Swine Flu Diary

I sneezed.

Immediately I checked if my nails were blue and that if I could breathe properly. Now I definitely wasn’t getting fresh air. I was standing in queue at a closeted billing counter of a departmental store. It was definitely hard to breathe fresh air there.

Other than me, everyone wore masks both inside and outside the mall.  Why not, I am in swine flu capital, Pune. I have to check my symptoms at every sneeze or cough, to be sure.

I do carry a scarf these days to cover my mouth like a bandida, but it’s a suffocating feeling.

Interestingly, Pune girls, even before we had heard of swine flu, have been tying headscarves (instead of helmets) while driving as protection against pollution. Their headscarves are unique in that cover their entire face and head except eyes.

Pune Girls Wearing Headscarves - Pic courtesy Eric Parker's Photo stream

A new Police Commissioner tried to ban headscarves in vain, amidst the hue and cry of Pune girls. So, owing to use of these headscarves I think, Pune girls at least are safe from air-borne swine flu contamination. 🙂

Link Diary: March’ 09

This centrestage link is from my friend, Hypermom, who wrote about women driving in Bangalore.

Manofroma has written a very informative post about a beautiful young woman whose body was found in the coffin in Appian Way. Nothing new about perhaps finding a body in coffin, only her body was as fresh as it must be 15 centuries earlier. Manofroma invites an ‘Indian perspective’ on the same.

March 23 was death anniversary of our martyrs Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. Jai Hind: Proud to be an Indian reminded us on their blog. This is their last year’s detailed post.

For humor, here is a clip called ‘If Three Stooges were Makers‘ from Daily Cup of Tech. Go on visit his post to laugh.

Meanwhile, Vikas has started another blog on river rafting in Rishikesh, hop over his blog to read his adventures in detail. It was a nostalgic experience for me. 🙂

Finally, polling for MovieManiax Awards is still on. Vote now.

Results for MovieManiax Awards will be announced on 7th April.

P.S: This is the shortest link dairy post I have ever done.

Blog Action 2

After Blog Action part 1, here is Part 2

I am sure you must have heard of Pink Chaddi Abhiyaan, an initiative by The Consortium of Pubbing, Loose and Forward Women.  Idea is to collect pink panties and send them to Ram Sena chief Ram Muthalik in protest of his dictum at Valentine’s day. This is not in view to uphold Valentine’s day but to oppose unnecessary morla policing against women.

Link Diary: January 2009

Admist so much furure about accustations of perverse ‘slum tourism’ of the West in Slumdog Millionaire and Adiga’s The White Tiger, I couldn’t have escaped unscathed. Dev aka former lallopallo 😀 posed this question “Did West take advantage of India’s slums?’ to veteran filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and wrote a complete post about it. Hop over and oblige Dev with your views. He,  as an apiring filmmaker, is very keen to know what you think.

While we are at the subject, do not miss this Mumbai’s other side (read slumdog) presentation at Telegraph. Note the title: Mumbai’s real slumdogs Do you find it offensive? Slideshow also has a picture of child labourers making carved belts in appalling conditions.

The Mumbai Seige: Link Diary

A complilation of all the worthwhile links I came across various blogs (like DesiPundit, Smoke Signals, lallopallo’s), newspapers and other internet portals

Burning Taj: almost has become image of the year

We have all been complaining about the minute-by-minute media coverage of combat operations that took place during terroist attacks in Mumbai. Musician Vishal of Vishal-Shekhar fame has filed a petition about the same. You can go there on his website to sign the petition to show your support to the cause.

All the landmarks of Mumbai were attcked by 10 terrorists, who were armed to teeth. The timely information on Internet portals was well-publicised. Lede blogs updated everyday-progress in Mumbai attacks. Citizen journalists twittered and blogged away. Vinu’s Flickr page, that displayed first pictures of the Mumbai attacks, is being upheld by every blogger and online media.

Let’s Go Local

Links Delhi Can Use

Internet has already become a dependable resource to keep up with local ongoings in a busy schedule. We book movie tickets online, read online local newspapers or tabloids. Our banking transactions and bill payments are also done online. There are several other things you can do online locally.

I am looking for a rented place these days. There is Locanto, Indianroomates.in and click.in where I find most relevant advertisements. Though, once in a while you can come across a fool’s advertisement like:

I am male 35 year old, living in 2bhk apartment. Looking for a female partner to share my bed. Room rent: 5000k.

!!

Sounds like a dating advertisemnt straight from fropper.

I check all listings for foreign movies, plays, exhibitions, dance shows and recitals in Delhi City Limits magazine. (published by Outlook magazine group). If you are an art lover residing in Delhi and are not going to these events, I would say you are missing something. You can check all these events online here at Delhi Events Web site. This site is diligently and passionately maintained by its founder Rohit Malik at not-so-great-profit. How do I know? I read his interview in the newspaper; he says he wants to keep the site going for the love of it.

Of Blogging Awards, Friends and Links

Before I begin a link diary for this month, I must thank Reema for awarding me Best Blogger award. She awarded whole lot of bloggers aptly: most beautiful blog, artistic blogger, serious blogger and so on. It opened window to more bloggers. 🙂

So, if you want to go ahead and create other award for fellow bloggers: click here to create blog awards. However, this one did not have a generous blogger award that I wanted to give Reema, I would instead give her a high-five of my friendship. 🙂 See right! 🙂

Just as we use MyLiveSignature for generating personal signatures for our blog posts and emails (I use a signature for all my meme posts. :P), we can use this superstickies site to generate colourful post-its. Like one I have used here: (I have used one post-it in my last Olympics post too.)

I recently signed up for Evernote, a useful notemaking tool that can capture anything on your desktop and Web, and save it for you. It makes even the text in your saved images searchable. 🙂 It is only my laziness to login that prevents me from making good use of it. 😦 You can use a plugin in your browser for ease. There are many other notemaking tools available (like Google Notebook), if there is a good one that you use, do let me know in the comments section.

July: Link Diary

Let’s first begin with my post on Its A Free World, I have few questions about CFLs that I would love to have answered from you. There are three questions in this tiny post (tiny from my standards :P) .

I started looking up tumblr blogs for a friend, I ended up with few nice cartoon blogs. Here is one: My Life in a Cube and Garfield minus Garfield. There’s more you can look up here.

cartoon via My Life in a Cube

I then hopped to Postsecret, and was intrigued to see new postcards there. Here are two new:

                                         Postcards via Postsecret

Links Galore: From Memory, Entertainment to Career

I always feel vulnerable about loss of my memory. Irrational fears (I like to believe that they are irrational) like having Alzheimer’s keeps me taking up mnemonics tutorials. That’s how I stumbled to this 2-minute youtube video about 5 ways to boost your memory.

I then came across this wonderful Web site that enlightens me how my brain works. It is book called Brain Rules written by molecular microbiologist, John Medina, in an accessible language. It details 12 ways that work for brain. One of them is that “exercise boosts brain power”. It reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s by 60%. Visit this Brain Rules, illustrative Web site. Surf the slides, chart and videos.

Presentation about 3 Brain Rules

So maybe now I should do these office exercises not only to avoid occupation hazards of a 9-hr job, but also to exercise my brain.