Ajay - On the Road called Life

Don’t know how far this is true… but, it sure is fun reading!

The questions below about Australia, are from potential visitors. They were posted on an Australian Tourism Website and the answers are the actual responses by the
website officials, who obviously have a sense of humour.

Q: Does it ever get windy in Australia? I have never seen it rain on TV, how do the plants grow? (UK).
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

Q: Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you’ve been drinking.

Q: I want to walk from Perth to Sydney - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it’s only three thousand miles, take lots of water.

Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Australia? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Hervey Bay? (UK)
A: What did your last slave die of?

Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia? (USA)
A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific which does not… oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing
is every Tuesday night in Kings Cross. Come naked.

Q: Which direction is North in Australia? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we’ll send the rest of the directions.

Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule? (USA)
A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is… oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Kings Cross, straight after the
hippo races. Come naked.

Q: Can I wear high heels in Australia? (UK)
A: You are a British politician, right?

Q: Are there supermarkets in Sydney and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilisation of vegan hunter/gatherers. Milk is illegal.

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)
A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca which is where YOU come from. All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Australia, but I forget its name. It’s a kind of bear and lives in trees. (USA)
A: It’s called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them. You can scare them off by
spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

Q: Do you have perfume in Australia? (France)
A: No, WE don’t stink.

Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in Australia? (USA)
A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.

Q: Can you tell me the regions in Tasmania where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay night-clubs.

Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.

Q: I was in Australia in 1969 on R+R, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Kings Cross. Can you help? (USA)
A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.

Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you’ll have to learn it first

By popular request, I’ve updated Auto-Close with two new features.

The first one is the ability to close comments and pings on posts and pages separately. There are separate checkboxes for both of them. So, now you don’t need to enter the page IDs.

The other feature is two new buttons, one to open all comments and the other to open all pings.

What do you think of these features? What else would you like to see in this plugin?

Been tied down all of this week with either gallivanting or working on my technology blog. So, here is a day-by-day summary of the last week or so.

25th December

It’s Christmas day. Because of the Terror Attacks in Mumbai [Photos], almost all places in Mumbai canceled their Christmas dances. Not that I went out a lot, but this time we decided to just have a quiet dinner.

Dinner was at the usual spot, viz. Dynasty. Marise’s sister Ruth joined us for dinner.

26th December

I had planned in advance to dedicate this day to technology shopping, which is exactly what I did. Went over to Marise’s place in the morning and after lunch we took a trip to my vendor in Lamington Road.

Picked up a DVD Writer and a 500GB WD Elements for Marise, a 6-cell battery for Akshat’s laptop and pendrives both Akshat and Aditya.

I also bought a Notebook Cooling pad, which is this cute plastic pad with three fans that has been effectively keeping my laptop cool. I do however, need to open the same and dust it properly.

27th December

My dear cousin Seema is down from the US and she decided to drop in to my place. We then headed over to my Grandma’s place in Bandra. Picked up lunch at the Subway on Linking Road. The sandwiches sure cost a bomb especially when you are looking at two footlongs but they fill you up well. Spent the entire day at my Grandma’s place.

28th December

Sunday, once again. Began it as usual with mass in the morning. Marise came over in the afternoon to spend some quiet time at home.

29th December

This day Marise’s parents celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary and I joined them for dinner. We decided to go to Amrut Punjab, but being a Monday, the place was closed. So, instead we decided to go to Gajalee in Phoenix Mills. I have been to the one in Seepz, Andheri several times, but this was my first at Phoenix. And, I was disappointed by the service.

The food was good as usual, but the waiters were totally disorganized and unresponsive and we had to wait a long long time for food. For the prices they charge!

Desert was jack fruit ice cream at Natural Ice Cream.

30th December

Spent the entire day at home and went over to Marise’s place to fix the DVD writer. We then went to Maroosh in Phoenix Mills. Dinner was kababs and biryani. The food isn’t as good or maybe it doesn’t fit our taste buds. Desert was once again ice cream at Natural which is the shop next door.

31st December

We decided to spend New Year at home, our respective homes i.e. I was also tired with the activities of the previous week. So, on 31st, I decided to unveil the brand new look of Techtites. I have great plans for that blog. In spite of it being on the web for well over two years, it hasn’t really taken off. I’m trying to get new talent to blog for me, but it is always difficult to find good technical writers.

So, what do you think of the new look?

1st January

A new day in the new year. Marise came over and we ordered pizza from Smokin’ Joes’. I think they have among the best pizzas. Only problem is that they don’t have great offers which makes regular pizza eating expensive!

2nd January

Today. Decided to finally get down and complete this blog post. Plan on spending the rest of the day blogging. May also work on a plugin or two if I have the energy!

So, what have you been upto this New Year?

I had posted earlier that I had submitted the updated version of my theme Connections Reloaded to the repository. It’s finally been approved today. So, grab it while it is hot

The changes in this version are:

• Complete support for WordPress 2.7
• Threaded comments and paged comments are now supported
• Custom Header. Now you can change the image header from within WP-Admin itself
• Support for all versions up to WordPress 2.7. So, even if you haven’t upgraded to 2.7, you can use the theme without modifications.

Download Connections Reloaded or view the Demo.

By now all of you must be aware of the Terror Attacks in Mumbai starting 26/11 [Photos]. it’s been one month since then and the actual persons behind it have still to be caught.

This post isn’t about them, but actually about something that I experienced in the last two days. Yesterday, as I headed into town and today on my way back home, I got stuck in traffic that stretched for a few kilometers. Couldn’t figure out why exactly this was until I saw the nakabandi (i.e. roadblocks in Hindi) with police checking taking place.

The result of this was a huge highway being halved in width and a traffic jam a few kilometers in length. Those of you have been to or have lived in Mumbai will know that the jams out here are extremely close knit with a four-lane road actually becoming a five or even six lane one!

While I do understand that a roadblock helps in better checking, but what I don’t understand is how will it prevent a bomb blast.

A traffic jam packed with vehicles stretching across a few kilometers means tonnes of ready-to-explode petrol tanks and several hundred people.

I’m not sure how possible this is, but can’t a single bomb exploding start a chain reaction?

So, is that roadblock helping us stop a terror attack or just increasing the intensity of it?

The last time I could spend such a prolonged Christmas vacation was two years back, when I was preparing for my MBA.

Spent a quiet day at home on Sunday as well as a good portion of Monday. Painting work in my house began on Sunday and carried on till late Tuesday which meant lots of dust, smell and work.

In spite of that, I went out to meet Marise on Monday evening. Met up with her in Bandra and we stopped by at a Handloom Expo at Reclamation. However, unlike last time, we did not find anything good.

We then made our way to Shopper’s Stop, where we did a bit of shopping including a Christmas gift for me

Marise’s sister Ruth joined us for dinner at 5 Spice. This has become one of our regular joints. The quantity was fantastic, as usual, which resulted in “doggy bags” yet again.

Met Marise yet again on the Eve of Christmas Eve. Picked her up from Dadar and we headed to her place where I helped her with completing some jujubes (where’s my cut Marise?).

Spent all of yesterday cleaning up the house. First vacuumed all the rooms and my computer (I sometimes think my computer was made to attract dust!) and after a lot of deliberation, I decided to swab the room as well.

Went for mass this morning instead of last night. Having lunch at home. Mom’s cooking biryani. Marise comes over later and have dinner plans with her. Will post details then

Merry Christmas my dear readers. Thanks for making this site so successful. May you have a splendid holiday and an even better 2009

The image is a Christmas tree, beside a portrait of George Washington, in the East Reception Room of the White House by catface3.

I’ve updated my Open Browser Window plugin. This one is the big daddy of my relatively more famous Open Picture Window plugin.

Open Browser Window opens a new browser window with the URL of the page that you specified using JavaScript. Opening a page in a new window using JavaScript is a preferred method over using target="_blank" due to XHTML compliance issues.

This is a major update. For one, this plugin has been lying in the WordPress plugin repository since even before the repository existed in this form. So, I cleaned up the files and folders to conform them to the current use of the repository.

A quicktags button titled “OBW” has also been added which you can use in the HTML tab when composing a new post / page.

The code has also been fixed for better compatibility with later versions of WordPress.

Read more or directly download the plugin from the repository.

After a good long party, I went off to watch The Day the Earth stood Still on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday were relatively lighter days. Went off to McDonalds for dinner on Thursday. Was so exhausted, that I just crashed after coming back.

Friday was lecture day with me attending a Strategic Marketing class. The strategic marketing class so far has been filled with cases which makes studying a pleasure. I hate subjects that require us to learn by rote and vomit it out at the exam. While theory is necessary, it is important that there are a good number of cases.

The internet connection at college has been as terrible as ever. The experiments by the network folks are a massive failure and we are starved for a decent connection at one the finest business schools!

Spent all of Thursday coding. I’ve worked on upgrading Connections Reloaded to the next version. I have submitted the same for approval at the theme repository. Given the current controversy, I’m sure this approval process is going to be a while.

I also released updates for three of my plugins, viz. Open Picture Window, Add to Feed and Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks yesterday.

Ohh, as for Mumbai, I came back here late Friday night. Was accompanied by a friend who had some personal work out here. We have painting going out at our place in time for Christmas which requires me to spend a while at home. Have some plans for the next few days. Will let you know how it goes.

I have updated my plugin Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks with one feature addition.

You can now choose to delete post revisions. Selecting this option will delete all post revisions in your WordPress database. Post Revisions were introduced in version 1.6 and in my opinion are absolutely useless unless you operate your blog as a wiki. But, do you?

I also fixed a minor bug where the scheduled cron was not deleted when you reset the plugin settings to default.

Lastly, the plugin now comes with its own uninstall code. Deleting the plugin from the Plugins screen of WP-Admin will delete all options from the database.

Existing users can upgrade the plugin from within WordPress Admin itself.

Read more about Auto-Close or directly download it from the plugin repository.