June 12: When the buttercups walked for charity

It was a strange day, weather wise, that day in June when I popped over to RNOH for their annual charity Buttercup day.

An old old old broken down clock on its own clock tower…

The grounds are full of lovely majestic old trees. This one obviously lost its head

Somebody taking it easy before the race starts

Old gnarled trees

I reached the top and saw this banner stretching out across the road. The walk is from one end of the hospital to the other and back. About 1 mile in total.

A member of the radio Brockley team

People started collecting around in the start finish line

Even teddies got into the act.

Some of the very brave adults and children and their carers all who came up to support this very worthwhile charity

Smiling at something

You can almost see the determination on the face

I don't care if I need walking sticks, but walk a mile I will.

The little girl in the middle, she is from St. John’s Ambulance. there was a celebrity there to help wave off the walk and these two girls were going nuts about him.

With face painted.



Loads of people clicking away.

Its very very near starting time…

This is the celebrity. To my eternal shame, I have no clue who he is

And we are off, this girl was skipping to the end

While I was on my wheelchair, and face painted!

And with my walking sticks.

Now for some faces in the crowd.

But the weather turned and the rain started to come down.

The brollies and jackets started to come on as the rain started to come down.

But Mamma, I dont want to get out of the rain, I want to go for the walk…

But I wont let a little rain stop me, I will wear my jacket, I will hold hands. But I was again humbled by the sheer courage of the various patients who, despite their infirmities and disabilities and illnesses and challenges and the disgusting weather, had shining eager motivated faces. What an amazing display of courage. Hats off to you.

I went and took refuge inside a ward

Orthotics Department..

The first returnees..

I have no idea why there is a barbie doll here…

Some pallets

An old entrance to some storage site

Then as the race was over, we all made our way to the fun place, and passed this posh loo

A Bus Fund got this? But enough of all this, I noticed a cake stand..and made a bee line for it…

A most extraordinary set of delicious cakes and muffins and and and..beautiful.

Unfortunately, the rain came down again..

People sheltering under the marquee on the left..but the rain then went away..to Spain's plains presumably…

Then we had some kids from a Church group dancing..

Nice

The spectators thought so as well

Very nice….taking the final bow.

A stuffed toy shop..

The two girls from St. John’s Ambulance..

A climbing wall…I think I will avoid this..



I dont want to show my face

Wet hair and chewing on a burger

Waiting for food

This burger is good, just smell the smoke

What are they doing?

mmmm, I love icecream

Couldnt take it any more and haired it to the burger stand for a burger and then left..

As I said, it was a lovely day and the grounds have wonderful trees..

Old ancient trees

Mr. Crow has found something nice..

Hmmm, an old abandoned building in a hospital, I mean, this is perfect Horror Movie material



A crimson tree

Sunbeammmmmmmssssss

A creeper going up a tree

Another road into the abandoned ward

the sunlight dappled leaves

A calm weeping willow?

An excited weeping willow?

the tree is leaning over…

Some ferns



I think they are weeds…

 
a container next to where I was parked.

A lovely day out indeed.

Starving the natives

Just read a fascinating story about Salt Starvation which I got hold of after reading this book, Great Hedge of India.

I quote:

Salt Starvation in British India – Consequences of High Salt Taxation in the Bengal Presidency, 1765 to 1878.

Roy Moxham

Little seems to have been written by modern historians about the physiological consequences of salt deprivation that might have resulted from the high Salt Tax in British India. Occasionally, there are brief references to salt being “a basic necessity of life” (Brown 1989, 236), but without amplification. Writers on famine in British India seem generally to have ignored salt intake as a nutritional factor. The indexes to Bhatia’s Famines in India (Bhatia 1967), and Seavoy’s Famine in Peasant Societies (Seavoy 1986), for example, have no references to salt. In recent years there has been much publicity about the evils of excessive salt consumption, and this may have caused some to suppose that salt was unnecessary. Thus, Weber writes of Gandhi: “Generally, however, the thrust of his medical arguments, which should be much applauded by those stressing the link between salt and hypertension, was that a normal diet provided the salt needed for the body without the addition of sea or rock salt which in fact was toxic” (Weber 1997, 80). Probably the best overview of the Salt Tax and the need for salt in India is in Denton’s The Hunger for Salt but, understandably given the massive scope of the book, this is restricted to a one-page summary and is mostly concerned with the twentieth century (Denton 1984, 84-5).

Gandhi’s salt march has tended to focus attention on to the Salt Tax in the twentieth century, whereas the Salt Tax was much greater in the earlier period of British rule – especially in the Bengal Presidency. Consequences could be expected to have been greater, and thus easier to observe, when the tax was higher. For this reason, this essay concentrates on the situation in the Bengal Presidency from 1765 to 1878. It seeks to investigate the level of salt taxation over that period and its effect on the retail price of salt relative to wages; the physiological necessity for salt and the peculiar nature of salt hunger; the minimum salt intake necessary to maintain health and to recover from illness; actual salt consumption; and the particular consequences of a high Salt Tax in times of famine.

Its freely available, but reading about this made me really wonder if the defenders of Colonialism really know the sheer level of problems and injuries and sickness and death they caused? And also another example of what taxation can do to ordinary folks.

As the research by Amartya Sen has shown, famine is pretty much caused not just by weather patterns but by active or idiotic responses by governments. Here is a list of famines in British India. Simply adding it up gives me an idea of about 40-50m killed. Now there’s a fair few but only darkies, eh? Who cares…We are already hurting here as well, while its nowhere near starvation time (perhaps we could think about it given the rates of obesity..?) rising food prices are troublesome…Given the level of taxation in the food production value chain, people need to think about what and how much to tax..

In the Sorting Office

Kannu

You are living through some very interesting times where technology is destroying old ways of living and doing business. 

This is an example of how giant monolithic businesses fall apart when they cannot handle structural change. 

When very large trees fall, they take many other trees with them and leave a swathe of destruction around them. So one has to be careful from three perspectives. One, how to manage this tree fall from society's perspective. Second is to ensure you don't get hurt by the tree fall. And third is to ensure that you learn to profit from this tree fall. 

People usually only see one perspective. But the trick is to see all three as they are all interrelated. 

So have a think about it, we will soon stop needing paper based mail but parcels and other bits still are required to come to our door due to home e-shopping. How do we ensure this happens? How can we manage otherwise? And where can you invest in alternatives so that you can profit from this collapse in the post office? 

Something to think about son. 

Ps: was happy to hear that you are settling down and liking college. If as you say, that its easy, then challenge yourself by spending time in the library or do other stuff :). See the lecturers in the online university. 

Love

Baba

In the Sorting Office
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n09/james-meek/in-the-sorting-office

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In the Sorting Office

James Meek

Somewhere in the Netherlands a postwoman is in trouble. Bad health, snow and ice and a degree of chaos in her personal life have left her months behind on her deliveries. She rents a privatised ex-council flat with her partner and so many crates of mail have built up in the hallway that it’s getting hard to move around. Twice a week one of the private mail companies she works for, Selektmail, drops off three or four crates of letters, magazines and catalogues. She sorts and delivers the fresh crates but the winter backlog is tough to clear. She thinks her employers are getting suspicious. I counted 62 full mail crates stacked up in the hall when I visited recently. There was a narrow passageway between the wall of crates and her personal pile of stuff: banana boxes, a disused bead curtain, a mop bucket. One of the crates has crept into the study, where the postwoman’s computer rears up out of her own archival heaps of newspapers and magazines. Should these two streams of paper merge they would not be easily separated. The postwoman hasn’t given up. She had a similar problem with the other private mail company she works for, Sandd, a few years back. ‘When I began at Sandd in 2006 I delivered about 14 boxes of mail every time,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t cope and at Christmas 2006 I had about 90 of these boxes in the house. By New Year’s Day we had 97. There were even boxes in the toilet.’ The postwoman is paid a pittance to deliver corporate mail. She hasn’t done her job well, yet so few people have complained about missed deliveries that she hasn’t been found out.

Across the world, postal services are being altered like this: optimised to deliver the maximum amount of unwanted mail at the minimum cost to businesses. In the internet age private citizens are sending less mail than they used to, but that’s only part of the story of postal decline. The price of driving down the cost of bulk mailing for a handful of big organisations is being paid for by the replacement of decently paid postmen with casual labour and the erosion of daily deliveries.

My Summer at an Indian Call Center

Son

This is an interesting read of how call centres work in India. I have personally have experience of setting these up in a variety of countries such as USA, Canada, uk, Poland, Egypt, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines etc etc. this behaviour that the author describes is quite common across the world. It's not just in India. 

The kids who get here and work are starting their careers. And they have an hunger, son, which is sort of humbling to see. The job is sort of thankless, to sort out your phone issues, to sell you insurance or time share holidays or or or. But these things keep on happening. 

With the increase in globalisation and connectivity, we don't see the man who is delivering our services and that is a bit of a shame as we lose touch with an important part of the value chain. But as a person interested in economics and management, remember that these people are the face of the companies to our customers. Never forget them and pay extra special attention to them, they are very very important. 

Love

Baba

My Summer at an Indian Call Center
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/indian-call-center-americanization

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My Summer at an Indian Call Center

Lessons learned: Americans are hotheads, Australians are drunks—and never say where you’re calling from. Read the story everyone’s talking about.

By Andrew Marantz on Tue. July 5, 2011 2:00 AM PDT

“We were asked to hate everything Indian,” said 26-year-old Arnab (shown in his Delhi flat). Photographs: Sanjit Das/Panos

I stand flush against the window of a Toyota showroom, trying to stay in a shrinking sliver of shade. We’re on the cusp of midday, which, in Delhi in June, lasts most of the day and drives everyone into a languid torpor. I am waiting for a company cab, now an hour and a half late, to drive me across town to a call center, where an Indian “culture trainer” will teach me how to act Australian.

A uniformed guard next to me dozes on a stool, his rifle slumped in his lap. Behind the showroom window, which would be clear if two boys would stop rubbing it down with rags, a dozen red sedans glisten on a waxy white floor. On the dirt shoulder of the road, children hold hands as they walk to school.

Call centers don’t trust Indian infrastructure, as well they shouldn’t, so the company cab—typically a white Toyota Qualis—has become a standard industry perk. This morning a class of 24 new hires, myself included, will be ferried from all corners of the city to the offices of a small firm named Delhi Call Centre. For three weeks, a culture trainer will teach us conversational skills, Australian pop culture, and the terms of the mobile-phone contracts we’ll be peddling. Those of us who pass the training course will graduate to the calling floor. Our first job at DCC will be to interrupt Australians at dinner and ask them to switch phone providers. In the Delhi area alone, maybe 100,000 call-center agents make their living selling vitamins to Britons or helping Americans troubleshoot their printers. I am almost certainly the only one who acquired his conversational skills accidentally—by being born in the United States.

My phone vibrates. By the time I get it to my ear, a husky male voice is shouting in Hinglish, a rapid-fire blend of Hindi and English. “Meet at Toyota showroom!” I shout back.

“Fine sir, 20 minutes,” he replies.

I know “20 minutes” is a Hinglish phrase meaning “30 minutes,” so I call back after 40. A woman answers this time. “No problem, sir,” she says, “20 minutes only.” A sweat-and-sunblock solution drips down my forehead and stings my eyes. Behind me, the boys continue toweling the glass. The streaks they create blur into the streaks they wipe away.

"The Place to Disappear"

Kannu

This is an interesting story about a little street in Thailand. Full of young people enjoying themselves. 

Some thoughts about travel. I've done my fair share of it now, both business and personal. We have been on holidays to various places. When you go with somebody you love, like we went to Corfu or Chicago or Cornwall (interesting how our holidays line-up) I loved it because you all were with me. 

But till you have a regular girlfriend or a family, I would strongly advise you to think about going out on your own. Just a backpack and then you roam about on roads like this in Thailand or in Tibet or in Israel or panama or equador or USA. I haven't done that much but whenever I go on my trips, I sneak out of the hotel room and go for long walks around the cities. Just feel the city or place. Smell the food and trains and roads and people. Watch how they react. How the architecture has been built. Grab a slice of pizza at a local shop. Or a Philly cheesesteak at a kiosk. Or a burrito from a pavement seller. 

I think wandering around alone will not only help you know more about the world but also about yourself son. We are but our experiences and its these experiences which will help make you into a smart intelligent and great man. Plus you will find some very interesting 'company' when you are out there :)

Love

Baba

"The Place to Disappear" by Susan Orlean [Send Me a Story]

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On Bangkok’s Khao San Road.

The Place to Disappear
On Bangkok’s Khao San Road.
Susan Orlean | New Yorker | Jan 2000

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All languages are welcome on Bangkok’s Khao San Road, including Drunkard. “Hold my hand,” a man fluent in Singapore Slings commanded a Scottish hairdresser one night at Lucky Beer and Guest House—only in his dialect it came out soggy and rounded, more like Hole mah han. “Not right now,” the Scottish hairdresser said. She was a slender girl with the pinkish pallor of a milkmaid, blond hair, gray eyes, and a nose ring. She was on a six-week trip through Asia with two cute friends from Glasgow. They’d just arrived on a super-discount flight from Scotland and had checked into a seven-dollar-a-night room at one of the several hundred or so cheap guesthouses around Khao San Road-Happy Home Guest House or Nirvana Caf and Guest House or Sweety’s or Lek Mam’s or something; they actually couldn’t remember what it was called, but they knew how to find their way back. They also knew how to get from their guesthouse to the new branch of Boots, the English drugstore, which opened recently amid the T-shirt shops and travel agencies that line Khao San. Within their first few hours in Bangkok, the girls went to Boots and blew their travel budget on English soap and shampoo—same soap and shampoo they could get at home but somehow more exotic-seeming when bought in Thailand—and on snack packages of Oreos, which they worship and which are not easy to find in the United Kingdom. They thought Khao San was horrible because it was so crowded and loud and the room in the guesthouse was so dingy, but it was brilliant, too, because it was so inexpensive, and there were free movies playing at all the bars, and because they’d already run into two friends from home. On top of that, finding a branch of Boots right here was almost too good to be true. What’s more, Boots was super-air-conditioned, and that distinguished it from many of the other Khao San Road shops, which were open to the hot and heavy Bangkok air.

Nigella Lawson: Erotic?

Kannu

This is a story about a lady who cooks. We have her books, we watch her show and we discuss her. So you can read about her but I wanted to mention why I like her. 

She is what I would call as a zinda dil. A live heart. A person who lives life to the full. As you can read about her, she has had some pretty awful experiences but she comes across as somebody who has made peace with those sorrows and she enjoys life to the full. That's the crucial element son, totally enjoy fully whatever you do. And don't give a shit about what others say. You will constantly have people (including your parents) who will keep on telling you what to do but like nigella, be confident and just do it. She is beautifully plump during a time that women are desperate to be stick thin. She tells them to bog off. She does what she does with passion and verve and thoroughly enjoys being her own self and decadent. 

I try to be the same, unfortunately have seen far too much death and destruction, read too much about cruelty and pain and betrayal and and and. I was speaking to somebody yesterday who was a bit unlucky in their life and company and I said, I trust and have faith in mankind. 95% of the time, my openness, happiness, faith, love, passion, fun and games is returned. There are some who betrayed me or are depressing or what have you but keep loving and living life to the full son. 

Love

Baba. 

Nigella Lawson: Erotic? Ms Lawson furiously denies she dishes up food porn | Mail Online
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2071324/Nigella-Lawson-Erotic-Ms-Lawson-furiously-denies-dishes-food-porn.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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Nigella, Goddess of Pleasure: Erotic? How dare you says a caramel dripping Ms Lawson who furiously denies she dishes up food porn…

By Catherine Ostler

Last updated at 8:54 AM on 8th December 2011

What an exquisite riposte to those who criticised her for wearing that frumpy burkini on Bondi Beach: Nigella Lawson has posed for a magazine cover, heavily made up and looking ‘rapturous’ with salted caramel sauce dripping down her face.

That pale penguin-lookalike, photographed in a full cover-up against the late-summer Sydney sun, is ancient history.

Nigella, on the cover of the free magazine Stylist, has become a human toffee apple. They should release the image as an Athena poster for hungry men everywhere.

So how did the IAF perform during the Kargil War?

an excellent overview of the performance of the IAF during the Kargil War. Here is the summary:

High in the mountains of Indian-controlled Kashmir in 1999, India and Pakistan fought in an intense border clash for limited but important stakes. Overshadowed by NATO’s higher-profile air war for Kosovo, the Kargil War ensued for seventy-four days at a cost of more than a thousand casualties on each side. Yet it remains only dimly appreciated by most Western defense experts—and barely at all by students and practitioners of airpower. Nevertheless, it was a milestone event in Indian military history and one that represents a telling prototype of India’s most likely type of future combat challenge. !e Kargil conflict was emblematic of the kind of lower-intensity border skirmish between India and Pakistan, and perhaps also between India and China, that could recur in the next decade in light of the inhibiting effect of nuclear weapons on more protracted and higher-stakes tests of strength.

The experience offers an exemplary case study in the uses of airpower in joint warfare in high mountain conditions and is key to a full understanding of India’s emerging air posture. It is the one instance of recent Indian exposure to high-intensity warfare that provides insights into the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) capabilities, limitations, relations with its sister services, and interactions with India’s civilian leadership.In the Kargil War, the IAF rapidly adapted to the air campaign’s unique operational challenges, which included enemy positions at elevations of 14,000 to 18,000 feet, a stark backdrop of rocks and snow that made for uncommonly difficult visual target acquisition, and a restriction against crossing the Line of Control that forms the border with Pakistan. Without question, the effective asymmetric use of IAF airpower was pivotal in shaping the war’s
successful course and outcome for India. Yet the conflict also highlighted some of India’s military shortcomings. !e covert Pakistani intrusion into Indian-controlled Kashmir that was the casus belli laid bare a gaping hole in India’s nationwide real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability that had allowed the incursion to go undetected for many days. It further brought to light the initial near-total lack of transparency and open communication between the Indian Army’s top leaders and the IAF with
respect to the gathering crisis.

All things considered, the conflict was a poor test of India’s air warfare capability. Despite the happy ending of the Kargil experience for India, the IAF’s fighter pilots were restricted in their operations due to myriad challenges specific to this campaign. They were thus consigned to do what they could rather than what they might have done if they had more room for manoeuvre. On a strategic level, the Kargil War vividly demonstrated that a stable bilateral nuclear deterrence relationship can markedly inhibit such regional conflicts in intensity and scale—if not preclude them altogether. In the absence of the nuclear stabilizing factor, those flash points could erupt into open-ended conventional showdowns for the highest stakes. But the Kargil War also demonstrated that nuclear deterrence is not a panacea. The possibility of future conventional wars of major consequence along India’s northern borders with Pakistan and China persists, and the Indian defense establishment must plan and prepare accordingly

The Subramanyam Committee was asked to review the war, here is its report. Typically, the implementation was crap but here’s a review based upon an interview of Mr. Subramanyam.

Mayhew Animal Home

So as you might know, we closed down IT4CH for a variety of reasons so had some little space in my diary to help another charity. This time I decided to see if I can help animals so went and interviewed for the Mayhew Animal Home Trustee position. It is a lovely place and for some very strange reason, they agreed to pick me! promises to be very fun.

Will say more when I get formally inducted next month..

Very chuffed, I love animals…

Imran Khan just cannot win

heh, Imran Khan is going off on a crusade (yes, i meant this word) to protest against the American drone attacks which are killing the Taliban.

On the other hand, the Taliban say that Imran Khan is an agent of Israel, USA and Europe.

The government is also upset with Imran Khan for obvious reasons.

heh, seriously funny..