Indian National Anthem

Lately, there has been some strange round of messages claiming that UNESCO has awarded the 'Best National Anthem' award to India! Is that a proud moment, I wonder! I googled and all I found was several of blogs and random websites giving this piece of information. No official website has claimed such crazy stuff. On the contrary, when I clicked on one of those images, I was directed to a random page (Ashit would call it VIRUS) to register with some Mumbai-Hang-Out group.

A few days ago, I even received an email as posted below:

The first thing I saw is ‘Ads by Google’….that made me believe that this is a totally hoax news. Assuming this was true, it makes you wonder why even have such useless awards? It sounds like claiming to the world that MY parents are the best in the world!This takes me back to the time when there was infact an on-going discussion on changing the national anthem of the country to another song. Or for that matter, the time when people in India revolted to a simple norm of singing to the anthem in movie theatres before all the shows. So all of a sudden, why such pride in this news, albeit a sham?

Internet is currently full of this information (when one searches for Indian anthem + UNESCO) that I reckon may be coming from such non-performing, attention-seeking groups who may have nothing productive to do and think are spreading such stories for pure mockery of it. I wonder if UNESCO even knows that they are in this hoax news.

What difference does it make if the anthem is the best or not. We would still be proud to be Indians. I'd say, just ignore such stuff and enjoy the anthem in its purest form as shown in the video below:

IPhone Way of Life

I hope that as you read this, you are not part of that school of thought wherein technology, according to you, has been a bane for today’s world more than it has created a world of convenience. While that can be a totally different discussion, after a decade of relying on my filofax (aka organizer), I have more than semi-shifted the organizer to my latest possession – Snitch to me and IPhone to the world! Why a Snitch? Because the moment you hold it, you do not want to let go of it! While it is only a phone that lets you do what it should and what you want it to do, this one is way off the mark. The moment I slide to unlock, it is a totally different world out there.

Seven E-mail messages…great, I scroll them and all are trash; not a problem, slide through and woof, deleted. Back to check Facebook [another planet of beings altogether!!!], and view current status of all near and dear ones…aah, there I see new pics of my nieces and nephew!! So what is the weather like in McLean? Around 80F they say and in Mumbai? Ohh its raining out there! How I miss the monsoons…Now, how about some music? Or news? Or simply, watch some videos on YouTube?

Indeed groundbreaking, it lets me do things I never thought would be possible and some things that I considered totally absurd. Things like tuning the musical instrument, browsing to get restaurant information and of course, load of other downloadable applications. Its fun to have facebook, LinkedIn and Aol Radio on the phone...and not to forget the fact that Tetris gets me totally hooked on to the phone so does SuDoku and Solitaire!

There is room for improvements too and not everything rosy, for instance, to do all of the above, the battery life gets exhausted pretty quickly. Also, being obsessed with bollywood ringtones in my previous phone, this one sadly does not let me do so! Overall, a truly cherishable gift from Ashit so that I stop nagging him when he's with his phone!

p.s. Did I mention that you can blog from IPhone? Well I just did..

p.p.s. Loads of other application available at this link: http://iphonewidgetlist.com/