For the last few days Nokia advisory on BL-5C batteries is in the news . Being an affected party I logged on to their site and checked the advisory .
We are informed that there are more than 300 MILLION BL-5C batteries in use in various Nopkia models . Of these only 46 MILLION batteries may become over heated as there were about 1oo cases reported world wide . So the chances that a battery may give trouble work out to one in four point six lacks . Even with such odds Nokia is providing free replacements !! Good work ethics , one must say .
With this in mind and one of the reasons for self destructive vibrations in the washing machine as told to me ( rotary motion of the machine may make the cloths in a spherical shape and this causes excessive vibrations ) made me think as to the likely number of cases reported . Unfortunately Indian consumer AND Indian Companies are not too aware to bother about such things !!!
Wonder Ken star will ever under take to study this phenomenon and take remedial action ! Here is hoping for the best .
18 August 2007
17 August 2007
TRAVAILS OF TOOTHLESS NESS . PART TWO.
TRAVAILS OF TOOTHLESS NESS. PART TWO.
I had written the blog series Travails of Toothlessness between August and November 2007, when I was 58 and had lost all my teeth.
Even though I published the blog, and as Priti says, no one reads, a statement of fact, I was not very happy with what I had written
This is a redone and revised edition of the 2007 blog.
This is Part Two.
Some rambling thoughts on the matter of teeth.
I have been thinking of writing part two for quite a few days now, but somehow could not get my teeth into it to really start, pun intended, as I am a toothless man!
In English movies, I have noticed that in some countries, to summon a taxi, you just whistle and the passing taxi will come to pick you up.
Now, when you become toothless, you have not only lost your teeth but also the ability to summon taxies. You see, as I found out first-hand, teeth are very essential to whistle.
There was a time when I was proud of my whistling. I could whistle with one finger of one hand, with two fingers of one hand. Than two fingers, one finger of each hand. Also, four fingers, two fingers of each hand. I could also make sounds like a diesel engine of about a horsepower or like calls of a copper smith barbet by making a hollow mace sort of contraption and placing my thumbs forming this mace to my lips. Oh my word! I could whistle.
Now, no teeth, no whistle.
Of course, after getting married and becoming a father and a responsible officer, I very rarely whistled; the loss of power to be able to whistle occasionally makes me sad.
Some people are good at public speaking and making speeches! Some not so good, and some break out in sweat at the very idea of standing on stage and giving an oration to a large gathering. Such people are normally bad speakers.
Invariably, a good speaker will always have a clear, good voice. To a large extent, their good voice contributes to their being a good speaker. Along with a clear, good voice, if they also have good tone, diction, modulation and good control over tone, be able to convey emotions not only by words but by embodying them in the voice as well. With such a voice, Public speaking becomes so much more effective.
When all these, good voice, good tone, diction, modulation, delivery style, get together, the person becomes a very good orator, and the listeners are held spellbound by the very quality of their sound.
Of course, you can not talk bunkum and hope to keep the listeners interested or spellbound only because you have a good voice. Good subject and text of the speech are, of course, important!
It is God's gift.
As time passes and the person gets older, one of the things that happens is they start losing teeth.
Only old age may not be wholly responsible for such a poor state of affairs, as they may be the wages of poor oral hygiene and trying to keep away from the toothbrush and the toothpaste, in younger days !!!!
When the front teeth, top and bottom, are lost, the first casualty is looks and the second is speech.
The presence of front teeth is very very essential for pronunciation and articulating certain sounds, specifically associated with words having " S " or SH " in them.
While speaking, when words with this sound are spoken, they do not come out correct sounding and escaping air from the gaps in the front teeth imparts a whistling sort of noise rather than the correct sound.
This whistling sound while speaking is very embarrassing.
Just imagine giving a public speech with a whistling or hissing sound coming out at a critical moment of the speech, or that keeps happening every now and then. You have not only lost your front teeth but also your ranking as a good public speaker.
This is nothing; in fact, more embarrassment is in store, which is very sudden and takes you totally by surprise.
It is the embarrassment of the listener getting some fine saliva spray through the gap left by missing front teeth in his face when he gets a bit too close, while you earnestly want to emphasise a very serious point.
Your friends and listeners will start, if not altogether to avoid you, will at least start maintaining a safe distance from you.
You have not only lost front teeth but are also likely to lose friends!
Even though I published the blog, and as Priti says, no one reads, a statement of fact, I was not very happy with what I had written
This is a redone and revised edition of the 2007 blog.
This is Part Two.
Some rambling thoughts on the matter of teeth.
I have been thinking of writing part two for quite a few days now, but somehow could not get my teeth into it to really start, pun intended, as I am a toothless man!
In English movies, I have noticed that in some countries, to summon a taxi, you just whistle and the passing taxi will come to pick you up.
Now, when you become toothless, you have not only lost your teeth but also the ability to summon taxies. You see, as I found out first-hand, teeth are very essential to whistle.
There was a time when I was proud of my whistling. I could whistle with one finger of one hand, with two fingers of one hand. Than two fingers, one finger of each hand. Also, four fingers, two fingers of each hand. I could also make sounds like a diesel engine of about a horsepower or like calls of a copper smith barbet by making a hollow mace sort of contraption and placing my thumbs forming this mace to my lips. Oh my word! I could whistle.
Now, no teeth, no whistle.
Of course, after getting married and becoming a father and a responsible officer, I very rarely whistled; the loss of power to be able to whistle occasionally makes me sad.
Some people are good at public speaking and making speeches! Some not so good, and some break out in sweat at the very idea of standing on stage and giving an oration to a large gathering. Such people are normally bad speakers.
Invariably, a good speaker will always have a clear, good voice. To a large extent, their good voice contributes to their being a good speaker. Along with a clear, good voice, if they also have good tone, diction, modulation and good control over tone, be able to convey emotions not only by words but by embodying them in the voice as well. With such a voice, Public speaking becomes so much more effective.
When all these, good voice, good tone, diction, modulation, delivery style, get together, the person becomes a very good orator, and the listeners are held spellbound by the very quality of their sound.
Of course, you can not talk bunkum and hope to keep the listeners interested or spellbound only because you have a good voice. Good subject and text of the speech are, of course, important!
It is God's gift.
As time passes and the person gets older, one of the things that happens is they start losing teeth.
Only old age may not be wholly responsible for such a poor state of affairs, as they may be the wages of poor oral hygiene and trying to keep away from the toothbrush and the toothpaste, in younger days !!!!
When the front teeth, top and bottom, are lost, the first casualty is looks and the second is speech.
The presence of front teeth is very very essential for pronunciation and articulating certain sounds, specifically associated with words having " S " or SH " in them.
While speaking, when words with this sound are spoken, they do not come out correct sounding and escaping air from the gaps in the front teeth imparts a whistling sort of noise rather than the correct sound.
This whistling sound while speaking is very embarrassing.
Just imagine giving a public speech with a whistling or hissing sound coming out at a critical moment of the speech, or that keeps happening every now and then. You have not only lost your front teeth but also your ranking as a good public speaker.
This is nothing; in fact, more embarrassment is in store, which is very sudden and takes you totally by surprise.
It is the embarrassment of the listener getting some fine saliva spray through the gap left by missing front teeth in his face when he gets a bit too close, while you earnestly want to emphasise a very serious point.
Your friends and listeners will start, if not altogether to avoid you, will at least start maintaining a safe distance from you.
You have not only lost front teeth but are also likely to lose friends!
13 August 2007
Kenstar Washing Machine .
It has been a long long time since I wrote in my blog . It is not because of for any dearth of material, but because I have been thinking furiously for the last so many days the sequence and the manner in which to put it . From the tips given by Anuj and Jayati , to write about what concerns me most , I have put aside all that material and to write about some thing which happened two days back and concerns me the most for the time being .
We got ourselves the " very first top loading tumble top washing machine , model LF 2008 E ,to be introduced in India " by Kestar . I thought now Priti can just load up the machine switch on and forget about it . After an hour and half or so remove fully washed and centrifuged dried cloths and that was that . She can thus enjoy the freedom from the drudgery of washing cloths in our semi automatic machine , where she had to do water filling and transferring the cloths from washer to drier etc etc before the cloths were centrifuged dried !!! It worked fine for couple of times . Priti was happy and because she was happy I was doubly happy !! Then one day Priti had loaded the machine , started the washing cycles and we were having our breakfast . Suddenly we heard tremendous racket and loud knocking noises coming from the direction of the bathroom where the washing machine was running . We saw the machine was in "spin" mode , vibrating like mad and creating the noise we had heard . I immediately hit the power button to turn the power "off" , to my horror nothing happened and it appeared that the machine had gone in "self destruct mode" . It stopped only when I pulled out power plug from the mains supply !
We took out semi wet cloths , manually wrung them and hung them to dry . I had a look at the machine , it appeared OK . Priti and I heaved a sigh of relief as we had spent major portion from our pension savings for the machine .
After that it worked normally for couple of times , then the malfunction/snag was repeated . This misadventure was repeated FEW times !!! After few more cases , I discovered that even though hitting the power button does not stop the machine instantaneously , pressing START/PAUSE button stops/pauses it immediately . Then once , we were late reaching the machine , this time vibrations and self destruct mode was so severe that a corner of the plastic outer drum was broken . I called the Kenstar Service centre . they sent a service engineer I explained every thing to him and emphasised that a "fully automatic machine " was not expected to go in self destruct mode like this as it can cause a major accident if in operation when there was no one around to switch it off , a very likely scenario , with working couples using this machine where both were working and likely to be away from the house .
The service engineer found that there was nothing seriously wrong , how ever he had no satisfactory explanation for or solution to prevent such vibrations in the future . Charged me a hefty amount for the visit and went away .
There after , I always stand guard next to the machine as soon as spinning occurs any time between the cycles with finger on the pause button just in case the vibrations are likely to run away !!
As I had mentioned , Anuj is home . Every time we use the machine and he sees me standing guard he has been making fun saying things like if you had to stand by the machine all the time why did you spend so much in buying a "fully autometic " machine etc" .
So three days back just to make him happy I operated the machine the way a fully autometic machine is supposed to be operated . ie , put dirty clothes inside , put detergent , connect the water and switched it on and left it unattended !!!! It was like tempting fate and before we could reach it , This time the whole thing really did self distruct !!!! The machine had come to a grinding halt . I asked Anuj to take some photos with his digital camera , here they are :
It was back to the service centrer and the service engineer . It was found that , the plastic drum had broken off from the spring moorings !!!! Now it has to be replaced , a costly affair !!! I discussed this machine with the service engineer .The machine has some good design features like wash , rinse and spin with repeated water changes between each cycle . Different cycles for different fabrics etc . Since the first time this had happened I have been thinking as to why the designers have not been able to foresee this type of thing happening . Also by now they must have received feed back of this type of undesirable charectership of the machine and no corrective action seems to have been taken . I think there is a very simple solution to this , it may not stop excessive vibrations as I have not been able to identify the reason for them , it will surely will stop the machine before it self destructs !!! As the drum is mounted on two springs at the back and a shocker on the front , vibration amplitudes will increase and run away only in fore and aft axis and not in lateral axis . So All they have to do is install a limit switch / micro switch at the back of the drum . This will ensure that whenever the vibration amplitude increase to certain limit , this limit switch is operated by the rear wall/ casing and switches off the machine before further damage is caused . The service engineer had no sat solution for its installation .
I checked for web page /e mail address of Kenstar on the instruction guide . Extremely surprised to see it was not given any where . I googled Kenstar and came up with the web pages . Tried to contact them here , and here . The server seems to be having trouble , as till date , I have not been able to get in touch with them on the internet !!!! SURPRISING !!!! A modern company having such poor web page / web site .
Machine is still not repaired . Will keep you posted .
We got ourselves the " very first top loading tumble top washing machine , model LF 2008 E ,to be introduced in India " by Kestar . I thought now Priti can just load up the machine switch on and forget about it . After an hour and half or so remove fully washed and centrifuged dried cloths and that was that . She can thus enjoy the freedom from the drudgery of washing cloths in our semi automatic machine , where she had to do water filling and transferring the cloths from washer to drier etc etc before the cloths were centrifuged dried !!! It worked fine for couple of times . Priti was happy and because she was happy I was doubly happy !! Then one day Priti had loaded the machine , started the washing cycles and we were having our breakfast . Suddenly we heard tremendous racket and loud knocking noises coming from the direction of the bathroom where the washing machine was running . We saw the machine was in "spin" mode , vibrating like mad and creating the noise we had heard . I immediately hit the power button to turn the power "off" , to my horror nothing happened and it appeared that the machine had gone in "self destruct mode" . It stopped only when I pulled out power plug from the mains supply !
We took out semi wet cloths , manually wrung them and hung them to dry . I had a look at the machine , it appeared OK . Priti and I heaved a sigh of relief as we had spent major portion from our pension savings for the machine .
After that it worked normally for couple of times , then the malfunction/snag was repeated . This misadventure was repeated FEW times !!! After few more cases , I discovered that even though hitting the power button does not stop the machine instantaneously , pressing START/PAUSE button stops/pauses it immediately . Then once , we were late reaching the machine , this time vibrations and self destruct mode was so severe that a corner of the plastic outer drum was broken . I called the Kenstar Service centre . they sent a service engineer I explained every thing to him and emphasised that a "fully automatic machine " was not expected to go in self destruct mode like this as it can cause a major accident if in operation when there was no one around to switch it off , a very likely scenario , with working couples using this machine where both were working and likely to be away from the house .
The service engineer found that there was nothing seriously wrong , how ever he had no satisfactory explanation for or solution to prevent such vibrations in the future . Charged me a hefty amount for the visit and went away .
There after , I always stand guard next to the machine as soon as spinning occurs any time between the cycles with finger on the pause button just in case the vibrations are likely to run away !!
As I had mentioned , Anuj is home . Every time we use the machine and he sees me standing guard he has been making fun saying things like if you had to stand by the machine all the time why did you spend so much in buying a "fully autometic " machine etc" .
So three days back just to make him happy I operated the machine the way a fully autometic machine is supposed to be operated . ie , put dirty clothes inside , put detergent , connect the water and switched it on and left it unattended !!!! It was like tempting fate and before we could reach it , This time the whole thing really did self distruct !!!! The machine had come to a grinding halt . I asked Anuj to take some photos with his digital camera , here they are :
It was back to the service centrer and the service engineer . It was found that , the plastic drum had broken off from the spring moorings !!!! Now it has to be replaced , a costly affair !!! I discussed this machine with the service engineer .The machine has some good design features like wash , rinse and spin with repeated water changes between each cycle . Different cycles for different fabrics etc . Since the first time this had happened I have been thinking as to why the designers have not been able to foresee this type of thing happening . Also by now they must have received feed back of this type of undesirable charectership of the machine and no corrective action seems to have been taken . I think there is a very simple solution to this , it may not stop excessive vibrations as I have not been able to identify the reason for them , it will surely will stop the machine before it self destructs !!! As the drum is mounted on two springs at the back and a shocker on the front , vibration amplitudes will increase and run away only in fore and aft axis and not in lateral axis . So All they have to do is install a limit switch / micro switch at the back of the drum . This will ensure that whenever the vibration amplitude increase to certain limit , this limit switch is operated by the rear wall/ casing and switches off the machine before further damage is caused . The service engineer had no sat solution for its installation .
I checked for web page /e mail address of Kenstar on the instruction guide . Extremely surprised to see it was not given any where . I googled Kenstar and came up with the web pages . Tried to contact them here , and here . The server seems to be having trouble , as till date , I have not been able to get in touch with them on the internet !!!! SURPRISING !!!! A modern company having such poor web page / web site .
Machine is still not repaired . Will keep you posted .
03 August 2007
I had come up with the title and the idea for the subject of my blog as a result of my recent visit to Ajeet and Jayati , my son and DIL ( Daughter -In-Law) at Delhi . There I had read an autobiography written by RK Narayan . It was interesting . The way he started off no one would have thought , least of all , R K Narayan himself , that he would achieve such eminence and become a star in the firmament of the literary world . That book gave me the idea that I can start a blog which could be autobiographical in nature because the way and surroundings in which I grew and was brought up no one , least of myself , would have ever thought that I will land up becoming a well qualified officer and a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force ( IAF ) . I thought it was plenty similarity to start ! And so , the title and generally contents , of my blob were decided !!!
So after a big big motivation and with lot of enthusiasm I started my blog . With this , I thought that things will become easy . Sad to say it was not so .
They say that while embarking on a journey , the most difficult thing is to take the first step . I can now say that it is not only the first step which is difficult but the second , the third and all the subsequent steps as well . This is particularly true if you don't know where you are going and are unsure of the destination !! One can ask that if I had already decided the general outlines of my blog how is it that I was not sure of my destination . Well you see when I started thinking about writing my next post , I thought I have decided to make it autobiographical after reading R K N . One was likely to think , as they say in hindi " KAHAN GANGOO TELI AUR KAHAN RAJA BHOJ ." ( the closest equivalent I can think of is " where is chalk and where is cheese " ) . Here is velu sr equating himself with the great RKN . This posed a great dilemma . Days were passing and here I was already at 02 August of the year 2007 of our lord and still not written the second post !!! No way could be found of the impasse !!!
I decided to seek help and wrote to Ajeet and Jayati for a way out of my situation . Jayati , good that she is was prompt to come to my rescue . Her mail was so inspiring that it solved all my problems .
Here I am already posting my new post !!!!!!!!!!!!
So after a big big motivation and with lot of enthusiasm I started my blog . With this , I thought that things will become easy . Sad to say it was not so .
They say that while embarking on a journey , the most difficult thing is to take the first step . I can now say that it is not only the first step which is difficult but the second , the third and all the subsequent steps as well . This is particularly true if you don't know where you are going and are unsure of the destination !! One can ask that if I had already decided the general outlines of my blog how is it that I was not sure of my destination . Well you see when I started thinking about writing my next post , I thought I have decided to make it autobiographical after reading R K N . One was likely to think , as they say in hindi " KAHAN GANGOO TELI AUR KAHAN RAJA BHOJ ." ( the closest equivalent I can think of is " where is chalk and where is cheese " ) . Here is velu sr equating himself with the great RKN . This posed a great dilemma . Days were passing and here I was already at 02 August of the year 2007 of our lord and still not written the second post !!! No way could be found of the impasse !!!
I decided to seek help and wrote to Ajeet and Jayati for a way out of my situation . Jayati , good that she is was prompt to come to my rescue . Her mail was so inspiring that it solved all my problems .
Here I am already posting my new post !!!!!!!!!!!!
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