total timepass...

The NHS is one of those coffee table topics discussed quite often in the UK. The theme is generally the same - frustration with how inefficient it is, and horror stories that everyone shares on how their experience has been. Till now, I had not had to interact with them, so for a long time I did not hold any view. But now that I have crossed 30, and need to reach out to them more, my view about them has become very consistent with what I had heard till now! To be honest, I think that if its an emergency or a life-threatening situation, their services are still efficient and quick (apparently), but if you are just a little sick, they are terrible. And there are multiple levels of inefficiencies in their processes. The ones I have experienced myself is at the GP level. I think either it was my bad luck with the GP I registered with, or maybe its the norm, but my experience was quite bad. For one, they make it impossible to even meet the doctor! They make you do all kinds of jumps be

Here is a chart showing world migration, from and to different countries .... This is a page showing indian memes . Its hilarious and you can read it for long and keep laughing the whole time gives its all so true!! And another one listing things we may not have known about India !

I am generally not a fan of self-help kind of books, and a feminist one at that, would definitely be a no-no. At least that's what I always thought. But then there are good self-help books too, so its definitely not right to just discard an entire genre. I have read two such books, which I think at least point out to the right problems, even if they may not be able to give the perfect solution! One of these is, 'Men are from Mars, Women from Venus' and the second one is 'Lean In'. And I just assumed that to be the truth:) But then recently, I realised that Lean In, which to me feels like a good book tends to polarise women a lot. And hence, I thought of submitting my two cents in support of the book. This is not a review, but just my synthesis of what I think Sheryl is saying in the book (or at least what I take away from it, which makes it seem logical to me...) and which answers some of the criticism that comes its way... IF women want to focus on their

In recent years, I have diversified from reading only fiction, to sometimes reading history books. And I just love them. One because they are still stories (so I don't miss fiction) and second because there is so much more that you can understand about the current world, its intricacies and under currents if you can understand and follow its history better. I was always interested in understanding the events in the Middle East, especially the Israel-Palestine conflict and realised I had only a half-knowledge about the issues for a long time. Reading Wiki helped, but not enough as Wiki is good enough to get some information about something, but if you need a detailed insight about anything, Wiki too falls short. So one day in the library, I just picked up this book randomly. And it turned out to be a successful experiment. Of course I learnt a lot about the Middle East through it. But I realised two other things which I tend to sometimes forget. One, its fun to pick random boo

In recent time, criticism for Apple has started to dominate the news a lot more than appreciation. And maybe justifiably so, Apple has started to lag Google/Samsung products. But one thing even Apple critics will accept, their products are way way ahead of Microsoft, which is still used by the majority in the world. The fact that it took Bill Gates an entire day to setup his own built software is testimony to that! I wonder if this news article is true or not, but its definitely believable!

I know its not right to compare India with a Scandinavian country, they are way ahead from even the rest of the world, that comparing them with India is just not fair. Still it does increase the irony.. My question is this (la Arnab style), what would India have been if like in Norway, a huge oil reserve had been found in India. Am sure the result would NEVER have been this . In 25 years, the sovereign fund has (notionally) made every Norwegian a millionaire. If this had happened in India, what would have been the result in 25 years? The mind runs wild, The Gandhis could become multi-multi billionaires The Mulayam/Laloo Yadavs could become billionaires Amma, Maya could become billionaires A Raja could be a billionaire ........... The options are infinite, except every Indian becoming a (notional) lakhpati even! That is the one option we all know is not realistically an option. How sad is that?

Strangers on a train is a play based on the Hitchcock movie by the same name, but with a storyline of its own. It is based on quite an interesting idea, that two strangers who meet on a train agree to murder a person for the other. And they think they will never get caught, because the police will never suspect them as they are not connected. One of those people is a rich heir (Bruno), who wants to have his father out of the way, and the other is an architect (Guy) who is troubled by his ex-wife. What follows is a psychological thriller, where Bruno carries out the murder and then blackmails Guy into committing his part of the deal. But Bruno does not leave Guy alone, he vitiates his life, his soul, his relationship with his wife, and ruins him to the point of destruction. The play is very well acted, and Bruno as a psychologically challenged person is the highlight. There did feel a homosexual tinge in his acting, I wonder if that was also part of the story or not. The sets in t