Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Star Blog

The Mumbai Mirror on this Sunday had an article which was basically, an interview with Aamir Khan. There, I found mention of the star's website and blog. As is known, Aamir is not a very outgoing person when it comes to media, so we get to read very little of him. So I checked out the website which hosts the blog now, and was very happy to read his blogs. He also has a chat on the website, which I haven't checked yet, but the blogs are good tp. He is very informal and friendly in his blogs, and I personally felt nice to read it. He has definitely used it for publicity of his upcoming films (TZP at present), but its very obvious. I just felt like sharing it with u guys.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Orkut Marriage

Note: This blog was waiting for some time now, due to technical problems in my site.

Marriage, as we Indians see it, is of two types conventionally - arranged and love. Arranged marriage is supposedly prevalent only in India, though I have strong arguments about it. It is the type in which the entire family is involved in finding a partner for the person getting married. So, it is basically done on the basis of education, salary, horoscope matching, family background (and assets) and other qualities of both, bride and groom. Love marriage is the type where the two fall in love and decide to get married. No clarifications are needed here.

Now with the widespread of the internet in our everyday lives, arranged marriages are also done with the help of internet. I mean, there are matrimonial sites which post profiles of candidates. But about a few years back, a site was born with the name orkut.com. Here you can create your profile and get in touch with other orkut users and make new friends. There are communities which have people with some common interest. However, naturally, the site is also used to look for partners. And this has given rise to the third type of marriage which we term as Orkut marriage. Myself and 2 of my closest friends have found our life partners in this way.

The best part in this type is that the relationship develops on the basis of the inner soul of a person, and not the outer physical looks. Likes and dislikes match and there's no stopping. This way, there are no boundaries which would stop the two. You can be anywhere on the globe, the only need is internet access. We three also found our partners in our same caste, which made it easier for our parents to accept it. There was little sweet curiosity at the time when I personally met my wife, but it lasted only for a couple of minutes. After that, we both were talking the regular stuff we used to chat or talk on phone.

I have also heard cases of people getting mislead/deceived, but then you need to do some preliminary checks. But as for my view, it has given a whole new dimension to the way marriages happen in India, and guys and girls, I would advise you to go slow and steady to win this race.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Microsoft officedead


Many of my friends know I had created a personal website and was hosting my blog there. It was a MS officelive basics subscription which is offered free by MS. I was one of the ones who got the beta version and were initially allowed to use MS FP for site design. Later, they changed the privileges and just allowed templates. In the mean time, the upgraded my account to premium, which I didn't notice and had to pay $35 p.m. for 2 months. When I asked them to downgrade the account, they did, but I still cud use FP, due to some flaw in the switching on MS's side. I was happy, till I started getting errors while saving files to my site, soon after coming to Swades. I informed them about it and they said they will have to escalate it to the programming department (which, I have a serious doubt, whether it exists or not). After no response for about 15 days, I filled out the online form again and then I used to do it almost twice every week. MS, the owner of Windows and IE, couldn't find a solution for the problem, and I had to delete my site.

When I tried to create a new site, firstly, the basics subscription is not available in the country which is a software industry giant in the world, India. When I asked Jolly to register for it from the land of opportunities, US, it didn't work either.

So, now I opened my blog with my favorite website, Google. The following 3 blogs are reposted here from my earlier blog. Hope to post my latest very soon.