Talking to the Tanzanian Home Ministry - Part 2

More faxes sent, more calling cards, a conversation with the Police chief later i've tracked down my mother's file. I was thrilled that I had uncovered the needle in a haystack. So now for the sad part of the story.
The processing required US $25 to be sent along with the initial application. My mom said she had $25 in cash and would send it along with the application. Mr.Smarty Pants (me) screamed at her for not being thoughtful on such things. I told her i'll take care of that part. Promptly went to Bank of America and got a Cashier's check in favor of the ministry, walked straight to a FedEx office nearby and sent the package to India for my mother to send it along with her application. Needless to say I felt pretty proud of myself. Now when I called and spoke to the Police chief he said the application was stalled because they expected cash and not a cashiers check. Apparently encashing the cashier check would cost them and was not acceptable. Send cash through DHL or FedEx he advised. I did a mental revisit of everything my mother said. There was a mention of $25 (no mention of check, DD, cashier's check, in favor of etc). So why did I use my intelligence?

My mind quickly worked out a brief synopsis of the damage:

Cashiers Check for $25 + FedEx to India - $70
Calling Cards to Tanzania - $20
$25 cash + FedEx to Tanzania - $115
Lesson learnt by Mr.Smarty Pants - Priceless.

Talking to the Tanzanian Home Ministry

I am in the process of trying to do the impossible. My mom needs a good conduct certificate from the criminal investigation department of the ministry of home affairs in Tanzania for her to obtain the US green card. She lived in Tanzania between 1974 and 1983; The US consulate has provided us with information on where we can obtain this certificate which according to the documentation they provided should take 2 weeks. It's going to be almost a month and we have no idea what the status on the paper work is. So here I am now trying to determine what the status of the paperwork is. So far I have managed to establish a phone conversation with a person in the ministry who has asked me to Fax details of the case again. I have faxed the information but now I have to call again to know what the status on the "requesting status request" is. Add to that timezone differences, language differences, bad international calling card quality and you know what I am up against.
On the bright side I got a phone number from the Internet and a cheap calling card all courtesy of the internet (can't imagine what we would be doing without the internet and internet commerce) and above all a fairly courteous individual at the other end. Hope this story has a good ending.

Cyclone Nargis

One of the reasons I read blogs is it points me in directions that may be of interest to me. It stimulates me and I start digging deeper. One such instances was Lakshman's blog about Cyclone Nargis. I was in Chennai when the Tsunami hit and though it did not affect me in any way I did know of people who lost their lives just because they happened to be at the Marina beach for an early morning walk. It took me a few days to recognize the magnitude of the devastation. What has happened in Burma is no different. I think this disaster has even softened the military junta which has started letting military aid flow in.

I urge people to contribute since this is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions and given that in the Internet era it takes all but minutes for such tragedies to make way for more popular headlines, it's upto us to all of us bloggers to keep it alive. In case you are wondering how you can help, here are some basic tips.

1. Go with an organization which can help most effectively in such times. E.g. Doctors without borders, Red Cross etc.
2. See if your company matches your contribution.
3. Mobilize as many people as you can think of to contrubute.

I decided not to include gruesome photos of the devastation and instead include the snap of two lovely burmese kids to symbolize hope. Hope!

Cat on the wall

While having a conversation with a colleague I mentioned I was "cat on the wall" when it came to making a decision on the matter we were discussing. This colleague of mine was an English major and he had a puzzled look on his face. I patiently explained to him that this was a popular adage used to imply indecisiveness as in the cat was capable of jumping on either side of the wall. He said he had been exposed to a number of adages and he had never come across this. Determined to prove him wrong I searched for the phrase on the web but the number of search hits on both google and yahoo were paltry at best. Yahoo! provided the answer from its question answer service which made me ponder if this phrase possibly has its roots in Tamil I realized that this could be because this probably had its origins in tamil "madhil mel poonai". Have you heard the phrase "cat on the wall" ?

Why?

In Tamil there is a saying that children and god are alike mainly to reflect their purity and innocence. This village in India seem to have taken this literally.

I hope the child gets the immediate medical attention it needs. I don't see why the Child protection services are not getting involved to control this circus?

Quotable Quote.

I picked this up on one of the blogs. Made me ponder.

During grad school at Northwestern, me and some fellow class mates had the pleasure of spending half a day with Warren Buffett.
Buffett said if you have 20 great ideas in your life you’re doing very well……this was a couple of years ago and at that time he said he hadn’t even reached 20 yet.
He returned to Omaha from NY because they tried to come up with 20 great ideas before lunch. Unplugging from the clutter and noise certainly hasn’t hurt him any. It’s a good lesson.

Should I head to Omaha where I can escape all the chaos that Silicon Valley offers? Nah!, I'll stay. And on another note my idea counter has been initialized and the quest has begun.

World's oldest recorded sound.

Ever wondered how people sounded in the year 1860. Well here is a sample of the world's oldest recorded sound.

Scott recorded someone singing an excerpt from the French folksong "Au Clair de la Lune" on April 9, 1860, and deposited the results with the Académie des Sciences in 1861. The existence of a tuning-fork calibration trace allows us to compensate for the irregular recording speed of the hand-cranked cylinder. The sheet contains the beginning line of the second verse-"Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit"-and is the earliest audibly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered.

Click here to be part of some audio history

Do your bit to save the tiger.

NDTV has been on the forefront of making changes in many cases where the Government has failed and make the voice of the people heard. There are already signs of some change since there was a mention of a fund for saving the tiger in the National budget. Let your voice on this matter be heard by
signing up here and help protect the Tiger.

Back to blogging.

It's been a while since my last blog post. Though I did not envision the hiatus to be this long as they say "things happen". So expect more frequent posts going forward. To rephrase our governator "i'm back".

Pepsico CEO

What does Rajinikanth, Jayalalitha and the Pepsico CEO have in common. No, the answer is not they all drink Pepsi to beat the Chennai heat :)
Indra Nooyi, the CEO of pepsi and rated the top businesswoman in the world has bought a huge 4100 sqft apartment in Poes Gardens. More on this scoop here

Devious Mind.

My mind often goes into a mode where it tries to detect conspiracies. Upon reading the news article that the US Economy got a boost on account of "Back to School" sales, me and my mind had a conversation.

Me: Wow!, Back to school can help boost the economy?
Mind: Daa!!, it happens every year. Why do you think kids don't wear uniforms in this country? It's part of a conspiracy by the retailers to force consumer to buy "color" dresses

Me:Wow! Walmart reduced prices on 16,000 school products to entice shoppers. I wonder why "Back to school" does not work any magic on the Indian economy?
Mind: How many school products did you deal with? Let me give you the list
a. Wholesale uniform supplies from a marwadi store in Parrys for you and your entire apartment complex.
b. Camel/Natraj Geometry Boxes: Camel for the rich and Natraj for the wannabe rich
c. Ratna store tiffin box with lifetime warranty for you, your children and your grandchildren.
d. Lifetime supply of books/brown paper from Vijaya stores.

Me: Wow! you're smart.
Mind: No you're dumb.

Do you want to roll on the floor laughing?

I know the first working day after a long weekend is always not very pleasant. Here is a video that will cheer you all up. Feel free to ROTFL.

Silicon Valley To Silicon City

The World is flat remarked Thomas Friedman. With the introduction of a direct flight between San Francisco and Bangalore this is becoming closer to reality. This is going to be a welcome boon for folks travelling to other cities in the south as well since domestic connections between Bangalore and other southern cities are a plenty. Flying to India is no longer going to be a voyage but more like what it should be. So folks, time to plan your next long weekend :)