What's keeping me busy....(Mar -May ' 09)

I've been keeping myself busy myself spending some time on social networking site (with some difference), watching the IPL matches (and yes Deccan Chargers win made me proud for I am very much a Hyderabadi) and last thing I am currently hooked to is a new found love for web-based browser game called Travian.
Geni.com

The Geni craze for me started in the month of March with an invite sent by my Wife's aunt and a bit of tinkering around in the application made be a big fan of this site. Geni is a social networking site intended to connect family members and fill the family tree. Launched in January 2007 by Web 2.0 company Geni, Inc with over thirty million profiles created in a span of one year.
I was hooked into this site for good 2-3 months fetching collecting data about the family members and putting up their photos personal information etc. I added more than 550+ profiles in this while inviting close to 50 profiles. It's been a good time collecting to know the faces of our wide family. An overall good time experience.

Travian

Travian in a web-browser based war-based strategy game. Created using PHP and Ajax this is the hottest game on the lines of Age of Empires (sans graphics and sound). This is completely an online game where players compete for domination in the virtual world. The game lasts for 300 days till from the date the game is initiated with multiple servers serving multiple players.

I ended up on this game from a banner which claimed this to be the best online-strategy based games. It wasn't before this curiosity changed to full fledged addiction. Its been over a month I have been playing this and am such an addict that I keep checking the status of my virtual city through my mobile Internet connection every 2 hours. I sleep late watching the troops and city grow and wake up early to check for any attacks from other co-players. Lots of literature study and lots of wiki and forum guides fill up my empty time between those long waits while my resource fields or infrastructure is being built or while waiting for my troops to return from a mission.

Secondly as per Alexia.com which is the premier internet traffic tracking site; Travian server is the 19th most popular side for 2 months running (April, May 2009) you can check them out yourself for India category. Was pretty surprised at this rating as none of the other popular countries (Arabia, Turkey, Italy,America, Germany - Top 5) have no Travian in the their top 20. Its one feat for Travian.

My girl curses the game heavily as its eating a bit too much beyond her fancy into her life as the game seemingly is getting more priority over her; which rightly pisses her off.

For me Travian has ensured that I was away from the stock market while I was actively trading and making money in the months of March and April; and the opportunity driven due to the election results was the biggest led down as I was busily researching my Travian guides, and storyboards and forums. Lets see how long this craze continues.

Travian ruins my personal life as I have hardly watched any movies, have not ventured out of my house for long hours nor currently planning given the future plans of my future empire.

Nature Cure / Naturopathy

What is Naturopathy ?
Naturopathy is a preventative approach to health care - it aims to balance the body so that illness is less likely to occur in the future.
Naturopathy is built upon the dictum of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who declared "Nature cures; not the physicians". Naturopathy is a combination of different methods of natural healing in addition to it being a way of life. It is known by different names - Nature Cure, the natural methods, the New science of healing and Healing from within.
Approach towards Diseases...
Naturopathy believes that all forms of disease are due to the same cause, which is the accumulation of waste materials and toxins in our bodies that are steadily piling up. The primary cause being an unhealthy lifestyle. As in other treatments its suggests avoidance of a diet high in fat, salt and refined Carbohydrates, smoking , excess consumption of alcohol and high stress levels. Its core focus is to Identify and remove the causes of illness, rather than eliminate or suppress symptoms
Naturopathy advocates a new life style with corrective habits such as exercise, a good diet and a moderate approach towards all things Naturopathic life style should be viewed as a method of disease prevention. In Naturopathy, the fundamental healing force is considered to be nature itself, that is the power of the individual to defeat disease.
Essence of Naturopathy
Naturopathy is a system of medicine aimed to diagnose and treat any human ailment, pain and injury through the use of natural elements, mainly 5 in number - Space, Air, Fire, Water and Earth - Also known as Panch Bhootalu.
Naturopathy believes that all the 5 elements combine to form the living form in the world. Similar to any life form man is derived as a combination of these 5 elements in appropriate ratios; an imbalance in these ratio's leads to an eventuality of systematic breakdown of the human body and gradually paving way to diseases. The process of maintaining this healthy internal balance is called homeostasis
Pancha Bhoothalu(The Five Elements) and life
For life to evolve and sustain a symbiotic relation between these elements is quite essential.
Space - The largest of all the 5 elements without which none of the other elements exists. Its only if there is space there is a scope for growth; and scope for replacing old with new/
Air - The air occupies the majority of the living world and is engulfed by space. Air sustains life and the quality of the air reflects the quality of health of the beings in the environment. Air carries the PranaVayu to sustain various organs in the body similar to various life forms on the earth.
Water - Water makes up 70% of the earth and 70% of the human body too. Water is an essential element to awaken life. Water is the only element which triggers growth of new life forms be it plants from the seed or cells in the body. Its also an universal solvent/cleanser which has an ability to wash off any toxins and wastes.
Earth - The carbon form is required to give shape and build anything from a lifeless stone to life form. Life all around the world is carbon-based; Imbalance is of sufficient Earth in the human body also leads to various imbalances in the healthy functioning of the life forms.
Fire - The celestial element is required to convert and utilise the various other elements in a meaning full manner and to sustain life. It is this elements which develops the synchronisation between the elements.
Nature cure starts with trying to understand the deficiencies in these elements and then filling up as required to restore balance. Once the balance is restored and enough of time is give to the body it starts the self healing process.
Basics start with cleansing process involving starving just surving on few essential juices for close to 20 days (detox). The intent is to creat Space in the system which has been filled completely with unwanted toxin giving space to the system to start the self heal. Parallel to this alternative treatments like sunbath, mudbath, steam bath etc are undertaken to induce removal of toxins through the skin. The intestinal system is flushed clean during this 20 day process and then subsequently overhauled with ingestion of raw/steamed vegetables without oil, sugar or salt. If one sustains this process and continues with this lifestyle of nil to near nil consumption of salt, oil based and sugar based products the benfits of the thearpy can be sustained.
Naturopathy is a two stage process

1. The Treatment - (Therapies - Mud, Sun/Chroma, Pranayam(Ozone), Hydrotherapy, Steam, Fasting etc as bare minimals in the course)
2. The Lifestyle - (The lifestyle habits one is supposed to follow for the rest of the life to sustain and enjoy the benefits of Naturopathy)

Benefits

The benefits of a full and dedicated follower of this lifestyle are immense and requires a disciplined approach towards life.

• Diseases are eradicated by attacking the cause of the issue hence preventing the recurrence of the disease. Probably there would never be a need for a doctor.
• Zero dependency on drugs and costly hospital treatments and surgical procedure.
• Severely Reduced risk of major diseases like Cancer, Diabetes, Cardio Vascular, Digestive issues...
• Overall well being of the body

Drawbacks -

• The treatment takes atleast one month to begin from cleansing and detoxification; This makes the treatment unpopular in the current generation where time is money.
• Extreme lifestyle changes, withdrawal in terms of habits keeps people away.
• Sustenance of adapted new life style is difficult to sustain in the current social scenario.
• High amount of will power and determination is required

Big Mac has never been this awful

Today I messed up to drop in at Big Mac. A couple of colleagues from office ventured out of the office beating the sun to have some delicious meal at Tammanna (not the heroine!) restaurant; Thanks to Friday frenzy we found ourself queing up at the guest bench. Guess the hunger had no control which had us drove away a kilometer towards the McDonald in Hinjewadi.
It was as any other eat-out filled upto the brim. 10 minutes into the waiting I got to place my order; Yes full 8-10 minutes of waiting. And what more the guy at the counter doesn't accept credit cards (ahem!!!) I want to offload some amount in the Visa Food card. I found it quite amazing for the fact that a US Multi-National refuses to use credit cards; what a shame for a country which lives on plastic and credit doesn't do the same in its Indian arm. I wondered I should have preferred a Domino's or Smoking Joe's they atleast accept cards.
The food menu is very much Indianised; and only thing American seems to be the Happy Meal though the menus are again customised to meet Indian tastes.
A medium cool drink costs 27/- !!!! Way too high to a retail shelf price. I bought Paneer Wrap with Sandwich Salad. The first one is more of paneer tikka wrapped in a dosa with some sauses and vegetables; while the Sandwich salad was more vegetables sandwiched in a burger bun. Nothing special on these two; but I found the taste quite unlike to my liking and had a gut feel that I was ingesting something which was totally unhealthy and junk. This bothered me even furthering my displeasure towards the taste as I continued to nibble. Once out of the McD I've decided a never to have a things at McD few pointers...
Credit cards not accepted...
Waiting during peak hours...
Unhealthy Junk food culture...
Its nothing American it's more Indian...
Why the hell should I feed an American MNC when I have good Indian options...
Anyways few things I didn't consider were about the Quality of Service, Standardisation, Ambience, Brand, Youth/Yippee factors.
Disclaimers - I have been to McD not more than 4 times earlier. Once in Delhi, thrice in Hyderabad.

Misuse of Pharmaceutical Drugs ???

Typically when Ria took her 7-year-old daughter to a doctor to check on her fever and sore throat, and was prescribed seven drugs, including antibiotics and medicine to prevent febrile seizures.
As experts would say it as another classic, but only too common, case of over-medication, or prescribing drugs patients do not need. Here, the antibiotic was unnecessary, as was the drug to prevent fever-related seizures as the child had no history of such attacks.
Experts warn that driven by profits from selling medicine, many doctors overprescribe medicines, a practice which will be disastrous in the longer term.
Polypharmacy (overmedication) means use of lot of medicines which are unnecessary, like prescribinh many types of antibiotics for a cold.The consumption of multiple drugs triggers drug reaction and unpredictable side effects. Worse, it gives rise to bacterial resistance.
The most recent example of growing resistance involves the drug oseltamivir(Tamiflu), which researchers in the United States found was now ineffective against 98 percent of the H1N1 seasonal human influenza virus strains. (Swine flu and bird flu)
Apart from eventually reducing the effectiveness of drugs, exposing bacteria and viruses to drugs unnecessarily also has other serious consequences.
A general observation is that most parents rush to treat symptoms, not the disease. Doctors may feel pressure to give treatments, even when it is not necessary or in the best interests of the child's health.
It's upto to us to know understand and adopt to the human body needs and support it to build resistances to various microbiotic organisms. Its important to enable such a strenghtning process within out system by means of adopting a few lifestyle changes and taking a positive approach towards moving away from Allopathic treatments which are primarily based on chemical compounds which act on inhibitting the symptoms/giving relief or directly act on behalf of the human immune system to tackle infections.
A traditional form of treatment is a stream called Naturopathy which revolutionary to the contemporary medicine (Allopathy and Homeopathy) and also slightly unadvanced compared to ancient medicines (Ayurvedic, Unani, Accupuncture). The main focus of this form of treatment is more preventive and comprehensive than reactive treatments.

Walnuts and Fish Protect Against Heart Disease

In healthy individuals, walnuts lower cholesterol more than fish, while fatty fish lower triglycerides. Both can reduce the overall risk of coronary heart disease.
Following the qualified health claim issued by the Food and Drug Administration, researchers found that incorporating approximately 40gms of walnuts (a handful of whole nuts or about three tablespoons of chopped nuts) into the daily diet lowered serum total cholesterol by 5.4 percent and LDL (bad) cholesterol by 9.3 percent compared to a control diet based on USDA recommendations. For this study subjects were randomly assigned to each of the three diets for eight weeks over a 24-week schedule. This gave the researchers a chance to compare the effect of each diet on each participant.
Source - Loma Linda University research just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

List of Telugu Channels

As I was trying to cut across some time, I picked up the task of analysing the current Telugu TV media space. Interestingly I found a micro India kind of presence in terms of channels that are floating around the airways. The Sun TV run Gemini TV with its 6 sister Channels are the leader of the pack; Gemini has dethroned the innovator in TV media Eenadu Television run by Suman son of Media baron Ramoji Rao. The reputation of ETV has lost due to possibly tasteless emphasis and portrayal of Suman's own taste didn't convert into viewers taste. While ETV couldn't capitalise on its journalistic base and span; lots of channels proped up as its competitors in the Current affairs and News section. While TV9 continues to top this segment, ETV2 follows it as its competitor. ETV also failed to launch new segments and penetrate deeper into the growing viewer base and lost its viewership to competitors like Gemini and new entrants like Zee and Maa TV. Lack of innovation, creative thinking has lead to an erosion and gradually lead to fragmentation of the Telugu Media.
New segments are being formed and creating a niche for themselves while current segments as the General Entertainment sections is getting highly commoditised.
While the 2009 Parliamentary and Assembly elections added an entire new equation of Politics driven media with launch of Sakshi, and likes of Studio N and Mahaa TV; its to be seen if an Tamilnadu like segmentation on politics backed and driven media channels emerge and make a foot holding.
Comedy Channel - 1
Children Channels - 1 (Excludes Jetix, Disney TV)
Movie Channels - 1
Music Channels - 2
Devotional Channels - 2 (excludes Missionary Channels)
General Entertainment - 11
News - 10
Social Channels - 2

Overhauling Life - Sprouts for Better Health

You know what fascinates me? Life! Life as an individual’s journey on this planet, that begins with birth and ends with death. Hinduism talks about cycle of life and death and says that there is one more life, its life after death!
But think about it, all these beans and lentils usually go though two transformations. First one is when they are young and fresh. All those bouncy and fresh ones jumping and running around with high energy. That’s their first life as child, adolescent and grown-up. And then there is a dried bean, all hard and tough skinned, as if it is dead and can’t feel anything that happens to it. When you soak this same bean in water, it re-hydrates and as a result it’s all round and plumps up. Take these same beans and sprout them and what you see is another life formation! Plant these sprouts in soil and with in few days you will see small plants sprouting and growing and producing new batch of crops. Isn’t it a fascinating process? Give it a thought sometimes and you will know why I said life fascinates me. Now, do you see the connection between my theory and the theory of Life-Death-Life after Death? Sometimes, I could be too philosophical with some random thoughts surfacing on idle days. I don’t want to go too philosophical today.
Why to Sprout
Sprouting boasts off the nutrition values contained within the seeds. On sprouting the seeds undergo a series of changes transforming hard to digest matter (aka enzyme inhibitors) into protein rich easily digestible food. The nutrient content difference between Sprouted and non-sprouted seeds is known to be atleast 3-4 fold.
The protein available in the sprouts is off the purest and most easily digestable form as its converted to pre-digested Amino acids, while fats and Carbs are broken done to simple sugars.
Water-soluble vitamins such as B complex and vitamin C are created. Through the miracle of germination, thiamin increases five-fold and niacin content doubles. Vitamin C, E and carotene increase. In fact, the vitamin C content becomes as rich as tomatoes. Sprouting is accompanied by an intense enzymatic hydrolysis of protein.
How to Consume
Best when consumed Raw, unboiled and without seasoning is the best combination.
For beginners semi-boiled (destroys minerals and micro nutrients) can be prepared. Can seasoned with lemon juice to taste.
How to Sprout Lentils, Seeds & Legumes .
Sprouts provide super nutrition for all, harvest quickly, and can be grown anywhere. Sprouting jars and lids are available at many places and can be made without help of these too.

Sprouting Instructions

• Place whole, untreated, lentils or beans in a clean, wide-mouthed jar and Soak them in purified water overnight.
• Cover the top of the jar with a screen, cheese cloth, or sprouting jar lid.
• Next morning drain the water from the jar. (Note this water is toxic for humans but nutritious for plants; hence can be doubled as fertiliser for plants).
• Distribute the seeds or beans around the walls of the jar evenly. Lay the jar on its site or tilted at an angle to allow the water to drain. Place the sprouting jar in a warm, dark place.
• Once a day Rinse sprouts, draining excess water.
• After the sprouts have grown to their maturation length, put the jar in the sunlight for the sprouts to develop chlorophyll.
• When the sprouts turn green, rinse, Drain and refrigerate.

Good for Sprouting

• Alfalfa Seeds (Lucerne /hindi-razka) - 4 to 5 Days - Rich source of minerals, protein, vitamins A, B-complex, C, D, E and K
• Black-eyed Peas (Lobi/Alsandalu) - 3 to 4 Days - Rich source proteins, minerals, and vitamins A and C
• Chick Peas (Kabuli Channa) - 4 to 5 Days - Rich source of proteins and also contain many minerals.
• Lentils (Red or Yellow) - 3 to 4 Days - Rich source of proteins and also contain many minerals
• Moong Beans - 3 to 4 Days - Rich source of protein, vitamins A and C, along with calcium, phosphorus and iron.
• Soybeans - 3 to 5 days. - Rich source of protein, vitamins A, B - Complex, Vitamin C and Vitamin E.
• Peas (White, Green, Black) - 3-4 days - Rich source of Proteins, minerals
• Sunflower Seeds (hulled) - 5-6 days - Rich source of Proteins, minerals, unsaturated fatty acids, and vitamins D and E.
• Wheat - 2 to 3 Days - Rich source of Proteins, Vitamins B, C and E. Alternatively grown for 4 to 7 days to produce wheat grass can be juiced or eaten for its high chlorophyll content. Wheat Grass juice is rich in antioxidants.
• Others - Barley, Corn, Lentils

Precautions on Sprouts

• Remember to dispose of water that has been used for sprouting.
• Indigestion problems/ gastric activity might be high and common due to high fibre content. Consume lots of water and ideally avoid masala's for the remainder of the day.
• Sprouts are more easily assimilated and less gas-forming than dried beans. Digestibility is vastly improved compared to regular beans.
• Ideal time for Sprouts - Morning, Afternoons - Never consume in night as dinner.
• Ideally don't mix Sprouts with cooked food/fruits. Have a gap of minimum of 1 hr if required.
• Soybeans sprouts should be only consumed after semi-boiling. Soya is believed to cause irritants and allergens if consumed directly due to toxicity.