Mukesh Bhai's Problem !

Mukesh Ambani in his 27 storeyed House

Mukeshbhai gets up from his bed room on 15th floor, takes a swim in the swimming pool on 17th floor, has breakfast on the 19th floor, dresses up for office on 14th floor, collects his files and office bag from his personal office on 21st floor, wishes Bye to Nitabhabhi on 16th floor, says 'See You' to his children on 13th floor, and goes down on 3rd floor to self drive his 2.5 Crore Mercedes to office, but then he finds out that he has forgotten the car keys upstairs. But on which floor? 15th, 17th,19th,14th,21st,16th or 13th ?

He phones all his servants, cooks, maids, secretaries, pool attendants, gym trainers, etc. on all the floors. There is a hectic search and lot of running about on all the floors, but the key is not traceable. Fed up, after half an hour, Mukeshbhai leaves in a chauffeur driven ordinary Ikon car.

At 3.30 P.M. late in the afternoon it is discovered that 4 days back, a temporary replacement maid had washed Mukeshbhai's pants and hung it to dry on a string in the balcony of 16th floor, with car keys in the pant pocket. They had blown away somewhere in the high winds at 16th floor level and was never found. This was found out because of Nitabhabhi's habit of checking clothes given for ironing personally.

After 3 days Nitabhabhi complained to Mukeshbhai that where was he roaming till 3 A.M. last night? Mukeshbhai said the he was at home all night.

Then why did the helicopter land in the terrace at 3 A.M. I was so much worried. I could not sleep whole night, said Nitabhabhi.

 

Oh that helicopter? That helicopter came from Germany, sent by Mercedes people to deliver the duplicate car key. 

-- 

Spoof Defence by Suresh Kalmadi

My fellow citizens, Over the last few weeks, I have read and watched a series of reports about corruption in the organizing of Commonwealth Games. It has pained me no end. Some of those things I have tried to explain but what has shocked me is the demand for my exit. Each day there is a new disclosure and the chorus begins again. Therefore, I decided to confront the question head on. Yes, corruption has taken place in holding of the games. Trails of quite a few scandals lead right up to my door. So I will not deny it. But what is so surprising about it? What did I do that had not been done before? To see the outpourings of outrage everywhere, it would appear Indians are seeing corruption happen for the first time. Come on, let us shed that garb of innocence. Please come with me to the collectorate of any of our nearly 450 districts. Each one presided over by an IAS officer, the best and the brightest among us. Here you find people in their thousands waiting for such commonplace things as domicile and caste certificates. There are contractors waiting for permits to mine materials such as boulders and gravel. My contractor friend tells me it takes 18 approvals to get one permit. Please try to get just one of them without giving a bribe or using a big name. The same goes for each certificate. I could take you to the secretariat of each of our 30-odd states. Or to ministries in New Delhi where even bigger deals are made. The story will be repeated on a progressively larger scale. Let us travel to any of the RTO offices. I dare you to have a vehicle registered or transferred, or just pay your tax without going through a tout or paying someone. Why, most of us have driving licences. I ask each one of you to keep your hand on your heart and ask whether you got it by honestly appearing for a test or gave a small fee to someone to get it for you. I also want you remember the last time you were booked for jumping a traffic signal or wrongly parking your car. Did you quietly pay your fine or tried to settle the matter with the cop for a lower amount? Please get me a birth certificate from your local municipal office in a straightforward manner. I could say the same about courts but for the risk of being hauled up for contempt. I shall still suggest that you spend a day in the court complex of any district and check out the exemplary honesty and integrity with which everybody from peons to lawyers to judges work there. Let us then go to a PWD or an irrigation department office of your choice and try to find a road or a dam built with complete honesty. I could go on. But you get the drift, right? Somebody has thrown a CAG report on my face. Poor CAG has been writing such reports by the dozens about every department of every government at every level. I am yet to discover their utility other than providing particularly untalented reporters a means to live another day. The toilet paper in my bathroom finds better use than those reports. It is the same with CVC. And, ah, the media… How can I forget my friends there? Please ask them about the increasingly blurred line between advertising and commercials so that readers do not know what is paid for and what is not. What editorial integrity do we see when interviews and features on movies appear sweetly timed with their release? We had the scandal of paid political news during elections. I am yet to see an editor or an owner hauled over the coals for that or being asked to demit office. No, my compatriots, it is not corruption in CWG that bothers you. If that were the case, you would have lynched every district collector and every RTO in the country by now. You have long made peace with corruption. You have become part of it when you could. It is brazenness and scale of my corruption that concerns you. That is the novelty element. If my team had kept itself limited to taking 10 or 20 per cent cut, you would be looking the other way. The media would find it boring to report that. What shocks you is that I paid Rs 9 lakh for hiring a treadmill that could be had for Rs 45,000. If I had done the deal at Rs 50,000 you would be OK with it. You do not mind people crossing the line. You mind them crossing it too openly. But you forget, friends, that once you allow crossing of lines you cannot set the rules for it. Also, I have only raised the bar here. Citius, Altius, Fortius. Isn't that what having games is all about? Give me credit for at least that (though I'd prefer cash!). (The Olympic Games Motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius - Higher, Stronger, Further). With all sincerity (or what is left of it amongst us),   Regards, Suresh Kalmadi

Pencils ( from the Economist)

Faber-Castell

The future of the pencil

An eight-generation family firm shows how innovation need never stop

Sep 16th 2010 | NUREMBERG

A wonderful tool with many uses

ULYSSES GRANT, an American general, jotted down battle plans with one. Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian chancellor, used his to tamp down the tobacco in his pipe. Vincent van Gogh used one to "draw a woman sewing" and found they "produce a marvellous black and are very agreeable to work with."

Craftsmen have made pencils in Stein, near Nuremberg, for nearly four centuries. Faber-Castell, the world's biggest branded pencil manufacturer, has done so since 1761. Its task is daunting: to improve a product that pencil-lovers insist has been perfect for well over a century. Among these is Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell, a dapper former investment banker and the eighth member of his family to run the firm. "At my home I have a Faber-Castell pencil I bought from an antique dealer that must be from 1890 or 1895," he says. "It writes perfectly, even after all these years. That's the fantastic thing with a pencil."

Many people thought that pencils would become obsolete in the computer age, yet sales continue to grow. Perhaps 15 billion-20 billion are made each year, roughly half of them in China. Faber-Castell produces about 2.2 billion. They are cheap, sturdy and popular in schools, especially in poor countries. As countries grow richer, children's pencil cases grow fatter, though only up to a point. Sales of pencils in most European countries are growing only slowly, if at all.

Faber-Castell, however, has kept growing despite the recession. In its past financial year sales increased by almost 6%. The firm does well in emerging markets with vast numbers of bright-eyed schoolchildren. It is also grabbing market share in the rich world by making its pencils better. This is nothing new for Faber-Castell. Lothar von Faber, the great-grandson of the company's founder, took over in 1839 and invented the hexagonal pencil. By cutting the edges off a cylindrical one, he stopped it from rolling off a table.

Faber-Castell's second big innovation was stolen. In 1875 America's Supreme Court ruled that Faber was entitled to put rubber erasers onto the back of its pencils, although another inventor had already patented the idea. The court felt that the idea was too obvious to patent.

Since then, years of research have gone into making leads firmer and finding the type of wood that best protects them from breaking when dropped. But for scribblers, three ideas stand out. First, Faber-Castell started using water-based, environmentally friendly paints in the 1990s. Teachers and parents, who used to worry that children would swallow toxins while chewing their pencils, would have preferred plain wooden ones. But children love bright colours. So Count Faber-Castell reworked his entire process to accommodate new paints without harmful chemicals. Teachers in Europe now urge parents to buy them by name.

The count's second innovation was to introduce an ergonomic triangular shape that is popular with children. His third was to add rubbery dots that keep the pencils from slipping out of sweaty little hands.

As for the future, Count Faber-Castell still sees scope for further refinement. Pencils could perhaps be made tougher, or easier on the eye. But the basic design—graphite encased in wood—is unlikely to change much in the next ten to 15 years, he says. Asked about the next 100, he laughs. That may be for another generation to decide.

Dining Quiz

Little Bit of Fun... Click on "Dining Out In The World"  below, then select your answer by clicking on the twirling utensil. It will give you the correct answer, then move to the next country.   Dining Out In The World

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