Random thoughts.. contd

On the corruption index, India seems to have dropped two places to 86th most corrupt nation, whoa! Anyway, the article also says that Indians pay 210 billion in bribes every year!! and kerala is the least corrupt state in India, while Bihar the most corrupt. Corruption in India comes in different sizes, once there was a police officer who too Rs 5 from me cos I was driving without a license! and the best case was a friend of mine who paid 1 Rupee to a police guy in Kolkata to get off being charged for running a red light! Some of my friends have even paid Rs 1000 to get off being charged! At the higher end are politicians who make millions from tax payers money. An example is the construction of needless flyovers in chennai during the late 90's by the then mayor of the city- MK.Stalin, who got a fat cut from each one of those!

I missed the last episode of the apprentice but I checked out what went on from the nbc website, as expected the women lost, Toral was a Total disaster, and she was fired! Trump said he felt bad he had to fire someone that smart (A wharton graduate)! I feel there should be some kind of psychological screening before entry into prestigious B-Schools!

A list of funny and nice names I have come across-
'Apple' Paltrow (Funny) - Gwynyth Paltrow's daughter.
'Salma Hayek' (Nice) - Actress
'Murasoli' Maran (Funny) - Industrialist
'Vijay Mallya' (Nice) - Industrialist
'Mammooty' (Funny) - Actor
James 'Gandolfini' (Nice) - Actor
'Ho Chi Minh' (Funny) - Leader
'Augustine Cheung' (Nice) - A friend
'Kurian-Kurian Cherian' (Funny) - Doctor
'Abbas-Mustan' (Nice) - Directors
'Puli' (Funny) - A common name in South India
'Achamma' Puliyanthil (Funny) - A friend
'Alessandro Del-Piero' (Nice) - Soccer Star
'Raji Rajan' (Funny) - A friend
'JFK' (Nice) - Politician
'Murtaza Bhutto' (Funny) - Politician
'Ashwathaman Menon' (Nice) - Journalist
'Maman Matthew' (Funny) - Journalist

After a long time I burnt a music CD a couple of days back, cos I found it cumbersome to keep switching CD's which had my fav songs, so I burnt 3 CD's- 1. English, 1. Hindi and 1. Tamil, This gave me the freedom to play 3 CD's over and over again instead of playing over a dozen! And now I have given my iPod a break. Of late I've started downloading a lot of Indian MP3 but very rarely do I download English MP3, Why? cos Indian cyber laws are not very strict! and here they are not really bothered about Indian music anyway!! Man.. that makes me feel guilty!!

My favourite Brands..
Levi's Jeans
Starbucks Coffee
Apple
American Express
Google
Coke
Marlboro
IBM
Blackberry
Nike
Lockheed Martin
Boeing
Tommy Hilfiger
Sean John
Bose
Infosys
Heineken
Police
Booz Allen
Ben Sherman
GAP-Kids
Audi
Sony
Visa
GE
Roc-a-fella

A list of cities/countries that I have really enjoyed my stay at..
Chennai- India
Coimbatore- India
Goa- India
New York- U.S
Chicago- U.S
Boston- U.S
Philadelphia- U.S
Columbia- U.S
Arlington- U.S
Miami- U.S
Washington- U.S
Colombo- Sri Lanka
Neuralia- Sri Lanka
Male- Maldives
London - England
Manchester- England
Singapore- Singapore