Melbourne - my dream destination

As I live in India, I grew up knowing Australia as just a difficult Cricket team to defeat. I always thought Australia as our rival, and thus I was always curious to know more about it. Interest in David Boon, Allan Border, Glen McGrath, etc in particular and the game of Cricket in general and the rivalry associated with it drew my attention to the famous cricket ground of Melbourne and thus the city of Melbourne occupied a special space in my mind.

Other than Cricket, Melbourne brings to me the annual sporting extravaganza of the Formula One Grand Prix. It is one of the first few races of the year or you can say that the F1 season starts from Melbourne. Along with these, the 1st Tennis Grand Slam of the year is held in Melbourne. So for a sports enthusiast, Melbourne is the starting point of the year. And for me it is a dream to be here in this city at this part of the year. And the icing on the cake would be a visit to the iconic National Sports Museum located in the famous MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground).

Next on my list in Melbourne would be the balloon flights. Imagining about ballooning and that too in Melbourne pumps up my adrenaline. In my opinion, it is a must must activity in Melbourne. Just think about the tranquility while on the sunrise balloon flight over Melbourne, watching the sun rising slowly and having your glass of wine to enjoy... It gives me goose bumps!!

For all the coffee-addicts, you have a very exciting cafe in Melbourne - Brother Baba Budan. Just to let you know a little about Baba Budan, for those who doesn't know him, he is known as the world's first coffee smuggler. He has a very a significant India connect. He is believed to have introduced coffee to India and thus can be called as the father of India coffee. We have a famous peak in the Indian state of Karnataka named after him as Baba Budangiri. And it is also the place from where I started one of my earliest treks. I trekked from Baba Budangiri to Mulayangiri.

There are so many reasons to be in Melbourne, but what I say is that Melbourne doesn't need a reason to visit. My heart just says to me..."…it's your time to visit Melbourne NOW!" My travel guide would only be my heart and the informative weblink www.visitmelbourne.com/in

What is International Terrorism??

I was reading through a few articles and then just out of curiosity I dig in Google to find a few interesting pieces of articles, links etc. I am sharing those below. These are random but still connected to the topic. There is no conclusion by me. It is for the reader to draw it out for themselves. Internet is full of articles, links etc which could justify either side of the story.

"In a column for the Guardian four weeks before his death, Cook caused a stir when he described Al-Qaeda as a product of a western intelligence:
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by Western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."

- source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Cook#Outside_the_government 


The Power of Nightmares - a BBC documentary
2 people mentioned in the above documentary:
Leo_Strauss - Wikipedia
Sayyid_Qutb - Wikipedia

PS: I will update this article if I will find anything else interesting on this topic.

Points to ponder over in regards to RTE

With the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the constitutional validity of the Right to Education law for all schools, some points to came to my mind over the actual implementation of it across India. There might be that a few points / questions which would have arisen because of my lack of understanding of this Right to Education Act. However I think that most of these are valid food for thoughts. I am not jotting these in any order...

• How would a private school find out that a kid is from a disadvantaged family or on the other hand how would a disadvantaged kid's parents would prove their case?

Parents often research for the best school in the city / locality. How would poor parents get this sense or information?

• There would be cases where one's kids would be studying in the same class as that of the kids of their house maids. It would be interesting to see how the parents would react to it. Would they compare their kids class' performances with that of their maids' kids? Their might be cases when the maids' kids carry the same food in their tiffins as that of their bosses' kids. There would be a set of kids with mobile phone, neat clothes,etc and there would be a set of kids with minimal things. This disparity might bring the class-feeling among the kids too.

The parents (employer of the maids) might put the condition on the maids / servants to not send their (maids') kids to the same school as that of their bosses' kids.

• There might be cases when the disadvantaged children are not treat well / equally as the other students. The teachers might not guide them well. The facilities in school extended to other students might not be shared with the disadvantaged kids. In these cases, I dont know whether the Govt. of India has put any provision or not.

• With making it mandatory to the private schools to provide 25% of their seats in each classroom for the under-privileged children, has the Govt. just pass on their duty on to the private school owners? Neither illiteracy among the poor people is not because of these private schools nor it is their duty to think about it. They are actually spreading education, though at a profit. I suppose the Govt. should strengthen their state or central school. The present state of the country is such that no person with enough money to pay private school's fees would send his/her kids to a State School.

• As the compensation from the Govt. for these 25% free seats would be meagre, the private schools would pass on this burden on to the parents of the fees-paying parents. Therefore it can be said that it is actually the fees-paying parents who are paying of the RTE act.

• As this provision of providing free education to the disadvantaged kids is only for under-14 kids, what would happen to them after 14. In India 10th Board exams are very very important and these happen for kids aged around 15. I don't think that private schools would be so kind to continue with this free education even after 14 years and pay for the board exam's fees also. Govt. should think over it. I have got to know that the Govt actually is pondering over extending RTE till 16 years of age.