The Perfect Vacation

The phrase Perfect vacation for me means my car, my destination, and the people with me should be the ones whom I consider as the best thinkers and from whom I want to ask a hell lot of questions. Now you must be wondering who are these people. The people are Steve Jobs(founder of Apple), Mark Zuckerberg(Facebook founder) and Osama Bin Laden(Al Qaeda). I know these three are all from different fields but there's one thing common between them. All three of them are/were the best in their fields and that's what I like about them. One is the best thinker, other is the creator of the best social networking website and the third one is the best and the most dangerous terrorist the world has ever known. Now the car for the destination must be some jaw dropping, breath taking and electrifying. There's one and only one machine which can handle all the three parameters and that's the Rolls Royce Ghost. So now the people and the car are all set to go, but where to go! Now the toughest part of the vacation is deciding the destination. Lets amake the decision easy. There's no destination! Yes you heard it right there's no destination, and we are gonna take turns and proceed ways as per our random selection along the way. Deciding a destination for those people who decided the future of technology is an insult to their always unpredictable and ever expanding mindsets. Hence the destination will be a surprise to be decided by the travellers themselves. Now the journey starts from New Delhi with all the extraordinary personalities looking at each other and having straight faces. Althogh Steve and Mark knew about each other but Mr. Bin Laden is someone they have just seen on the television under the 'Most Wanted' tag. I asked them for drinks and Steve and BinLaden opted wine, while Mark settled for a beer. The conversation began by Mark askin Bin Laden how he was successful in evading the FBI and coming on this journey with us. He replied that he just thought like an FBI officer and listed all the places where FBI could find him and planned his route avoiding all those places. Then Bin Laden told Mark how he faced problems while trying to create a Facebook account as his name was rejected and he was repeatedly prompted to choose a different name as it offended the moral conditions of the website. Steve gave a faint smile and after thinking a little, he suggested to change the name to Mr. Terrorist or something like that. The conversation continued for sometime. Till that time we reached the Delhi beach and came out of the car to enjoy the sea and sand. Steve quickly came out of the car on seeing the nearby seafood stall. Prawns and tuna were ordered even before we all came out. Mark ordered a lemonade and Bin laden just went towards the sea to enjoy the waves which were just like him. They were low all day long but their intensity was unpredictable. The same was with Bin Laden as he looked as simple as a seaside wave but we all k ow what was his limit to rise and cause destruction. After eating seafood Steve also came to the seaside and started telling us about the yacht he was building and how it was different and had features never before seen in any yacht. After about two hours we walked back and went inside the car to go to Las Vegas casinos to get the money rolling. We entered the casino and started purchasing coins for slot machines and tokens for gambling. Steve walked to the token machine while rest three of us went to card games. Steve could understand the pattern these slot machines used to decide the fate of the players. Me and Mark walked to the tables to play poker and bin Laden stood in the corner silently watching everyone around. It was just fifteen minutes ago that we saw Steve going to the slot machine and suddenly we heard someone screaming out of happiness. I turned back to see it was Steve. His slot machine screen displayed "1 Million". Steve had won the jackpot. We all were amazed to see a man could jugde the probability of a slot machine in fifteen minutes. Then me and Mark left our game and went with Steve to celebrate. Finally we reached the Malibu Club. It was the most happening place of that area. Vodka shots were ordered to start the party. Then came the beer pints and the whiskey pegs. Finally we all were high and chose to stay at the club. So that's hiw I spent my vacation with three great personalities.

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Examify: A brilliant idea!

I recently saw the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=88IJCKhsCTE

Its a video about an 18 year old guy called Angad Nadkarni. He is a hacker and also knows things about data mining algorithms. Since my interest lies in simplifying education hence I got really motivated with what he's doing these days. He is making an application called Examify which scans the question papers of all the coaching classes, schools ,tuition centers and then uses programming algorithms to take out the pattern for the questions. In short it guesses your next exam paper!! Amazed?

I was wishing if these things existed when I was giving my 12th board exams. In a country like India nobody asks you how you did it when you get good marks. All that matters is you got 90 plus in boards. Nobody feels the need to ask about interests and paths that we wanted to take. They just see our academics and labels us intelligent or idiot. So Examify will make all the students reach closer towards the so called 'intelligent category' and also give them time to pursue their inner calling. The students will just study the important questions and have time for extracurricular activities.

For all the features see the link to the complete video.

Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012.

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