Footballers Wives

Times of india..the legendary gossip page does it again!
Here is a link to the girlfriends/wives of footballers.If u see most of them are companions of Italian players...no wonder they screwed up so miserably in the Euros...cant get ur concentration to the requisite levels to win such a tourney with these models arnd.

Balls

Blogger vs Orkut -- Blogger wins !

I was just thinking after the gradual fizzing out of orkut whether the comparison made above is fair. On one end we have one thing which is a medium to let our creative juices flow and also for all our bullshit, mud-slinging and leg-pulling. On the other end we have a seemingly techno jazzy interface where we can meet people and read their profiles however inconsequential they may be. Orkut and things similar to it have a phase of usage. When its new, its simply great( well, I have to say that ,because the only motivation i used to have some days was increasing my friends on orkut), but lack of new features and simply lack of change makes it suck pretty soon.So however technically good Orkut maybe, I give it a max of two months of peoples' interest unless they change it drastically.But just come to think of it, on blogger we have been pretty active for the past 8 months now and though it has caused a few fights and ill-feelings the plethora of joy it usually gives to share our "near-life" experiences expunges those(ill-feelings). Today we've completed 8 months since we have started blogging ( not counting the inactivity periods in between), so heres to Freaks Inc and happy blogging !

The Van der Vaart Saga

Just managed to come across an interesting piece of article on the dutch sensation Rafael Van der Vaart. Manchester United has been courting this 21 yr old whizkid for 2 yrs now...and if British Tabloids were to be believed...then Fergie was supposed to move in for the kill and offer 15M to swoop Rafael.
But apparently Fergi has come to know of Rafael's high profile relationship with
Sylvie Meis and is having second thoughts abt the transfer. Fergie had trouble with the relationship of Becks and Posh Spice...and that was one of the reasons Becks was shown the door.But this Weis woman is leagues better than Posh.
Search for her pix on Google guys...she is one helluva hottie.

Balls

Another Near-Life Experience (Think I have been having too many of them these days)

Venue – Mongolian Grill of Columbia
Date – Saturday, June 21, 2004
People – Myself ,Vishal , Anadi , Anoop.

Will start with some other events of the day; got to watch a brilliant game between Holland and the Czech Republic .It was one of the best soccer games I have seen. FastPaced attacking football at its best. And I still repeat my words “Though Czech Republic deserved to win, Holland certainly did not deserve to lose” I hope ppl do understand the literary connotations of the contradiction ;-)

After that superb game we decided to goto the Mongolian Grill. It’s a Thai Cuisine restaurant on Columbia. Bala was gonna accompany us but unfortunately due to his
advisors (Dare I say his name and he would pop up outta nowhere :) email, he had to stay back to submit some work.

The idea behind the grill is --

There is a Salad Bar where u can make ur own salads. Also there is a buffet corner where u pick up the ingredients of the food u want cooked; down to the amount of salt and the sauces u would like added and they make it for u that way.

Though it was great food, but the highlight of the evening was something completely different. The lady who stole the show completely away from the food was one of the waitresses who was serving us. Just to make u understand how she with her amazingly beautiful smile took away the limelight from the food I would like to just say one line. Even Anoop was looking at her more than the food :)

She can easily give any Hollywood actress a run for their money. Aishwarya Rai probably isn’t even in the same class. To top her amazingly beautiful face, she had an even more amazing figure. A smile anybody would kill for. One of those for whom poems are written. Stuff Dreams are made of. All one would probably do on a date with her would admire her beauty.
(And there is no exaggeration involved here; am sure other freaks who accompanied me will vouch for me.)

Nonetheless, we left with a heavy heart absolutely not wanting to get her out of our sights. In fact, I shamelessly accept, we even went to the extents of driving in front of the Grill when we finally left the place in hope of catching a glimpse of her.(Also u need to consider the fact that Goli was in the driving seat ;-))

Then we went off a nearby Star Bucks and spent the evening talking bt the most weird (Goli thyair) topics. An hour just went in discussing the life and more importantly philosophy of an unnamed loner. :)

Also, I would like to nominate and vote the abovementioned waitress the Official Freaks Inc. Babe with immediate effect.

Goli, agle Saturday same time same place? kya bolta hai ?

Latest Addition to Freaks Activity -- Taboo.

This particular board game was introduced to all of us by Anoop.
A brief introduction to the game – U r given words which u have to prompt to ur team members to guess using clues which do not include certain words which are written at the bottom of the card.

The game was great fun all in all. Some things need special mention. I thought I should archive them on the blog so we remember the newly devised clues forever.

What is NOT – is paint.
As sweet as …. – Jelly
Hockey + Grame Hick is – Hickey
Arsene Wenger – Arson
Claude Makelele + Jayawant Lele – Ukelele
Juventus – Juvenile
Nimbus 2000 – Broom
Prisoner of Azkaban – prison facility (though the right word turned out to be ‘book’)

Also among other points to be mentioned bt the 2 days of fun would be the exemplary sportsman spirit we showed, not ending up even having one spat during the entire duration of the game :-). (I think u can discount the row I had with Goli or Bala occasionally swearing S.O.B) Amongst all of this special mention goes to the DHAMKI that Vishal gave to Srikant – Quoting him on that “G main Dum hai to yahan bol na, Bala ko kya bol raha hai” … Boy ,that dialog has probably has scarred Srikant for life. The after effects of the threat were so dire that Srikant suffered from an attack of headache immediately.:-)

Also include the fact the GOLI (in whose words “Bahut hi simple aur weird si game hai”)never managed to score beyond a negative point or with a bit less exaggeration I would say not more than a couple every time he turned up prompting clues. BTW,with all due respect,COMB is the correct pronunciation, not "cooomb" as u said. Proof -- COMB

Trying to keep the blog short, I end it here with a small request to every Freak who has played the game to at least contribute 2 devised clues.

Dream Band

Been a long time since anyone wrote on the blog...everyones been 'working' out real hard in past few days...while i have been busy doing my Laundry :-).
Being Freaks abt most of the stuff we like...i had a quick poser for ppl (esp Aup,Stri and Bailya) 'If u had a dream line up for a rock band with 4 members...who wud u have?'

My choices:

Vocals/Rhythm: Jaymz Hetfield (Metallica)...GOD...nothing more said.

Lead Guitarist: Randy Rhoads (Ozzy) ...Ive always been a HUGE fan of this guy...even though he has made only 2 albums with Ozzy,those 2 demonstrated that if he were to be alive,he wudve been one of the all time Metal greats.

Bass: The one and only....Steve Harris (Iron Maiden)...never seen/heard a guy who plays the bass guitar like a rhythm guitar...breakneck speed....hear PowerSlave to believe me.

Drums: Ahh now this is a tough one...as much i love Lars/Nicko/Vinnie Paul...i guess i wud have to go with Mike Portnoy(dream Theater).

Waiting to hear ur voices...Scream for me!
P.S. Im learning to write short Blogs :-)

Near Life experience ( Anubhav ishtyle) on I-95
Yesterday evening we(Suraj, Jeetu, Anubhav and I) had been to Siva Vishnu temple. Samir's whimsical nature justified with his undecisive contemplation to come or not , finally "No" being his desicion, coupled with Pradeep's mood ensured that we had two places empty in our Honda Civic.It was 7 ish in the evening and it struck me as we were leaving the house that Anubhav was alone and he would not mind accompanying us.Anubhav's extraordinarily quick "geting ready" skills ensured that we werent delayed anymore.The absence of Anadi in the car ensured that we didnt take any wrong exits and lose our way, though I must admit that I am usually his(Anadi's) accomplice in crime(taking wrong exits) when he doesnt screw it up all alone.We spent a nice 1/2 hour at the SSVT culminated with savories like "Yogurt Rice" and "Mango Lassi" that made Anubhav promptly declare, "Wow..This is the best way to end a fast".
On our way back, Suraj doing his typical "ranti" manouvres, we were approaching Baltimore pretty quickly. In the middle of the journey we were overtaken by a Uhaul truck with a BMW Z3 convertible in tow.We just got into a deep discussion about why that person must have hooked the BMW to his Uhaul trailer. Only a desperate relocation at a time when no one else must have been available for him might have prompted his imprudent decision. It was not difficult to hear each other echoing similar thoughts that had the BMW Z3 been theirs, how they would treat it like a queen and never do such a ghastly act with it.More disturbing were the sparks which were emanating from the friction between the trailer and the ground, undoubtedly due to the high speed(about 90mph) the Uhaul was pulling it at.Suraj stuck to 60Mph and soon the truck was out of sight.A few minutes passed by and Suraj suddenly interjected the silence by saying," Oh shit, saw that car? did you all see that major accident?". Taken aback by his words which caused our lackadaisicial minds get out of slumber we all rhymed back a "NO".As we drove past the spot where Suraj had suspected that an accident just took place, we saw nothing and Suraj was sure by then that he had been hallucinating. But he kept telling us that he saw a car which cut across two lanes and went into the bushes that separate I-95 N and S and needlessly to say we didnt believe him. Seconds later we saw a Uhaul, this time with nothing in the trailer behind it and a close second look at the sparks coming from behind confirmed that it was the same Uhaul we had seen a few minutes ago. Where was the BMW Z3 then? Yeah..Suraj wasnt hallucinating, it was the same unmanned BMW Z3 which got unhooked from the trailer of that Uhaul and cut across two lanes to the left before crashing into the ditch(bushes)/road divider between I95 North and South, and mind you this happened when there were other vehicles behind the Uhaul travelling at around 70.The owner of the car was still oblivious about what a phenomenon had taken place and his Uhall still whistled away at 90 mph.We immediately decided to chase the Uhaul and let him know that his BMW Z3 was gone and here we were helped by Suraj's F1 style driving which has earned him the dubious distinction of many speeding tickets.We were next to him by his right and we were honking and honking to attract his attention but that man ( who I can now say for sure was a drunk, stoned idiot)would not hear.Luckily, there was some other person who had also noticed what had happened and (he)sent an alarm from the left side making the person( the BMW owner) finally realize that something was amiss and causing him to slow down. Being on a highway we couldnt just stop, so we just moved ahead, just looking back and thinking about what had happened,almost missing exit 47B towards UMBC, engrossed in our discussions.Just spare a thought for the person who realizes that his fav possesion which he was carrying in tow is no longer there.What thoughts must have raced in hs mind for that split second when he was told by the person who informed him that his BMW has crashed, what a mile or a mile and a half behind. What must he have been thinking when he would have had to take an exit to get on to I95 south and keep looking around to the left in the bushes to see if he can find his BMW somehere.But I guess a man as stupid as he, deserves his fate. He may argue for the nex few months with his insurance agents or may even sue Uhaul for not providing a stable trailer but can he ever answer these questions:

Scenario 1> What if the approaching cars from behind had crashed into the BMW leading to a massive mayhem with about 10 or more cars involved in the crash.
Scenario 2> Say it eluded the cars approaching from behind, but what if the unmanned BMW ( clearly a misfired bullet) evaded the ditch between I95 N and S and got on to the other side causing a major accident.Imagine a driver on I95 south coasting along at 65 and suddenly he sees a BMW just cutting across out of nowhere.Since the Uhaul was travelling at 90 odd there is a good chance that the sideways speed of the BMW, when it got itself free from the trailer hooks was pretty high ,since it had the momentum to keep moving along.

We all laughed it out in the end with Suraj(now endowed with the power of hindsight from Dravid) saying that he had thought that the car was making an F1 style overtaking manouvre.He said he was thinking.." Oh that car has briskly changed one lane, oh another..and oh its gone( crashing into the bushes )". But what if there was actually a scenario 1 as stated above, then we(our car) would be approaching a mass car melee at 70mph :-))

~Anoop

हिन्दी प्रचार के प्रयास मैं मेरा छोटा सा योगदान् --


मौत से ठ्न गयी

ठन गयी
मौत से ठन गयी

जुझ्ने का मेरा इरादा न था,
मोड पर मिलेंगे इसका वादा न था,

रास्ता रोक कर वह खॅडी हो गयी
योन लग ज़िन्दगी से बडी हो गयी

मौत की उम्र क्या है ? दो पल भी नही,
ज़न्दगी सिल्सिला, आज कल की नहीं

मैं जी भर जिया,मैं मन से मरुन्,
लौट्कर आउंग, कुच से क्य ड्ररुन ?

तु दबे पाव्, चोरी-चुपे से न आ,
सामने वार क्रर फिर मुझे आजमा

मौत से बेखबर्, ज़न्दगी क सफर्,
शाम हर सुर्मयी, रात बंसी क स्वर्

बात ऐसी नहीं कि कोई गम ही नहीं,
दर्द अपने-पराये कुछ कम भी नहीं

प्यार इतना परायो से मुझको मिला
न अपना से बकी है कोई गिला

हर चुनौती से दो हाथ मैने किये,
आंधियो मैं जलाये है बुझते दिये

आज झकझोरता तेज तूफान है,
नाव भॉवरौ की बाहौ मैं मेहमान है

पार पाने का कायम मगर होसला ,
देख तेवर तूफान का, तेवरी तन गयी

मौत से ठन गयी |

-- अट्ल बीहारी वाजपयी.

Beta Testing of a new blogger template.(Just goes to say how motivated my Sundays usually are..for that matter any day ). Comments required. Meaningful comments should include apart from criticism, a link to a blogger template which you think would be more appropriate, an image for the index page etc :-)). The Hindi dates seemed to have worked well with the flow of the blog. So also added " Vishesh Tipanni " a la Amitabh style instead of "comments". Anyone more knowledgable in Hindi could suggest another word for the same. Suggestions for that one sentence which says what the blog depicts, are also welcome.

~Anoop

Bahut Heavy Movie Hai!!!

The man has finally delivered! After almost a year of pretexts and irrational denials, the ‘peer’ finally conjured up the courage to watch the ‘Heaviest’ movie of ‘em all “3 Deewarein”. And was the man impressed by it or wat! (Balasmosis sentence).
It surely wasn’t a breezy, happy go lucky, Speedo advertising movie made by an effete group of self-professed intellectuals like Karan Johar and Co. And best of all I didn’t have to endure the pain of sitting through irrelevant song and dance sequence or the misery of mindless slapstick idiosyncrasies.

Without delving too much into the movie, I wud just pen the gist of this gripping fare.
---Here you have a story about three criminals - one who hasn’t committed the crime, one who accidentally committed it, and the third who confesses to have done it in his senses. All three have been sentenced to death. A filmmaker wants to document the turmoil that they undergo. Slowly, a bond begins to form between the three men and the filmmaker as they realize that in some inexplicable way, they are linked to each other--- (courtesy some review website).

It’s fascinating to watch the movie unravel its glorious uncertainties; at a pace that the Lee’s and Chuktar’s don’t vie for. The acting is top-notch especially that of Juhi Chawla. She is certainly a revelation in the movie…finally managing to avoid her 2000W toothy grins. The bedroom scene where she threatens her husband to file for divorce or be scalded with gasoline is one of the best I’ve seen in a hindi movie in recent times (“If you don’t…I will do this tomm and the day after…and the day after that”…cult dialogue that one!). Don’t think I have to say much abt the acting skills of the thespian who goes by the name of Naseer. Jackie too has finally emerged from his ‘Thumbs-Up’ shadow!

Ive always been a fan of ‘Kukunoor-ish’ flix and this movie reiterates that it aint worth second thoughts to watch his movies. Using his directorial skills Kukunoor manages to paint a grim yet touching picture of lives gone wrong without making it gory and with the minimum use of dialogues. Next un on the agenda…Bollywood Calling…haven’t seen that yet. Freaks…If you're almost brain dead thanks to all the movies that you have been assaulted by lately, watch this movie for guaranteed revival of your grey cell embryos.
Heavy zaroor hai…but fulltoo vasool hai.

Enlightened…

“Enslaved by three walls,
The fourth, a barrier in my will.
Break it I must, leaving behind a hollowness,
Sighs and screams begging to be free.
But free I am, free is my mind.’’

Memoirs of a Power Rafter

“Aag Se Khelna” a statement glorified from my VESIT years...worship the unnatural; carry out activities which fall into the far end of the imbecility spectrum. A reunion of my undergrad memories brings to fore such actions…correctly typifying the above statement. So equipped with a Level I rapid experience (with a couple of glorified losers at Letchworth Ntl. Park), hydrophobia and zilch swimming skills, I still had the stomach to face the Cheat river. When I told my buddy Vivek about the idea, he completely freaked out….these were his exact words “Bala bathroom mein nahaneko hi fat thi hai…udhar jaake main Rapid Stilling karne wala hoon!!!”

Nevertheless off we went in 2 separate cars to counter the raging River. As destiny wud have it we never got a chance to meet the other group…whatever be the reasons…but fate was benevolent…for once. A reasonably uneventful drive took us to West Virginia…the only noteworthy incident being the speeding ticket that we got (my car now has the unenviable distinction of having got a ticket both times when we went rafting!). Having reached the place we had no clue of where the rest of the gang were…no cell fone signal u see (I have to admit here that an IR port doesn’t help in such situations). The wait was killing us…so were the rest of the ppl who were waiting for Capt.Marwadi & Co. (or shud I say Capt.Proxy & Co.).

They finally made a call and put us on to the raft (though had to endure the usual rafting technical mumbo-jumbos). With Rupil and urs truly at the front end of the raft (apparently the power paddlers), Srikant in the middle (to avoid raft toppling over) followed by Ajju, Viv and the guides, we set sail on the hallowed waters. Since I was right at the front, the sonic fury of the water totally cut me off from our guides instructions. Sri used to chip in his bit by repeating to the guys in front what the instructor said. A second late, we wud have all gone swimming….thats y Sri’s part was extremely crucial.

Waddling through calm waters initially, swatting gargantuan horseflies and psyching ourselves up to face the uncertainties that Mother Nature had in store for us, we reached the First Rapid ‘The Big Nasty’.

Big Nasty: (Level5) The first Rapid and really a Nasty one at that. Our guide’s psychogenic talks really helped us in a way to bear the onslaught the river had to offer. The Big Nasty was nothing but a hole that sucked objects towards itself and spat them right out towards a huge rock…that was the scary part u think…no sir. We cudnt see the rapid at all in the first place coz it was at a place where the river turned right (u take a right and viola…ur there swimming/gasping and hoping God gives u another day!)…this made it all the more dangerous. The trick here was to keep the raft at an angle and avoid the hole by taking a left.

With feet deeply rooted in the raft…paddles cutting through the skin of the water and pounding hearts we took the turn. Within no time we realized that we had ‘hagged’ badly and found ourselves right in the hole. The raft was quivering like an autumn leaf on a decrepit oak tree. This is when our instructor screamed…’don’t panic…row harder…more Horsepower!!!’. And guess what…we did just that and absolutely CREAMED the Big Nasty. A bunch of abt 20 ppl standing on top of the rock that I was talking abt cheering us on at every motion of our paddles…real adrenaline pumper that un! High-fives, shoulder charges and hugs all around…it surely was a helluva confidence booster tonic. After our raft, none of the rafts made it…a few broken noses and busted ankles galore. Bring on the other Rapids baby!

Even Nastier: (Level4) Yeh that was the name of the next rapid. A pieca cake according to me after the Big nasty. Twas a level 4 rapid and after a level 5 rapid, it felt as smooth as the creamiest “tiramisu”!!

Rooster Tail: (Level 5) This was easily the most enjoyable Rapid of em all. The water level drops abt 10 feet and rises up again giving a roller-coaster feel to the entire experience. Its called the Rooster tail coz as the water rises up from the crest, the force of the water splashing takes the shape of a Rooster’s tail. Awesome experience and ofcourse no casualties again.


Middle and Lower Coliseum: (Level 5) Ahh this is where the fun part starts. A set of 2 quick rapids within touching distance of each other. Our guide had warned us that if u screw up on the first un, the 2nd wud killya. But as luck wud have, we (I to be precise)did just that…fucked up real bad. Cudnt hear shit that the instructor said and completely froze. Rupil saw me doing nothing and screamed at me….now that really stirred the Hornet’s nest. Both Power paddlers were screaming on top of their lungs with the Rapid a few feet away from us.

As we hit the rapid, call it sleight of hand or twist of fate, Srikant was thrown out of the raft. The buoyancy that was created yanked the instructor out of the raft too… ‘Eureka’!
This is where the genius of a man called Vivek Shekar comes in. Instead of offering his hand or his paddle, he throws his paddle towards Srikant…’Le Pakad’… another cult dialogue from the bevda. U shudve seen Srikant’s face at that point in time…the expression was priceless…zoink!

The rest of the rapids weren’t as eventful…except for Rupil’s foolish bravado that had him almost swallowed by the rapids…water water everywhere and all u cud do was drink!

After 3 hrs of pure mayhem, we finally reached the shore. Rafts had cut our skin real deep and the mucky shore waters were kissing our fresh flesh. Trudging along, barely managing to carry our dead limbs and sore butts we reached the bus to take us back to the office. White water rafting is a thrilling, adrenaline pumping activity and I wud seriously recommend that to Freaks who haven’t tried it yet. As I look back at the experience, I have muddled thoughts in my mind…thoughts of fear, pleasure, anxiety and satisfaction. And given a choice I wud be out there again defying gravity and flouting the raging river…
Ash to Ash…Dust to Dust…Fade to Black…But the Memory remains!

This is really interesting..


Consider any list of numbers that was obtained from the financial
records of a corporate, or from geographic, scientific and
demographic data.It comes as a great surprise that, if the numbers
under investigation are not entirely random but somehow socially or
naturally related, the distribution of the first digit is not
uniform but the following: 1 will be the first digit about 30% of
cases, 2 will come up in about 18% of cases, 3 in 12%, 4 in 9%, 5
in 8%, etc.

For the more mathematically inclined - the first digit, D, appears
with the frequency proportional to log (1 + 1/D).This is known as
Benford's Law.

The astonishing fact is that this law is correct for ANY list of
meaningful numbers that are socially or naturally related. It also
astonishing that none disputes it or offers a competing law related
to digits.

The law was discovered by the American astronomer Simon Newcomb in
1881 who noticed that the first few pages of his logarithm tables
books were more worn than the last few and from this he surmised
that he was consulting the first pages-which gave the logs of
numbers with low digits-more often

In 1938, Frank Benford arrived at the same formula after a
comprehensive investigation of listings of data covering a variety
of natural phenomena.

In 1961 Roger Pinkham discovered an interesting property of the
Benford's probabilities.It turned out that these probabilities
(i.e. 30%, 18%, 12%, in 9%, 8%, etc) are scale invariant. In other
words, if a set of numbers followed Benford's law closely, and if
all the numbers in the set were multiplied by a nonzero constant
(such as 22.04 or 0.323), then the new set of numbers would also
follow Benford's law closely. Only the probabilities of Benford's
law had this amazing property.

This scale invariance explains why Benford's law works on financial
data throughout the world, even though the data are expressed in
different currencies.

Benford's law has surprising applications in financial fraud
detection. Because human choices are not random, invented numbers
are unlikely to follow Benford's law.

The interesting thing is that the more the deceivers try to make
their acts look random the easier it is for CPA's using Beford's
law to expose them.

Dr. Theodore P. Hill asks his mathematics students at the Georgia
Institute of Technology to go home and either flip a coin 200 times
and record the results, or merely pretend to flip a coin and fake
200 results. The following day he runs his eye over the homework
data, and to the students' amazement, he easily fingers nearly all
those who faked their tosses.

A person trying to fake 200 flips of a coin would never list 6 or
more series of the same side although in true randomness these
series have a quite high probability of occurrence.

A SAILOR'S (B)LOG

Fellow crew ,
Now that we are back in calm waters I thought I'd
let you know that I had a great time on board. The worst moments turn out
to be the ones best remembered.
Had it not been for the Captain's misjugdement I am sure I would
have had a few broken bones today. Even though I was upset in the
beginning, in the end i was quite relieved at having rafted a class lower.
The first few minutes "on the water" were literarlly for most of us "in
the water".. Our most experienced boatsman was slightly....what i would
call..... totally confused...and so was our loudest sailor "check Vishal
check"....he won't admit it but he was as confused as our veteran.
When three of them went overboard...i dug my feet deeper in the raft.. So
deep that I couldnt fall over even if the raft capsized.
After the first major calamity...Vishal and Aarti were so shaken that they
were most happy to jump rite into the centre of the raft the moment we
experienced the slightiest turbulance....And when Captain decided that he
had to be one up over the rest and went overboard the second time..it
didn't frighten me at first cause it all seemed to be one thrilling game
...till he kept going and it seemed that he would chrash into the
rocks...saved by a kind indian soul he was once again back ...smiling
sheepishly and claiming that he didnt freak out...Vishal and Aarti were all
the more determined to stay in the boat and I guess i was the most ..
...The most memorable was Anadi's emotionally loaded lecture when Anubhav
went in for a dip....he just yelled ...as if we had all conspired to throw
him over ....anyway when he calmed down ..he spoke maybe the most
thought provoking words of the trip ...."Right now nothing is right
nothing is wrong....." The rest of our trip flew "rapidly"....pun not
intended :)...with me getting "totally wet like after 2 hours " ....and
vishal and anadi SHREiKing "r we there yet ? " every few minutes...
all in all I had a good time and hey Anadi the seat belts in no way meant
to reflect ur driving...u did a really good job.
Hope we all get to do it one more time...hopefully we'd remember the action
for forward and backward by then....


-Nicolle

I will paste somethings in Vedanta which was analyzed by my friend which is pretty clearly indicative that Swami Vivekananda was perfectly right. In particular reference to what Balls has asked .For once I disagree with his views

* Balls' quote :
1."Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful"-think abt it ... were the English good when they plundered our rich country? Is Conversion holy?
2."If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light"-Cant be more ridiculous...i see someone being ruthless murdered...does he expect me see the good in that?
3."Throw the burden on yourselves!"-Y shud i do that when sumone else has machiavellian instincts

Underlying Concept: The world can be called as a dream. The world exists in the mind. When our mind stops working the world does not exist for us (eg. SLEEP). Mind is temporary and when a person has realized God his mind dissolves. So when the mind is dead then where is the question of this world. Does this world exist for a person who is in deep Samadhi. The only thing he sees is God, Divine light, bliss.

To answer Balls' question : If we are all God’s divine pieces, we do not need him at all. If whole world is pervading Brahma, there should be no hell, no war, no problems, no pain.
Answer : Why cant Brahma manifest itself as pain, suffering and problem. Why does it always have to manifest itself as pleasure, happiness, peace. As long as you see pleasure, you will see pain. Once your are above pleasure, then pain wont also affect you. Again all these are the states of the body and the soul is pure.
Nainam chhindanti shastraani, nainam dahati paavakah,
Na cha enam kledayanti aapah, na shoshayati maarutah".This is a shlok from the Geeta describing the soul. Pain and Pleasure mean nothing for a realized person. If you ask this same question to an advaitist he will say “War, problems and pain belong to your body and this world. When there is no world then where is the question of all these things”

I know I am not well read on this issue but I am trying to be.Though it is a totally spiritual perspective of viewing at the question I think it qualifies as an answer.

Found this on the web. really interesting.. Lotsa ppl may not agree on this. I atleast know of one.

"It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves! ... Whenever we are tempted to say that the world is going to the dogs, we ought to analyse ourselves, and we shall find that we have lost the faculty of seeing things as they are." - the greatest personality ever born.. big V.