Life as I find it

Funny, naughty and irrepressible girls having a great time on a top berth of a train

In a world of speed and luxury, I had forgotten the charming sloce of India - long distance travel in Sleeper Class on Indian Railways.

This time, I was attending the HID Forum’s Group Relations conference on Leadership in a Gendered World in Bangalore which was based on the Tavistock model of sensing unconscious group processes, which is a different story. I decided to travel the way I used to travel with my family in my childhood - Sleeper Class.

So here I am on the Udyan Express that left at 8:05am sharp. This Indian Railways experience of mine is complete as I booked a waitlisted ticket days in advance and then tracked its progress eagerly, until it became RAC - Reservation against Cancellation.

Itsdifferent being a kid travelling with a family and the compartment my playground to be an adult female travelling alone, with an unconfirmed ticket and responsible for securing her own seat. Not that I hadn’t travelled by train since then, but Air conditioned compartments are just not the same thing.

I arrived early (being anxious to check my seating status) and ended up entering the train as one of the first passengers in our compartment when it was unlocked.

My first sensation was the smell - its a dingy, ammonia laden horrible smell that is particular to a sleeper class compartments with closed windows and unventilated for some time standing in a busy long distance train terminus with all its implied toilets contributing in turns towards nurturing that particular stink.

I few passengers coughed and opened windows, which brought my attention to a group of four handsome young boys a few seats down. They were watching me with equal interest - the beginnings of long distance train intrigue. More windows opened, more passengers came in, and the smell changed. It was now a complex hybrid of our original smell, perfume, hair oil, sweat, different kinds of food being opened and that typical train smell….. quite overwhelming and kind of nasty but intriguing.

The train took off and things settled down. The smells grew less intense, movement of people stilled, sounds lowered. I had claimed a top berth on entry as usual, intending to sleep my way through the otherwise monotonous journey. Plus, I felt that I had better get some sleep done while the owner of the berth sat below, as I didn’t have a confirmed berth for the night.

Lous tea vendors woke me next and I looked hazily around to see that most top berths were occupied by sleeping passengers - I guess everyone had woken up early to be on the train.

Honestly, I slept for most of the journey, but what I do remember is the sheer diversity of people. All kinds of colours, clothes, languages, foods, ages…… the informal friendliness that needs no introductions….. and three mischief making girls sitting on a top berth near me - they were partt of a large family group going to visit their village temple. Take a look

I got this email from a friend.

ICICI bank’s net banking has a duplicate site as details given below. Please be careful while using ICICI net banking.
ICICI Bank Duplicate site-be careful

—–ICICI Bank Duplicate site —-

Genuine Site

Hi All,
An important piece of information.
Surprising both the sites have secured SSL from Verisign !!!!

beware !!
This is one of the worst phishing scam ever seen.
Here are the both the URLs, they are same, except there is a space (%20) at the end of the phishing URL.

The wrong one
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/BANKAWAY?Action.RetUser.Init.001=Y&AppSignonBankId=ICI&AppType=corporate&abrdPrf=N%20
Actual ICICI Site
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/BANKAWAY?Action.RetUser.Init.001=Y&AppSignonBankId=ICI&AppType=corporate&abrdPrf=N

Actually, that is not the thing. If you look at the images carefully, you will see that the ICICI url is icicibank.co.in while the fraud url in the image is icici-infinitysupport.com <—- Do NOT login here with your real ICICI details.

I checked out the url and it now seems to belong to an expired hosting in any case, but I bet the scam is not dead, but simply moved to a fresh url.

Beware.

I seem to be on a learning swing. Just back from the Group Relations Conference in Bangalore, and as I headed to my email, I saw that Cisco certification has a possibility for a review to be written. So I headed over to their site to take a look. No surprise so far.

What I found there was a relatively newish site with an eye for quality. This I admire. Further exploration led me to the learning center where the first article to cath my eye was one about soft-skills in IT managers. NOW, this is what I appreciate in an educational institution whether online or physical.

Just the last week, on an induction programme for young IT professionals in a leading organization in Mumbai, we had talked about how important it is to forget the competition orientation of education and learn to collaborate and achieve practical functionality.

The unfortunate fact of life is that people want to know what you know, and your own claim of competence is not an adequate measure in their eyes. So unless you are a mighty famous professional, it is important to have an idea of where your skills lie, build on them and get them officially acknowledged to certain standards to make them more visible and credible to those employers who have no clue of where your talents lie.

We had spoken of different ways to accredit and improve on this competence. In my opinion as both a consultant and an active webmaster, it is important to not just keep learning and updating our knowledge, but also to be able to apply it in a practical and functional way. One way of doing this is to step out of your comfort zone and take a risk to test your knowledge and get a stamp of acknowledgment.

The sorrow of much education today is that it doesn’t account for the human factor, which is what actually makes things work. To find a site that talks about soft skills while encouraging the certifications in various subjects makes me happy to be.

The online world is a good place to unfurl wings and chase development and growth in our chosen careers. This site is a useful tool for those.

The certifications themselves are well thought out and useful. In a world of competence, it is getting increasingly important to have skills verified and attested, which is exactly what this site helps you accomplish. Rather than duplicate the contents of that site to tell you everything about it, I invite you to actually experience it and perhaps you may want to share how you found it here.

I got this email:

Dear Administrator,

We inform you that your account is about to expire. It is strongly recommended to update it immediately. Update form is located here. However, failure to confirm your records may result in account suspension.

Confidential: Please be advised that the information contained in this email message, including all attached documents or files, is privileged and confidential and is intended only for the use of the individual or individuals addressed. Any other use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. This is the automated message. Please don’t reply. You tell me.

Talk of spam….. i don’t even know if I need to talk about this, except that it is sad that in this online world, it is so easy to defraus (or attempt to do so).

I had never heard of the company that sent me the email, forget buying something that needs updated subscriptions. Obviously a case of phishing or some get-rich-quick-illegally kind of thing.

I researched this message to see what experiences others had had and came across:

The write of this blog, some Ritesh Roshan has published it on his blog!!!

The description of this blog says:

“THIS BLOG IS CREATED TO EXPRESS THE FEELING & CURRENT RESEARCHES OF
SCIENCES. THESE EXPRESSION LEADS IN THE SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT
SCIENCE. THESE KNOWLEDGES HELP IN DIFERENT SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION.
FURTHER, PRAYING FOR EVERY PERSONS WHO CLICK FOR MY PERSONAL BLOG AND
THOSE WHO DIDN’T CLICKED THIS FOR ANY REASON. YOUR’S FRIEND RITESH
ROSHAN”

Some exploration led me to:

For a moment, I thought that this was some student from Patna running a scam. Then I thought it must be some student who had been convinced to pass on a scam as a genuine message.

Then I looked at all the posts in the blog. The posts list looks like my spam box. All sex spam and scam. Yet, the description didn’t sound spammy.

Now I am wondering what happens when a spammer gers someones “email to blog” ID and runs it through a regular spam bot without the benifit of spam filters and stuff a normal email account would have.

And there are other people like this. Lazy to hunt for links at the moment, but there are plenty who create and abandon blogs and get careless with stuff like logins and blogging email IDs

For me, this post highlights two major concerns:

• What does it do to a person’s reputation if a spammer is running sex and scams in his name on his blog and what can be done to prevent it
• How are these scams still operating in a world of computerized banking and tracking of fraud?

Might be worthwhile making a preventative measures kind of post about this later.

Fly like an eagle to the sea
Fly like an eagle let my spirit carry me!

I just love this song. A friend told me about her ebay shop and when I visited it, this is the song I wanted painted. To my mind, if there is any one song that inspires a visual, this is it.

Take a look whether you buy an artwork or not, come and tell me what song YOU would like painted.