India Celebrated her 55th republic day. For the uninformed this was the day when India became a republic in 1950 and adopted a new democratic constitution. It attained Independence on the 15th of August 1947. A relatively new democracy compared to Uncle Sam. Though the common man’s favorite refrain is that we have only exchanged the foreign goons for local ones. The pessimistic though apart, it is one of the few post-colonial countries to have a live and vibrant democracy. When I was India I never missed a single one of the Republic Day parades, now I have to just satisfy myself with images on the web .

In other tragic news of this short year, more than 300 hundred people died in a stampede at a religious festival in India; 37 soldiers died in the bloodiest day in Iraq; more than 10 people died in a train in California; The death toll due to the Tsunami has risen to 280,000 … hopeful you and I realize how blessed we are.

Links for the day:

Brave kids

A good excuse to stop smoking

What can you buy on eBay ? A missile

Now why didn’t I think of this ??

Bored ? check this out

“If elections would change anything, they would be forbidden” – Kurt Tucholsky

That’s the number of consecutive days I have gone to the gym a new personal best for me. I hope I don’t break a bone trying to pump it up… The Jibjabbers are back with a new video . Its been one of those slow days today at work … nearly put me to sleep then again 8 hours in front of the monitor will do that to anybody.

Tsunami update

The latest reports indicate that the death toll has crossed 226,000 almost 160000 of those in Indonesia. Now there is reports of fighting breaking out between the government and rebel forces in the Aceh province which was the worst affected by the tsunami. In Sri Lanka, the Government and the LTTE(Liberation tigers of Tamil elam) rebels are locked in a war of words over the distribution of relief materials. The rebels claim that the government has done nothing for the people living in the rebel dominated areas. I my city of madras the city council has decided to have a fish buffet for the councilors to show the public that the fishes are not contaminated.

“Money can’t buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy.” ~ Spike Milligan