Vivek’s Blog

Traffic jams, wrong directions, odd food hours, a cloudy day, and a runaway guide notwithstanding, how long could the Taj elude us? We could’ve seen it back in January but things didn’t materialize. This time, they did. In spite of several hiccups. [Hit the More link at the end for a bonus list of crazy things that happened]

The lowdown on the Taj Mahal is simple. It’s a beautiful structure that’s suffering from shoddy maintenance. And industries on the outskirts of Agra. Most of the shine is gone and instead of being a bright white, the Taj has acquired a brown hue. I was taken aback by the sheer number of visitors even on a Monday afternoon. There were literally thousands of people. Which led me to do some simple math and conclude that almost 2 crore people visit the Taj Mahal every year. The number is probably higher due to surges in the winter.

Anyway, I have posted only a couple of photos of the Taj with this blog entry. You can find more photos in the following two Facebook galleries (you don’t have to be a member to view them):

Visiting the Taj Mahal
More Taj goodness

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UPDATE: My old I-20 was delivered today, July 18, 2007. One month after it was sent. And in not-so-good condition.

The Indian Postal Service, or Indiapost, is a complete and utter joke. Their mission, taken from their shoddily designed website:

To provide high quality mail, parcel and related services in India and throughout the world ; to be recognized as an efficient and excellent organisation exceeding the expectations of the customers, employees and the society

Yes, that is indeed their mission. And yes, I have copy+pasted the mission statement from the website as it is. The formatting is theirs. You might wonder why I hate Indiapost so much. Hopefully, you don’t.
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Today, The Times of India called well-known games such as Need for Speed, Half Life, and Max Payne MMORPGs or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Granted that people outside the gaming community won’t know an FPS from an MMORPG, but the article smacks of shoddy research. As a longtime gamer myself, I found this piece of writing to be ridiculous:

The games that Mayank plays include Max Payne, Thrones of Chaos, Need For Speed and Half Life. Most of these are Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), which typically require at least six players.

Since when are games needing six players MMORPGs? You want an MMORPG? Look at World of Warcraft. Look at EverQuest 2. Look at The Lord of the Rings Online. A simple Google search of the term “MMORPG” throws up close to 31 million results with the Wikipedia entry prominent on the first page of results. From Wikipedia then:

Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a genre of online role-playing video games (RPGs) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world.

As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (most commonly in a fantasy setting) and take control over many of that character’s actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game’s persistent world, usually hosted by the game’s publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game.

Since you’re too lazy to do your research on the games you quote, let me help you. Need for Speed is a racing game. Max Payne is a Third Person Shooter. Half Life is a First Person Shooter.

So the next time you want to do an article on gaming, please do your research Times of India. All it takes is one simple Google search. Or a Wikipedia search for that matter. Don’t mislead your readers.

Times of India Story

A more fun-to-read response to the story.

Some good news from Portugal. The Taj Mahal was voted in as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World! The Taj was languishing in tenth place a month ago so everyone who voted since deserves a big thank you. I’d also like to thank those that voted for the Taj after I asked them to via my earlier blog post. And a reluctant thanks to the media who pushed the voting. Well, at least this time they’ve something worthwhile.