust girls. And they should, if a girl is a good friend, she would mostly not ditch another girl. But with most of the guys, it's almost the opposite. I have seen guys playing with emotions, i have seen guys playing with lives of innocent girls. But I have never seen a girl playing with emotions/lives of another girl. This is one of the reasons that comes to my mind for the "Girls will be Girls" behaviour I talked about in one of the earlier posts. And now that a guy is completely optional, we, the goody goody mamaa's boys will have to compete with girls as well :(. It's definitely going to be a real tough world.