Book Review - The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

Hello friends….I am writing this blog as a personal book review of the book I recently read “The Accidental Billionaires - The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal” by Ben Mezrich. Well the reason I chose this book was just that I had no other option. A friend of mine was supposed to give me another book from the store of Sidney Sheldon (which she hasn't given me till now, TIMESTAMP – 10:41 PM, 26th Jan 2011) and so I groped for this ebook from my LAN and read it.
I had no personal propensity about reading this book as I had already seen the movie “Social Network” which has been adapted from this book and also has been nominated for the annual Oscar Awards 2011.So I started it off with not so much of frenzy as a veritable real life drama deserves. But as the story went by, it educed and gripped in my interest as some of the aspects of the book differed from the movie like in the movie. It wasn’t depicted lucidly in the movie that who was behind the case of sean parker being busted while getting stoned but some of the excerpts of the novel clearly mention that mark wasn’t as bovine in this case as the world thinks him to be. Besides that also there are much other cases of dissidence between the book and the movie.
There is no denying the fact that mark has been an effulgent prodigy in the history of computers and networking, but he has been alleged of plagiarizing technology and ideas(though he has been disbursing all of it). The story also depicts how unkempt a person Mark is in his personal life. Anyways the thing he engendered way back in 2004 is one of the addictive things in today’s world as well as a boon to social networking which has been given a new dimension by adapting the whole of our Social Experience online. The way you get invited to events on facebook is as identical as you get invitations through mail at your door is one such instance of this assertion.
Anyways there were certain things that were peculiar about the novel which were great to discover like I never knew that originally the poke feature in facebook was designed to let someone know that you have checked out their profile and you are interested to see them. Well lots of my friends have been indiscriminately using this poke thing without even knowing that they are actually wooing at the profiles they poke. No one knows what impression they must have made of themselves over the people they have been POKING (how does it matter anyways as most people getting poked never knew its meaning :P)
Though mark zuckerberg has been constantly rebuked and reprimanded by people over the years for what he did to Eduardo and the twins (maybe sean parker too) but still the legend of this geek is worth a read.

RE: Apprehension to lose Master Blaster

Hii friends…I was apprised of a blog some guy wrote , in which he talked about why he dint want india to win this World cup 2011 just because he is afraid that Master Blaster Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar will quit the game if India wins. May be this guy thinks that sachin envisages to give a farewell tribute to Indians and that’s why sachin has been waiting for this mighty quadrennial ICC Cricket World Cup 2011. He has eulogized sachin(which surely is deserved by the cricket god) but he says that he adores sachin so much that he will even quit watching cricket if there is no sachin in it. 

I wrote this blog because I don’t really acquiesce with the opinion this guy held. Might be I find him much more clairvoyant, but I differ a bit with this chap. He is intimidated by the very thought of sachin leaving cricket. I don’t intend to write badinage to this SACHIN fanatic’s views. But in my opinion, no matter what the verdict of the world cup 2011 is, sachin will quit himself from the game.

We are aware of how briskly sachin has achieved fame and honor for himself and India. He has won several laurels for india, booked records (and even broke lots of them etched by Don Bradman and Brian Lara). Also everyone knows his avocation (virtually), endorsement of various commodities ranging from toothbrushes to sedans. No doubt he is the best sportsman india ever had (or may be will ever have). He indubitably made CRICKETism(or CRICKETianity…ahh whatver) the 5^th major religion (besides of course Hinduism,Islam,Sikhism and Christianity) and the irony about this religion being that it is exclusively followed by the former four. 

Talking about the master blaster quitting the game, he has been playing the game since a tender age to his present age of 37. When a child is supposed to learn tricycling, he held a cricket bat and vivified the gully area. He is a self made personality from scratch, born in a house of a novelist. He has been there in the good (World cup finals 2003) as well as the bad (World cup 1999) as well as the ugly (World cup 2007). No one can question his adroitness in cricket, but there is a limit to everything nature has created. He can’t do all his life, How could he. He gets atrophied like any other human on this earth. He just has been vividly waiting to give his career’s best in this world cup 2011 and that too which is being held on the holy land where he was born and raised. Referring to the annals of Cricket World, India won the world cup in ’83 on the playgrounds of england ,and now its being held on sachin's homeland itself making the World Cup ’11 even more valued to india(it hurts more if you are beat on your lands and that too in front of majority spectators being of your race). Of course, he will also get the full time devotion to his career in advertising and that will surely make up for what is lost when he will (or may) quit the game and he is surely going to be legendary in that like big B(old bones die hard). Also I anticipate another appendant restaurant christened to be Ramesh’s or may be Anjali’s with better cuisines of the worth of price paid, for a gourmand like me sometimes thinks of food only!! :P

So badly flattering time’s celerity as there is still more than a month for 19^th feb to arrive and then India hosts the most appraised laurel in the world of cricket the World Cup 2011. Let’s see what god (and the Cricket God) has in store for us.

Travel log to Chandigarh,Shimla and Kufri

Hello everyone..a very happy new year to all of you. With the inception of this new year I thought of resuming my blogging after almost an aeon.

This Blog is actually a travel log to my visit to Panchkula,Chandigarh,shimla and kufri where I spent my new years eve 2011.It all revolves around 3 protagonist states (Punjab,Haryana and HP) and 1 UT(of course chandigarh).My brother stays down in panchkula(in Haryana) and that’s where it all began.
 

On the first day of my trip, we went on to visit Chandigarh city. The city is good enough in terms of catering rustic needs of aristocratic class people like roads are tidy as well as broad enough to make your SUV gallop around in the city. The people are pretty and cooperative enough to channel you through all the ways around. For some the Guns n Roses song “Paradise city”  holds a meaning  to this city as the grass is green and the girls are pretty .Just the poor thing is that you won’t find that great food out there(as apparently Punjab side is famous for ) like lassi and sarso da sag. There are not much restaurants around,so if u are a fast food fanatic..there you go.Places like Sukhna Lake and Rock Garden are worth a visit. You can enjoy boating in sukhna lake with the scenic beauties around like the horizons along the lake and a closed windmill located at the left side center of the lake.In rock garden you will find a judicious usage of your home made garbage like pottery,broken tiles etc into small canopies and hut like structures. If you are not an atheist kind,there is a mansa mata temple in panchkula as well as a well known gurudwara and another shiv temple(famous for majestic veracious appearance of shiv ling back in the medieval ages). All 3 derive their fame for sending your wish to god. Besides that pubs and discs are also good enough to visit in the main city of chandigarh. That was the end of the first day of our trip.

At the break of the dawn on the next day, around 6.30 AM we set off to our adventurous excursion to Shimla(and not stipulated kufri).It was hell cold and I sincerely recommend you to wear gloves and nice gripping pair of shoes(which most of us dint). And ya if you can’t get along with the motions of your SUV, do take recommendations from your family doctor because the roads are too curvaceous and zig zag. The road to shimla was expected to take around 3 hours max(too paradoxical as it actually took us 5 hours). It traversed from Haryana then Punjab and finally HP. I should mention that December to mid February is the best time to visit shimla and places around as you would be able to see the snow fall. During our journey we could see snowflakes on our way 15 kms before shimla itself. Houses looked magnificent with foots of snow resting over them blushing in the daylight. Continuing with the way you can either stay and have a look around at shimla but we chose to go up further as we had anticipated more of snow and ice around at kufri(40kms from shimla). The roads were blocked half by snow and rest half by queues of cars being channeled by policemen there. But the scenic beauties of the formidable nature could be seen from inside your vehicle. Trees and forests around could be seen spattered with flakes of snow. We actually felt that this was the crux of our trip but there was more (adventure) to come. As we ascended towards kufri , all of a sudden our car skidded on a small block of ice on the road while turning and the car rotated 180 degrees and thumped a fence on the diversion which saved us from falling straight from the cliff. We had bluffed death by just a millimeter. We thanked god for not fixing our tryst with death and giving such an edge because the roads were very risky and that’s where we realized that why KUFRI isn’t that famous instead of being far better place than shimla. We then continued ascending after recovering from that sudden shock. Cars in the queue drifted very slowly. So now when our vehicle was stuck in the jam, we started our waddling gait up and getting some pics clicked with the wonderful ambience around. Now we were at that place where the real fun starts. There is a 2km path reaming with snow and you either need to hire a horse or ramble enjoying each and everything around which seemed no less than some paradise. We chose to walk to the top where we found much astounding things like the apple gardens and skiing. Those were the extreme pure apples there, which are even exported from India but we dint dare to grab any of them may be because of paucity of stamina after walking hard on the snow ridden paths. There were restaurants and dhabas on the road side there which charged ridiculously high for even a cup of Maggie. That spot had a great vista of Himalayan range which was fully covered with snow all over and seemed like a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Some people involved themselves in skiing there and some relished watching them. We preferred the former. The key thing was not to be impertinent to nature else you get castigated severely by her. By then it was almost 4 PM and there was not even a somber ray of sunlight overhead. We decided to return back then as some of the group members were exhausted and attrite. The way back was worse than way up. It was a road jam of about 2 hours till shimla and that again was followed by another road jam in shimla of 1 hour. It was darn cold our way back and lots of cars stuck on our way covered with foots of snow by the road side .We took a detour which lead us to Haryana from the outskirts of the city itself. We then stopped by a restaurant on our way home to have our supper. Finally the day ended with having some scotch to escape the austere climate.