NEED HELP! NEED A GOOD SAMARITAN!

A visually-challenged friend of mine has been diagnosed with Leukemia. The treatment for Leukemia includes Chemotherapy and/or Bone Marrow transplant. Both these processes are extremely expensive for a person coming from a lower middle class background. The estimated cost of the treatment varies from hospital to hospital but is around the sum of Rs 20 Lakhs. He is at present undergoing preliminary treatment at CMCH Vellore.

Is there anyone out there who would be willing to sponsor the treatment of my friend? Is there anyone out there who knows of someone else who can sponsor the treatment? Does anyone know of any organization that sponsors such treatment? My friend needs help and I request you all, on his behalf, to come forward and help him. If there is anyone willing to help or knows people or organizations that can help, please get in touch with me as soon as possible.

Ramblings of an 18 Year Old

Munni is my friend from school. We live in the same town and have been friends for a few years. She is very pretty but is not very smart. She now goes to a local college while I go to a well known one in the city. I have always liked her and whenever I come home from college during vacations we spend a lot of time together. She also likes me a lot and we have long heart to heart conversations. But we are not dating. We are just friends – good friends.

Then there is Sheila in college. She is also a very close friend of mine in college and we hang out together a lot. She is not that beautiful but she is very smart. I really like her company and she also seems to like mine. But we are not dating. We are just friends – good friends.

I guess I am in love. I love both Munni and Sheila but in a different way and I can simply not make up my mind whom to chose as my girlfriend. I would like my girlfriend to be beautiful, in which case I have to go with Munni. But I would also like my girlfriend to be smart, in which case Sheila is the obvious choice.

I have known Munni for a longer time than I have Sheila. I know Munni much better and she seems to understand me, but she is not very smart. She does not read too many books and does not speak or understand English very well. How can I take her in front of my other friends? What will they think of her? It is true that she makes me laugh and I really care about her, but she won’t fit my social status. Undoubtedly she is much more beautiful than any of my friends’ girlfriends, but she will be the odd one out as she won’t be able to participate in discussions. I mean, come on, she likes Bollywood movies and she has no clue who Johnny Depp is or who won the Oscars or what the series Friends is all about!

Sheila is not that pretty but she is smart. She reads a lot and has read all the Nobel laureates in Literature. She watches French and Italian movies and she is suave. But she is very moody. She throws her temper all around and does not understand me most of the time. This does not matter much as she is so busy all the time doing something or the other. She is kind of attractive in her own intellectual way.

I guess I should go with Sheila. She has a very good social standing and she would increase my cool quotient among my friends. I know Munni cares for me and all but I need something more. I am so better than her. Sheila is just my type. This time when I go back to college I shall propose to her. God, I love her so much!

[P.S.: It so turns out that when the boy goes back to college he finds Sheila already dating a guy. He planned to come back and propose to Munni during the vacations, but Munni was also dating someone by then.]

Chitrangada Singh

The first time I saw her she was mesmerizing! I kept waiting for her to appear. I just could not take my eyes off her. It was in the movie Desi Boyz that I first noticed Chitrangada Singh Randhawa. I had seen her earlier movies like Hazaron Khwahishe Aisi and  Sorry Bhai but had never been able to find her name. I have found her extremely pretty. Now, when I say this to my friends, some of them start a discussion on how she is hot and not pretty or how she is pretty and not hot. How do I care? I just like her and find her really pretty in my own way. It is a heart breaker that she is married, and even if she was not she would never notice me. But the fact remains a fact – she looks fabulous! Thanks to a dear friend of mine, I had an opportunity today to watch her on the TV in an award show. She was simply mesmerizing! Maybe one day I shall meet her and then I shall tell her how pretty she is – however cheezy that might sound!

The Refugee Syndrome

My grandparents came to the present West Bengal from what is now Bangladesh during the 1940s, just before the holocaust of partition. Thereafter, till 1982, various other relatives have slowly come over and settled down in West Bengal, mostly around Calcutta. Various families have fared differently. Some have become richer, and some have been driven to the brink of starvation. Since childhood I have been listening to the conversations of the family elders and others who had come over as refugees. From my experience, I have come to the conclusion that there is a pattern in the fortune of the refugees. There are obviously exceptions and this hypotheses cannot be applicable to other refugee communities at this moment.

The people who have prospered after coming to West Bengal are generally those who had nothing when they were in East Bengal or who lost everything in the partition. The ones who could not fare well were generally from well-to-do families in East Bengal or those who could save something from the partition. The people who had nothing or lost everything had nothing to lose in the new land. They did not discriminate between dignified or undignified labour and took up whatever employment came their way and whatever opportunity were afforded them to make some money to subsist. Their zeal to survive at all cost saw them work day and night and change their fortunes over a span of a decade.

People coming from a well-to-do family did not take up just any unemployment as they did not have to worry about subsistence and social status was still higher on their priority list. They gave up opportunities and most of them slowly began sinking into poverty unlike the other group.

Obviously there are exceptions to this generalization but the majority follows this trend. This could also be true for refugees elsewhere but without thorough knowledge about those communities and their background no generalization can be applied. In the absence of any other compelling reason, I believe that it is the force of physical survival and social status that determined the future of the people who migrated to West Bengal from East Bengal.

I am always open to new ideas and would appreciate inputs and suggestions. I am reading more on this subject as of now and shall modify my hypotheses as and when necessary.

Johnny English Reborn (2011)

This issue of Johnny English is not as hilarious as the last one but Rowan Atkinson rocks!!! There are a number of very funny scenes but the movie becomes a drag at a number of places. The women - Gillian Anderson and Rosamund Pike - do not have much role to play but they look pretty throughout. But this movie is surely not for people who do not like Mr Bean in any of his avatars. The plot is pretty straight forward and everyone is in place but the end result id not very engrossing. For people who really like Mr Bean, they will find many occasions to laugh and might even enjoy the movie. I for one liked it but not as much as I had liked the first part.

Camtica 4.3

Camtica enables you to create professional screen recordings, presentations, tutorials and more. You can record any desktop activity with voice, webcam and animated mouse clicks. The resulting video can be saved in various formats including AVI and WMV.

Why do you need Camtica?
* To create professional screen recordings, demonstrations, presentations, screencasts, tutorials and more
* To generate effective videos that help you train, teach, sell and more
* To create demonstration videos for any software program
* To show customers how to use your product
* To create on-demand interactive training, tutorials for school or college class
* To create a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions
* To share your recordings on YouTube, Screencast.com and other videos sites

Features:
* Records entire desktop, selected rectangle region, dynamic region around mouse cursor, webcam
* Records anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen and rectangular regions
* Records desktop screen with audio and webcam together - personalizing your videos by including a webcam movie of yourself over * your desktop at any position
* Records video chats, Skype video calls, games, flash movies played on sites
* Mouse highlighting spotlights the location of the cursor
* Records video in many video file formats including AVI and WMV
* Supports various video and audio codecs
* Free support and advice
* Free lifetime updates and upgrades
* System requirements: Windows XP/2000/2003/Vista/Windows 7

It’s easy to use as one, two, three.

You may get more information about Camtica 4.3 here:
http://jiteco.com/screen_recorder_software.html

Here is a link to download Camtica 4.3:
http://jiteco.com/download/camtica/camtica.exe

Try it first and then decide for yourself. I am quite satisfied with this. Have fun.

Shaolin (2011)

This is a wonderful movie to say the least. I have always liked Chinese movies as they have a wonderful way of narrating, but this is by far the best Chinese movie that I have seen. It has brilliantly combined a wonderful storyline with classic Kung Fu action. You will also have the privilege of seeing Jackie Chan in action.

The story is set during the Warlord era in China when the West has just started laying railway lines there and establishing their power using the fragmented state of the politics. Andy Lau puts in a brilliant performance in the lead role and the background score is wonderful. If you are looking just for an action flick, this is definitely not the movie for you because, even though there are some pretty awesome action sequences, it is the story that prevails. If you take my advice, read the history of China before watching this movie. That way you will enjoy it more.