Participants: 2 wheelers, 3 wheelers, 4 wheelers, 6 wheelers, Trailers …
Contestants: Any user ir-respective of age
Vehicle: Any make, Local/Foreign
License: Not mandatory
Driving Skills: Not essential
Circuit: Bangalore – Mysore State Highway
Race Type: Death race
Timings: Open 24 hrs

The very good about this race track is that it is open to unrestricted public viewing and any one can participate from anywhere on that circuit and tend to increase on weekends. The track makes it’s way through small villages as well as some major cities, making it easily accessible to all the contestants.

Since I planned to push on updates on the track and the race status, I hoped into a Tata Indica and joined the already moving race group. I met the group at the Mysore intersection, one way coming from the city while the other being from the by-pass. Our driver was driving at 100 kmph, when I am being zoomed passed by 5 cars and when queried about the speed to him, he promptly said around 120-140 kmph. Our driver put his foot on the gas, and woh, we were also on par with them at 110 kmph. One Mercedes Benz and a Skoda Laura have just zoomed pass me at around 150 kmph leaving all of us behind trying to be the first. There is hardly and space between the two of the cars. If one puts on the brakes, I am sure the other would just ramp on the other. With both flashing indicators, they were just passing each one of us in the race track.

As we were cruising along on that speed, oh, what do I see! I see a cyclist trying to make it’s way on the the circuit. As far as I can see, he is seated on his Hero cycle, with one hand holding on to the cycle while the other hand trying to adjust his `lungi`, which does not seem be holding on to his waist. God, please don’t take his `lungi` off, else their might be a sudden increase in the Testosterone level in some contestants.

My driver would just shift the gears in order to lessen the speed along with the breaks. Oh what an idea, though it leaves the engine burning. As we are competing with one another, I notice a a group of villagers walking just beside the circuit, one set trying to cross the circuit and the other happily sitting by the side of the circuit gossiping, while our contestants are zooming by. Oh no. God save them.

The space that is between the cars is hardly a meter and everyone takes it granted that the former would not stop. The best part is that all the big vehicles would be driving on the extreme right so that other’s would have overtake through the left, a new overtake rule. They are the Big B’s of the road and would not give any indication while changing lanes making it difficult for us to shift and overtake. One needs to squeeze past them as we and fellow racers did.

I reached Bangalore and was lucky enough to complete the race and come out unharmed. Will update once again when I would be a part of the race. With government easing on the speed breakers rules on the roads, hope to have some more excitement as days go by.

This is Ophiophagus signing off for the day.

I went to the cabin, where in Mrs. Purva Suryarao, was shifted. She was undergoing a lot of pain but the joy of being a mother, overwhelmed the pain. I felt like crying, after seeing the pain that she had to undergo for the birth. Giving birth is itself a rebirth to the mother due to the pain/trauma that she undergoes and in past there were incidents wherein only one of them used to live.

I quietly started comparing our complicated lives (which we have made complicated) with that of the life of a kid. A small thought which sprang up was that when we grow up, we don’t think of what trouble/pain our parents might have gone through in bringing us up. We just think of our own self and our worldly pleasures, and when questioned, we try to give ample reasons to justify ourself. Do any one of us try even to think of the mark would it leave on our parents. The fame, the respect that they have earned with all experience goes off by just one wrong deed of our and still we don’t care for that. Is this the way we should treat our parents? Or there are better ways of dealing with it.

A never ending list …

So, what/whom does it help? I am not sure whose whims it fulfills, but it leaves a huge impact on the state/centre revenues.

We humans have a good mentality of doing things and we Indian’s in particular, have one great quality. Up till our boundaries are safe, we don’t care for others. We have seen people breaking public property during the the time of bandh’s and riot’s but we don’t care. In the sense we don’t feel the pinch, since it does not go directly from our pocket. What we tend to forget is that the taxes that we pay to the government is being re-used for the public property. I have seen people being proud to say that they have destroyed public property. WT.? So, when some one breaks/destroys a public property, bottom line is that we pay for it in-directly. So who is to be blamed? The political babus who form of the government or the common people?

India, has been greatly driven by politics in the past as well as today. You can peep into and see the dirty politics/policies that goes into, for getting the throne. As a matter of fact, you can’t give a `clean chit` to most of the political leaders as of today. The very basic qualification is to have a `good criminal` background (except a few). And it is them who gives the verdicts of bandh’s and hartal’s just to get into limelight. The worst suffers are the common people, daily wagers and it cost an whopping amount of around 20,000 crore to the exchequer. Political parties don’t give a damm on that figure. And as common man, we sing the way to the parties. No one thinks about the money that is being lost since we don’t directly pay it.

Being a developing country we can not afford bandh’s and riot’s. It’s too expensive for the nation.

Moreover the same server had the slow mounting of NFS issue. Users would just wait for at least a minute after issuing the `ls` command and when login to GUI mode, it would just be in some state of hangover mode. I tried re-installing NFS kernel server along with updating the kernel, but still no help.

When doing a search somewhere it was mentioned that host needs to be identified. Since I was using IP’s, I thought it would not be a problem, but later on I found out that you need to make entries so that `idmapd` is able to locate it, some sort of a reverse DNS lookup. While restarting nfs-common you see two services being start, idmapd and statd. `idmapd` is the NFSv4 name mapping daemon. It provides functionality to the NFSv4 kernel client and server, to which it communicates via upcalls, by translating user and group IDs to names, and vice versa, while statd creates a file in /var/lib/nfs/statd/sm. When starting, it iterates through these files and notifies the peer rpc.statd on those machines. In case it does not find, it just takes it’s own time to mount it.

The same solved both the problems and user’s are also using it without any complaint.

Update:

It was displayed at Cubbon Park for public viewing, and the news is put up on The Hindu paper. http://www.thehindu.com/2010/04/10/stories/2010041063440300.htm

The best part of the mall is the parking area which is free (as of now) with double decker parking for cars. Auto parking is also on their cards. When inquired about the double decker parking (which seems to be first in Bangalore) to one of the service person, he informed about it’s functionality. One slot is always free so that cars from top can be pulled down. A full bay has 5 slots in the bottom while 4 slots in the top wherein the top open 5th slot is used to navigate the other cars parked up, to be lowered down. It was amazing to see the technology that is being used.

Woh!. When I checked the device, I could see the codes of the various items being instantaneously downloaded from their server. The user would just have to select the product code with the quantity. Cool hah! I was very happy to note that not only does it save paper, but also reduces delivery time bringing better efficiency. Moreover the best part of it was to see that technology is now being getting spread to the masses. It is just a matter of time, when electronic gadgets will fill up the masses and people will be using those technologies.

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Prostitution is known to be the world’s oldest profession/trade. There has been issues raised for legalizing this profession but little minimum has been actually done to legalize it.

If prostitution were made legal what could we gain,

1. Reduce victimization of prostitutes as well as the criminal activities that are associated with it.
2. Control STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Disease) through regular checkups.
3. Get prostitutes off the street and put them in a better environment.
4. Put our cops in fighting crimes rather in this social elements.
5. Get young women away from drugs in in order to turn them into prostitutes.
6. Eliminate a significant source of income for organized crime.
7. Put this multi-million dollar business on the tax rolls, and earn some revenue.

Your inputs …

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