Cutting my Birthday Cake!

I had my birthday recently। And as you can see in the picture I am cutting my birthday cake. To visit my photo album on Flickr click here.

Job Cuts | Invest in Mutual Funds

Are you living in fear that your company might throw you out? Just follow these simple rules. There are two different times in life. One is Good Times and the other one Bad Times. When you are having a very good time with your life, be prepared for the bad times. You must have a plan on how to tackle the problem of any future job cuts. And the best way to do it is to invest a part of your monthly savings in a diversified mutual fund. It is wise to invest in an SIP (Systematic Investment Plan) rather than going for the traditional lumpsum investments. Follow the rule, which says that do not put all your chickens in one basket. That means, choose more than one mutual fund scheme. The best way to start is to visit your local bank where you have your savings account. Investing directly into equities is a risky move. You should avoid direct equity as it requires you to be well versed with the stock markets. When you loose your job look for another one. During this time you can fund all your monthly expenditure by withdrawing partially from your mutual fund investments.

Job Cuts | Where To Go Now?

I was upset when I heard about Jet Airways cutting jobs. And it all happened suddenly. Not only Jet Airways, but some other airline companies too are cutting jobs. I feel sorry for them and I know how it is like when you are out from such a good reputed company. Now, they will have to find a job again. Will they go for Airlines? I don't think so. Airline companies have now become very unstable. Sometimes they even run on heavy losses due to the sudden rise of the crude prices. My suggestion would be to look for a job in the hospitality industry like travel & tourisim, and the hotels. This industry is growing very rapidly and I have never heard them doing job cuts.

Fish Curry | Macher Kalia | The Recipe

This is how I cook my macher kalia (fish curry). Its so easy, just try it. Chop some onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger and green chillies. Put them in a grinder. Grind them until they become a paste. Cut the fish into small pieces (as you like it). Then clean the fish under running water. Take a kadhai (large fry pan) and put some musturd oil in it. Heat the pan in a mild flame. Now drop all the fish one by one into the fry pan. Fry all the fish under mild flame until they get a reddish colour. Then pour all the paste on the fish in the fry pan. Stir gently and add some water if needed. Now add some haldi powder, salt, dhania powder, jeera powder, and chicken masala ( yes, you heard that right - I use it in macher kalia, interesting is int it). Again add some water and stir it. Now add some tomato ketchep sauce to it. Stir well. Now cover the lid and simmer it for 15 mins. After 15 mins, sprinkle a pinch of garam masala powder on it and quickly cover the lid and keep it till lunch (or dinner). To garnish, add freshly chopped green dhania patta on it. I sometime use grated cheese if there is no dhania patta near by. Believe me, I love to experiment with food. Next time I plan to add some chopped pepperoni pizza.

Spinach on Gandhi Jayanti.

Today was 2nd October 2008. And today was the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. So, the stock markets was closed. I had nothing to do. So, I thought it will be great if I help my mom with her cooking. Today, there was no non-veg item. I was searching for something to cook. I saw a bunch of spinach in the fridge. I took them out and decided to cook it in a very special way. Mom started washing it under running water. I got ready with a plate and a knife. After chopping it into small pieces my mom added some vegetables to it. Then in the kitchen she fried all the spinach along with the vegetables in a non-stick fry pan. Then she added some salt, pepper, haldi, and some more masalas. I saw a bottle of kasundi (mustard) in the fridge. I added some to the spinach. The mustard paste gives a good aroma to it. Finally, my mom added some water and covered the pan with its lid. After 20 mins its all done. At lunch we had rice, spinach, dal, aalu bhindi. Oh ya, the spinach....it was lovely. After lunch I had an apple which helped me to digest the musturd spinach.

Today I visited Guruji and did some research.

Today I decided not to use Google as a search engine. Why? Because today I was looking for some information which was related to India. So, I decided to visit Guruji.com and found that it has improved itself a lot. Yes, you can call it a copycat of Google. However, Guruji has its own limitations. For example, if you do an image search with the word 'bollywood' it returns some pics about indian history. I mean what is going on. I was looking for some bollywood faces and not about history. So, again its not so perfect.

However, one thing that made me happy was its music search. I searched for 'Summer of 69' and found the exact match. The best part is that when you click on any song it simply plays it on your computer. I think they need to work very hard if they want to win over Google. I am sure that one day this website will launch their very own web based e-mail service. And they also need to give an answer to Google's social networking site Orkut.

Carmel Convent English Medium School Madhupur Class 1992

Original scanned copy.

Original scanned copy enhanced.

Cropped and enhanced.

Top row from left.

Binod Singh, Bipin Singh, Sachin Jha, Sunil Tekriwal, Sanjay Singh, Manoj Agarwal and Iqbal Khan.

Second row from left.

Shakeel Ahmed, Sandeep Bathwal, Bikash Bathwal, Chandip Singh, Aman Singh, Amit Singh, Suman Paul and Amrendra Jaiswal.

Third row from left.

Pradeep Poddar, Rajesh Das, Shantanu Dan, Irina Goswami, Sandip Modi, Sandeep Banerjee and Sajan George.

Fourth row from left.

Rashmi Dalmia, Neelam Fatima, Elsi Uthup and Kanchan Verma.

Finally, we have our class teacher Mr. Mitra popularly known as Sir Mitra sitting on a chair.

The Indian Dal

The picture above is a typical Indian style soup called "Dal". Have you heard of the famous "Dal Roti"? This is it. It is very tasty as it is made up of various ingredients and masalas. After cooking a bowl of dal my mother kept it on the dining table for a while so that it may cool down a little. I got this opportunity and clicked some photos of it. I love cooking too. And also taking pictures of them. I will be posting it all in this blog in future. So keep visiting this blog.

How to Buy a Laptop over the Internet?

In this post I will tell you how did I bought my first laptop computer online.

First I visited an internet cafe in order to access the internet. Then, from the internet cafe's computer I opened futurebazaar.com which is one of the most popular online shopping websites in India.

In order to purchase any product from Futurebazaar, you need to have an account. Opening an account is free and simple. After opening my account, I started searching for a cheap laptop in the computer section. There I found a laptop which was in my budget. I quickly placed my order, and paid via Internet Banking. You also have the option to pay by Credit Cards and Debit Cards.

Then I got an e-mail from Futurebazaar confirming my transaction. I also received some more e-mails from Futurebazaar about the status of my Laptop computer. I finally received my laptop withing the time frame they mentioned ie. three weeks.

I received my laptop in good condition. It was well packed and shipped by Blue Dart.

How to watch Live Internet TV Channels on your Computer?

In order to watch live Television on your computer first of all you need a good internet connection. Broadband connection will be the best. However, there are some channels which you can watch with your old dial up connection. I myself do not have a broadband connection. But I do watch channels like CNN & BBC on my portable laptop computer. I connect the internet via GPRS. My service provider is Airtel. I have to pay Rs. 498.00 per month, and that's it. No extra charges. No extra billing. This is an unlimited service. And it is for 30 days only. At present the quality of the television channels are not good as compared to normal cable connections. But if you are on broadband you will see the difference.

For those of you who already have a good broadband connection, and if you want to watch tv over the internet, then just open Google and type the keyword free tv and hit enter. Then you may choose any website of your choice and open it. The rest the website will tell you.

For those of you who do not want to search over the internet, I would suggest some web sites of my choice. They are Free Tv and WWI TV. You must have either Windows Media Player, Real Player or Quick Time Player installer as these websites may use any one of them as a plug in.

Should you use Facebook for networking?

I saw this documentary program on BBC World Television. It was all about the popular social networking web site Facebook. I got a lot of information about Facebook on how it collects users personal information and makes money out of it. Well, I think making money online like this way is not bad. However, If our personal information is protected and not leaked to third parties, then I think there would be not any problem. But, If they sell or leak our personal information to third parties in exchange of money, then that is not good.

Internet has been invented to communicate and exchange information around the globe. Making money over the internet is becoming more and more popular than ever before. It saves time and money. What Facebook is doing is selling information of people which they have never bought. So how do Facebook collect information? They do not ask for any information from us. They lay a so called trap for there users and wait. Then we users login and fill up the information and provide a little more about ourselves. For example, what we eat, where do we shop, are we married, etc. When I logged in to my account to check what else can I fill up, I found that Facebook has setup a form so that I may by mistake fill up my credit card information including my credit card number, the date of expiry, etc. Why have Facebook created such a form. Then I found that they have also created an option to gift something to my Facebook friends online. In order to make the transaction quicker and faster I must fill up the forms. So, now you can see how clever they are from there counterparts like MySpace, Orkut, etc.

I am sure that next year this time there will be another social networking web site like Facebook, competing with Facebook, and trying to win advertisers trust. I now personally think that visiting and using these social networking web sites are a waste of both time and money if you do not make money. If you still want to use social networking sites then before giving them your time to them, ask yourself what will they give me in return. If you are satisfied as a customer then please go ahead and enjoy networking with you friends online over the internet.