29 June, 2006

Dream A Dream

Remember me talking about NGO way back in february Link. After due diligence, I zeroed in to work as a volunteer in Dream A Dream Web. DaD is a Bangalore based NGO working on enhancement of lives of economically disadvantaged children. Every one of us has tons of fruitful memories about our childhood. We might talk about our school, toys, joyful summer vacation, host of friends, punishments and pains, jocous moments and many more. Imagine a section of children are being denied of their rightful pleasant childhood just because they born on disadvantage state and family. For no mistake of their own, those kids lead a pathetic life. DaD steps in their formative years and believes in providing a good life. DaD conducts various programs like story telling, teaching computer, encouraging sports, trekking, conducting cultural programs. And with all those programs, DaD aims to provide a normal livelihood for those kids. That normal livelihood are crucuial in imparting more confidence and open up a world of oppurtunity to move ahead. And I strongly believe  in DaD's vision. Not lot of NGO's run with help of volunteers, they demand dedicated people. But DaD started as a voluntary organisation by 6 engineers and its work is purely based on volunteers's enthusiasm.
 
On my association with DaD, I went for volunteer orientation program in april and was waiting for suitable oppurtunity to contribute to their grand vision. I am now working with Dream A Dream computer program, where we impart basic computer training to group of children from the above mentioned background. In the forthcoming program, I volunteer to teach "How to draw using Ms paint" for kids. And here are my primitive ideas about the list of topics that I wanna cover in the training. Do feedback me about your thoughts after seeing the flash presentation. I am sure most of us would have stepped into teaching computer to kids at some point of time. We erred at some styles and found out better way to convey the information to kids. The intended audience for the training will be around 8-13 years. I am looking for more active and constructive feedback. Click on the flash file to move on to next slides.
 
Here is the revised version and it early version.
 
                           
 


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27 June, 2006

Nasty Football Matches

Talking about Italy Vs Australia match. Italy, despite being 3 time world champion, couldn't face australian juggernauts, thats the hard fact. Australia's possession of ball (60%) for the game says it all. And it's Socceroo Lucas Neill reacts after giving away a penalty - resulting in a 1-0 win for Italy - for a tackle on Fabio Grosso during the dying minutes in Kaiserslauternnot fair for Italy to get into quarter finals by the penalty kick route. I have a serious reservation about the judgement of referee to give away shootout chance at the final moments of the game. I wish he had given a free kick rather than that heart breaking decision. I was supporting Italy till that point, after this, I am not gonna be supporter for Italy, its not fair game at all. The sorrow face of that australian defence guy, who made that last minute foul, was undescribeable.
 
England's David Beckham celebrates after scoring the winning goal.  (AP/Matt Dunham)England Vs Ecuador: England played the game with the worst strategy ever, 4-1-4-1 pattern left Rooney in the top all alone. Whatever Rooney tried to do, there were couple of ecuador defence to stop. Add to that, none of the passes from other england players to Rooney were perfect, either he had to run a long way or passes came in midst of defence shield. If at all, Ecuador player Tenoria didn't miss the golden goal chance in first half, England would have had never reached the quarters. Lot of foul game too, if referee was not strict, the game would have had become the childish fight. Atlast my demi-god, england angel David Beckham saved the England face with that beautiful free kick. That goal put a lid on his critics mouth, people were questioning his leadership ability off-late, he was arraigned for failing to inspire the fellow team mates to perform. Expected a lot of quality game and interesting tactics from England team, for which they failed miserably. After that Beckham's goal, England team resorted to all sorts of dirty delay games, just to push off till the final whistle blow. Not at all fair game again. Till now, germany and brazil are the best two teams in the fray. My wishes are that good team should clinch the world cup and matches should be very interesting and competitive.
 
 


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23 June, 2006

Football fever

http://www.wavecaps.com/images/flags/stills/brazil.gifhttp://www.gulf-times.com/mritems/images/2006/6/19/2_92958_1_248.jpg Yesterday's Brazil vs Japan was an interesting match to watch. Curse Indian timings, we got to wake up till night 12:30 to witness the great event. In first half, Japan was concentrating on the defence for long time. And they were successful in thwarting most of the attempts of Brazil forward players- the magical rectangle- Ronaldinho, Robinho, Ronaldo and Kaka. Japan broke the brazil defence ring once and fortunately they converted that attempt into a goal. There were tensions in the face of all brazil players and brazil fans, as they were one goal down at one point of time. Me and my frens were cursing Ronaldo during that time. He was accused then for missing most of the chances given by his team mates. Japan made sure two players were covering Ronaldo always. In the last minute before end of first half, thanks to beautiful cross passes from the other brazil players, Ronaldo scored his first goal in 2006 FIFA worldcup. After that only, we were relaxed. Can't really imagine, Brazil going back to dressing room with one goal down. I missed the second half as it was already late to fall into bed. Morning, woke up to hear the good news that Brazil won the match 4-1, dominating Japan in the entire second half. That was refreshing news for all Brazil fans like me. Viva Brazil, this is the way to go! Wish the finals will be between Germany and Brazil this time. My favorite stars for this season: Ronaldinho, Arjen Robben, David Beckham, Robinho, Messi, Klose, Lahm.
 
 


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21 June, 2006

Dance Show Videos

After a short break, back with a blogpost. And thanks a million for all who encouraged me for my previous dance performance videos. This time, got few more video clips of the stage show. It was shot during my dance school summer showdown. Undoubtedly a great show with excellent performance from professional dancers. I too danced in the show for two songs (no wonder if you can't find me prominently in first two clips, I was dancing in the last row ;) bad dancer huhh...) yet all three video clips are worth watching.
video 1- genre: Jazz
video 2- genre: jiving
video 3- genre: HipHop. This is by professionals. You can spot the difference with ease.
 
 
 


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07 June, 2006

Foot Loose

Learning dance for 4 months now, here is a video on dance of non-professionals. Me and my roommates in Bangalore house. These are Gags - just for laughs. Will soon post the video of my dance school annual showdown.
 
Same song, now my another fren
 
 
Here is one more,
 


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Folklore

http://pragyan.org/images/pages/dalal_street.jpgWhat happened in capital market in past 2 weeks is a tragedy. Huge correction made bearish change in mood of investors in India. Even in this hot moment, a hilarious story made people laugh out in dalal street. I read this story in this week's business today. The story goes like this:
 
A businessman camped in a village and announced that he will buy their monkeys at Rs.10. He also said that he want 1000 numbers of them. People started selling their monkeys to him. After few weeks, its hard to get supply of monkeys in market, so the businessman now decided to raise the price tag to Rs.20. This doubling has helped in getting few more and the story continues like this. Everytime when he hike the price, he will get some supply from the market. After subsequent increase, the price has come to Rs.50 for one monkey. The price tag looked attractive, and people were ready to sell their monkeys to him, but they had none. On this moment, the businessman left for his hometown and before leaving , he appointed an assistant to take care of his business and monkeys collected so far.The image “http://www.ndtv.com/images/topstories/Bse.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
The assistant looked at the inflated price in the local market, devised an idea. He called all the people in the village and announced that he will sell the monkey collected so far at Rs.35 to all people, so that when the businessman returns back, the people could sell them at Rs.50 and take home a hefty profit of Rs.15 for nothing. This offer looked very attractive and everybody bought back the monkeys at much higher price than original price. After that, both businessman and his assistant were never seen in the market. What's left in the village is nothing but all monkeys- not just they sold- but a hoard of people too.
 
The businessman is none other than FII's who came to the market and the people are none other than retail investors like you and me. The monkeys are synonym of the equities traded in our capital market. Now we are left with equities with huge price tag and no buyers to buy them, hence market correction and sensex crash.


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02 June, 2006

Egypt cracks down on bloggers

Egypt government detained and beaten six bloggers for their anti-regime movement and protests through their blogs. Few bloggers were sexually assaulted too. You can read the full story here. The Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel continues to blog from prison, his blog here.  Any action against bloggers for expressing their opinions is condemnable. This is not the first time the bureaucrats and corporate honchos taking actions against bloggers. Earlier in India, the blogger vs IIPM fight raised the same question on our freedom of speech. Egypt government's action, IIPM controversy shows the decreasing trend in patience and accepting criticisms in this fast-paced world. Mr.Statesman, suing or arresting those who fielded views against you is utterly unproductive.
 
Blogging is an expression of freedom of speech, given to each and every citizen in a democratic country. However I analyse, I end up seeing the blog world is full of pros rather than cons. On technology front, blogging is the pinnacle of Web 2.0, which was conceptualized around user generated content. The old internet was based on providing information to users in a static and non-interactive way. The new Web 2.0 business model revolves around creating avenues and solutions for people to fill their content in web, which has proven to be highly successful. On creative aspect, Bloggers are multi-faceted personalities and blogging gives an avenue for them to exhibit their creativity. Lot of construction actions are happening in blogworld. In someways, the blogs listed as technorati's top 100 blogs seed a paradigm change in this world.
 
World has started listening to blog world discussions to understand the true mind of common people. Be it a controversy or appreciation, bloggers views are frequently quoted in all magazines. (Ex, DNA newspaper aggregation on blog views on hot topics). While listing a company profile, Google finance lists recent blog posts on those corporates too. Blog based business models and advertisement ideas are the talk of the wall street now. Metroblogging brings the bloggers in a city to a common platform and metbloggers differ from regular journalists and newspapers in reporting events happening in a city. Metblogs also serves as the original source of breaking news in cities. Wiki article on metblogs here.
 
Within short span of time, this little world has grown as a fifth pillar of democracy and it can be termed as true voice of common man in a country. With the expressed opinions and feelings in media, Statesmen should listen to criticisms and correct the mistakes in the system. Any kind of oppression on the freedom of speech (like egypt's ) should be condemned to the core.
 


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