Blog@GraceJunction

It been some time since I blogged. Well, I didn’t have any withdrawal symptom for sure. I wanted to ensure that too because of the way I was blogging, I had a feeling, whether it was becoming a compulsion. Gladly, all is fine.

During the time of this hiatus, however, I did have my urges to blog over certain issues that came up, but then I was really held up with some or the other work.

During the week, two figures firmed up significantly enough to impact thousands of people.

One is the inflation in India. It is almost becoming a sinful indulgence to buy simple fruits and vegetables. The Alphonso Mango has become unapproachable. The vendor showed me four pieces and said with absolutely no feelings at all, “one hundred fifty”!! I mean, almost 38 for a mango! Gold is firming. Good. Realty is firming. Good. Deposits in bank are firming. Ok. What about liquid cash? We need cash for our regular routines and its power is surely draining away. We can’t sell gold everytime and eat the profits! Inflation is hitting everyone hard. I am buying Kesar and Badaam mangoes to make up for the Alphonso vacuum! (more…)

It was mid April when I read about the elaborate plans of the Chinese government, on how they are preparing themselves for the upcoming Olympics. Frankly, I was quite impressed about the level of thought & effort they are putting in, to make the event a success. If you’ve ever been to China and if you had a glimpse of what they have built it to be, you would surely bow down to their achievements. In everything that they did, they’ve shown it to the world.. what sheer human grit could achieve!

The news article read something like this “The Chinese government hopes launching shells containing silver iodide pellets into clouds will curb rainfall and ensure clear skies for the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. According to the plan, 100 staff at 21 stations surrounding the city will have 10 minute window to blast away at the clouds so that they can be dispersed before they come near the stadium. Three aircrafts will also be on stand-by to drop catalysts on the clouds…!! (more…)

The 2008 Olympics is hosted by China and will be held in Beijing. However the Torch relay has seen protests across the globe and that too at some unexpected and unprecedented places. The supporters of ‘Freedom of Press’ have staged protests at some place. However, the principal protesters, who have also managed to get enough political mileage have been the supporters of Tibet.

The Olympics is best remembered by its symbol-the Olympic Rings. These five intertwined rings represent the unity of five inhabited continents (with America regarded as one single continent). They appear in five colors on a white field on the Olympic Flag. These colors, white (for the field), red, blue, green, yellow, and black were chosen such that each nation had at least one of these colors in its national flag. (more…)

The government has proposed a possible nine (9) more IITs across India looking at the growing need and demand for engineers of the standard and level that IITs produce.

Directors of the existing IITs have however requested that the new institutes be given some other name so that the brand image of the existing IITs didn’t get diluted! They and their supporters argue that IITs have a recognition at par with American Colleges like Harvard etc and argue that institutes like Harvard have maintained their ranking as one of the top institutes of the world for many years together just because they have not added more Harvards anywhere else nor significantly increased the seats. If they had done it companies would have stopped recruiting from Harvard! (more…)