Dying poor is ur fault? Really?!

I’ve heard of this saying somewhere “If you’re born poor it’s not your fault; but if you die poor, it’s definitely your fault.” Do you know the source of this quote? And do you agree on this? I feel it is right to a certain extent. If anyone is born poor, it’s not their fault… but if anyone dies poor, its everyone’s fault! That brings me to this old fable, guess you might already be knowing it. “One day I asked God… “God, you created the world because you loved it right? Then why are you allowing poverty and hunger destroy it? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?” Then God replied… “Yes I am… that’s why I created you!”

Can we ever live in a world where there wouldn’t be poverty? Will such a ‘perfect’ world be ‘healthy’? I mean, what if all are engineers, doctors and film stars… there won’t be any masons, or security guards, or garbage cleaners anymore! Don’t you think they are as important as others in building our world? Take the ‘Dubai Flop Show’ for example. All those workers stranded in those artificial sand islands, are together, the only way Dubai is going to keep up its ‘promises’! Blessed Mother Teresa once told… “The hunger for love is worse than hunger for food…”. In today’s world, I think its the other way round. I mean why will a malnutritioned child care for who loves him and who doesn’t. They’re just craving for a morsel of food, so that they can take each breath with ease! They need a life first, then the love…

Does it itch or prick you when you pass by a beggar, near the church, temple or elsewhere? When your having dinner at a local restaurant with your family and a boy of your age, probably younger, comes to wipe the table. He doesn’t even look at any of your faces… one because the table is his workplace, second he’s the least bothered about you! I’ve tried this out, and I suggest you try it once too… that a smile and a nice small-talk just makes his day!

“Poverty and Global Warming are very similar; your actions can affect a whole lot of other people, and by the time you realise that, it would be your time to leave earth, and your next generation will have to pay the price!” – Mario Dcunha

If you’ve liked this post, get free updates by Email or RSS .

Dubai: Bling City is dead, but the desert dream lives on

Three years ago, when Dubai’s debt-fuelled boom was at its height, the emirate launched its most ambitious project yet – a gigantic offshore replica of the planet Earth, made from sand dredged from the deserts and beaches of Arabia, with countries and continents carved out among a man-made archipelago of 300 islands. That project is unlikely ever to be completed. Deprived of essential maintenance and reinforcement, the islands are slowly slipping back beneath the waves. The emirate’s carefully crafted image of brash, glitzy modernity dissolved into chaos as “Dubai World”, effectively told its bankers and investors that it could not pay its debts.

With some $60bn (£36bn) at stake in loans, bonds and outstanding bills, the news sent shockwaves around the real world. Investors deserted Dubai in droves. The emirate became as “toxic” as Lehman Brothers and spread its contagion around all the Gulf countries, from Abu Dhabi to Kuwait. Some analysts feared it might be the spark for the feared W-shaped, or double-dip, recession, just as the global economy seemed to be recovering from the credit crisis.

Life in the emirate is good – great weather most of the year, cheap cars and petrol, and a touch of high life in the swanky hotels. Property prices were a worry. “The things I liked best about Dubai were summed up in four words: no tax, valet parking.”

There is no doubt that Dubai has had a bad year, image-wise. There’s a “dark side” to Dubai, like there is to any big city anywhere in the world, in every era of history. Labour exploitation is probably the most obvious scandal. Construction workers from India, Pakistan and China are lured to Dubai with the promise of wages big enough for them to give their families a better life back home, only to have their passports confiscated on arrival as they are hit with huge “fees” for their travel and accommodation. The conditions they live in are primitive compared to the rest of the city and the west.

How the emirate resolves the current dispute with its international creditors will determine whether it remains the best hope the Middle East has or reverts to some kind of Islamic isolationism. There’s a hope that Dubai’s unique economic, cultural and social experiment should be allowed to continue.

Jack Hughes is the pseudonym for a writer who lives and works in Dubai

Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The Observer, Sunday 29 November 2009

Dance Reality Shows

Are you a fan of reality shows? I am one! Here in India we have reality shows for practically covering all concepts in life. Singing, dancing, adventure, dating, marriage, music, etc. I’m sure that the same exists in may other countries as well. Big Boss (Big Brother), Roadies, Fear Factor, Amazing Race are all time reallity-television-blockbusters. But let’s focus on the dance shows.

In India, the first dance reality show was Nach Balliye. This is quite interesting when compared to all the other ones, even across other countries. The main format of this show was the only married or dating ‘celebrity’ couples would participate in this show. The later seasons seemed like as if these ‘celebs’ began dating just to come on that show! The first and second seasons were a smash hit, and I loved them. It had a mixture of all dances, ballroom, hiphop, latin but predominantly bollywood. In the thrid and fourth season, the audiences, including me, lost interest. The new judging panels were hopeless and it had more drama than dances!

The next one was Jhalak Dhikla Ja, the Indian version of Dancing with the Stars. The first season was a little boring with an incredibly boring judging panel (even with Shilpa Shetty in it). The second season was the best. It had Shaimak Davar (one of India’s best ballroom and contemporary choreographers), Urmila and Jeetendra (two of India’s great film personalities). The third season was also pretty good. This show focused on various dance forms in a very explicit way. They had all dances with equal priorities… not more or less of anything. Bollywood was rarely done.

And then finally came Dance India Dance. The reason everyone (me too) likes this is because its for ‘true’, ‘non-celeb’ dancers… people who can dance more, and show-off less!! This judging panel of Remo D’Souza, Geetha Kapoor and Terrance Lewis is currently the best in India… knowledgable and fun! The second season is on-air now… you dont’t wanna miss it! Before the second season could kick off, another dance show called Dance Premier League (DPL) was just over. Wierd concept of mixing dance with cricket??!!! Nothing more to say about that!

But my most favourite of them all… So you think you can dance. I just love that show! They have the best dancers, the best and fun judges, and above all the best dance routines. Also Cat Deeley… the best host! The 6th season was recenlty done. If you really love dance, especially western styles, this show is a must watch! Every episode has so much to offer! Which are your favourite shows? Who’s your favourite dancer ever in So you think you can dance?

Taken from my other blog: www.dancetrance.wordpress.com

…It’s just another exam! – (Blog-a-ton 6)

“This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 6; the sixth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton” .

Some of you reading this post would be working, some would be students and some, in the way between. I want to take you back to those days… where the worst disease that students ever feared hit them atleast once a year… examinations!!

What’s in an exam…? Well if you ask your parents or your grandparents, exam was all what a student must worry about. Well yes… but is that all? Why do we quiver and shiver when it comes to exams? Don’t we go to college everyday, finish our classes and come back home, get on with our play and other activities? Can’t we do the same for an exam? All we have to do is prepare enough, go to school/college, write what is asked and come back! You must be thinking its not so simple as I’ve said… well… it is… but only if you beleive in it.

You have the pencil to make of what you have. Why do we fear ghosts? Why do we beleive in God? Some great person has said… “…its all in the mind!” Go back to your high school days, where you lost a paper by 3 or 4 marks, where you got 60 when you were expecting 90 marks! Does that even remotely bother you now?!!! I can surely tell, that if “people” don’t create the hype that surrounds board exams, there would be more distinctions, and far lesser suicides!!!

I knew a friend in my 12th standard, who wrote his math exams sweating and panting. After the exam was over, he used to come out of the hall shaking and trembling… literally!!! But today, in our engineering college, he somehow reads through through whatever ‘he can’ and comes out smooth. When the results were out he said, “Phew! A smooth 57 is way better than a nerve-racking, brain-twisting 60!” The basic idea is to keep your cool. Infact, don’t think about keeping cool… just stay the way you are as usual…

You can go on and blame the ‘system’, your school, your teacher who didn’t teach you the subject well… but the only person who can surely get you through any hurdle… is you! All you got to do is BELIEVE. Take a look at the picture above… you control the pencil; you can draw yourself, worried, tensed in the exam hall… or what if the pencil in the picture was replaced by an eraser! Just erase the exam worry off… after all… it’s just another exam!

“The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here . To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton” .

If you’ve liked this post, get free updates by Email or RSS.

Designer Laptops

When I was surfing through the net, I tripped over the following link. It gives a demo of a laptop that can be rolled over and carried about like a water-bottle or a hand-bag! If we are heading there sooner or later, I would love to stretch out my hand towards research. I guess, these laptops have already seen the light of the sun!

Check it out at this link and tell me what you think about it:

http://manneli.com/movies/Laptop.html

SMS: A new way into social-networking

Are you a regular user of twitter or facebook or both? Do you have the habit of updating your status all the time? Well I do, and I found it very difficult to let my friends know my status when I was doing thuings away from my comp or outside my house. Surprisingly, twitter and facebook being very popular, not many know about the sms mechnism they both support. Well, if people do know it, I dont think many use it… do you?

I was very happy when one of my friends told me about the sms tweets and also about facebook mobile. Now, I can update my status on the go, outside and absolutely anywhere as long as I have my cell phone with me. Facebook user have to register themselves on facebook-mobile and similarly twitter users on the sms tweets. For me in India, the sms rates for updating my status on both these sites are the same rates that apply for a national-sms from my service provider. This sms-support is applicable specifically for selected telecom compnaies in your country, but now its applicable to all in general.

Here’s what to do:

Twitter: just visit http://www.smstweet.in/ and register yourself there.

Facebook: in your facebook account, go to Settings > Account Settings and then check the ‘Mobile’ Tab. Here, you can register your phone and choose the desired settings. You can also choose to recieve status updates of your friends. Try it out… its fun.

Try out blog-writer: Raven

When I first started this blog, I used to post with the built-in wordpress editor itself. I was getting too tired with that, because for a slow internet connection, using an online editor was irritating. Plus, the images took a long time to get uploaded, even with a broadband connection, dunno why.

Later, I swtiched to the Windows Live Writer which was a very good tool. But due to some reason, which I could never find, even after breaking my head on the wall, Live Writer wasn’t downloading the pages right. Also, it showed some error when I tried to install a new blog on it. So I decided to go for something compact, fast and easy to handle… and thus I ended up with Raven, powered by Zoundry.

The adding of accounts, writing posts, re-writing posts, spell-check, inserting pictures, image tags, aligning them with text is just too easy. No problem with downloading pages, no delay AT ALL, and its already running smoothly with my two blogs. Publishing and re-publishing is neat. The user-interface is normal, but simple. Currently I’m using the Beta version. Hopefully Zoundry comes with something more powerful, but yet simple and easy. Its available for free: http://www.zoundryraven.com/download.html

Do let me know about your ways of posting. What software do you use? By the way, using the built-in editor is not so bad; many of my friends use it. But Raven’s the best…