Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

25th October 2007: The world's largest jetliner made aviation history Thursday, completing its first commercial flight from Singapore to Sydney with 455 passengers , some of them ensconced in luxury suites and double beds. The Airbus superjumbo lifted off from Singapore's Changi Airport and landed about seven hours later in Sydney. Also aboard Flight SQ380 was a crew of about 30, including four pilots. Flight attendants handed out champagne and certificates to passengers, some of whom paid tens of thousands of dollars in an online auction for seats. "I have never been in anything like this in the air before in my life," said Australian Tony Elwood, reclining with his wife, Julie, on the double bed in their private first-class suite. "It is going to make everything else after this simply awful," he said, sipping Dom Perignon champagne after a lunch of marinated lobster and double boiled chicken soup. He paid $50,000 for the two places. The double-decker A3

The market, which has been on steroids through most of October, also saw Mukesh Ambani , the head of Reliance Industries Ltd, become the richest man in the world, edging out software giant Bill Gates of Microsoft and Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim and Warren Buffet . PTI reported that Mukesh Ambani's net worth rose to $63.2 billion (Rs 2,49,108 crores) on the back of Reliance Industries, Reliance Petroleum and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd. In comparison, the net worth of both Bill Gates and Carlos Slim is estimated to be slightly lower, at around $62.29 billion, with Slim leading among the two by a narrow margin. Investor czar Warren Buffett was pushed to fourth position, with a net worth of about $56 billion. Mr Ambani's wealth of about Rs 2,49,000 crores includes about Rs 2,10,000 crores from RIL (50.98 per cent stake), Rs 37,500 crores from RPL (37.5 per cent) and Rs 2,100 crores from RIIL (46.23 per cent). The Ambani family, whose wealth has always ridden on the f

YOUNG COUPLES are increasingly announcing their break-ups over social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook. Having had enough of her boyfriend's "I have notime" ways, Tanuja (name changed) logged in and ended her two-year relationship by simply changing her personal details on Facebook. These networking sites with profiles have all personal and professional details with a friends' network. By changing her relationship status from "committed" to "single," and removing all pictures of the boyfriend from her page, Tanuja was sending out the mes- sage loud and clear The update was immediately sent to all her friends: and it was not long before one of them began to flirt with her Tanuja is not the only one. Social network users are becoming candid about their break-ups. "Teens adapt dating practices to the technologies they use. So it is not surprising that the intimate acts are made visible on these social networking sites. Online publicness

Prince Harry nearly got into a right royal rumpus when he threatened to kill a reveller at a night club he visited with some of his pals and girlfriend Chelsy Davy. The 23-year-old Prince, an officer in the Blues and Royals, yelled, "I'll kill him, where is he?", when a unidentified reveller made a remark about Chelsy. "Harry was really smashed. When he came back from the toilet he was fuming. His bodyguards had to pull him away from some guy and guide him back to his table. The guy had made comments about Chelsy and he reacted pretty strongly." " Chelsy was looking really sexy in a black lowcut minidress which showed off her cleavage," the News of the World quoted an unnamed onlooker as saying.

INDORE 24 October 2007 : A court here on Tuesday issued a non-bailable warrant against actor Aamir Khan who failed to appear before the court in a case of alleged disrespect to the national flag. Judicial Magistrate First Class B S Muvel issued the warrant on the complaint filed by one Shailendra Sharma against Khan for violating Section 2 of the Prevention of Insult to the National Honour Act of 1971. The court had earlier issued bailable warrant against the actor and three others, but they failed to appear in the court on Tuesday. The complainant alleged that Khan disrespected the national tricolour during inauguration of a car showroom here on August 16 last. He accused that the flags atop the showroom remained hoisted even after the sunset and the showroom employees pulled the flags down in a derogatory manner. The court has fixed November 7 as the next date of hearing.

People search for all kinds of words on google. Here a list of the words that are searched for the most…… Internet users in Egypt, India and Turkey are the world’s most frequent searchers for websites using the keyword “sex” on Google search engines, according to statistics provided by Google Inc. Germany, Mexico and Austria were world’s top three searchers of the word “Hitler” while “Nazi” scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the “Google Trends” Web site showed. Chile also came in first place searching for the word “gay,” followed by Mexico and Colombia. The top searchers for other keywords were as follows (in order from first to third place): “Jihad” — Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan “Terrorism” — Pakistan, Philippines, Australia “Hangover” — Ireland, United Kingdom, United States “Burrito” — United States, Argentina, Canada “Iraq” — United States, Australia, Canada “Taliban” — Pakistan, Australia, Canada “Tom Crui

NDTV: Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan finally ended all speculation about his new romantic interest after he went public with confirmation of what has long been talked about. The Hum Tum star put all rumors to rest and finally owned up to his 'together' status with Kareena Kapoor. Saif confessed to the media that he was dating Kareena. The hot couple were seen together at the Manish Malhotra fashion show in Mumbai on Wednesday night. NDTV: Can we ask you one dangerous question? How about Kareena and you? Are you guys dating? Saif: We are here together, ya and that's about it and that is what I am all comfortable with...... There's been a little too much attention but I suppose that's fair enough. We are excatly not shouting from the rooftops but I mean yes really, we are together and we are happy.Reports of their romantic linkup first came up while the two were shooting for Yash Raj Films Tashan in Ladakh. After this Kareena and Saif have been repeatedly seen together