Anil Kariwala

The first testicular guard was used in cricket in
1874, whereas the first helmet was used in 1974.It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also
important!

(Contributed by Alok Maheshwary from London)

I have decided to write something a “Did you know?” section on my blog. Its not an attempt to holier-than-thou. It would actually be a representation of my naivety; every time I learn something simple, I intend to put it on the blog – my space where I can say anything unabashed, including calling Mayawati and Mamta a joint curse on India.

 

So here am I.

 

Did you know that Honey is a substance that doesn’t rot? Ever. Time would crystallize, but never destroy its basic composition. In ancient times it could be used for mummification or simply to preserve bodies. Its said that Alexander the Great’s body was preserved in white honey.

 

Good thing is it does get digested J

The Bird Flu, SARS, Foot and mouth diease, mad cow disease…… and now the Swine Flu??? All related to eating non-vegetarian; and few people know that Sars had its origins to eating cats, a Cantonese delicacy!!

 

Have you heard of Cabbage flu, lady finger epidemic, wheat disease or vegetable fever? Porbably God is sending signals to the mankind to become vegetarian. A fellow traveler argued with me, where would the food grow for so many vegetarians. He didn’t seem to know that to get 50 kg meat from a real fat pig, the poor thing consumes much more than 500 kgs of grain in its life time.

I am right now in Hong Kong, my 25^th visit probably; and I don’t stop discovering. The tram to the Victoria Peak was the first mechanized transport in HK (later than the first trams in my Calcutta, and the clock stopped for us). There was a First class and a Servants’ class! The Servant’s class ran unabated until 1960.

And the British called us class conscious!

The big difference is while rest of the world moved on from classes, segregation, apartheid, and so on, we stick to them and even win elections riding on them. Quite a class, we Indians.

 

Yes, that’s true. In a sport called Luge, where you jump with skis on from heights from a snowcapped hilltop. Most of us don’t know it (nor did I, thanks to cricket) in India.

 

Keshavan, 28, who lives in Himachal Pradesh shall participate at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, and has been sponsored by Swiss Air (who else) and Limca book of records.

 

And here’s the real piece: Keshavan originally belongs to Kerala, the southern Indian state where leave apart winter sports, people don’t even know what Winter Clothing is!!

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer.
CFO -- Corporate Fraud Officer.
BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.  
BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry.
VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.  P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.  
BROKER -- What my broker has made me.  
STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.
STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.
STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves. 
FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.
MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.
CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.
YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.   
WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share. 
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.   
PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

(contributed by my friend - Alok Maheshwary from London) 

 

The RBI is perplexed with the huge amount of circulation of fake currency notes. The newspapers yesterday carried a story that RBI intends to involve students after the board exams. I wonder was has happened to even to those pea-sized brains. What would the poor students do? All that the RBI needs to do is to demonetize all currency notes above Rs.100. If you need to do a bigger transaction do it via banking channels. It’s safer and convenient provided the money is not ill-gotten. Counterfeiting technologies would become so cheap in the future that one would be able to print a $1000 bill for $1.

 

Somebody needs to tell the government that they need to give anti-corruption classes to students. Catch them young and tell them that ill-gotten money only gets to rotten in Swiss banks. You can’t even use it buy a house in your name. Once the need for paper money is finished, fake currency notes would be finished, and the poor students won’t have to take lessons from RBI. Hope somebody is listening.  

I did the cardinal sin of taking a small ride on an auto-rickshaw in Greater Noida earlier this week. The auto driver coolly took on the wrong side of the 6 lane expressway and my protests had no effect on him. Few cars, obviously used to these antics came to screeching halts and I reached the destination only 1.5 kms away safely. The Auto driver proudly told me – “Indians are brave people”; obviously, assuming me to be an African, given my complexion.

 

Truly we are brave people. But all the bravado is limited to playing with lives on the roads; not to mention the bravery of fighting the Giant government by breaking its rules. When did I last hear Indians indulging in any adventure sports? Bungee jumping, windsurfing, skateboarding, para-trooping etc are for the chicken-hearted Europeans who drive so carefully like cowards. We are brave Indians. Truly brave!

�
Ø Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair
Ø The world’s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
Ø Our eyes remain the same size from birth onward, but our noses and ears
never stop growing.
Ø You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.
Ø A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation.
Ø Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a
few weeks.
Ø The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

Ø Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never telephoned
his Wife or mother because they were both deaf.

Ø “I am.” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language
Ø Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking
countries because Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.”
Ø The smallest unit of time is the yoctosecond
Ø Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different
Ø “Bookkeeper” is the only word in English language with three consecutive
double letters

Ø Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed
people do
Ø The sentence “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every
letter in the English language
Ø China has more English speakers than the United States
Ø Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
Ø Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.
Ø If you leave Tokyo by plane at 7:00am, you will arrive in Honolulu (US)
at approximately 4:30pm the previous day.

Credits: MK Goyal, Mumbai

 

In between the travails of travels, I love to take some time off and put my air trips in a lovely web portal called www.flightmemory.com . Thanks to my friend John Wilkinson in the UK that I learnt about it, so I could enter only from the beginning of 2008. The statistics generated can be interesting, as I discovered that I circumnavigated the earth almost 5 times in one year, in distance travelled terms. The following was my flight statistics today:

Flight Distances:

  

In Miles   121,635

In Kilometer   195,752

Earth Circumnavigation 4.88 x

Distance to the Moon  0.509 x

 

Other interesting statistics have also been designed quite nicely.