Dry run @ Beijing

Beijing has had to divert water from a willow-lined river northeast of the city to replenish its Olympics rowing and canoeing venue which has run dry, Xinhua news agency said on Monday.The municipal government had spent about 430 million yuan ($57 million) to divert water 13 km from the Wenyu river to the Chaobei river which had run dry for nine consecutive years, Xinhua cited deputy director of the Shunyi district reform and development commission Qin Yongjun as saying.

The Olympic rowing and canoeing centre in Shunyi was built especially for next August's Games and features a 3-km rowing lake which holds 1.7 million cubic metres of water.Beijing sits in the arid north China plain, where water tables are falling fast due to climate change and rising consumption by farmers and booming cities.The country has embarked on massive engineering projects to divert water from rivers feeding the south to the dry north.It is also starting to address the serious problem of pollution of water supplies from untreated city sewage, industrial waste and farm run-off

Xinhua said Shaanxi province, in the northwest, will build ten sewage disposal plants to reduce pollution in the Weihe River, the largest tributary of the Yellow River.
By 2010, it plans to build 40 sewage plants along the Weihe River, which receives more than 800 million tonnes of sewage and wastewater annually. The Weihe accounts for about 18 percent of the discharges in the Yellow River basin, the source of irrigation and drinking water for millions of people in the north.

Trivia # 2

The Dead Sea is so called because of the high salt content of its waters. That spells instant death for fish that happen to wander in, as they occasionally do from the Jordan River. In fact it kills most animal and plant life--with the exception of tourists, who love the property of the salt water that makes it so easy to float on.

Bacteria survive in the Dead Sea, though, as do brine shrimp and a class of plants called halophytes that love salt water. So it's not entirely dead, although not exactly a wild and crazy place, either.


(Sources: The Handy Science Answer Book)

Answers for Quiz # 1

Answers to the Quiz # 1 :-

1. Kothamangalam Subbu.
2. David Yates.
3. Minmini
4. Saritha.
5. Vinod Khanna and Rishi Kapoor.
6. Karthik.

Soon with more ....

Quiz # 1

1. On whose work was the Tamil classic Thillana Mohanambal based?
2. Who directed the last of the released Harry Potter movies?
3. Who sang A.R. Rahman’s path-breaking number ‘Chinna Chinna Aasai..” from Roja?
4. If it was Rati Agnihotri in Ek Dujje Ke Liye, who was it in the original Telugu (Maro Charitra)? 5. In the popular Hindi hit Amar Akbar Anthony, who played Amar and Akbar?
6. Which Tamil actor is credited under the name Murali in Telugu flicks?

Answer in my comments box / guest book .....
Correct Answers to be posted tomorrow .....

It's really small - ~the world around~

One half of me was really surprised and the other (cynical one, i guess) was not equally surprised to see the same / similar posts in this link (of a Confused Calcuttan) and leading me to another link of Adino on my earlier post on East Vs West .......... (also check out the 3 depictions missed by me in Adino's post with topics : "Stomach Ache, Defnition of Beauty & Perception of Each other's culture")

This only makes you realise how small the world around you is !!!

Please visit the ORIGINAL of the East Vs West design too ....


errata : my earlier post said this design was conceived by Liu Young, But its actually Ms Liu Yang

Trivia # 1

How are enormously heavy steel ships able to float?

They appear to defy basic laws of nature. But in fact, they're obeying a law of nature, buoyancy, which Greek mathematician Archimedes reportedly discovered while taking a bath. The trick in building ships so that they don't go straight to the bottom is to get the shape right. The vessel has to be configured so that it will be buoyant, displacing a volume of water weighing as much as it does. In other words, if an amount of steel equal to that in a giant tanker were rolled into a compact ball and dropped into the sea, bye, bye ball. But if the metal is spread out over a thousand feet, the ship can cross the ocean.

East vis-a-vis West

A very interesting email hit my mailbox, this was a caricature based comparion of the various attributes of the Easterners (China, Malays, Indonesians, Thai, India .... mostly Asians) and of the Westerners ( i guess mostly eurpoeans).

Though some of them you don't tend to agree fully, but this brings smile and a nod to most of our lips. This was concieved by Liu Young, born in China & Educated in Germany.

The BLUE coloured ones depict Westerners

The RED coloured ones depict Easterners.

on Opinion :-

on Way of Life :-

on Punctuality :-

on Contacts :-

on Anger :-

on Queue when waiting :-

on Me :-

on Sundays on the road :-

on Party :-

on Inside a restaurant :-

on Travel :-

on Handling of problems :-

on Three meals a day :-

on Transporation :-

on Elderly in day to day life :-

on Shower timings :-

on Moods and Weather :-

on The BOSS :-

on What's trendy :-

on The Child :-

on Things that are new :-

Do you agree ? .............

Resignation ....... in a software firm

Poetic Resignation

The name is good, the brand is big
But the work I do is that of a pig
The work or the brand; what is my way?
I don't know if I should stay.

To work, they have set their own way
Nobody will care to hear what I say
My will be NULL, they wont change their way
I don't know if I should stay.

The project is in a critical stage
But to do good work, this is the age
This dilemma is killing me day by day
I don't know if I should stay.

The money is good, the place is great
But the development is at a very small rate
Should I go for the work, or wait for pay
I don't know if I should stay!

The managers don't know what they talk
The team doesn't know where they walk
That's a bad situation, what say?
I don't know if I should stay.

I can go to any other place
But what if I get the same disgrace
I can't keep switching day by day
I don't know if I should stay.

The -ves are more, the +ves are less
Then why have this unnecessary mess
No more will I walk their way,
It's all done, I won't stay.

Thanks & Regards
Employee


Manager's Response

The decision is good or decision is bad
Only God knows still I am glad
Keep moving in life that is what I can say

If you feel right go in the same way
May god give you the work, the challenge you want
Anyway there is always a second chance
Chances are there, grab them snatch them
That is what I can say

Keep on jumping companies to get more and more and more....
That will keep you always a fore (Even to me)
From my experience I can tell you
Being in software development is like taking hell out of you
You are frustrated since you have no quality work
And you were frustrated because you had quantity work

It's always like that previous job was better than the current one
And expects the new job will be much better than this one
But what you get is a frustration level up to sun
Than you will again send the resignation like this one
This is all what I want to say

Have you completed all the formalities?
Filled the form and got it signed from department humanities (HR)
Once done you can take all your cash
But don't refer others as they will follow you're a*s.
At last I appreciate your contribution to the company
Even though there was not any....

You will keep a copy of this with you for FYI
Don't feel shy
As I also got it some time back from my old manger say Hi....
That is all what I want to say.

Thanks & Regards
Manager

Korea talks are for Real

The leaders of the Koreas got down to talks on Wednesday after a cool start to a summit between two countries divided by decades of animosity, but news of a deal on unwinding Pyongyang's nuclear arms programme could lift the mood.

South Korea President Roh Moo-hyun has said he wants the summit with Kim Jong-il to ease tensions between the states, which are technically still at war, and help the economy of his impoverished northern neighbour. The international community is offering Pyongyang massive aid and an end to its isolation if it gives up atomic weapons.

Yesterday, Washington said it had approved a tentative deal reached at six-party talks in Beijing that would disable North Korea's Soviet-era nuclear complex by the end of this year.

The nuclear deal, almost exactly a year after the North conducted its first nuclear test, should ease pressure on Roh to force disarmament concessions out of Kim. Roh, in the final five months of an unpopular presidency, faces heavy pressure to come home with results from a summit which has been widely criticised as unlikely to achieve much.

Today's summit talks coincide with the day both states mark the legend of the foundation 4,300 years ago of the Korean nation.

Many analysts say the Seoul government is less fearful of the North's military threat it has lived with for decades than of its neighbour's collapse and the impact that would have on its own economy, Asia's fourth largest. That in turn means that Seoul sees spending billions on the gradual rehabilitation of the North Korean economy as in its own best interests.

Roh is expected to witness one of the North's typical mass games extravaganzas featuring goose-stepping soldiers, dancing schoolgirls and a large flip card animation section that promotes unification under the North's communist banner.