Pakorakorner | A personal portal with a strong Asian Indian flavor on a whole range of topics.

I have read recent reports (accompanied by scores of photographs) in the media about the recent Arun Nayar-Liz Hurley wedding. I was pleasantly surprised to read that Mr. Nayar heads up an IT firm!Can't remember the last time when an IT executive came together with a movie star. Is this a new trend? Revenge of the nerds 2.0, perhaps? :-)

Check out this news report about an NRI who used RTI to collect his tax refunds which had been pending for years. This is just one more example of the success of RTI. Hopefully, there will be many more such successes to follow.

Online booking of airline tickets in India have started to take off. Arzoo, Makemytrip, Travelguru, Air Deccan being a few of the competitors. Not to mention, Yahoo's farechase is also in the game. The start-ups companies in this space have raised boatloads of Venture Capital. (wonder why, for a technology that is so common place in the US). These sites are very much in a state of infancy and there is plenty of scope for improvement.Here are a few observations/tips ...

The Indian Consulate in SF landed itself in a needless controversy which could have been avoided with the purchase and use of a paper shredder! (A friend of mine who happens to be an obsessive advocate of privacy sent this to me. So I won't reveal his name here :-)The Consul General does have a point when he says that this is a "cultural" issue but this is no excuse for not using a paper shredder!

Do you feel you are growing old and losing your creative instincts? Not to worry."....We often presume creativity is the domain of youth, that great artists are young geniuses, brash and brilliant iconoclasts. Arthur Rimbaud, Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, Orson Welles, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jasper Johns all revolutionized their artistic disciplines in their teens or 20s. Picasso created the first cubist paintings at 25, and Welles made ``Citizen Kane'' at 25. These artists made dramatic, inspired discoveries based on ...

There is a nice article in today's SJ Mercury News highlighting the benefits of feminism (author: Neil Chethik) to both men and women. Its an interesting perspective (based on personal life experience) on an otherwise hot button issue.

If you ever drop your cell phone in water here are some useful tips.Remove the battery.Wipe it as dry as possible.Dry it with a hair dryer!If you have a spare battery use it and try to turn the phone on. If it works good for you else you are probably out of luck.

NY City Cab drivers are often the butt of jokes especially on late night television. I was pleasantly surprised to find on several cab rides in NY city that these folks are actually just fine. There is no question they are all very aggressive drivers. But I consistently noticed that they never made any demands of rates, they always used the best available routes to get you to the destination the fastest, they went out of the way to take ...

Skype announced today that Skypeout is free in US and Europe. Amazing! This should really make the phone companies nervous. Wonder if this had anything to do with the release of Jajah.

Wish you (anyone who visits my blog:-) a Happy and Prosperous 2006!