486. Facebook has attained Puberty

When Facebook was launched in the year 2004, I and my friends did not take it seriously. We were busy on social networking platforms like Hi5 and Orkut. The Orkut bug had bitten India in a bigger way and all of us were victims of that bug. I ate, slept and lived my life on the social networking platform Orkut. My experience with Orkut made me to write two advice columns on how to use Orkut for maximum benefits.

1) Orkut for men [link]

2) Orkut for women [link]

In the year 2005, a friend of mine invited me to join Facebook. I joined Facebook, but I did not use it as I was active on Orkut. Till the summer of 2008, I was stuck in Orkut. Then the herculean twist happened. Change is the only constant; and I was sucked into the world of Facebook.

Facebook in 2005

In the year 2005, Facebook was still in its diapers. The interface was so complicated and the user-base did not swell as expected. Orkut was still the dream-date site for youngsters.

Facebook in 2006

In the year 2006, FB adopted the three column approach which was popularized by blogger. The content went in the middle section and the left side-bar had the menu bar. Many bloggers joined facebook because they could associate with the three column layout. But still Orkut was ruling the roost in India. Facebook started to crawl.

Facebook in 2007

The year 2007 was the most complicated year for FB. Instead of grading from crawling to walking, Facebook started wearing diapers again. The technical team messed up with the layout and many bugs were found in the layout. This boosted Orkut's popularity in India. The testimonial section of Orkut was an instant hit and Facebook lacked that section.

Facebook in 2008

The marathon leap happened in 2008. Lot of interface similarities with orkut made it easier for orkut users to associate with Facebook. Indians started using Facebook in a big way. Facebook looked more organised. Chronicwriter closed his Orkut account in 2008 and turned his focus to FB.

Facebook in 2009

In 2009, FB introduced the commenting on a status message format. Bloggers started liking this feature. The Big space in the right side bar indicated that Facebook ads will soon be filling the space. The FB management team were working out their revenue models in the background. How ever the chat feature was a major disappointment. Game applications gained momentum

Facebook in 2010

As expected, online advertisements started realizing the power of FB. Farmville and other game applications zapped the time and energy from FB users. The top photo banner was added. Facebook became a virtual home for many users. The Like button was incorporated and that enabled many to take sides. Facebook became the third most populated country in the world behind China and India. The growth in 5 years was stupendous. The diapers went into a hiding.

Facebook in 2011

In 2011, Facebook became a rebel. The changes were many. The new FB page looks like how my face looked when i was a teenager ~ full of pimples. The ticker column at the right side bar gave me greater insights into the personal lives of everyone. Everyday Facebook changes its mood. It is like a nagging wife now. Just when you think that you have figured her out, she changes her mood. With more than 4000 friends in my list, I have no clue on whats happening around me. This is how my page looks now.

Facebook has become a home for many. We can expect many unexpected changes every now and then. But still student and officials will facebook even if they don't like to face their books.

Diapers - Crawling- Walking - Pimple Faced teenager - What's next?

Will Facebook ever reach old age?

-Chronicwriter

485. Poverty Eradicated from India?

The Planning commission of India has made a wonderful statement in its affidavit to the supreme court. According to the affidavit an individual income of Rs.25 per day is enough to push a person above the poverty line. This statement reminds me of my Ethics Professor who always believed in confusing us if he couldn't convince us.

The Poverty line is now fixed at Rs 4284 per month in cities. If only such benchmark were adopted in the world of sports, Indian football team would qualify for football world cup, Sania Mirza would win a grand slam and Ishant Sharma would become the opening batsman for India. I stand 164 cms tall (Short). If the planning commission had made changes to measurements and if 1 foot had been made equal to 25 cms, I would be 6 feet tall. I can also call myself a six footer.

The 21st September 2011 issue of The Hindu (Page14- Chennai Edition) stated that the Annual salaries of the top three corporate heads of India ( Naveen Jindal, Kalanithi Maran, Kaveri Maran) for the year ended March 2011 was more than Rs 140 Crores.

The gap between the rich and the poor is so much in India. The World Bank report says that India is one of the poorest countries in the world. In fact the poverty indicator line pushes India below Bangladesh according to that report.

Sarcasn's Quote on FB made me smile :

Poverty line fixed at Rs 4,284 per month for cities. Great move, if you can't pull people above the poverty line, push the poverty line backwards.- Sarcasn

Why is the planning commission making such statements? Anyone spending more than Rs 965 per month in Urban India and Rs.781 per month in Rural India will no longer be called as poor. (Rs 32 per day in Urban cities and Rs 26 per day in Rural villages). To add salt to the injury, the fuel prices are going up. We would not mind all these inflation in every single area in our society as long as it does not affect us. We would sit in front of the TV and watch the indefinite fast stunts and the MODIfied definite fast stunt shows. We would listen to NDTV's version and TimesNow version of a story and would assume that as News.

India's growth in the MDG (Millenium Development Goals) program set by the United Nations is pathetic. The following graph according to the statewide development in India shows that more than 85 % of houses in Jharkand do not even have sanitation facility. It is also the home state of our India's cricket captain - Dhoni.

It always feels good when someone appreciates you. But that does not mean that we ought to prove to the world that we are rich when we are not.

The planning commissions health diet suggestion will be snubbed even by my pet dog. If I have to live a healthy life according to the Planning commission, then I have to drink 85 ml of milk , three teaspoons of rice mixed in 20 grams of dhal curry. My 7 year old neighbor laughed at me when I told him about the Planning commissions affidavit.

The whole nation was going all gaga over all the media frenzy maniacs who fasted in front of television. Do we know that many in our country have nothing to eat and hence end up fasting for many days. What is our response to them?

I am sick of all the Babas and the Modis and all their stunts. I am gonna go on an Indefinite Fast to protest against all those who say that they are going to fast for a cause. I am sick of seeing the fuel prices hike. I am sick of the economic crisis that is trapshooting us from down-under. I am angry. Really angry.

OK. I have ranted enough. Let me go and watch some CLT-20 action on TV. Chris Gayle is gonna hammer; the cheer girls are gonna hover and Ravi Shastri is gonna stammer.

-Chronicwriter.

If you really feel like doing something for our country, you can make a change in the life of a child living in poverty by helping him/her to have education, food and health care. Click this [link] to Help A Child of India.

484. Yo Baby

Yo Baby

The other day I waiting for the red light to turn Green and my car was stuck in the middle of a jam-packed traffic.I saw an old lady knocking all the windows of cars~ begging for money. She came near my car and as I rolled down the window pane, she said "Yo Baby! Gimme some money ". She did make me smile.

I was first introduced to this word "Yo-Baby" in the year 1999. I did my bachelors in engineering in a French-influenced city called Pondicherry. The first day in college- a young guy came to me , with two folded fingers and said "Yo-dude". I had no clue what he was trying to do. But I was not the guy who would act dumb even if did not understand what it meant. So I reciprocated by folding my fingers- the same way and said "Yo-Dude".

Immediately a group of guys came to me and said, "Wow! Here is a guy who knows our language". That very moment, I was inducted into the dude gang in college. What is Dude gang? What are their priorities? What do they do? I never knew the answer to any of these questions. But still I was a part of the gang that called themselves the Dudes of the college.

A dude is a human being who is different from the rest of the crowd. He thinks out of the box. In Short, a dude is defined in the following points.

1. A dude assumes that sitting in the last bench of the class is a cool thing to do. Chronicwriter never got the opportunity to sit in the last bench of the class in his entire school life because of his short stature. But college life came as a treat to him. As he became a member of the Dude tribe, he never sat in any row other than the last row in class.

2.A dude would grow his hair.

3. A dude would wear a torn jean ( I am talking about the dudes of the late 1990s)

4. A dude would say "Yo Baby" when he sees a girl

5. A dude would say "Yo Dude" when he sees a boy.

6. A dude would use a cuss word in every sentence that he speaks. The F word is a must.

7. A dude would excel in everything other than studies.

8. A dude would always have a gang of girls around him.

9. A dude would know how to play the guitar. He should be the kind of guy who should say " I have a band".

10. A dude smokes.

11. A dude thinks that he is sexy and he even thinks that all girls are crazy about him.

12. A dude does not know the meaning of the word Yo-Baby. (So, this post doesn't have the meaning for the term Yo-Baby)

13. A dude pierces his ear lobes. Chronicwriter had a magnetic ear-ring. His friends found that he was a fake-dude when his magnetic ear-rings came in contact with a metal board.

14. A dude thinks that he is a dude; but he is not.

15. A dude thinks that having a blog is cool. Then he thinks that FB is for hitting on girls. Then he starts tries his legs and hands in trekking. Then he becomes a photographer. He then enrolls himself in a salsa class. Finally he acts in a Tamil short film and uploads it on YouTube and announces to the world " I am an actor too".

Yo Baby! Every human being is a Dude irrespective of the gender differences and all the world's a stage. Did I just make William Shakespeare proud?

-Chronicwriter

483. Happy Engineer's day

Today is Engineer's day.

Engineers are the breed you find everywhere these days. During the days when my dad toiled hard in the IIT campus for his engineering degree, only 1% of the college going population took engineering as a course. But today only 1 % of the college going population do not take engineering as a course. Everyone is an engineer these days.

What do you do after you are done with your engineering degree? "I really don't have a clue" is the answer that almost all the engineers give. Chronicwriter is also an engineer. He did his engineering in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering. His first regular job was in an IT firm as a business analyst. This is the specialty of engineers in India. You can do a course in mechanical engineering, aeronautics, communications and even in civil engineering. But you all will one day become a software engineer.

You might be now sitting in a cubicle coding and testing all java nonsense and if you just think about those engineering days where you did not have a clue about what you would become in future, just be happy that you are a software engineer now.

The author of this page is a product of Madras university. The more the pages used in examinations, the more marks the students get in the exams. This is the secret mantra of those days. Things have gone worse these days. Now you don't even have to write papers after papers. All you need to do is chase them. (If only you get what I mean).

We are all born engineers. There is an engineer inside everyone of us. We will all realize our potential one day.

1) Kunjumon realising the potential to convert a LapTop into an i-Pod.

Just Imagine what would have happened to him if the laptops had not been invented. Inserting a desktop like this would have been really painful

2) Gabdun is a a Gomblede Enginearing Bradecd.

3) What ever said and done, engineers aren't that lucky. Either you have to be a Richard Gere or Swami Gilfanandha to get into the peck books of Shilpa

Note : Rakhi Sawant's childhood ambition was to become an Engineer too.

Happy Engineers day.

-Chronicwriter

482. Girls and Facebook

"Dear Facebook, Every time I add a girl you ask me "Do you know her?" Is she your sister? "

This was an innocent question raised by an innocent friend of mine recently. Facebook has asked the same question to me too. Facebook has never asked the question when I add boys.Is Facebook showing any partiality towards the fairer members of the human species?

The other day, some of my girl friends were talking to me and they complained to me that theywere getting too many fraansheep requests from many strangers. Were they showing off that they too have graded to the category of BABES? Is this why they straightened their hair and colored it in three colors? Is this why they waxed their girly mustaches and threaded off their hairy eyebrows? They might have told the truth. But I found them to be irritating. When the whole country was talking about Anna Hazare, these girls were talking about the fraansheep requests they were getting through facebook. Why can't they just ignore the requests?

So I asked one of them "Do you accept those requests?"

She said "No! I don't accept requests from strangers?"

Then I logged into Facebook and found that the same girl had more than 4000 friends in her facebook account. Does she really know all 4000 of them? Later that week, I found out that this girl was in fact sending fraansheep requests to all random men.

To every Girl suffering from too many friend requests,Do you wanna stop getting Friend requests,Then Put Your REAL Picture!!

If spending two hours in the beauty parlor was not enough, then spending one whole week in photoshop to spice your picture and then cropping it might yield better results to you.

But let me tell you a secret, Girls!

If you wanna receive many fraansheep requests from men, you do not really need to have a cute display picture. All you need to have is a name that sounds feminine. Even if you add a picture of a flower or a cat, Men will add you. That is the manufacturing defect that men are born with. You and I can never change that.

The picture at the top is Chronicwriter's FB display picture. If you want to know how Chronicwriter really looks like, please click this [link]

-Chronicwriter

481. One Fanta, 8 Girls,and a Quarter.

Number of people Involved in the adventure : 8 girls

Adventure : Getting drunk

How? : Mix one quarter whiskey with 500 ml of fanta and gulp them all down

1) All set for the adventure

Bottle ready, Tumbler ready, fanta ready and girls are ready too.

2) The whiskey is poured into the tumbler, Pickle is also ready now. All set to gulp and get drunk

3) My head is spinning

The next day, the girls went around telling their friends that they too have passed the grade and are expert drunkards.

Women prove all drunk-quotes do not apply to them with their actions.

A man's (woman's) true character comes out when he's/ she's drunk.
Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin is proved wrong by the girls. The True character never comes out even when they are completely sloshed.

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
Charles Darwin

Hope you guys got the hidden pun in the above quote.

A final message.

Please don't get drunk in wild parties like this. Do you remember the lovely actress Divyabharti who died after she fell down from the window because she was drunk?

Say No to Getting Drunk.

- Chronicwriter

480. First Words

What was the first word you spoke? Researches indicate that 99.99 % of the children utter the word "Mommy" as their first word. The word mommy is mostly uttered in their own vernacular language. The remaining 0.1 % belong to the rebellious category and this 1 % have spoken words other than the usual Mommy. Another weird truth is that these words are spoken by these nutty group of people on the very day they were born. The following pictures reveal this weird truth.

The first ever words spoken by these people, the moment they were born

1) Gates- The man who opened the windows of the IT world.

2) Steve Jobs

Eve ate the apple and sin entered the world

Apple fell on Newton's head. Physics went bonkers

Steve bit an apple. Windows Shut.

3) Anna Hazare! I still prefer Anna Kournikova any day.

4) The Real Raja

5. Some one is Chetan Bug-Hat

6. Rakhi Sawant - She was born through Normal delivery.

7. Mike - The lethal left punch.

8. Arnab Bow-wow-sami

9. The man who can silence Arnab - "Siddhu"

10 . Indo- Pak Connection. ( My dream girl once upon a time)

-Chronicwriter

479. Corrupt people fight against Corruption

We are all back in business after Anna Hazare won freedom for our country with his three points.

For one whole week, I was glued to the TV. The NDTV and Times Now gave exact contradicting versions of the same story. Barkha Dutt and Arnab Gowsami took time to interrogate, drill and rip apart many politicians. My next post is about them. Anna is out of hospital and we are back to our normal mode with the happiness of winning our battle against corruption.

Have we really won the battle against corruption?

Corruption starts at home. We first learn it from our parents. Then we re-learn it and apply it in school. We copy and paste our answers in class exams. This habit is then carried forward to the social networking space too, where we copy quotes, jokes and post it as ours. We are fundamentally corrupt from within. We lie. We have hatred against people. We gossip. We disobey traffic rules. "What is a Zebra Line?" Many of us do not even know. Many roads do not even have Zebra lines. Many cities, towns, villages do not even have roads. All the money are eaten, bribed, and excreted by corrupt people. We are a part of it.

My dear Friend Soumya caught in her act of copying during exams.

I have copied in exams too. I have copied ideas from others to post blogs and earn a good report. Does comments and compliments mean anything when we really know that we don't deserve it? Why am I ranting now? I am ranting because we are unstable and we are soooooo corrupt. We do things that we are not supposed to do and we fail to do things that we are supposed to do. Check the following pictures to understand this.

A pair of slippers that costs less then 50 bucks (1 USD) is not safe in our country. It needs protection. People even steal dirty socks and under-wears that are left in drying stands.

We trash our waste in places where we are not supposed to trash. We spit pawn on walls. We urinate everywhere, because we have the right to pee everywhere.

We disobey signs and messages. But still we raise slogans and raise our support in our fight against corruption.

Finally, if the people who are supposed to protect us starts to steal from us, even if 1000 Anna Hazares hold millions of fasts, nothing is gonna change.

No one can stop corruption. Only our Gabtun can. It is really dreadful to fall into the dangerous hands of Gabtun.

-Chronicwriter