Fédération Internationale de Football Association

A bit of G.K. for football lovers who might happen to read my blog...

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association was founded in Paris on the same date as today in 1904.

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football), commonly known by its acronym, FIFA (usually pronounced /fifə/ or /fifæ/), is the international governing body of association football. Its headquarters are in Zürich, Switzerland, and its current president is Joseph Blatter. FIFA is responsible for the organization and governance of football's major international tournaments, most notably the FIFA World Cup, held since 1930. FIFA has 208 member associations, which is 16 more than the United Nations and 3 more than the International Olympic Committee.

ps: Courtesy again to Wikipedia for telling me about the significance of today's date in history!!!

The "Discovery" of India - May 20th, 1498

I just happened to figure out that India today was "discovered" by the western world...
Portuguese Vasco da Gama(pictured) arrived at Caliut(Now Kozhikode), India, opening up trade with the Far East... directly by sea.

Vasco da Gama

Actually, India has long had trade links with the entire world... The turks had closed the sea route which passed through Constantinople and the west was left looking for an alternative... So they "sponsored" da Gama for his exploratory voyage... Something they continue to do even today... Just carefully consider the "war on terror" (These are entirely my views, if anybody has a problem with it, they may stop reading it right away!!)

Gama's voyage was successful in reaching India. This permitted the Portuguese to trade with the Far East directly by sea, thus challenging older trading networks of mixed land and sea routes, such as the Spice trade routes that utilized the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and caravans to reach the eastern Mediterranean. The Republic of Venice had gained control over much of the trade routes between Europe and Asia. Portugal hoped to use the route pioneered by Gama to break the Venetian trading monopoly.

However, Gama's achievements were somewhat dimmed by his failure to bring any trade goods of interest to the nations of India. Moreover, the sea route was fraught with its own perils - his fleet went more than three months without seeing land and he lost majority of his sailor-crew, by the time the two of his four ships, returned to Portugal in 1499. Nevertheless, Gama's initial journey opened direct sea route to Asia that in time helped bring about an era of European domination through sea power and commerce that lasted several hundred years, as well as 450 years of Portuguese colonialism in India, Asia, and Africa.

HAIL INDIA!!!!

ps: Full credit to wikipedia for giving me most of the info I needed to create a good-looking post in 7 minutes.... Long live open-source..... Down-Down Plagiarism!!!! ;)

Coincidentally, on the same date in 1873, The Levi Struass & Co. (remember that denim brand??) got a patent for using copper rivets that we see on every denim trouser's pockets.....

The Rajnikant Shot!!! ;)

I found this picture somewhere on the internet when my curiosity led me to find out some details of a gun mentioned in a book written by two British mercenaries....

Shown above is a spent bullet cartridge through which a sniper round has punched its way clean(sniper rifles are high precision rifles sometimes also known as "telescopic rifles")...

I was initially amazed by the marksmanship of the shooter - given that even the fattest bullets in the world are only a few millimeters in radius...

Then I saw a similarity between this shot and one by Rajnikant, a popular movie star in Tamil movies and a small-time actor of the yore in Hindi movies. The guy is known for his weird, funny antics on screen(like shooting his cigarette in order to light it - with complete success!!) which only the South Indians seem to be able to believe... For Rajnikant it is "just-another-shot" - He must've shot hundreds of bullets like the one above..........


ps: Moral of the post - "Don't dare mistake me for a complete goody-goody just because I 'm smiling all the time..." B-)

Miserable Failure!!!

In the meantime, I hit this very interesting pic whose link I have given below. Do hit the previous and next link given below the picture for even more interesting stuff. BTW, I reached it by searching for "miserable failure" on Google!! :-))

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushmiserablefailure.htm

My first post!!! :-)

I happened to have hit Bau's blog(actually Bawa & Dinesh, but the latter doesn't seem to be a very active blogger.. :P) at the link below:

Bawa's Blog

Seeing all the interesting(& sometimes mouthwatering/ enlightening/...) stuff posted by Bau, I said to myself, "Man! This is a pretty kewl way to air your views!! 8-)".

But I'm very Laaazy, by choice, by habit, and by instinct... :D So I had no plans to do anything about it and had forgotten all about it - Its a good idea to implement a good idea but a good idea not implemented is mere brain-$#!T, so better let it go... :-)

Until I landed on a piece of crap(the link is given below) about my nation which temporarily sent my temper through the roof(a very rare phenomenon I must agree..), awakened my sleepy intellect, and from that point onward, my insatiable curiosity prodded me to dig deeper into the issue and hunt out more similar truths I knew about and had not cared to delve deeper into...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYVmq7TW92JdZon5AcQX9ehJgO078pxsO-yc36NyPQn0Wpvv2-RkdXYb3j-WEWWe8BPdIueWdT35fRPz1EOAU3JHFDX04OZ8ryYp2m0Q5agTVIimSLl2O6gWOn0BSaifgZawc3nfJfhm_6/s1600-h/macaulay.gif

Am currently working on a full-fledged report sort of blog on all the stuff I've recently gathered, spiced with some of my own fiercely pro-Indian views... Watch out this space for that but definitely won't be appealing to the intellectually challenged, Indian-apes-who-think-west-is-best... All I can say to console such battered soles(I feel such people don't have souls..), better luck next time, maybe I'd find something extremely good about pasta... though I recently had some good chocolate dough nuts at the Delhi airport while waiting for a delayed flight, but I'm rather into the Desi "rude-food"(as declared by an idiotic celebrity eater..) prepared and readily available in my country instead of Angrezi Khana... And seriously feel that it doesn't get anywhere in variety and taste near Indian food. For a reference, South India itself has over 1400 varieties of sweet dishes or desserts as a firang would have it! But it sounds like desert to me and I can't understand who named something so fabulous as sugar(I love sweets!) to something similar to sand??? - The guy must definitely have been a diabetic!!! :-) And for all those who have been to South India, this part of the country is better known for its spices instead of sweets. I can't imagine what must be the number for Gujarat given that every Gujarati has a sweet tooth... Tell me of one country that has a cultural diversity greater than this and you are honorably invited to kick my... Sorry for offending the foodies - even I enjoy non-Indian food but today it has something to do with my hurt pride...

I am proud to be an Indian!!!

Some muted truths about Indian heritage :-| Part 1

Have a look at the picture at the link below:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYVmq7TW92JdZon5AcQX9ehJgO078pxsO-yc36NyPQn0Wpvv2-RkdXYb3j-WEWWe8BPdIueWdT35fRPz1EOAU3JHFDX04OZ8ryYp2m0Q5agTVIimSLl2O6gWOn0BSaifgZawc3nfJfhm_6/s1600-h/macaulay.gif

Shocking!!! Is it???

This is an address by Lord Macaulay to the British Parliament in 1835. This person is credited with "reforming" the Indian Education System.. He is the "father" of the current education system in India - I will call this person a "predator" rather than a father...

Lord Macaulay's education system still exists .... just look at the class system that exists between English speakers and non English speakers.... as for the law of the land it still is in English... sorry legalese.. not even the common folk of england can understand that language... yet India has to live with a British court system and banking system .... you have to research money theory and debt currency system to see how strong a hold the British/Roman Empire still has on our system .... what is your rupee backed by... the note in your pocket what are the Central Bank, RBI ... they not owned by the government: they're private institutions... franchises of the central banking system created by the Rothschild... who are the true rulers of Britain... same goes with the bar associations ... franchises of the Temple Bar in the city of London..
Consider another quote from one of Lord Macaulay's speeches available at the link below. Its called The Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education. Read this piece of garbage if you have no other work to do AND you understand Victorian English pretty well(another sign of the dominance of your life by the British long after they're gone...)
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/rraley/research/english/macaulay.html

"...We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population..."

I don't know if the picture up there is authentic or fake... It may well be a cook-up by some naive jingoist Indian...
But then!!! As Dheeraj, one of my friends said to me once, "Buddy!!! Everyone knows what the truth is... Every Indian knows the truth about his heritage... But who cares???"
For my answer I'd rather quote a short story narrated to me by Rashmin..

Somebody's dog was howling in pain in the middle of the night.. Everybody's sleep was getting disturbed... A neighbor finally walked up to his house, knocked the door and asked, "What's wrong with your dog man??"
The man replied, "Oh nothing!! He is just sitting on a pin..."
The neighbor asked in amazement, "Why doesn't he get up then??!!!!"
The man calmly observed, "Maybe its not hurting enough......"

We all know what we have inherited... But we all want to be somebody else... A ghost of ourselves.....
Everyone knows they're chasing a non-existent mirage.... That the chase is never going to end... Its not going to get them anything... Its not going to get them anywhere.........
Yet!!! We chase.... As Bau says,

"India is a democracy... Everybody has their right to ignorance!!!"
;-)

The BIG Question is.... Why don't we accept this fact??? The answer is simple...

It requires guts to do that!!!!

If you we simply looked back and (honestly)tried to find what is it in this chase that has given us long term happiness?
It definitely gives a heady feel initially.... but horribly screws up our lives later on......
For a record, "diseases" such as depression, heart attack, anxiety were never known to traditional Indian doctors..... They all popped out of nowhere in the latter half of the last century when India began its "industrial revolution"... Coincidentally, the same phenomenon was observed in the west as well.... albeit a bit earlier since the "industrial revolution" began way back in the west....
Now someone may say, "Are you against industrialization by any chance??"
My answer: "No! I'm only against exploitation...."

We are all like the dog-sitting-on-a-pin, but we don't dare to move, living with the ingrained insecurities that we're brought up with... We live with a notion of helplessness and incapability drilled deep into our psychologies.....

"If there are corrupt politicians, how can I change it??"
"I'm scared of my Boss... I need a job!"

Man!!!! Such asses we are.... If we can "elect" a politician, can't we remove him too????
Are you sooo worthless, you won't find a J-O-B(Just-another-Boss!!)??? Why don't you commit suicide then?? Its the easier way out...

I could go on and on about the victim consciousness we live with.... But have to save to something good for the part two of this serious coming soon....

Watch the coming blogs for even more shocking truths about the history of India...

Some muted truths about Indian heritage :-| Part 2
...A historical blasphemy cooked-up to appease the racist views of British Missionaries who doubled up as historians supposed to "educate the world with the truth about India...."!!!!