How about counting age by month

August 22nd is my Birthday. While I was celebrating my birthday and a thought crossed my mind. I was just 35 years old last night and have been 35 for a whole year and how all of a sudden now in few hours I will be 36? Do we age like that? certainly not. We age by every second. Of course we can't increment our age by every second or every minute for record keeping sake, but we certainly can make it every month? So, from now on, anyone who is 5 years old will be called as 60 month old and a 36 year old will be 36 X 10 + 36 X 2 = 360 + 72 = 432 months. Lets keep life expectancy as 100 years for common people then we live no longer than 1200 months!! This number is not a great number that we can't administer. I am looking forward to this form of age counter!!

Things Just happen Spontaneously

The other day I was looking at my bathroom window and found a lots of cracks. I thought may be this is light reflection, but it was not. It was indeed a big window crash!! I thought may be somebody hit it with a stone from outside. So we went out to check - but there was another layer of glass window outside that was intact without a scratch. So what could have caused it? I was surprised and was anyway thinking of calling our builder. Since we are living in a new house we are very privileged to have warranty services courtesy DR Horton. As I am a very lazy person and I never find phone numbers/addresses from the file, I have been telling my husband to keep DR Horton phone number on my table so that I can call. And as usual he forgets. So, today I was going to ask him before he left for work to search for the number, but again I forgot...
I was in the bathroom a few minutes back and there was a knock on the door and I just ignored thought some sales guy. Then there was this calling bell ringing and an irritated me reluctantly came to open the door and there he was!! The person from DR Horton office. He just was passing by and thought to check how we are doing. Viola all my problems are in wrapper now. He just inspected and left and gave me his card, so that I can send him an email to open the ticket. Very convenient for me. I just noticed this many times over, whenever I need something badly it just happens spontaneously. Is someone watching me over?

Our experience with Corruption...

Those who live in India must have faced corruption at some point of time or other. I lived in India for the first 30 years of my life before coming to the US. But I am very proud to say that I never had to pay a single bribe to anyone neither did my husband. As were talking over tea table today about who is responsible for corruption? Is it the system, the society, the corrupt employees? No the answer almost always is we..

We are always in hurry. We go to a govt. office and find out that our file has not moved and the clerk concerned is least bothered to do anything unless we pay him/her bribe. What to do in that situation? Just take some more pain, keep going to him more than once and force him to do your job without paying anything. This is a small price that we can pay to prevent corruption at a lower level. The other day we went to the income tax office and there was this attendant whose job is to photocopy documents. My husband approached him, but he just pretended as though he did not hear him. The intention was give me money, I will do photocopy. My husband went downstairs and got it copied outside. That's it. Similarly there was another instance. There was a guy going on the road and cops caught him because he broke some traffic rules. When they asked him to produce his document, he could not because he had no document. Then he was fined some 350 rupees which he refused to pay and instead offered the cop can you take 100 rupees instead and let me go. So who do we blame now.

We often say this is a free country and we will do what we like. But there are certain things like law and order and we have to abide by it.

A Tribute to my beloved motherland

Today is the 61st Independence day of India and I feel very proud to be an Indian. This is regardless of any amount of negative publicity, corrupt politicians, bad infrastructure just to name a few.. I feel vary proud of our history, the great people that were born in this land and the great epics we have produced. Indian civilization is older than 5000 years - and in this 5000 years old history we as a nation have never invaded another country, stolen any body's property or imposed our religion on others. We are peaceful and tolerant people who have allowed cultural invasion from time to time.By 1000 BCE, when Europeans were still living in mud and beating each other with clubs, Indian doctors used the principles of ayurveda to drain fluids, sew wounds, remove kidney stones and even perform cosmetic surgery.

I am proud to be a Hindu as well. For me being hindu just does not mean embracing a religion. Its much more deeper than that. Its all about leading the life in a certain way, to love this motherland and to behave responsibly . Our culture is so full of science, only some of them have been unraveled very recently and lot more yet to be proved in many more years to come through expansive research.

I feel proud of the educational system we have, the great work force, the great potential our country has. We just need to have an unified effort to let the best come out of people than to keep focusing on the negative points.

What I am not particularly proud of is: many of us choose to stay away from our country and being away we just tend to see all that is not well about this country and feel happy and safe that we are not in the same shoes as are other Indians. Another disturbing trend I found with our fellow Indians abroad is the rush to shed their Indian ness from themselves so that they can blend into another developed society. Although these are some of my frustrations, I am very hopeful for a developed prosperous India, where there are no poverty, no corruption, no division on the basis of religion, caste, there are happy law abiding citizens that are ready to help each other. Lets contribute towards the growth of this country by putting our 2 cents such as
* Not paying bribe to get our job done quickly
* Follow the rules and regulations
* Try and educate one family in need
* Try to change lives of 2 children
* Try planting some trees
Jai Hind..

Living Viruses!!

I came across a very interesting article in Nature News that says "'Virophage' suggests viruses are alive"..

For starters viruses are defined as infectious particle with genetic material wrapped with a protective protein cover. They have no machinery to sustain life like activities unless they invade a host cell. They eventually take over the host cell and start making copies of their genome quickly and breakout of the host cell to invade fresh cells.

Interestingly the virophage is called as 'sputnik' based on the name of the man made satellite. The giant virus that is sickened by this virophage is a giant virus named 'Acanthamoeba polyphaga' mimivirus(for mimicking microbe). This virus crossed the bounadary between the viruses and cellular organisms. Another strain of this virus was isolated from the cooling tower in Paris called as 'mamavirus' because it seemed slightly larger than mimivirus.

Mamavirus when infects its host amoeba it produces viral particles using the host machinary like a factory. But when these mamavirus is coinfected with the satellite virus it produces less virulent deformed viral particles something similar to a sick viral particle. This phenomenon has drawn considerable attention currently that a virus can co-infect another virus.