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December 31, 2006
Meera Jasmin photos
Baiju Joseph on Flickr has a set of photos from the famous press meet!
Accessing blocked orkut, myspace etc.
December 25, 2006
Kochuveli railway station going to be developed soon
It is learnt that Thiruvananthapuram Railway division has prepared a master plan to develop Kochuveli railway station (estimated to be over 80 crore rupees).
The highlights include 11 track platform and a nine storey station building! If implemented this will solve the congestion problems at the Thampanoor railway station.
It also needs to be seen how the travel problems from Kochu veli to city will be taken care. As of now there are not enough buses from Kochu veli to city.
Jyothika Surya marriage photos!
December 21, 2006
Kerala Government employees must wear mundu on a saturday!
Kerala government is thinking of making mundu(lungi) mandatory for male government employees. This is to promote the dying Khadi (kaithari) industry in the state.
Now we can pull down the mundu (mundu parikkal) when government employees ask for a bribe on a saturday! What is next? Government appeal to all empoyees to have sex only on sunday to improve workplace productivity? Ridiculous...
December 20, 2006
Malayali becomes Supreme court chief justice!
Justice K G Balakrishan will be the next Supreme court Chief Justice of India. This is the first time a Malayali has become Supreme court chief justice.
Balakrishan was born in a dalit family at Aappanchira village in Kottayam district. He passed LLB with first rank from Government Law College, Ernakulam. During his practise we was known as an expert lawyer. He has three children and all of them are lawyers.
You can apply passports online in Kerala!
Now passports can be applied online in Kerala! After applying online, the application print out must be submitted to a dedicated online counter at the passport office. So this can be used as a short cut for bypassing queues (like the credit card queues at the railway stations) :)
The new online registration service should reduce the rush at the passport office (In trivandrum, passport office is like a market - too many people, too little space).
But it appears there are some start up problems with the service. The registration site https://passport.gov.in/ seems to be having load problems and is slow.
December 19, 2006
Circumsize and prevent AIDS
Circumsized males have a substantially less chance of getting infected with AIDS claims American National Health Institute. 53% of circumsized males were free of AIDS as per the report.
I was wondering about the remaining 47% of males in the study! Anyway let us pass a law (ordinance will also do) to get everybody cut their "you know what"... (Political activists, trade unionists and student activists exempted)
Sreesanth kicks south african as* and Manorama gets a god
Sreesanth destroyed South african batting line up by taking 3 wickets for 47 (He took eight wickets in 2 innings). That paved way for India's historic test win in South africa..
Oh no!, Now Malayala Manorama will promote Sreesanth to GOD. Next on Vanitha - All about Sreesanth's eating habits.
Kayamkulam-Trivandrum railway line electrification is complete
Kayamkulam to Trivandrum railway line is now completely electrified. A test drive was done recently and it is expected that electric trains will start running from December.
Finally something good (long overdue!) is happening on Kerala railway lines. After complete electrification, I hope the 20 minute halt (engine change) for long distance trains at Ernakulam will be changed.
IFFK Trivandrum concludes and sarkari babus are unhappy
The 11th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) concluded on the 15th of December in Thiruvananthapuram. This was a huge success with almost all the theatres jam packed. In many cases foreign delegates was not able to get into the theatre. Film festival became more down to earth with lot of booing and jeering :)
The sarkari babus at trivandrum are unhappy that the IFFK concluded so early. They were signing at the office registers and then going to theatres to catch a movie - That is why in Kerala people say - Pothu Janam Kazhutha...
Torture and killings - all in the name of forests
An innocent man was brutally tortured and killed by Kerala Forest officials. Now their union is trying to rescue the accused.
Forest officials in Kerala are a notorious lot. They terrorize the local population and at the same time help smugglers to clean up the forrest. The best way to save Kerala forests is to dismantle Kerala Forest department.
Human rights activists, Where the hell are you?
Achuthanandan visits technopark
Kerala chief minister visited technopark at trivandrum and met all the company CEOs. Main discussion points were development of technopark, issues and development of technocity.
Comrades, we are thinking of introducing chumattu kooli for uploading and downloading. 1 MB download means you have to pay $1 to the trade unions. Upload will be cheaper at 50 cents per MB.
December 18, 2006
Cochin getting ready to welcome Kalam
President A P J Kalam will be visiting Kerala on 18th December. Cochin city is eagerly waiting for him.
Oh yeah, but they are waiting for him to return. With 20000 policemen, 300 bomb squads, 10 units of rapid action force and unkown number of roaming black cats may be cochin is not too eager to welcome him!
Kerala passes goonda act and the catch is...
The Kerala Cabinet decided to implement preventive detention of persons engaging in anti-social activities.
The Kerala Antisocial Activities (Prevention) Ordinance allows for a maximum detention of six months subject to a review within 21 days of the arrest.
What is the catch? Student activists, political activists, abkaris and trade union workers are exempted (that is almost the entire Kerala population!) - So in short, except goondas all are covered under the act :)
December 05, 2006
Read all malayalam blogs at one place!
Yesterday I came across this interesting site. This allows you to scan all Malayalam blog posts that is happening on the Web! Pretty big collection (probably covering all Malayalam blogs). Another good feature is that it is updated in near real time!