India: Big, loud, diverse, corrupt, and full of a vast number of people who annoy me. But I love it.
What I don't particularly like are its roads or, to be honest, the lack of them.
Let's say you decide to drive to Pune. Everything starts off smoothly, you move down fairly quickly (which, in Mumbai speak, means you manage without dying of sunstroke or boredom), get to the outskirts of the city, and promptly lose your way.
Going left could mean Madhya Pradesh, right could take you to Goa, and straight down could lead to Kanyakumari. What do you do?
First, try hard not to look stupid, unless you're a politician, in which case you can't try hard enough. Next, casually tell your wife and kids that you need to get a drink. Walk slowly till you move out of their range of vision, and then break into a run for the nearest cyber café. Sit down, and go visit Roads Of India. Problem solved.
What you get here are driving directions for most major cities, both on the Internet as well as on WAP-enabled devices, if there isn't a cyber café around. The databases are generated using GIS mapping which, I presume, has something to do with the word 'satellite' which, again, is good enough for me.
The site also has a lot of city related data, railway and airline information, road distances between two towns, and a comprehensive guide to Indian hotels. Just pick a city from the drop-down menu, soak it all in, and head back to said wife and kids with a smug look on your face.
That's one problem handled fairly easily, right? But what if you're a Non Resident Indian? The hassles faced by this group are anything but easy to tackle using a few clicks. Until now, that is.
Enter NriMentor, a help line that offers to solve any India-related issues. Backed by experienced chartered accountants, advocates and other experts, the site provides customised advice, information or consultation on specific issues. You can check sample queries, or read a comprehensive FAQ if it's your first visit. From then on, whether it's money or tax matters, civil laws, government policies, business advice, or anything else you need help with, simply fill out a form with your query, and submit. Free? Nope. $10 per query; still peanuts for an NRI.
In spite of all it can do, there are a bunch of cynics who hate dotcoms with a passion and, ironically, set up dotcoms to prove it. Take TheCompost which was created to track 'the death of dot com.' It has forums that dissect the topic, the latest news categorised by company, site, business-to-business, business-to-consumer, content, e-commerce, VCs, etc., and articles on how tech companies are ostensibly vanishing from the 'public' eye, or how confusion stalls ad growth online, or why interest is waning in the Internet. Take your pick.
Time to digress.
The word 'earthquake' is currently hot in these parts. You can't turn your head without hearing it mentioned. And, in between balancing yourself precariously while your building shudders and shakes, a good place for factual data is the National Geographic's Earthquake Page. Well designed, informative, and with an image gallery that's eye-opening to say the least, the site gives you a concise introduction to the earthquake phenomenon, its effects, and the science behind understanding it. It also has fast facts that tell you about how the largest earthquake of the 20th century registered 9.5 on the Richter Scale, and occurred in Chile on May 22, 1960. Before you quit, check out the video clips of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake near San Francisco, or animation of how quakes form.
If there's one thing I've learned after the Gujarat tragedy, it's that no matter what, there's always a theory. While some maintain it happened on account of two plates rubbing against each other, others say it's because the state rests on two huge fault lines, while still others maintain it has something to do with divine intervention.
While these ideas are thrashed out, new concepts, words and slang develop. And catching it all is the PSEUDOdictionary which lists words, slang, and colloquialisms that change and evolve constantly but aren't in the dictionary.
It throws up humorous slang like 'pentropy' which means, the tendency for ballpoint pens at rest on your desk to suddenly and surreptitiously take flight, until none remain. 'Totjectory' is explained as the unpredictable path of a toddler as he careers toward you at a mall or grocery market. More famous slang? How about 'middlenaming' -- the act of calling someone by their full name, especially useful when you're mad at that person. Or 'two comma' which means 'rich people' and is derived from having more than a million dollars, meaning there has to be two commas when writing it (1,000,000).
If that sounds outrageous, go visit Utterly Outrageous Recipes, a 'gross but tasty food page' for recipes to stuff like Scrambled Brains, Banana Worm Bread, and Rootworm Beetle Dip. Still not outrageous enough? The Celebrity Dead Pool lets you pick ten famous people you think might die in 2001 and, at the end of the year, the list with the most dead celebs wins $2001.00 in cash. True or not, it's your call.
Someone once said that there's a sucker born every minute. After spending a lot of time online, I tend to agree.
Tell us what you think of this article
