In Love with rains

Wow, I cant believe that that the rainy season has started, it feels like it was just yesterday when I was out there on the roads with sweat all over my face and quite irritated with the sun, applying of UV rays protected lotions, avoiding to wear black clothes, swimming pool was my favorite past time place and what not! But now all those lotions are in the dust bin, no more swimming pool, I can wear my favorite color black almost everyday now. Wow isn’t rains awesome?

Rains also brings back with it many memorable moments when it comes to food. Corn or what they call as the bhutta bought only from the roadside bhaiya is one of my preferred snacks! Then the famous batata bhaji , isn’t it mouth watering?

Getting wet in the rains is another fun activity that anyone enjoys at any given time. Though rains brings back with it many cherished moments and happiness with every drop that falls on earth, we should also take care because unknowingly it also brings with it many harmful diseases and sickness.

There are few precautions that I would recommend to all who want to enjoy this season an yet remain healthy

1. Do not get wet if you are allergic to cold water.
2. While travelling always carry following with you: Umbrella, raincoat, extra clothes, hand towel, socks if you wear shoes – am sure you don’t want to sit in those wet socks whole day and fall sick.
3. Make sure you have enough money when you travel – you never know when it is in use.
4. Avoid wearing jeans as it takes really long to dry.
5. Carry an extra plastic to avoid your valuable stuff from getting wet.
6. Make up for girls should be to minimum if they are going outdoors. Make sure products you use are waterproof or else you will end up making a fool of your own self.
7. Do not avoid if you feel sick/ill even for few hours, rush to the doc immediately.
8. Try not to eat outside food specially fried stuff.
9. Try not to drink water from restaurants or other places where you suspect they don’t boil the water. Learn to carry your own bottle of water.
10. Last and not the least – when you return back home from outside, take a shower or clean your legs, hands and face with water and soap. By doing this you will let all the germs and illness stay away from you.

So these are some important precautions that you have to abide by if you want to enjoy this season of happiness and fun. I am looking forward to your suggestions and comments.

-Stella Roy

Tennis at Wimbledon

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;"

(The above lines are carved on the wall above the doors that lead to the centre-court at Wimbledon).
There cannot be a better narrative of games played at Wimbledon then the above lines from Rudyard Kipling.

By the time I publish this post the Tennis festival at Wimbledon Tennis Championship would have started.

Wimbledon is known to be the prime tennis tournament in the world. Every tennis player has a dream of playing at the famous center court of Wimbledon once in his lifetime.

Wimbledon is the only major Grand Slam that is played on grass. This Grand Slam takes lot of pride in its old culture that’s why you will find all the players in white clothing. The game on grass is totally different from other surface. On grass the players need to be fully fit and should posses a great serve and volley. (Borg was an exception champion)

Wimbledon has produce some great rivalry in tennis, such as McEnroe-Borg, McEnroe-Connors, Becker-Edberg, Sampras-Agassi, Evert- Martina and the most recent one is that of Federer-Rafal.

Some major facts/records about Wimbledon:-

• The current year is the 121st championship at All England Club
• Boris Becker is youngest champion at Wimbledon at the age of 17 years.
• Bjorn Borg is the only male player to win five successive titles.
• Martina Navratilova is the only female player to win seven successive titles.
• Pete Sampras has won the maximum titles in the last 30 years at Wimbledon. In total he has won seven times.

This year Roger Federer is defending champion and will be trying to emulate Bjorn Borg record of six successive titles. I wish him all the luck.

If you love tennis and have more facts about Wimbledon then please do write me a comment.

-Stella Roy

Exams, results and career

It’s month of June and time for results of HSC and SSC examination across the country. Depending upon the results people choose their next step in academics. It’s during this period that you choose the path of your career.

Talking to many educationists I have learnt that choosing a career is like choosing your new life.

Choosing a career after Secondary board exams is the most difficult phase of any student’s life. He / She have to be very careful on choosing the right career as this would decide the fate of their future life. Elders should be more cooperative and supportive at this time and should give proper advice and guidance to the students.

There are basically 3 streams that one can opt for after higher secondary exams, they are: Science, Commerce and Arts.

These are entry level for your degree/ graduation. If you want to opt to become an engineer or a doctor you need to move in to the science stream, if CA is your ultimate goal then go for commerce, if teaching is what you want to do then Arts is well suited.

Apart from these there is also a Home Science field especially for girls. There are many courses in it that one can explore.
There are various diploma courses also available as good option for students. There are many diploma courses we have, like in Engineering, mechanical, pharmacy, Mine Engineering, textile engineering, architecture, for girls we have fashion designing, jewelry designing, etc.

You can also study to get into army, navy, or become pilots or air hostess etc.
If you go to see there are many courses available for each field today. It’s always help to take advice from a academic/ career counselor.

Before choosing your career, make sure that this is what you want to do all your life, know the end results, know your capability, explore various fields and colleges, talk to various people of the same field, take advice from elders and only then chose the right stream.

Best of luck

-Stella Roy

Movie Review of Rajnikant's Sivaji - The Boss

Some people are born to make history. No matter what and how they do, each and every act of their in public becomes a talk about topic for several years. And this Friday 15th 2007 Rajnikant the megastar made history with the release of his movie Sivaji. Well some may argue that every movie of Rajnikant makes history. Hmm! Yes I agree to it. It is Rajnikant's job to deliver hit after hit movies.

Sivaji is supposed to be the most costly Indian movie ever made. It is Rajniknat’s 100th movie till date.

Sivaji - The Boss starts with Rajnikant coming down from USA to India. The aim of Sivaji is to improve the social condition of the country. The first part of the movie is all about how the superstar is cheated and is left virtually penniless.

Sivaji losses the court case on a plot of land and with that he is left with nothing in his pocket. It is here that famous scene of Rajnikant comes to the screen. Suman gives him a 1 Rupee coin and Rajnikant tosses the coin towards the sky and vows to take revenge from his enemies and earn back whatever he has lost till now. The first half of the movie has some good comic scene with Vivek.

The second half is all about how Rajnikant goes about taking revenge from his enemies’ single handedly. The second half has lot of action that is synonymous with Rajnikant’s movies. The next 90 minutes of the movie is what you need to look forward to. It’s Rajnikant all the way in second part of the movie. It’s virtually impossible to hear anything in cinema hall except the chanting of Rajni’s fan.

Now if you analyze the performance the cast then there is not much to talk about except the two legend of South Indian cinema i.e. A R Rehman and Rajnikant. The music of A. R Rehman rocks! With Sivaji A R Rehman proves why he is regarded as the country’s premier musician.

Rajnikant’s performance in Sivaji is not the best of Rajnikant till date but a very inspiring one. Rajnikant is the soul of Sivaji. Take out Rajni from the movie and you have the same old story without any style to it. What Rajni has done to Sivaji is that he has given Sivaji the Rajnikant’s flavor. The same flavor for which the people gave him a demi God like status in South India. Whether it is a comic scene or a song/dance sequence with the heroines, be it fighting with the villains of the movie single handedly, Rajnikant delivers everything with élan and ease.

The songs of the movie are good with ‘Sahara Pokal’ being the best of the lot. Rest of the songs makes the flow of the movie little slow, but the music by the maestro A.R Rehman keeps you on your toes.

The rest of the cast is done good job of supporting Rajnikant. Vivek has done marvelous job in the movie. He has a wonderful comic timing with Rajnikant and others in the movie. The ladies of the movie have not much to do but Shriya looks good and have justified her casting against superstar by Shankar.

All in all a must watch and if you are a Rajnikant’s fan then by now you must have watch the movie at least twice.

I would like to have your comment on Sivaji the movie. And if you like my review please forward it to your family and friends. I would love it.

-Stella Roy

34th Annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards

The Daytime Entertainment Emmy awards are awarded in the field of daytime television production. It’s the most reputed award in television Industry for more then 30 years. Every year the Daytime Entertainment Emmy awards are given in more then 50 categories that include best production, best actor and other technical aspect of a TV production.

This year the 34th Annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy awards were held at The Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.

Bob Barker won his 19th Emmy awards at the age of 83. CBS swept most of the leading awards at 34th Emmy awards night. Some of the winners in the popular categories were;

Category: Best Drama (there was a tie)
Winners: Guiding Light" and "The Young and the Restless

Category: Best Actor in Drama series
Winner: Christian LeBlanc (The Young and the Restless)

Category: Best Actress in Drama series
Winner: Maura West (As the World Turns)

Category: Supporting actress in a drama series
Winner: Genie Francis (General Hospital)

Category: Supporting actor in a drama series
Winner: Rick Hearst (General Hospital)

Category: Younger actress in a drama series
Winner: Jennifer Landon (As the World Turns)

Category: Younger actor in a drama series
Winner: Bryton McClure (The Young and the Restless)

Category: Best Talk Show
Winner: The Ellen DeGeneres Show

Category: Best Talk Show host
Winner: Ellen DeGeneres

Category: Lifetime Achievement Award
Winner: Lee Phillip Bell, co-creator of ‘The Young and the Restless’ and 'The Bold and the Beautiful'.

Let us take this opportunity and congratulate the winner of 34th Daytime Entertainment Emmy awards who keep us entertained all the time.

-Stella Roy

Zahra Amir Ebrahimi and her sex Video

Zahra Amir the famous actress from Iran is facing the most difficult time of her life. Reason; there are several thousands of CD/DVD of her and her boyfriend (fiancé) showing them having sex and Zahra giving blow job to him. The video was reportedly made in their home some two years back.

So you might be thinking what’s wrong in it. There are several hundreds of porn videos of Shakira, Paris Hilton, Madonna, and Britney Spears circulating in the world in some form or other.

If such videos made star out of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton the same act from Zahra Amir Ebrahimi may cost her life. The strict Islamic law doesn’t allow making of such porn video.

The video was supposedly distributed by her boyfriend who was extradited from Armenia by the law authorities.The guardians of tough Islamic Law of Iran are doing all they can to punish her. Some reports even said that the Iranian actress even tried to commit suicide, the claim that Zahra Amir Ebrahimi denied appearing on a news channel.

The Iranian public is outraged and wants maximum punishment for Zahra Amir Ebrahimi. The Police have submitted their report to the court and a final decision is yet to come on the authenticity of the video tape.

Zahra Amir Ebrahimi has denied ever shooting that video with her ex boyfriend. She says her ex boyfriend is taking revenge with her by using her duplicate in the porn video. The result of this porn video has forced many production houses to ban their programs that featured Zahra Amir.

Your comment on this is most welcome. I tried not to make this long as most of my friends suggested that I need to keep my article short.

-Stella Roy

---Updated on 7th August, 2007-----
I have personally seen the video and no way I found that it was duplicate of Zahra or it was done without her knowledge. She was fully aware of it.
Also check out some interesting comments on Zahra here http://ekhichdi.com/index.php?topic=33.msg53#new

Traveling for girls is not safe?

The recent acid attack on bar dancer in Mumbai has once again raise the question of security of women/girls in the city of Mumbai. I would like to put across some points that we need to follow while travelling alone.

Traveling – The word itself seems so interesting to some people who have interstes in traveling. Traveling are of 2 types, one is when you travel to another city or country just for a holiday or site seeing, and the other is when you commute everyday from one place to another, be it for work, college or just to meet someone.
Today I am going to talk about the latter part i.e. traveling everyday in and out 24/7 for a purpose. My topic is more micro divided to specially girls traveling that too in the city of Mumbai.

Is it safe for girls to travel in Mumbai alone? Is there any specific time after which girls are not to wander outside? Well Mumbai is one of the boldest cities of India. It just does not sleep at all. There is no such restriction as such for girls to travel in Mumbai at any time of the day but hey there are few precautions that you should always take specially when you are traveling alone.

Make sure you carry enough cash with you when you are traveling alone. It always helps you take another form of transportation if you are stuck with one.
Most common used transportation here in Mumbai are the TRAINS, if you enter any compartment where in only few commuters are there, do not get into the train unless you are in a group of 3 or 4. Be aware of the fellow commuters while traveling in crowded busses or trains.

Also, make sure you guard your belongings well while getting in, out and when you are in the bus or train. Another form of transport which is easily available is the Auto Rickshaws, make sure when you sit into the Auto Rickshaw you know the roads well to the place you want to go in especially if it is late in the night and there is no guy with you. Make sure to write down the auto vehicle number. Same goes with the CABS.

So be aware of where you are traveling, and how you are traveling, when you chose how do you want to travel keep in mind the time you will be traveling and people you will be traveling with. It really makes a big difference if you travel with a group of people you know.

If you have any more suggestion on travelling please write it for me on comment page.

-Stella Roy

The Presidential Race: Your choice?

As the term of current President His Excellency APJ Kalam is close to ending, the hunt for the next President has gain impetus. All the major political parties have short listed their Presidential candidate.

The BJP (Bhartiya Janta Party) is strongly promoting the name of current vice president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the names coming out of various congress camps are of Narain Dutt Tiwari, Karan Singh and Sushil Kumar Shinde. The CPM is for its old hand Somnath Chatterjee. The name of former chief of Infosys Narayan Murthy and the reigning superstar of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan courtesy Bade Bhaiya Amar Singh can also be heard in the corridor of power.

In recent days, the race for Presidential candidate has taken a new twist. APJ Kalam has shown no interest to continue for the next five year tenure and has supported the candidature of former Infosys chief Mr. Murthy many a times. .On the other hand in recent press meet, Narayana Murthy has shown his reluctance to join the race for the President ship. This makes all the political party of India to fight it out among them and push their party candidate to the top most post of the country.

The majority of people who have been asked to give their response prefer the current President to continue. Whereas some people and I included have strong objection to candidature of Mr. Murthy and Amitabh Bachchan.

I feel the President post is political to the core and we need someone who knows Indian politics and is aware of problems at the grass root level. The President should be someone who has put his whole life in Indian politics. With due respect to Mr. Narayana Murthy, the former chief of Infosys, I am of opinion that running a $ billion company with top class engineers and managers is much easier a task then running the current Indian Politics that is entirely in appalling state. Our experience with APJ Kalam, a great human being and an extra ordinary nuclear scientist has shown the limitation of a person from non-political background in dealing with political issues like Afzal Guru’s mercy plea and imposing the president rule in Bihar.

Just having great vision will not help the country, we need someone who can implement those vision and in very short period of time. The President post also demand a strong political person who can keep check on all the politicians / parties and can take a path breaking decision to improve the social life of Indians. Right choice should be made.

So who you think should be our President? Should it be Mr Tiwari or Mr Shekhawat? Or do you still prefer a person from totally different field like IT or Movie Industry? Please give your comments. It’s a matter of national importance.

-Stella Roy

Great tips for MS Excel

Over the last few month I have been working on Microsoft Office for some important assignments. And while working on it I learned some new things that I would like to share with you people.


Below are the tips and tricks to use Microsoft Excel:

Working with date and time in your data: If your data has lots of date and time, you can change the format of the date and time as desired. To do that right click the entire row which contains date and time and click the FORMAT CELLS – hit the NUMBER tab. Popup showing you the possible date formats will be given. Similarly you can work on other data formats also depending on what your data is, for example general, number, currency, date, time, percentage etc.

You have copy pasted the data say from a word file or some website into your excel, but the data is not dumped properly in the excel file. What do you do? Simple copy-paste the data first into a notepad and then from there copy again and paste it into your excel file. Notepad removes all the formatting that goes with the data while copying it from such sources.

You have copied the data from a source to MS Excel, but there are lots of blank cells in between the data range. You want to get rid of these blank cells. How do you do that? Select the entire data range, hit F5 button from your keyboard, a GoTo dialog box will open, click on the button ‘Special’ from the bottom left of that dialog box, you will get many options to chose from, select BLANKS and hit OK, on doing so only the blank cells will be selected, you can now very carefully right click on any 1 of the blank cell (make sure you don’t click anywhere outside the blank cell) and say delete. This will delete all the blank cells from your data range.

The GoTo dialog box selects the data which has the formatting or similar data as the option you have selected in the SPECIAL box. You have many options to chose from here.

There are other mathematical formulas that MS excel can perform within no seconds with just one click like: Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division etc.

To add numbers: Select an empty cell, and click on the Summation icon (for those who do not know what summation icon is it is found in the toolbar), and select the data you want to add and hit keyboard enter key and it is done.

For Subtraction: Select an empty cell, type = and then select the first number which you want to subtract and then type the minus sign – and select the second number and hit the keyboard enter key. Same goes for other mathematical operations like multiplication and division.

Well this is just for the starters. There is lots more to come in my next blog, so keep waiting, and yes don’t forget to share your tips and tricks on excel by commenting on this blog.

-Stella Roy

Life of your Laptop

Just last week Intel launches a new series of ‘Metro Notebook’ that is one quarter inch thicker then the Motorola Razr.

The speed at which the Notebook is getting sleeker day by day, it wont be a surprise if someday we will have Notebook the size of Nokia N95 cell phone. Image yourself carrying Dell, Compaq, IBM or HP Notebook in your pocket with 120 GB HDD space and Intel Duo core processor. I wish I could get such Laptop from Dell or IBM soon. As we try to handle different things in our daily life we always ignore to take care of our computers or Laptops.

In this article, I would like to talk about some tips to keep your Notebook in the best working condition.

• Never expose your Notebook to direct sunlight for more then 15 mins.
• If you are using your Notebook as a desktop machine, it’s better to attach an external keyboard and mouse. This will increase the life of your keypads.
• Make sure that the outer air vents are free of dust. This helps in providing better cooling to the Notebook processor and HDD.
• The LCD of Notebook should be cleaned with non-abrasive cloth or soft towel. Avoid using Newspaper and plastics to clean your LCD
• The Notebook batteries should be charge/discharge periodically to get better longer battery life and better performance. Also configure your power settings to shut off the display after 5 minutes of inactivity.
• Run Disk Defragmenter once in a month. Doing this will give access to your documents much faster.
• Use the best quality carry bag, preferably a leather one that the Notebook manufacturer supplies with the Laptop.
• Use the diagnostic tool that comes with the Notebook to detect any defect in the Notebook at least one in two months.
• Always go for extended warranty. This saves lot of money in case you have a Hardware issue with you Notebook.

There are many more tips to keep your Laptop in great condition but I think that you need to tell me by giving comments.

-Stella Roy