Wake Up Call

Its time for a change !!! I got a very sharp wake up call last evening and realized that its time for me to wake up from a very long dream, a dream so good that I fooled myself into thinking that I was still sleeping so that the dream could go on !!!!! I will let the pictures do the talking in this blog post.

 “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

- Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

 - Andy Warhol

Cricket Gift

Andrew Flintoff is now the brand ambassador of Audi for the middle east sector. Andrew Flintoff !! If there are any middle eastern people reading this they would be wondering who the hell is this guy !!! Cricket is the last sport arabs have on their minds and Flintoof is definitely not the first cricketer that they would connect with. Probably the fact that Flintoff has been living in Dubai for sometime now with his family led to Audi's decision. Anyways he's got 2 Dubai plated Q7's as a gift !!

The happiness is pretty obvious !!!!

F1 Gift

The beautiful sculpture in metal that you see above is the beast that propelled the young 23-year old Sebastian Vettel to the 2nd position in the 2009 F1 World Championship. This car played a major role in him setting a lot of new lap records, breaking a lot of F1 records and him being nicknamed the 'New Schumacher'. 


Red Bull Racing was born from the ashes of the failed Jaguar Racing team and the major force behind getting this team to be a serious title contender was the Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey who was poached from the McLaren team in 2006. Adrian Newey is considered a genius in F1 design. This is what is written about him on the Red Bull Racing website :


" During 30 years in motorsport Adrian Newey has developed something of a legend. He’s heralded as an original thinker, a maverick designer, the heir to the legacy of Colin Chapman and a softly-spoken genius. But the thing he’s best known for is winning...


...It’s a widely-held belief that Adrian does his best work whenever F1 undergoes one of its periodic regulatory upheavals, moving development away from number crunching and briefly allowing creativity and intuition to come back to the fore. 2009 demonstrated that in ample measure: Red Bull Racing’s breakthrough season had Adrian’s RB5 taking five pole positions and score six victories....


...The idea of a clean sheet of paper isn’t just a metaphor. Despite the non-stop technological advancement of F1, Adrian still likes to use the drawing board rather than a supercomputer when he’s feeling creative. Away from the office he indulges a passion for classic sports cars, as both a keen collect and amateur racer. Not one to let the laws of physics stand in the way of a borderline overtaking opportunity, he’s had some high-profile scraps in recent years, but - undaunted by the bruises and occasional concussion - has progressed to more serious racing, finishing a highly creditable fourth in class and 22nd overall in the 2007 24 Heures Du Mans while driving an AF Corse Ferrari F430. He also won the 2009 Goodwood Revival TT Race, sharing his Lightweight E-Type Jaguar with his old friend, Bobby Rahal."

So when the car he designed secured 6 wins from 17 races with 5 pole positions and 6 lap records broken, what did Red Bull do ?? They gave him the car as a gift at the Goodwood festival of speed last week !!! When Red Bull secured 1-2 victories at China & Britain Adrian celebrated by donuting a Ferrari California on Team Principal Christian Horner's lawn and partially ruining it....this time around rumours are that the grass is gonna totally come off, or worse the tremendous torque for RB5 might cause the planet to spin the opposite direction !!!

Some of the information and all of the pictures were taken from the Red Bull Racing Website. Thank you Red Bull !!!

Population Explosion

Source : http://www.china-profile.com/data/tab_rurpop_1.htm

According to this statistic, the total population of China in 1978 was 963 million people and is currently 1,324,655,000 (2008 Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators). The reason I chose to show the population in 1978 is because it is later in that year that the Chinese government started implementing the One-Child policy.

The Indian population is 1,139,964,932 (2008 Source : Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators). This is 17.31% of the total world population, which is a significant slice, pretty close to the 20% contribution by the Chinese.

Back in the 1950's when the Chinese population was nowhere close to a billion, they started encouraging the Two-Child policy. By 1978 when they realised that they were soon going to touch the billion mark and that something needed to be done and fast, they strictly implemented the One-Child policy. Like every other Chinese policy this one too receives opposition and criticism from different parts of the world. Some even call it violation and abuse of the basic human rights. But more than 76% of the Chinese support it and believe that it is good for them. The Chinese government claims that till date this policy has helped reduce 300-400 million people. That is nearly 30% of the current population !!!  

Why is population a problem ??

Personally I feel that population is one of the major causes of misery and problems in this world. I feel that with the right population, there will be almost no problems in our world. Even if there are a few problems, they would be very much controllable and could be solved. It is the biggest crisis facing the planet today and  is so big and so surrounded by delicate issues that most people will not face it. Simply put there are at least 200,000 more people alive today than yesterday. Tomorrow there will be at least another 200,000 more. Just think about all the current problems the world faces, really just think about those problems, you will notice that a lot of  problems in this world finally boils down to extreme or intense competition which is because we have to compete with each other for the limited resources that we have.


The funniest part is that the world's most fastest growing country in terms of population is India, and nobody in India is even thinking about this it seems. Poverty, corruption, over-crowded cities, transit systems stretched to their seams, violence, drug abuse, unemployment, over-zealous religious madmen, terrorism....a lot of these problems can be traced directly or indirectly to over population. And what are we doing about it ? Painting 'Hum Do, Hamare Do' (literally translated 'We Two, Our Two' implying families to have just 2 kids) on the backs of trucks and rickshaws !!! Not a single politician has made this issue their major campaign agenda...Why ?? Because a few of the major religions in this world oppose birth control. In India and in most of the democracies in the world, gathering the highest votes and winning the election is more important than anything else. So who cares about what is actually happening and what is going to happen in another few years if you can make it appear as though you are actually doing something for the masses. Of course nobody would dare to even ponder about such kinds of issues which can arouse the sentiments of the extremely sensitive religious crowd, who knows when they are going to chop your hand off ?!?!?!

Some excerpts from an excellent article written on the same topic. The full story can be read here.


"...People can argue, as they do, that the world could cope with a population of 25 or even 50 billion. Perhaps they are right. What happens when we reach saturation at 50 billion (or 7 billion, or whatever saturation turns out to be) what will make the population stop growing then? The bigger the numbers the faster the growth. Eventually we need birth control or the population will be limited by natural means; starvation, pandemic disease or warfare to secure the means of survival. Imagine a world that has reached saturation, imagine trying to put the brakes on then, when the population is still growing at 5 or 10 every second. A new Calcutta, Cairo or Mexico City every week. It is too frightening to contemplate for long. To stop the growth we need to apply the brakes now, while there is still a chance that we can keep in control.


If we do not want to face mass starvation on a scale never before seen or have a war that will be in every sense the third world war, we have to stop the population from growing the way it is. Madly. Uncontrolled and in all the wrong places. The only fair way is two's your lot. A universal limit of two children per woman, or two children per person if you prefer. It must be universal, no exceptions, especially on religious grounds. It is the Muslim and Catholic communities who are the most dangerous because they believe they have a duty to breed. Let one woman be an exception and she breeds more exceptions.


To make things fair universality is necessary but not sufficient. We must also address why the third world people think they need more children when they are surrounded by underfed and dying children. We must recognize that their decisions are rational, we must change the reality. Children are social security and pensions. We must replace that with real social security. To say the least this will be expensive, compared to the alternative though it is the bargain of all time....


...Ideally I would like to see many people not allowed to breed at all. The poor who live in squalor, ignorance, poverty and disease will breed more of their kind. It does not matter if you believe that genes, environment or conditioning in infancy are the key factors. Dysfunctional families breed dysfunctional people....


....Birth control is always controversial. A formal limit on family size is a profoundly illiberal policy. No democratic politician is likely to see it as a vote winner. However it is very much the better alternative to ecological meltdown, starvation and violence on a scale that can barely be imagined. In contrast reducing the death rate is seen as universally good. That discrepancy is likely to make solving the problem even harder. Western charity is aimed at reducing deaths in poor countries, very little money is spent on birth control. When charities mention birth control they receive less money. So they go on with death control only, making the underlying problem worse.


Sometimes in life the right thing to do is the opposite of your instinctive reaction, like pulling down the houses in your street to save the city from fire. Your feelings that motivate you to care can blind you to the best way to express that care.


Saving a starving child today means having more children in thirty years time trying to live off the same or eroded resources. Saying that makes me seem like a heartless bastard. In many public meetings if I said that from the platform I would be shouted down, and maybe beaten up too. But I am not wrong, call me whatever you want, I am telling it like it is. There is a classic charity tag line that goes something like give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you help feed him for a lifetime. This is incredibly patronizing, as if starving people are surrounded by food they are too stupid to catch. The reality is that if you teach that man how to fish in two generations time there will be a lot more starving people in that same village and no fish. That is human nature. Man will breed and eat all the food available.....


The current charity model is doomed to both fail and make the problem worse. In the twentieth century there was a massive decline in death rates and only a modest fall in birth rates. That is THE PROBLEM. The biggest problem in the world today and it is an aggravating factor in almost every other problem mankind faces. Environmental decline, global warming, habitat loss, the loss of all easily mined metallic ores, the phenomenal rise in fossil fuel consumption; all these are made worse by the fact that in twenty five years time there will be another three thousand million more people alive than there are today.

It is the biggest problem because it makes every other problem worse and harder to solve. It will not be solved by ignoring it. There can be no technological fix that can provide ever growing resources for a population to grow at geometric rates. It cannot be solved by conventional democratic politics. Something radical must be done to get the world to wake up and face reality. "

The last paragraph really hammers the nail into the coffin....it is the biggest problem and it makes every other problem harder to solve. Its high time everybody wakes up, especially India, and stop playing touch and go with such issues....instead of acting like we understand the crazy bullshit that most religions propagate (which pea-brain wouldn't understand simple and obvious concepts like 'evolution' ?!?!?), we should face problems head on, religion and rallies by ignorant, selfish pricks be damned and do something about our own future....its not only the future but also the present.

Just look at this graph. The Chinese population seems to reaching its peak and will soon reach a level growth. Ideal growth patterns would be like UK or Japan, but looks like we Indians are going to have to colonise the moon or Mars in order to make space for us, little wonder the Indian space program is gaining heat !!!

Promises, promises .....

Its been ages since I decided to keep my blog updated and on more than one ocassion I have blogged that I am going to change forever and that things will be a lot more different from now on. Everytime I did put up a post saying tht things will be different, I was also trying to change a lot of other things in my life too. But all those vows were practically only as true as a politician's campaign promise. Well I have wanted to change for a long long time now and it just doesn't seem to work. I have tried every trick in the book, starting with imitating role models, changing behaviour patterns, altering my daily routines, changing my job, shifting my country of residence, gave up, tried again a gazillion times.....and the list goes on......and still I haven't figured the magic secret thats going to revolutionise my life and make me the next Steve Jobs or Richard Branson.

Its not like we don't know what makes a succesful person tick, most of us if given half a chance could easily give a lecture on how to live properly. Most of us our experts in the field of human psychology, many thanks to the reality shows on air, tremendous amount of info available on the net and of course our ever growing hunger for gossip and our passion for seeing every other person's lives around us through the looking glass and trying to figure out what makes them 'do it'. Well this time I am in another one of those famous life-changing phases and this time around I am trying even more harder to completely alter myself.

I was chilling with a few friends at Wadi Hattat yesterday night and we were sitting at a coffee shop with a good view of the road ahead of us. This was in Wadi Hattat 5. A minute ago we drove across a junction in order to get to this coffee shop and a minute later we heard the gruesome sound of metal on metal and a shout. I saw somethin like a big bag flying and landing about 10 metres away and then shifted my attention to the spot where a bicycle had got crumpled by a big white land cruiser. The road was poorly lit and the Landcruiser probably did not see the guy on the cycle trying to cross (or driving on the side of the road, nobody really knows). Whatever the case, it was soon pretty obvious that it was the cyclist who flew and fell in the middle of the road and not a bag or anything. Not a single person was in the vicinity except for a few of us. I was totally stunned for a few minutes and had no idea what to do. 2 Two of my buddies rushed forward without thinking anything, they ran, shouting & screaming, picked up the victim, banged on the land cruiser and made the driver open the back doors. They then told the driver to rush to Khoula Hospital. All this happened in just a few minutes.

Two things that I observed from this incident is the fragile nature of our lives, and the total lack of selfishness on the part of those friends of mine. They did not think about anything other than saving the poor victim, it is truly something commendable, especially for me since I am coming from India where I have seen dire situations where people are are only worried about saving their own asses. Well all this highly influenced me and I have decided to make some concrete, significant changes. Period.

I hate Lotus !!!

Well guys after nearly a decade of not blogging I am trying to break back into blogosphere. I thought I would make it really interesting by starting the new innings with the coverage of the launch of Lotus cars in Oman. Let me be very frank, I was never a big fan of Lotus or in fact of British cars in general especially the ones that started their life in a shed/garage, or as in the case of Lotus in a stable behind a railway hotel !!!! After several owners washed their hands off it, including GM and the owners of Bugatti, guess who owns Lotus now ??......the world-renowned-high-quality-perfomance car manufacturer........The one and only Malaysia based Proton !!!!!!! Yup, WTF is the exact feeling that went through my mind also when I heard this news.

The famous Proton of Malaysia...You will find hundreds of them...but only in Malaysia

Now you may or may not be wondering why I am so anti-Lotus, but to be fair to them I have to tell you the truth, Lotus is a very well acclaimed manufacturer of premium sports 'drivers' cars. They are actually powered by Toyota engines, and unlike the W12, 1 million bhp and 1000.6 litre engines in most sports cars, the Lotus babies have just 1.6 and max to max 1.8 litre Toyota engines in the most premium model. A 1.6 litre Toyota that is going to set you back at least R.O. 20,000 (to put things into perspective let me point out the fact that a Toyota Yaris has a 1.5 litre engine and the old Toyota Echo used to have a 1.3 litre one !! ). These cars are not at all meant for the daily driver. A lot of amenities that most petrolheads in the middle east love are not even on the options list simply because this car is meant to perform on the tracks and not meant for showing off to a lady friend or for a long drive to Salalah (unless you don't mind having a backside that feels like bricks by the time you reach your destination !!).

Another beautiful Proton, the Wira....what a name and what a backside....looks like somebody gave it a sound thrashing !

Well the real reason behind my hatred towards the Lotus brand, other than the facts that they are pathetic looking wannabes and that they are British, is that yesterday was the launch of Lotus in Oman. They organised a media launch inviting the few journos in Oman who knew how to drive a manual and the event was held at the Oman Automobile Association tracks at Seeb. Whichever pea-brain organised this event forgot that Lotus has absolutely no brand following in Oman and most people here don't even know what a Lotus looks like.....and so guess what they did ??? They banned  all public from the event......and not just public.....but hardcore, die-hard, ascertained petrolheads like me and many others were not even allowed inside the premises to even catch a glimpse of the beasts....I really doubt whether they were having a test drive inside or were providing some other 'services' to high net worth individuals in order to cajole them to buy a Lotus or two !!!!!

I was there at the venue even before the organisers were and those nitwits didn't even consider my continued plea for an entry into the place....finally I decided to break in.....did a 360 degree scan of the OAA premises and found a nice little spot where I could jump in and watch the whole show ( 'Prison Break' is really giving me a little too many ideas thats gonna get me into some serious trouble sometime soon !)....

The ROP guys standing guard at the venue....;-) just kidding...just a poor traffic cop...

...well I almost did break in, if not for the fact that the very next property adjacent to the OAA is some buildings belonging to none other than the ROP and the whole place was milling with people in Khakis ( The vehicle registration center and vehicle inspection centres are right next to the OAA plot ). Damn man, I could hear those babies screaming and howling on the tracks and all I could do was fantasize about the lucky privileged basketballs driving them around the tracks.....and guess what ?? as soon as I left the main entrance a 3 ton truck drove into the huge cut-outs placed in the front of venue and tore them apart...hehehe....and the tragedy doesn't end there......it seems that one of the journos who couldn't actually drive a manual drove one of the Lotus onto the tires placed at the sides of the track and broke the car......and he blamed it on the brakes not functioning properly......You deserve it Lotus......for not knowing the fact  that every car that has become a supercar is because a million teenagers have put posters of those cars besides their beds and dreamt about them day and night, and one day when those very same teenagers made it really big, they went and bought those crazy toys which they could not when they were much younger (How else can you explain the crack successes of Hummers and Lambos, and to an extent every supercar on this planet.....they all tickle the inner child within us). So next time if any carmaker wants to assure a good public opinion or at least a good review on this blog, BETTER LET US IN !!!! All I got was a lousy pic of the lights of the events (there were 2 laser beacons that were lit up to make it look more attractive but god knows for what since nobody was invited anyways) from the rear side of OAA.....for the time being guys be satisfied with this......I promise you that there will be an amazing article coming up this friday, post the Red Bull Drift competition....at least those guys know how to market a product well.....Well guys honestly saying Lotus may not be that bad a brand, and all the comparisons that I made earlier to other Toyotas are totally irrelevant as you must have already guessed or known, in the car world, god is in the details, F1 races have been lost just due to different tyre manufacturers !!! So simply comparing a highly engineered product like the Lotus to a Yaris may be unfair...but say what you may what they did was not right, period.

Yup...this is all I could get....obviously I cannot share the sounds of tht nite... so for now this is it !