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

Ramachandran, a Tamil, was hospitable and enthusiastic, keen to take me on a tour of Kuala Lumpur. I would have to see the Maha Mariamman temple and the Batu caves , as "without them a trip to Malaysia would be incomplete," he asserted. The Batu Caves temple, devoted principally to Lord Subramanian swamy, is a big tourist attraction for the entire South East Asia, with people of all religions and nationalities visiting it. Established in 1891, it's a signature spot of Hindu civilizational marks on the Malay Peninsula. Hindu influence, dating back to 2nd century AD, can be seen in Malay culture, language and traditions even today. The "Malay" of Malaysia, and "Pur" of Kuala Lumpur are unmistakably Sanskrit . I was introduced to a vivacious amount of Malaysian history while climbing the 272 steps leading to the Batu Caves. More Chinese Buddhists were praying there than Hindus. The atmosphere was so sublime and enchantingly serene that I felt I was in

Unicef, per Child One Laptop and Google have joined together to set up a portal of stories. This portal, www.ourstories.org , is meant to be a repository of traditional stories from various places. The portal is part of the attempt by the three agencies to preserve folktales and through them, different cultures. Under this project, children will write, narrate and upload folk stories which they have heard from grandmothers, friends and local people. People all over the world will be able to read these stories online and can also locate the places from which these stories come using Google Map. This will facilitate interaction between different cultures and make people aware of their common humanity.

Every fourth Indian has paid a bribe in the past year, an influential annual survey by a leading anti-corruption watchdog said in its report released in Berlin on Thursday. India emerged as the world's 18th most corrupt country on the basis of the percentage of its people paying bribes in Transparency Internationale's Global Corruption Barometer 2007. African, East European and Latin American countries are ahead of India in the corruption index. Cameroon is the most corrupt, with a whopping 79 per cent of its population having paid a bribe in the course of the past year. Pakistan is the world's sixth most corrupt: 44 per cent of its people having paid a bribe in the past 12 months. Worldwide, an average 25 per cent of people have been asked to pay a bribe to the police, and political parties and parliaments are the most tainted by corruption. The poor are targeted for bribes in both developed and developing countries. The study "has made it clear that too

Don't look now, but Microsoft might finally be getting the hang of hardware. The company's overall track record for designing gadgets is pretty awful. Remember the Smart Display? The Spot Watch? The Ultra Mobile PC? The original Zune? But Microsoft's new second generation Zune music/photo/video player is a pleasure to use. It fixes a long list of things that made the original Zune such a pathetic wannabe. Best of all, the new Zune is starting to develop its own identity. The echoes of Microsoft executives saying, "It'll be just like the iPod, only ours" aren't quite as loud on this one. The family includes three new models. First, there's an 80 gigabyte hard drive Zune ($250) whose size, design, shape and price are intended to compete with the 80gig iPod Classic. Then there are the flash memory based models, which resemble last year's iPod Nano: thin, tall slabs that hold 4 or 8 gigabytes of music, photos and videos (for $150 an

GOOGLE, The world's largest Internet search engine, is on several fronts a danger that has to be stopped, a study released by Austria's Graz University claims. A research team led by Prof. Hermann Maurer, chairman of Graz University's Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media , argues that Google is turning into a new version of George Orwell's "Big Brother" - creating unacceptable monopolies in many areas of the worldwide web. According to his research, around 61 billion Internet searches are conducted each month. In the US, on average 57 percent of searches are conducted with Google, and up to 95 percent of Internet users use Google at least sometimes. It is dangerous enough that single entity such as Google is dominant as a search engine, Maurer and his co writers say, but the fact that Google is operating many other services and is probably colluding with still further players was "unacceptable". "Google is massively invading priv

Pesky break downs in the middle of a busy street due to engine trouble would become a thing of past as future technologies would enable a car flash health report well in advance indicating all was not well with it. "Your car could send an e-mail telling you that it's time to drop in for a health checkup at your nearest service centre," said Dr Alan Taub, executive director, General Motors Research and Development in Warren Michigan, while tracing the future technology in the automotive industry. "It could warn you well in advance that it was having an engine problem or that the brake pads were getting worn out or that the battery has not been charged enough", he said. The component of electrification and electronification of value added software in vehicles, especially in the high end segment will go up to 40 per cent by 2015, said Mr Allan. The vehicle would have sophisticated software that could be serviced by just downloading a patch of software. GM, whic

BRITAIN on Wednesday announced a new points based immigration system that will help highly skilled professionals like scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs from India and other non European Union countries to settle in the UK. Applicants under the new system will need to gain a sufficient number of points. And scoring is based on a balance between the skills of applicants and skills needed in the UK, as determined by government research and statistics, Britain's Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said. The new system is designed to replace more than 80 different routes of entry into the country with a fivetier structure. Tier one will become effective from the beginning of 2008 and will be for highly skilled migrants including scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs. Those entering the UK under this tier will not need a job offer. Tier two will comprise nurses, teachers and engineers who have job offers in shortage areas and tier three will cover low skilled workers. Migrants in this ca