Bannerghatta National Park (25-Mar-2005)

Did a quick trip to Bannerghatta National Park. See here for details

News: Pak releases Indian fishermen

Nowadays it has been a common occurrence that Indian fishermen being confiscated by Pak navy for charges of venturing into Pak waters for fishing. Finally they are released after spending some time in Pak jail.

This incident is not something specific to Pak, this happens in South India particularly TamilNadu, which is very close to SriLanka. Srilanka is just 35 kms off the Indian coast from Dhanuskodi. Since countries defend their boundaries so religiously, government should do something to protect fishermen from falling prey to crossing boundaries. With SriLanka, the effort to bring back the lost fishermen is easy as the diplomatic relations are well above the mark. But I guess it is not the same with Pak all the time.

I am not proposing that every fishermen should be provided with GPS instrument to navigate. Something from the technological point of view could be done to prevent venturing into neighbour's waters. This will safeguard our fishermen and their families to a greater extent. I believe that these fishermen are not those who have left hefty bank balance for their families to use in their absence.

Another point at this juncture is that I had never seen a news item stating that India has released Pak fishermen who had been confiscated for venturing into Indian waters. How does Pak prevents this from happening?

Migraine and its deadly attack

Yesterday I had been under the spiteful attack of migraine which ruined my complete evening and peaceful night sleep. I had been suffering from this for almost a decade now and there is still no respite.

A web glossary defines migraine as

A vascular headache believed to be caused by blood flow changes and certain chemical changes in the brain leading to a cascade of events - including constriction of arteries supplying blood to the brain and the release of certain brain chemicals - that result in severe head pain, stomach upset, and visual disturbances.

The dreadful part of migraine is that there is no cure for it. Just the pain killers to give temporary respite from the nerve-whacking single sided headache. It is really terrible to withstand the head-ache alongside with other symptoms like vomiting sensation. If a single attack is so deadly, then think about having two consecutive attacks. This is what happened last night and it is nightmare.

This piece is out of my analysis and experiences with migraine. This claim is NOT supported medically. There are specific triggers for setting off migraine. Say for instance, in my case eye-strain due to bad light / harsh light conditions is a triggering point. Try and avoid these triggering conditions. But still there are some more triggering points in me which I could not still find out. Another point to minimize the aggravation of migraine is to try and minimize stress. Avoiding stressful conditions or controlling your emotions under stress helps a lot to avoid migraine.

Let me be optimistic and hope that this would end soon.

Some links to migraine related sites

http://www.neurologychannel.com/migraine/

http://www.achenet.org/news/impact/life-work.php

http://www.relieve-migraine-headache.com/eye-migraines.html

Nuptials with saxophone

Last week march 13th, I had been to my cousin's wedding. Apart from the all the traditions and customs, what stood out is the saxophone. It is custom to have miruthangam (closely related to davul) (percussion instrument) and natheswaram (wind instrument) in the marriage ceremony. They play these instruments at the time of marriage. In my cousin's wedding the primary instrument played was saxophone. It really sounded different from the traditional music. It gave a touch of western to the traditional karnatic music played. I really enjoyed it.

Westernization has surely left its mark in our nuptials.

Macro flower

A macro photo of flower in the sofa cushion

International Women's Day

March 8th is celebrated as International Women's Day. This post is about the most influential women in my life. It is none other than my mom. I am dedicating this post to her.

I owe her a lot and my entire life and not just this petty post. I really admire her for her awesome qualities and hard work. Her mental strongness is one that I wish to possess. How ever the situation worsens she will not loose her composure and keep everything under control. I have even blasted her a couple of times out my anguish for which she could not be blamed. In all those hard times she has listened to me and kept her nerves under control and helped me to recover from it.

She has helped us a lot during school days, right through the daily chores to helping us in our studies. She had done this all, keeping up her work. There was very meager support from my dad as he mostly works in a different place and gets transferred most often, leaving just his weekends for us.

I hope and pray that all those grueling hetic days be over once for all and wish her a happy time for the rest of her life.

p.s: For all male chauvinistic people, all the rest are Men's Day. Believe me this is what came out in Radio City today.

Building Vocabulary

Communication plays a major role in professional life. If you want to get a good job or want to raise in your career, then you need to communicate effectively and efficiently. To improve your communication, a lot of home work needs to be done. This post is about the various facets of improving your vocabulary so that your communication clarity increases.

There are various ways to build your vocabulary, the following is the one that I formulated and followed. Thus I did practise before preaching. The ideas proposed over here are my own and I do not hold responsibility if it doesn't work for you.

1. Learn new words
The best deal is to go through dictionary or GRE booklet and learn few words everyday. There are multiple software tools (Vocabulary builder, hangman) available to help you learn words by word play. Keep learning say 10 words per day. Keep revising so that you could remember.

Learning new words means understanding its meaning and its usages. Some words do even have primary meaning and secondary meaning which differs based on the context used.

You can also use "Word Power Made Easy by Noram Lewis". It is an excellent book that explains you the etymology of words. By practising this book, you can easily identify the roots of the words. Thus for an unknown word, you can do a educated guess of its meaning by the decomposition technique.

For instance...
Caligraphy - Kallos (Greek - beauty) + Graphos (Greek - writing)
Thus it means beautiful writing or artistic writing
Cacography - Kakos (Greek - bad) + Graphos (Greek - writing)
Thus meaning - bad handwriting.

2. Usage of words
Read news papers, journals, blogs, novels, etc to see how the words are used in different contexts. By this exercise you can refresh the words.
For instance, when you read a thriller novel you can see the usage of concur

"Do you concur with me?"

Concur means agree.

Thus keep on improvising on what you had learnt in the step 1.

3. Try using it
With step 2, you are just mid-way. Mind, communication is two way response. So it is not sufficient that you understand what is conversed, you should reply back in the same fluency. To get this talent imbibed, start using the words.

The way to go is to write travel-logs, diary or blogs of your interest with emphasis on using new words. This way you will put a lot of learnt words to real use and you get used to it. Finally it becomes a habit and you become an effective communicator.

One of the primary reason for me to blog is to improve my communication.

Virulent Fever

Yes, this is the reason for my absence in registering my presence in blogspot (aha rhythmic).

I was feeling febrile almost for the entire week and it didn't subside even after swallowing the pain killers. There was also mild head-ache accompanying the raise in temperature. Consulting a general physician brought me jitters as he suspected the symptoms leading to mild Typhoid. Usually blood test should reveal its presence. But the catch is that the blood test should be performed after a gestation period of five days.

The suspicision brought me the worst nightmare I faced two years back. I suffered from an advanced form of Typhoid, which affected the spleen. I had to be admitted to hospital for 10 days and had to go through severe medication. I lost almost 7 - 8 kgs of weight.

Weighing all the options left to me, I decided to return to my hometown so that I could consult my family doctor (who treated the previous typhoid attack) and also get solace from my parents. This time the respite came much sooner than I imagined and the doctor confirmed that it is not a typhoid and it is the seasonal one. A couple of days of complete bed rest brought me back on track.