Fanaa movie review

Friday 26th

We were 15 people and 14 tickets were bought on Thursday. I landed in Mumbai on Thursday eve so my ticket was booked later. Somehow the RAdlabs people sold out my ticket. So we had no option but to squeeze 15 in 14 chairs, which we successfully managed ;)
Turn ons:
1. Kajol looks gorgeous
2. AAmir Kajol chemistry rocks on screen
3. Good music
4. Gripping story and great camera work
5. Shayari fans would love the dialogues and the dialogue delivery
6. Moral of the story: Life is a choice. Choosing the better (behetar) ofthe two right paths and choosing the more righteous (munasib) of two wrong pathsdecides the way one's life goes about. (This is the last dialogue; it will soundbetter in urdu)
7. Moral 2: Jo pyaar ke chakkar mein fasa, woh mara

Turn offs:
1. Pace is slow
2. Too many coincidences makes it far away from reality
3. Predictable story
4. Aamir's age shows up

More information on the movie at IMDB

Deadly bike accident: Helmet saves 2

Tuesday, 23rd

It was a usual day. I got up early went to swimming and then a bit of jogging.We left for office at around 11:30 and Anant was driving as per his turn.As we approached Magarpatta city, there was one cyclewala who was riding merrily on the extreme left side of the road and anant was driving steadily at 60 Kmph. Suddenly the cycle rider realized that he missed the right turn on a divider-separated road. He took a very sharp turn, leaving absolutely no chance for the bike driver to avoid the collision. Thus, accident happened.

We were lucky that we both were wearing helmets. Anant slid with the bike for quite some distance. From the marks on his helmets,it seemed that his side face and the right ear were intact thanks to the helmet. Inspite of helmet protection he suffered minor bleeding through mouth. He had injuries on the shoulder. I was thrown at the other side of the divider and I could not recollect my line of flight. I can only tell that as soon as I realized something happened, I was lying completely on my back on the other side of the road. No prominent marks on the helmet. But there was a very bad injury on both the legs. On one leg there was no bleeding but it wore the direct impact on the sheen bone. The skin on the right leg was peeled off mebbe upto 5-6 layers, not sure though.

As soon as I saw up there was a truck coming from the opposite direction at about 50 meters from me. It must have stopped after seeing my spectacular stunt. I was able to get up by myself and I slapped the cycle rider. He was a kid of around 16 years. He was bleeding at 2 places on his face. He immediately said sorry. He was desperately trying to reassemble his ransacked cycle. So he asked me to help out. His innocence was very touching. I gathered myself and reached the side of the road.

I dont remember what anant did immediately after the accident, but he brought the bike to the side of the road. After I analyzed his condition I approached the cycle boy and advised him to go to the doctor. He asked for money. I immediately refused and then came back to anant again. He said he was fine.Then a local came and checked for our fractured bones and advised us to get away from the site b4 the locals come.

We went to Vatsalya's place, which is located near the office, washed our wounds with dettol. I had a quick bath, dorned myself with the same torn trouser and dirty shirt and went to office. I was already feeling nauseaous and suddenly my left leg started swelling like hell. I applied ice to it and some people advised me to get it checked up. I immediately rushed to orthopedic's hospital and then home. Luckily it was not a fracture but some blood clot under the bone lining. Had to take a tetanus injection. However, I was suffering from body pain on shoulder and back for three days and I also suffered from temperature, mebbe due to the body pain.
After I narrated the incident to my mother, she was of the opinion thatI should have given some money to the cycle kid. I felt guilty of not doing that. But somehow the instincts at that moment did not urge me to do what was right. Anant had done well not to directly hit the kid and instead hit the front tyre. One thing I learnt, bike riding is not safe. Even if you are a very careful driver anyone can hit you whenever they feel like.

beat_the_heat@pune.com

Visited this place Diamond waterpark at Lohgaon. It was the best possible outing tobeat the heat in Pune. Check it out. Details later. Photos to be uploaded soon

Biometric security in ATMs

From my previous post about SBI ATM story, you might be well aware that I am in awe of rural ppal using this relatively new technology in a whole-hearted fashion. Though we were quite behind the world in propagating this tech-blessing to our countrymen, we can surely catch upto them in no time.

As early as 1999, the developed countries started using the biometric security solutions in their ATMs. It is high time that we also follow the suit. To start with, we could recommend/compel the banks to augment their ATMs with finger print authentication systems.


I discussed this idea with few of my friends. The immediate refutation that displayed the resistance to change mentality was:

1. My ATM card is being used by my parents. So once this system is in place they wont be able to use my ATM card.

Many recent robbery events like extorting out the ATM pins and withdrawing money from ATM, a boy using his father's credit card password to make fradulent transactions worth some lakhs, etc has sounded the alarm. This necessitates that we consider the banking transactions as something sacred and take preventive measures by stopping people from accessing each others account.

2. The next argument was humorous but still realistic. The robbers might cut the thumbs of people and then withdraw money from their accounts.

Of course, no security in the system is safe from rubber-hose attacks, but we could make the life of criminals as hard as possible.

3. Movies like Charlie's Angels, Being cyrus, etc. show that it is very easy to fool the finger print recongnition system.

But when finger print recognition is combined with existing pin-password system, it would provide enhanced security as compared to the current state.

4. The cost factor.

Given that ATM machines cost somewhere around 3000$, cost of additional 200$ is acceptable by all means. There would be reluctance from banks to avoid this additional cost. But nonetheless it is an investment. Moreover, if a certain bank can provide this facility, it could make it a top advertising agenda to allure more customers. In essence, competitive advantage can be achieved by being the first one to introduce biometric security in ATMs. The rest of the banks will soon follow.

Indian banking sector is booming and with widespread use of technology in day-to-day activities, security is becoming a serious concern to the systems. The banking softwares are buring examples of real-time, robust and fault tolerant systems. They cannot afford even a minute downtime or loss of data.

I was quite impressed by the net safe payment methods, where the internet transactions can be done without disclosing the credit card information to the seller. The concept is simple, a temporary one-time card information is generated for doing a internet payment. The credit card payment gateway temporarily recognizes this information which cannot be re-used. Many such simple but efficient protocols are soon to emerge. It is just the matter time that ppal start believing in the widespread use of technology to their advantage.

More information about finger print authentication gadgets used in ATMs can be obtained from
http://www.axistech.com/indexWelcome.asp?size=1024
http://onclick.blogs.com/biometrics/2005/03/japan_banks_to_.html

IT meet May-06

Hi all,

I am sure many of you are gonna read this.

The idea of reunion started with some casual scrapping on Cheenu's orkut profile. It was long pending and we wanted to make it grand. So there were mails, IMs and phone calls carrying the message of this event. I still remember that we (with habib and cheenu) had an hour long yahoo conference to decide MOnday as the auspicious day. Let me not bore you with organizational details ... and get on to the interesting stuff.

It was decided to meet on Monday, 1st May 2006 at 5:15pm at Matunga station. People started gathering since 5:05 and till 5:30, we were already 6 ... Nisha, Habib, Cheenu, Swapnil, Ambokar and me. Most people looked as they were 2 years before with a few exceptions like Sumit and Swapnil. It was as if Swap had done load shedding on Sumit. We all then strolled down to Ruia college chatting about all the things in the world. In no time I had kept my promise by revealing all the interesting surprises that I had in my box.

In mid-conversations, there were mentions of different people and where they were and what they were doing and when are they getting married and ..... so on. Everyone was so enthused to know how their colleagues are doing. Then there was substantial addition to the mob with blessings from Kate, Shumit and Aniruddha. 9 of us then decided to move on to Cafe Coffee Day and have a grab. We walked through 5 gardens and lanes across VJTI having a lot of fun together.

At CCD, we made a ruckus with ferocious laughters and jokes from our college days. Then there was the usual photo session with gals giving their best looks. To tell you the truth Nisha and Cheenu were looking gorgeous ;). Soon I realized that only 9 people had gathered from our original lot of 50. Thanks to a birthday celebration by a group of teenaged girls who were much noisier than our mob. The birthday girl was looking like an angel, I am cursing myself for not taking a pic. We did our best to make them feel our presence by passing expensive comments and imitating them whenever we can.

The earlier realization gave me an idea to commemorate the whole lot. So we started jotting down the names of everyone and that too roll-number wise. Eventually we barely managed to recollect all the names. We were sure we could do this because all the memories came alive whenever you thought of someone. The most difficult names were easily recollected but the obvious ones like Shravan, who was going to come for the meet, was in the last few to surface on the list. By the way, we must have tried to call Shravan atleast 500 times that day. But god knows where he had been. Probing further we found out that he was on a date with some cool gal at Thane. At this juncture, we missed Chantoch very badly ... for obvious reasons.


As soon as we finished with the list, the guest of honour joined us. It was none other than Ms. Khyati Mehta soon to be Mrs. Khyati Doshi. Everybody was awestruck to see Khyati in a transformed look. I even saw Sumit talking seriously with someone --- U guessed it? he was taking fitness tips from Khyati. She also brought the photograph of Mr. Pritul Doshi. Ya, not to forget to mention the important personality who had accompanied her: Mittal. It had been a week since I saw her :(.

Soon we checked out from CCD and the early-sleepers started saying farewell to all of us. Nisha, Shumit, Khyati and Mittal departed from the flock. The remaining people were already hungry and started looking for a good place to eat. We had to select between classic and garnish. Since both of them were crowded, we selected one thru FCFS. At Garnish, people started their selection by discussing about varied eating habits across india. Then there were some good cool fundaes about stock markets by our Finance Director, Cheenu. Some people were planning to order sabji-roti. But the infectious Pav Bhaji ruled. Sumit has ordered a plain pav bhaji but soon gave in to the temptation and ordered a cheese pav bhaji. In all between 7 people we ordered, 5 cheese pavbhajis and 1 plain pavbhaji.

After the PavBhajis we decided to hogg ice-creams. Since we all were feeling nostalgic for the lack of presence of Santosh, we went to Dimple ice-creams. The AC wasnt working so we came out of the parlour before everybody cud get in. On the way to naturals sumit revealed two stories. I remember that one of those was about Santosh's bookay to Dimple by his friend. We all enjoyed ice-cream at naturals, followed by a pan. Then we all departed, with pleasant memories of the well-spent evening.

In the local train, I was with Swapnil and Kate, where I did chance-pe-dance and distributed general life fundaes to the mortals. This was all about the happenings of the meet ... the feeling part of this occasion is yet to come ... signing out for time being.

Love,
Virag

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