Food for Thought

Globalization of education has allowed students from all over the world to go to various countries of their choice to pursue a degree in the field of their choice. It has its own share of advantages as well as disadvantages, but what doesn’t have. Everything has its own share of advantages and disadvantages like the two faces of a coin. But I am not really bothered about any of it, as my motives behind writing this is entirely different and insignificant as well but my inspiration for this post comes from my Facebook “wall”.

I started going through few statistics and I found out that India is one of the recognized centres of education attracting students from different parts of the world, especially from countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Fiji, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Japan, Ghana, Malaysia, Lebanon, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Syria. The list is exhaustive, it has got almost all the countries in the region except for Pakistan and China (They have their own reasons I guess, but who cares..!!!). Any ways, Indians are not far behind, the number of students from India going abroad to pursue higher studies is growing every year. According to Times of India, US, UK, France, Australia, Germany and Japan are the most favored destinations for Indian students. China sends the largest number of students abroad followed by India and other countries. Now according to few statistics, India has a low rate of students going abroad compared to global average it seems, but according to numbers, we stand second right on the tail of China. Now come on, don’t be surprised… We have a population of somewhere around 1.2 billion and China has more than us…So when it comes to numbers will always be somewhere on the top.

What do our guys and girls do, after going there…? My guess, they will study hard…attend classes and complete the course work to graduate, which most of them do with flying colors and hopefully they will end up working in some reputed company and earn a hefty salary if they are lucky. Now, everyone knows this, and it does not come as a surprise to most of us. But… most of the people I know (or at least I pretend to know just because I am friends with them on Facebook..!!) do something else which always keeps me wondering…and it has also got me under a perception that they go out to learn how to cook Indian food which they would never have learnt if they had stayed back in India..!!!

Surprised?? Shocked?? Do you smell a hint of sarcasm in my words?? I guess so, but even you will start thinking the same if your Facebook wall starts looking like mine. I can see one or the other (sometimes 2 or more) “friend/friends” uploading pictures of the food they cooked at their place. Let’s say, they are excited to be cooking something new…But pictures of Indian food?? Come on…give me a break, we see and eat it every day or almost every day. If you are one of them and unless you are doing a course in hotel management or learning to be a chef, please concentrate on your work or studies more than garnishing, decorating and then taking pictures of “Indian” food (FYI, the food tastes the same with or without your artistic touch) .

In the end it is Facebook to be blamed for trying to tempt me by displaying the “foodilicious” updates on my wall and forced me to write this entry.

Source 1, Source 2

Disclaimer: If you are one of those people whom I may have intentionally or unintentionally described in this post, then please relax and don’t make any attempts to harm me for I come in peace and I would like you to keep on adding more pictures. J

Namma Metro at last?? Hope So...!!

‘Namma Bengalooru’ (Translated:Our Bengalooru), or ‘Bangalore’ as I prefer to call is ready for ‘Namma Metro’, with the first half of the first phase of East-West corridor stretching across 18.1 km completed at last ( Still more to come, dunno when). One can hear a sigh of relief from lots of Bangaloreans who had lost hopes of going on the Metro in their lifetime and hoped their ‘yet to be born’ children will get to commute in Bangalore Metro. But now they can experience it firsthand and probably live to share their experiences with others. I suggest them not to get their spirits up at least until it is officially inaugurated by the Prime Minister of India on god knows when.


The Metro project is running late by months already, hope the trains will at least run on time and most importantly on tracks..!!  If you find me too pessimistic, then you are wrong, for I still like to believe that every cloud comes with a silver lining (not gold as the prices continue to go skywards) and hence to convince everyone that I do still have few drops of optimism left in my system I applied for Namma Metro Travel Card, and I got it delivered to my home. So much for my optimism, I don’t want my 120 bucks to go waste, so they better get it running soon…!!

I do Support Open Access

In today’s world, money seems to be everything. Whenever and wherever there is a possibility numerous groups or individuals jump to monetize it. One can find various instances where people have stolen ideas from others and passed it off as their own, earning big bucks in the process. Not to mention the companies going ga-ga over copyrights, patents, trade secrets and all those stuff.

Companies want to protect their trade secrets, marketing strategies and even go to world’s end just to keep the public from knowing their modus operandi. While coming to the section of money minting machinery which comes under copyright protection, especially publishing houses one can hear them always fussing and complaining about piracy. Now is piracy really doing what they say it is?? I guess not. It is just greed and ignorance of various groups and industries what makes them say what they say. Now, http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2011/04/28/who-deleted-the-song-in-my-profile/ was something I came across and found that it makes perfect sense.

In the present scenario, the main purpose of dissemination of information through books and other literature has taken a backseat. It is all about how much a publisher can earn out of selling those books. It does not matter how much, the author will get as royalties for it will be usually a very small percentage unless he /she is well known and holds multiple degrees from various elite institutions.
Ever thought of the driving force behind piracy? What makes hawkers sell those pirated copies of well known titles on the streets? If you ever thought along those lines then you will observe that most of the pirated books are the ones which comes with a huge price tag and written by some well known authors. No one really cares about the quality of content or the quality and importance of the information available in it as long as the person who wrote it is famous.

But things are changing, It is the world of ‘wiki’ or that’s what they call it. It is people who are generating content, revenue and even sophisticated technologies, innovations and discoveries by the collective effort of people online as well as offline. There are various open source, open access content as well. Linux as well as Android are the best examples for open source software. The open access digital content on the internet allows people to use it for free and also share it with others without thinking about copyright infringements. All they have to do is give credit to the creator of the work.

Now, all I wanted to do was to share some information about a website I came across where one can download open access books on almost all fields of science and technology. I was so overwhelmed that I started writing lots of necessary as well as unnecessary things.

The following site is worth checking out. It may prove helpful and come of some use when in need of some material. http://www.intechopen.com/. I would also wish to express my gratitude to all the authors who have got their titles on the website and to the Intech Open team as well. I hope more and more people will do the same and let books and other materials become the medium of dissemination of information as it was earlier than commercial commodities of the current world. I would also wish to express my gratitude to Mr. Johannes Gutenberg as well as without his printing press these things may not have been possible at all.