At last! The Training is Complete.

Three exhausting days! THREE exhausting days! And the training is complete now.

The matter was mainly on detecting illegal drug business and taking precautions against them. The training course contained various modules on types of drugs, their manufacturing process, how they are consumed etc. The course material was provided by United Nations Office of Drug Control. I must say it was extremely effective. Now to implement the various techniques is up to us.

The vast course covered almost every aspect needed to prevent illegal drug business. From different type of drugs, their origin, how they are cultivated or synthesized to their intended customers. From the way drugs are transported to the various methods to detect those concealed in various materials. It was a complete picture of the whole system and our approach to it. Sadly, I could not say much about the material. The course material is so secret that it is even not allowed to install on personal computers, let alone discuss it in the public.

Here I have to make a confession. I am not drug controlling kind of guy, or I don't have any urge to work in such circumstances. But the learning had certainly provided some knowledge which may in some other time would come handy. Anything learnt is never wasted. I hope this would help me to perform my duty better.

I am lucky that I am still alive.

December is becoming the month of nightmare to me. When every one enjoying this year-ending festive season I am suffering from various misfortunes.
First, there was blood clots in my left eye, then sudden accident of my mother, then my sister broke her ankle and now throughout this whole week, several railway related problems.
On Monday, on my way to office, I along with several other co-passengers had to walk a couple of kilometers to reach our destination. Because, a train engine got malfunctioned on the same track our train was running. And for that disturbance, the returning train was also running late for at least 45 minutes. I reached home very late.
On Tuesday too, I had to catch an another train instead of the usual one that I am accustomed with, cause it was late that night too. Again, I reached home late.
Wednesday had been better comparatively. Though the train started late by ten minutes, it made up the time by running extremely well.
Now, today I had to attend the training, so set out early and caught a train. But to my utter misfortune, the train stopped in between two stations, later to be found out that the Railway Track was broken at the joint. The driver had rightly detected it and stopped the train just before the broken joint and prevented a possible derailment. Again, I reached the Training Centre late. But, today I had no regret. I am lucky that I am still alive and is able to write down my experience.
Now looking for a better weekend ahead.

The Training is On.

The training on Drug Law Enforcement is going on. The training is actually sponsored by United Nations. The study material and related computer based training course is provided by them. It is an interactive computer programme in which I came to know a lot about Narcotic Drugs and similar Psychotropic substances. As for the natural substances, how they are harvested, in what climate they are grown, and how they are converted to their final form. I also learned how to differentiate those various drugs from each other, what are their effects on addicts and what are symptoms that are seen on the people who are taking those illegal drugs for a considerable time. Overall, the training is extremely useful for Government Officers like us who can take effective initiatives in preventing the underground drug business.

Waiting for tomorrow to know more.

I have to attend a Computer Based Training on Drug Law Enforcement at NACEN, Kolkata.

Today had been an easy day at office, very little work pressure and a lot of time to spend at some other matters. Untill, a letter addressed to me came. I had to attend a training on a matter of which I had nothing to deal with, atleast now. This type of training is mainly required by them who work at some preventive unit. Me, working at Law Branch, had no use of them. But, who cares? And more disgusting part of the training is that I have none known to me.
OK! Nothing learnt in this life is wasted. If, ever I got posted in a PU again, this training could be of my use. But, I have no wish for that posting. It had been a bitter experience for me. So, waiting for a boring time ahead.

My New Xperia Neo V Review

After a long time, I bought a brand new mobile phone for none other than myself. It had been a very long wait. A wait for atleast 6 months. The last time I bought a phone for myself was in early 2009. Then I bought five different phones for my family members, but not for me.

There were plenty of devices to consider, from the beautiful Nokia Lumia 800 to the mighty Samsung Galaxy Note. But the price factor was there to consider and the functionality I needed. I wanted my phone to be like me, not a very big or extremely power hungry. It just needed to fulfill the tasks I let it to do. And it should be future proof for atleast 1 and half year, till I need to buy my next phone. Regarding the facts, there remains very few choices. Sammy Galaxy S, HTC Wildfire, Motorola Defy and SE Ray and Neo V. And there were Nokia symbian series, which were not desirable at all. And I personally prefer SE for their looks and user interface.

This xperia neo V fulfills almost every criteria that I set. It had a decent screen size, not very big but extremely useful for watching movies and to type little everyday notes. A bigger screen would have helped more but it would require more space. Bigger screens need bigger pockets and for a person like me with not so big hands they would look odd. There screen size is perfect for me. It's easy to navigate by one hand in emergency, cause the thumb can reach the whole screen. So in terms of usability the size is as perfect as it could be.

The phone ships with Android 2.3.4 on board and that's the primary reason why I chose this over Galaxy S. And it has a 1 GHz processor which is better than the 600 MHz one of the HTC Wildfire. It is though not the front runner in the game of improving processors, it can handle everyday tasks smoothly and effectively.

It's a known fact that htc has the best UI in the Android family. But in my point of view SE comes a close second. Here I had to make some adjustments, but I do not regret for that. SE provides a decent interface and the timescape as an app is great. I found myself using it very often for my social networking. By default, it has facebook, twitter, call and sms listed. There are plenty of apps for timescape available in the android market. I myself loaded the gmail app and it's working like a charm. Also the menu system and the five home screen looks dazzling specially when live wallpapers are set, though they sucks the battery more. The app menu can be arranged by different order, like own order, or the installed last are shown first etc. Editing the menu is also very easy as well as finding the desired menu. The settings app comes handy when dealing with the running apps. The media player is good looking, though I haven't use the video player very much till now. The gallery has different menu styles too with 3D style or plain grid style. Overall using the device is very easy and requires little effort to learn the new things when migrating from a different operating system.

There is a office suite preloaded in this phone which can be used as a document viewer, sadly to edit or creat new documents the preloaded app needed to get upgraded. But android market comes handy by providing free office suit through downloads. A built in adobe reader comes handy in viewing PDF documents. I.viewed pretty large documents and there was no lag. Apps like Facebook, twitter are built in and they can be used from deep within. Sharing via facebook from anywhere on the mobile is a breeze thanks to the facebook in xperia feature. Overall in terms of built in features the phone is not very good as a full fledged office suit was a necessity for me. But that point was solved.

The phone comes with a 5 megapixel camera and a VGA camera at the front for video calls or self imaging. Both the cameras did their job decently and I have no regret. The SE Ray has a 8 megapixel camera but it had a smaller screen which is not very easy for typing. And as a regular user I don't usually shoot videos a lot, and when I needed I have a handycam for those tasks. Actually, I wonder how many people would use their mobile phones for capturing serious video? This phone packs a good 720p video capturing camera which is more than sufficient.

I often need to type some as I write blogs, and this mobile being an android one, is compatible to WordPress or blogger apps. The QWERTY keypad in portrait mode is ok, but in landscape mode the full QWERTY keypad is awesome. SE also has a very good supportive software to make typing easy. It is called predictive text input. A separate toolbar appears above the four row keypad showing the most appropriate words and can be chosen from them. Though sometimes it gets annoying but I found it extremely useful. Blogging is as easy as it was on any desktop.

Overall, in my point of view, this phone is the best for me right now. Sony Ericsson has made a great phone and I am very happy with this piece of mine.

What is Love

We all live for love. We all search for love. We all want to love and be loved. But what is love?

Love is like air! it always surround us, soothes us with its gentle touch. It gives us the reason of our life. We can feel it but cant see it directly.

Love is a feeling that enrich our inner-selves. We tend to love something which is closer to our heart. And by loving something we tend to make ourselves suitable for that lovable, which in turn makes ourselves a better person, a lovable person. There is a difference between love and lust. Lust desires from us, makes us vulnerable. But someone who loves is free from such vulnerabilities. Love never demands anything, all it knows is love.

Love is in the heart of a mother, Love is in the touch of a brother, Love is in the eyes of a person who love. True love never seeks any reason for its being, it's just there. We are all being loved by someone and for that love we are still alive. We don't need to find it. All we need is to realize that it is there and forever will be.

Love can never be described, love can never be given a definition, love is what it is and the best way to describe love is: to Love.

"Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever."

Lunar Eclipse, as photographed by me from Burdwan

Lunar Eclipse, as photographed by me from Burdwan on 10/12/2011 at about 07:30pm. I must say they are very bad in quality, but I lack the necessary instruments to photograph such events too. The pictures are a bit shaky, sorry!

A Horrible Experience

Have you ever experienced what it feels when you came to know that the train is going to be late for about an hour or two after a long day with exhausting workload at office, and that on Friday?
I have! Today!
I work at a Government office which deals with various court and law matters. Generally, Friday is the day when most numbers of litigation come. There are many reason behind it, I am not going into them. The fact is I have to work harder on Fridays. And today was an EXTREME Friday. However, when the official work was completed, the only thing that came to mind is the comfort of ‘home sweet home’. Also there was a plan to go to the inauguration ceremony of a Book-fair at my native town. I reached the railway station just in time and went directly to the usual platform, only to find the train was not there! After waiting several minutes, an announcement was made that, that particular train would be delayed due to some problems in other railway division!
The mind devastated, the heart broke and the hopes were sunk. All the plans for Friday night were cancelled.
Then I caught a local train, which has numerous stoppages before my destination. It was a journey of about two and half hours. But that was not the end of suffering- it was the beginning of a new kind! The local train was a overly crowded one, because it was office closing time. Somehow I got a place to stand and after some stations to sit. Then came the second problem.
Probably the brakes of the train were not working properly- jerking unexpectedly, shaking during acceleration and deceleration and sounding horrible noise. So the driver might have decided to drive it slower than the usual speed. What hurt more was the express train in which I generally travel got past the local train I was travelling- making my journey more intolerable. I reached my destination after almost two hours late than the scheduled time.
But the icing on the cake was not done yet. When I came out of the station premises, no public transport was available. No bus, no auto! Only some Rickshaws- refusing to go and Cabs- who were asking for a price, if I had that much money to spend everyday, I would have bought an iPhone 4S in every second month. Having no other options I started walking- it was nearly two and half kilometres from the station and took around 30 minutes and finally, finally and FINALLY I reached the home.

The horrible experience was over!

Ban on Facebook, Google: Is It Justified?

The Central Govt of India has threatened to take steps to censor the 'objectionable' online contents shared via google or facebook or sites like that. But they did not define the term 'objectionable'. It may turn out to be any content which some person in the Govt or some leader finding not according to their consent and hence declared as objectionable! It could be any writing criticizing the Govt policy, and they proceed to block it cause it was objectionable. In India we talk about freedom of speech, then what is the reason for such censorship? Are they going to make India a second China?

For people like us the online world carries a highly significant role in expressing our views on different issues and sharing the same. Here we can express our feelings, our thoughts, to the fullest extent which may not be possible in real life due to several reasons which vary from person to person. For so many people the online world has created a separate space which they can monitor and live according to their own will hiding from the ever fault-catching eye of the so-called society.

The main reason for the Govt in taking  the steps is the abuse of their leaders through nasty pictures or other media. And the other is use of abusive languages towards a certain religion. But this also be taken into account that not all people are sharing or encouraging such mindless and very badly humoured jokes. General people do not appreciate such low-class activities. It's only a fraction of internet users who get some fun out of those abusiveness. They are the rotten part of the online society which is needed to take care of. By monitoring the tracking facilities it is always possible to locate the origin of such abusive contents and the creator could be prosecuted in a court of law. But that could not lead to taking steps against social networks by some unjust means. People of that kind would always found some other form of medium to spread their contents. So mere blocking or censoring would not prevent them.

In this ever increasing stressful world the social networks provide us some place to breathe . Please do not take any step that could take our free world away. And to the social networks, please do not fall back from your firm stand. Do not let the state snatch our right to freedom of speech.

Hands on with Nokia Lumia 800.

Today I got the chance to have a live handling of Lumia 800, the flagship of Nokia family. I must say it's amazing. The live tiles look magnificent and the name live is true. the office Suit and the Nokia Drive are awesome. It's extremely touch friendly and scrolling through the tiles is as smooth as breeze. The camera is one of the very best in the business. The screen looks dazzling and one could spend the whole day looking at that beauty. Though the front side glass is very much fingerprint friendly but using a screen protector would take care of that. The only disadvantage is the lack of front facing camera. That great phone is under pre-booking of Rs. 3,000 and will be available on or about 25th December, this year.

I am waiting for mine, are you?