My Indomitable Thoughts

M any people go through a lot of trouble while traveling abroad. It could range from passport problems to not having proper immigration clearance. If you take proper steps, you can do away with all these disappointments. Some of the things you have to be aware of while traveling abroad are as follows : Most embassies and consulates will not issue visa if the passport expires within the next six months. There should be enough blank pages to stamp the visas on. If there are no more pages left in the passport, apply for a new booklet. It takes between 15 to 20 working days to issue the booklet. Make sure that you do not require immigration clearance each time you travel abroad. The best way is to get an ' Immigration clearance not required ' endorsement on your passport. All you need to do is submit your graduation mark sheet or copies of your income tax returns for the last three years. Those over 65 years of age do not require immigration clearance. Take 12 passpor...

In today's newspaper, I came across a photo of the current Japanese Prime Minister Mr Junichiro Koizumi, who is presently on a visit to India for strengthening the ties between Japan and India. In the photo Mr Koizumi holds a banner reading " Seven Social Sins " as compiled by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi a.k.a M.K.Gandhi popularly known as Mahathma Gandhi - the father of our nation. I reproduce them below : Seven Social Sins Politics without Principle Wealth without Work Pleasure without Conscience Knowledge without Character Commerce without Morality Science without Humanity Worship without Sacrifice

G oogle has been hogging the news for some time because they have been the first to provide a whooping 1 GB storage space for its free email service called GMail - Now being upgraded to 2 GB space - which they have promised to go on increasing in a time based manner. It created ripples in the email arena so much that it forced Yahoo - one of the oldest and most popular email providers to upgrade its free email service from just a measly 6 MB storage space to 250 MB space. And they have also promised to provide 1 GB storage space in the future for all its email users - though that hasn't happened yet. That set me thinking; Is GMail the only service which provides over 1 GB storage space to its users or are there others? A quick search in google and yahoo search spit out a few surprises. Obviously there are a lot of email providers which are giving over 1 GB space to their users. For starters, there is a very popular email service (popular at least in India) called Rediffm...

H ave you considered what impact your daily decisions have on the health of the world's environment? What difference would it make if you didn't use a car, or if you used less water or owned fewer clothes ? Ecological Footprint model helps estimate how much productive land and water you need to support what you use and what you discard. Is our lifestyle sustainable? With the environment slowly deteriorating because of the simple decisions that you and I make, it is necessary to look at our consumption of resources. The more resources we consume, the more pressure it puts on the planet to supply those resources. Ecological Footprinting is a way of determining relative consumption. Ecological Footprints have been used to argue that current lifestyles are not sustainable. If everyone consumed as many resources as the average person in the North America, we would need five earths to meet the demand. In contrast, India (which has 5 times more population than America) has an ecol...

I still remember during my days as a kid, we used to store pottable drinking water in brass pots - infact most of the households used to store drinking water in metal pots; specifically made of brass or copper. Also pots made of these metal alloys were cheap. At that time nobody analysed why we used vessels made of these metal alloys and most took it as common practice. But over the years, the brass and copper utensils were replaced with more economical steel and plastic utensils as these materials became widely prevalent. Now an international study has suggested that the use of brass vessels to store drinking water could help combat diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid, jaundice and dysentery. A report published in the Nature said, the vessels could prove specially useful in the developing countries where people view plastic containers as better and cheaper options to store drinking water. The scientists found that the bacteria were less likely to thrive in brass water pots than i...

1. Quit smoking - now Did you know that roughly one out of five men keeps making the killing choice by continuing to smoke? If you smoke, or spend a lot of time around someone who does, sooner or later it can kill you. According to leading health specialists, cigerette smoke contains carbon monoxide as well as radioactive particles. The main way smoking may kill is by heart disease,lung disease or cancer - three of the top five killers in men. But first, smoking will make your life miserable. You'll suffer the mood swings associated with nicotine addiction; you will break into embarrassing coughing and retching fits in front of family, friends and colleagues; food will loose its taste. Meanwhile, the smoke will damage your lungs and pollute your blood with carbon monoxide ultimately starting a reaction in your body that causes cancer cells to grow. On the other hand, you can kick this bad habit. The incentive is that you will live longer, no matter how long you have been smoking...