Paradise Found?

It's official.

Our ship will be anchored off Teluk Semangka, and will be a storage tanker
for a long time.

It will be doing STS operations with other smaller gas carriers from time to
time.



But Guys!

Teluk Semangka is awesome!



(Teluk = Bay in Bahasa Indonesia (or Malay which is identical))



We are in this bay, anchored about 5 miles off a small village.

Small as in 'I see thatched rooftops, zinc sheet roofs and lazy fishermen
everywhere '.that kind of small.

We are surrounded by dense forests and lush greenery and mist laden
mountains.

The water is mirror flat and smooth and calm, occasionally breaking into
gentle ripples.

There are small dinghy-dory boats which carry produce like jackfruits,
bananas, pineapples and coconuts and come to your ship.

I mean, jackfruits delivered right to your doorstep! How cool is that?

But the locals in the boats are more interested in fishing than selling
their wares to us.



Just give me internet access, and I think I'll live here forever.

But then I'll have to marry a local girl, learn fishing and gutting it and
stuff.

But I think I can make it.

Learning to eat the dead cooked fish will be the hardest part though.

But I think my wife will teach me how to.

If not, when I'm hungry, love will keep me alive.



If not, I have my jackfruits and banana.

(Did you notice the double entendre or should I smack it on your face for
you to notice?)

Har Har!



The sights are awesome!

Trust me.

You'll fall in love too.



(If you happen to go to Google Earth and look up Teluk Semangka, you'll find
me on a big blue ship anchored just off land, shirtless, tanned, smiling and
waving at you)




Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:39 UTC
Message-id: 251418409S346

JOKE OF THE DAY

Gilani: Pakistan Will Not Allow Terrorists To Operate From Its Territory

DAVOS: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said yesterday that he would not
allow anyone to use Pakistan's territory for terror strikes on other
countries. Addressing delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Gilani
said, "I assure you and I assure the house that I will never ever allow my
soil, Pakistani soil to be used for terror activities." Describing the
Mumbai carnage as unfortunate, Mr. Gilani said, "we condemn terrorism,
whether it is in Mumbai or Islamabad or Karachi". He also assured everyone
present that Pakistan was investigating the Indian dossier on 26/11 and
whatever the findings, they will be handed over to India and the world at
large.



Good one Mr.Gilani !






Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:32 UTC
Message-id: 251212181S384

Calling all Monkeys

My friend once surmised that mangalore was going to hell because a certain movie was in our favourite theatre for a very very long time.(Was it 120 days or was it more?)

He was joking of course, making an astute social commentary of sorts and displaying his keen and well honed sense of observation at the same time.



Let me remind you once more.

Rama attacked lanka with an army of monkeys, a vanarasena.

Of course, they could talk, walk on 2 legs, perform feats of strength and intelligence far superior to that of today's primates, but they were monkeys nonetheless.



So what is the difference you ask?

Well, in those days even monkeys did not attack women.

Even monkeys thought that it was unethical and even cowardly to beat women.

(I'm making this up. I don't believe for a minute that monkeys were among Rama's army or that they were particularly non-violent towards women)



Hey!

Calling all fascists! Calling all fascists!



Where are you going to draw the line?

Today you don't want women to drink.

Tomorrow, you might not want them to drive.

On some other day, you might deny their education, because frankly speaking,women today are getting too smart for themselves...right?



Go on...shake hands with the Taliban!

They too want women in burqas and other physical and metaphorical and metaphysical shackles.

Congratulations to you modern monkeys!

The Taliban sends their warmest regards form the depths of their cold hearts to you for going on the right path,which by the way is the path that they follow.They congratulate you, for the
actions of the vanarasena have done them proud.

But they'll kill you infidels just the same...because you still remain infidels.



When my friend made that joke, it was funny, because, He was not going to attack the theatre the next day with a bunch of his friends (If he did, then he probably forgot to call me) He will never attack beliefs and actions contrary to his own, because he is secure and in peace with his own unwavering core beliefs.



Every time I read the news, I wince in pain, shame and embarrassment.

Attacking churches, communal violence in the recent past, and now this...

Mangalore? Nah! It's a nice place to stay. I used to tell people confidently.

I'm not sure anymore.



What you monkeys haven't realized is that one man's Garden of Eden...I'm sorry...

Forgive my use of Christian religious terminology.One man's Ramarajya is another man's version of hell or naraka.

One man's jannat is another man's... you get my drift don't you?



I know, some of you will disagree, but I call for an irreligious movement.

Cast away your religious shackles and let them not define who you are.

If you want to be a pacifist, you don't have to be a Buddhist...you just have to make up your mind to be a pacifist.

If you want to be good, don't let your god decide it for you.

Decide for yourself.

If you want to blow up people, don't do it for your gods.

Do it for yourself. (But please reconsider...blowing up people is not nice...maybe you can play Halo 3, and not hurt anybody in real life)



What good is Ramarajya in today's context?

Does your vanarasena want Mangalore or for that matter the entire world to
regress back to Tethrayuga?

Whatever it is , you've just halted Mangalore's progress and thrown her back by about 20 years ...into the past.



People have an odd notion about the past...somehow they believe that the past was much better...this notion is usually due to amnesia, lack of historical knowledge and wishful thinking.

C'mon people...the past was not better.

There were no telephones,penicillin,loctite,3d goggles, aero planes,chemotherapy, internal combustion engines, satellite TV, polyester or even sliced bread!... not even a band aid for your boo boos.

The best time is the present. Really...because there is nothing else like it.



Even then, what about Ramayana do you want to emulate?

Is it Dasharatha's lust driven blindness for kaikeyi or his obsession with
his eldest son Rama?

Is it Rama's blind unquestioning obedience drove a prince and his wife and
kids to the woods?

Is it Rama's deception in killing Vaali?







Perhaps, what you monkeys really want is more Sitas to burn in pyres to prove their purity.



Rama lost his self respect the day he let Sita jump into a pyre.

Sati is still in practice.

And I'm brimming with disgust.



Calling all monkeys, calling all monkeys!



Stop attacking soft targets.

A few unarmed and isolated civilians minding their own business are not worthy of your might and spectacular prowess.

Even Rama fought a ten headed Ravana!



What I suggest is that you fight the real villains here.

Try someone your own size!



You don't want women to drink? Fine!

Fight the powerful liquor barons who push and peddle legal and illegal
alcohol, backed up by influential politicians.



You want old world morality?

Fight the shady underworld nexus that controls prostitution and drug
supplies and sales along with arms supplies.



Do you want progress?

Fight rampant corruption.



Fight fear.





Fight for freedom.

Fight for empowerment.



And stop hitting women.



P.S

Surmise (verb): Infer from incomplete evidence.



Holy shit! I just realized that I'm a pagan by definition.



Pagan (noun): A person who follows a polytheistic or pre-Christian religion
(not a Christian or Muslim or Jew)


Nah! I'm just your regular garden variety atheist who is going to hell after
death for forsaking all gods. At least It'll be toasty warm down under.

This is Ridiculous

We are five miles from Sentosa.

Yet we are in a different country, with a different time zone.

We are in Pulau Sambu, which is officially in Indonesia.

SO now we are keeping GMT +7 .

This is ridiculous.

Time is such an amorphous and bourgeois concept that legal time is anything
that you (or your government) decide.

Indonesians love pulau.

I love pulau, but I like biryani too.

Dammit!

Mangalore is in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Amnesia, Sweet Amnesia

The only thing new under the sun is what has been forgotten.

Does Multiply have a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) too?

Read this article about ISPs & Broadband connections.

"The amount of data that you download has a significant impact on your
broadband speed.

With each broadband package, you're assigned a download limit. Exceeding
this can either cost you money or result in a slower broadband connection.
If you've gone for an unlimited account, you may think that you're safe from
these concerns, but you're not. The reality is that all unlimited packages
are subject to a fair usage policy (FUP), which is anything but
straightforward and fair.

FUP disclaimers can be as the following examples: "excessive online
behaviour may result in termination of customer accounts without notice" and
"very heavy users may have their bandwidth restricted during peak time", or
even "usage not at a reasonable level may lead to disconnection of service".
Unfortunately, quantifying what is excessive, very heavy or not reasonable
is not made clear.

You can't blame the ISPs for wanting to cap broadband usage for fixed and
unlimited accounts. After all, they have only a finite amount of bandwidth
capacity, and it costs money to provide it. If usage truly were unlimited,
the network would become clogged within a very short period of time as users
soaked up the available bandwidth. Adding more capacity costs money and that
cost would have to be passed on by way of higher subscription fees and would
quickly be used up anyway. BT Wholesale, which provides the majority of raw
broadband supply to the ISPs, switched from billing by numbers of users or
total amount of data moved around to a system based upon capacity in 2004.
This means that ISPs are charged by the amount of data that can be carried
every second, and it has led to ISPs needing to control customer usage in
order to keep costs down.

The ISPs use traffic-shaping tools to spot what they regard as abnormal data
traffic, where there is continuous use of the full line capacity over an
extended period of time, such as might be experienced when using a file
sharing service. The bandwidth management system reacts to this and 'shapes'
traffic flow by reducing the available bandwidth, resulting in a dramatic
slowdown for the user.

Soft-capping is another method applied behind the scenes to shape traffic
flow and works by prioritising based upon application: online gaming and
internet telephone calls sit higher up the data transfer queue than web
surfing and email, while file-sharing users sit at the back. If the network
is quiet, then P2P users won't notice a slowdown; when it is busy, they
will. Customers who have gone over any monthly download limit are sent to
the back of the queue."



This is applicable to ISPs in general, but I'm wondering if free online
storage sites or even Multiply has a similar policy for maximum data that
can be stored.



Is this the reason Segaman's account is getting deleted repeatedly?


Received: from C6XB2 at Globe Wireless; Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:54 UTC
Message-id: 716787311S244