Toilet water put to good use by Google!

Yes, that's true, they use it for cooling the heat generated by their data centers.
Came across this interesting piece of information as I was browsing through some of my routine reads.

Of course, the objective might be to save money, but still that deed must be doing quite some good to save the natural resource.

May be I will not use regular water for my car's battery and wash-wipe system anymore, instead will ask the service guys to pour some toilet water... !!

Source: Arstechnica

The green tea hype!

It started a few weeks back with a couple of guys sipping the hyped 'green tea' in office instead of the regular dose of caffeine. And slowly, the fad spread to more than a dozen people.
Getting curious (as always :-)), I asked a couple of guys what's the thing about it, and what's so special about it.
The answers ranged from vague ones like 'Good for health' to technically-sounding ones like 'Gets rid of toxins'.

It is common knowledge, (in fact very common) thanks to Google, that walking or any other physical exercises are equally or in fact more detoxifying, de-stressing, rejuvenating than the daily cup of green tea.
When there are cheaper and more effective alternatives available, not sure why people turn to things which claim to do things easily and fail at it so badly.

Sure green tea companies, sauna belt manufacturing units, 'morning walker' etc will continue to make hay till we don't give up on these easier and costlier, yet ineffective alternatives.

So next time, instead of sipping on the green tea, just get up and get moving!

What's the "once in a lifetime" offer from Volkswagen?

This new Volkswagen commercial caught my attention recently, and I got very curious about WTH is the "Once in a lifetime" offer.

I kept wondering whether it's a big discount, or a B-O-G-O-F (Buy One Get One Free) offer, or if it's a limited edition model made by Volkswagen and the possibilities of my imagination were endless ;-)

Apparently, the punch line "once in a lifetime offer" does its job perfectly of attracting prospective customers to the showroom. As for yours truly, he was nowhere planning to buy one nor willing to spend time to visit the showroom just to find WTH was the offer.


Eventually, I watched the commercial once again (thanks to Youtube), did some Googling and got the answer.
If you see and understand the commercial, you'd realize that the Persian gentleman loves his car so much that he cannot bear any dirt, dust or dropping on his car. The gentleman eventually passes away, and comes back by 'travelling a lifetime' to take care of the car in the form of his grandson.
And voila - the "once in a lifetime offer" now makes some sense... you own it once in a lifetime but keep coming back to it time and again.

Personally, I liked the campaign because it does its job very well without hiring any of the expensive brand ambassadors. Don't believe me? Ask someone who is planning to buy a hatchback, and chances of him/her having called up Volkswagen are very high.

Take a bow Volkswagen for that punch line!

Mom, why do they switch off aircraft cabin lights during take off and landing?

I was on a flight last week, and as it goes with my inquisitive nature about anything on wheels, I kept wondering about a lot of things around me like how does the movement of wings affect the flight, why do flight attendants request passengers to pull up the window shutters, why are the cabin lights switched off during take off and landing.


Once home, I googled it up and found the answers.


As for the cabin lights being switched off, from some amount of reading around it's apparent that those are done because emergency situations are more likely to occur during landing and take off.
In case the worst happens, they want our eyes to be already adjusted to the darkness around us (on a night flight) instead of passengers trying to pave their way through pitch darkness that surrounds ones eyes if there is a sudden transition of the intensity of light.


Found it to be one of the noble precautions that the aviation industry takes to give us safer yet comfortable in-flight experience...


I will try to write about answers to my other inquisitive thoughts about an aircraft in some other post.

Cheap tricks...

Got the following as a forward in my email from a very close friend...
~~

Find the error, its impossible:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Did you know that 80% of UCDS students could not find the error above?
Forward this to at least 5 people with the title
'Find the error, it's impossible',
and when you click 'Send',
the answer will be right in front of your eyes!

~~
This is something new, have seen earlier emails supposedly originating from Microsoft, HCL, Nokia and types, claiming to give freebies(and even money!) to all who forward the same to more than 'n' people...

I really don't know when would netizens get more mature and stop initiating such really cheap email chains, which I am sure will do more rounds than my hard disk does per minute!

At least now, someone who comes across this blog would not forward email having similar content to this, and I'd have saved some network traffic, doing my bit to contribute to faster internet :-)

It's not about your brakes...

This happened about a couple of weeks back, while I was driving one of the arterial roads of Pune. The sedan in front of me braked suddenly, so did I with the 'power assisted Vacuum front disc brakes' on my Wagon-R. However the six-seater behind me, couldn't brake in time (probably he was never educated about keeping safe distance) and THUD! I got a nice jerk on my back, and my car got a nice dent on its back.


Claimed insurance, Maruti Sai-Service, Pune did a neat job of getting the repair done in just 2 days. The Fix? The boot door was replaced, so was the rear bumper.


Now the costs incurred ..
To the insurance company - Rs.19.3K
To the car owner - Rs. 3.7K

Now you know, it's not about YOUR brakes, it's about the brakes of the vehicle behind you!

(Photo courtesy: My Nokia-3110c :-) )

The Indian Train lingo...

As a kid, I remembered asking a lot of questions from around the world to my dad, and I must say he answered most of them with a lot of patience especially with the amount of "whys" and "hows" I used to bombard him with :)

However, there was one question I always asked but never got a concrete answer, for the obvious reason. That was, why the trains (mainly the local EMUs) in Mumbai hoot in a certain rhythm at times? Was that done to indicate an accident? A faulty engine? A boorish railway line crosser mowed down?
The answer to this age-old question of mine was published in the Times Of India(TOI) Mumbai edition one fine Sunday!


Supposedly, every driver who undergoes the training is taught the lingo amongst many other things before he gets behind the wheel.


So, the next time you hear the engine driver honk in one of those tones, you know what's happening, thanks TOI! :)