Oh well, we’ll confess to consuming just one bottle of ice-cold Guinness Extra Stout purchased from the local Patel liquor store.
It’s no secret that the U.S. housing and building sectors are in bad shape.
Make that very bad shape.
So, our question is whether the housing and building companies had anything to do with the 5.8 Richter Scale earthquake that struck the East Coast a couple of hours back. Yes, our house shook like hell.
God knows how many buildings are badly damaged by the earthquake.
Of course, to the naked eye the buildings appear all right but who knows what structural damage has been caused.
The more houses certified damaged, the more opportunities for the housing and building sectors, na?
You may term our suspicion a wild conspiracy theory but remember that the human soul is capable of incalculable evil.
Evil that you cannot imagine lurks in the human soul, ever ready to burst out.
Do not forget there are a lot of stakeholders in the housing and building industries.
Millions of construction workers (mostly Mexicans and other Latinos), executives and real-estate brokers who’re desperately looking to see an uptick in their business.
A few minutes back, around 1:49PM ET, we felt the whole house shake.
Not a mild shake but something more severe.
You know, this side and that as if it was going to collapse. It lasted about 15-20 seconds.
We rushed out in fear.
Only to see our African-American neighbor running out of his house yelling, What the Hell.
As we looked down our road, we saw children and elders rushing out to the street.
People started frantically calling on their cell-phones. Who were they calling? Loved ones, police?
Down the road, we heard a middle-aged white lady telling her neighbors, I’m glad it was not just me.
Smyrna Town – Strong Quake
The Earthquake or whatever it was struck powerfully in Smyrna Town in Kent county of Delaware.
Going by the magnitude, we’re guessing the quake must have been 5-7 on the Richter scale.
A shelf-stockist at the Acme grocery store on Glenwood Ave in Smyrna told us that some boxes had fallen off the shelves but there was no damage otherwise.
Some Boxes Fell off the Shelves at Acme
Reactions to Delaware Earthquake
:
Crazy, isn’t it? The first time I’ve been through something like that.
- A Teller at Wilmington Trust Bank/M&T, Smyrna
I felt the floor move.
- Kirit Patel, Liquor Store Owner, Reba Liquors, Smyrna
Kirit Patel (owner) felt the Floor Move
At this time, we’re unsure if New Castle County and Sussex County were also hit.
Update: The quake was felt from Virginia to NYC and beyond.
Certain Damage
We have no doubt that the quake must have caused serious damage in parts of Delaware, particularly to older buildings.
On the positive side, we’ve not heard any police or ambulance sirens.
Quake Hits Philadelphia Too?
Going by the IP addresses of our visitors, it looks like the quake might have hit Philadelphia and other parts of Pennsylvania too.
Quake Strikes DC, Virginia, NYC
Media reports say that a 5.8 earthquake in Virgina was felt in Delaware, Washington DC and New York City and North Carolina.
The White House was evacuated for a short while.
We’re heading out now to see if things are all right near Rt-13 in Smyrna, DE.
Update:
No visible damage in Smyrna that we could see during a short drive around town.
Of course, there could be structural damages to buildings that can’t be discerned by the naked eye.
All in all, despite the powerful effect of the earthquake it does not look like there’s been any loss of life or serious injuries.
Man, Andy Warhol was right with his famous comment that In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.
Well, it’s Chuck Ganapathi’s day under the arc-lights today.
The Internet is all atwitter about this fella.
It seems the PSG Tech alumnus, who we were all blissfully unaware about until a short while ago, has joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel Partners as Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
In his new avatar, Ganapathi’s mandate will be to evaluate and incubate new business opportunities created by the confluence of social and mobile technologies in the enterprise.
Accel Partners is a prominent VC firm and an early investor in social companies like Facebook and Groupon, mobile companies such as Angry Birds (Rovio) and Admob, and enterprise software and cloud startups such as Cloudera, Couchbase, Fusion-io, Springsource and Atlassian.
Before joining Accel, Ganapathi was Senior VP of Products for Chatter and Mobile at salesforce.com, leading its product development efforts in enterprise social networking. Earlier, he slaved for six years at Siebel Systems, where he was founding product manager of their Internet application Siebel eChannel.
Ganapathi has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from PSG Tech in India, a master’s in industrial engineering from Purdue University, and a master’s in product design and an MBA from Stanford University.
By the way, what does Chuck stand for in Chuck Ganapathi? Chummapoda, Chakaraipongal, Chinnathambi, Chumma2much…
Apple’s iPad is going into places where no tablet has ever gone before.
United Airlines is converting to paperless flight decks by deploying 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots.
Besides replacing paper flight manuals, the iPads will provide pilots with paperless aeronautical navigational charts via the Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck app.
United Pilot with iPad
United executives are gushing that iPads will reduce clutter on the flight deck and let pilots quickly and efficiently access reference material without having to thumb through thousands of sheets of paper. The tablets also provide pilots with faster access to updates.
United started distributing the iPads earlier this month and expects to deploy it to all its pilots by year end.Continue reading »
Deven Sharma, president of tainted credit rating firm Standard & Poor’s, has been out-graded (take that neologism, schmucks).
Sharma, 55, is stepping down as head of the firm effective September 12 but will remain an adviser of the parent company until the end of the year.
The official reason cited for Sharma’s departure is that he “was ready for new challenges.”
But we suspect Standard & Poor’s decision on the leadership change today is the outcome of pressure from the Obama administration.
Citibank’s Chief Operating Officer Douglas Peterson will succeed Sharma as the new president.
Under Fire
Standard & Poor’s has come under fire after it recently downgraded America’s long-term federal debt credit rating to AA+, a notch below the top grade of AAA.Continue reading »
The year is 1967 (most readers of the wonderful SI blog are not even born).
Shammi Kapoor has put on noticeable weight, the cheeks seem a little swollen and the gait is a tad less graceful (two years have passed since his beautiful wife Geeta Bali died of smallpox leaving behind two young children).
Yet, the liveliness, the sparkle, the hint of mischief in the eyes and the quaint, quick adorable shake of the head offer unmistakable proof that Shammi still retains the magic to delight the audience.
The effervescent, bubbling charm is there.
Rubbish
By any standards, An Evening in Paris (Shammi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore, Pran) is unvarnished garbage.
A story that is beyond silly, a heroine (Sharmila Tagore) clueless about the rudiments of acting and photography that’s hopelessly pedestrian suggest that the 1960s was no different from the 2010s as far as Bollywood is concerned.
The more things change, it seems the more they remain the same.
Thank God for Shammi Kapoor.
It’s only his presence and the fine music, of course, that prevented us from collapsing in agony at the dreadful spectacle on our TV.
Like in Kashmir Ki Kali, a movie that featured the same lead pair, the story is hopelessly amateurish in this film too.
A rich businessman’s daughter Deepa (Sharmila Tagore) comes to Paris in search of love.
Apparently, there are no worthwhile men in her overpopulated country India. You see, the men there are all obsessed with money and, worse, are all liars and cheats.
At least, such is the bilge we’re fed early in this hopeless juvenilia.
Soon, the paths of Deepa and Sam (Shammi Kapoor) cross. Sam pretends to be a French man though he speaks fine Hindi, an unlikely feat attributed to a professor father who once taught in Lucknow.
Sam is instantly smitten with her but not the girl. Yes, Sam eventually inveigles his way into her affections through sheer persistence if nothing else.
What Sam does for a living in Paris or for that matter details of his background are all mysteries not shared with the audience. Bet even director Shakti Samanta wouldn’t know.
The movie drags on in all its countless amateurish frames, interrupted now and then by one of those memorable songs before ultimately falling back upon that disgusting ‘lost and found’ element of Indian movies.
Voila, Deepa now has a twin sister Roopa (Sharmila Tagore, bad as ever again), who disappeared twenty years earlier.
As usual, Pran is cast as the villain.
A Hindi movie in the 1960s and 70s would be incomplete without Pran as the villain.
Of course, it all ends well finally, not in Paris but in Niagara Falls (no kidding), but not before we’re subjected to a lengthy trial by fire.
Disgusting Sharmila
One of the great mysteries of Indian movies is where Saif Ali Khan picked up his acting chops.
Certainly not from his worthless mother Sharmila Tagore, who once again, proves that if acting slapped her on the face the schmuck wouldn’t recognize it.
To consider that this hopeless creature acted with all the leading stars in some of the most successful movies of that era is extremely distressing.
As if her very presence was not bad enough, she quadrupled our rage by donning a one-piece blue bikini swimsuit in the Aasman Se Aaya Farishta song. She looked sick!
Orgasmic Music
As with the other Shammi Kapoor-Sharmila Tagore film Kashmir Ki Kali, music is the strong point of An Evening in Paris.
Thanks to Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle and Shankar Jaikishan, songs from An Evening in Paris possess a timeless appeal.
To this day, they’re sung at parties and popular on YouTube.
Who having heard of Akele Akele Kahan Ja Rahe Ho, Deewane Ka Naam Tho Poocho, Aasman Se Aaya Farishta or Raat Ki Hum Safar can fail to reach the giddy heights of pleasure.Continue reading »
Some Boxes Fell off the Shelves at Acme
Kirit Patel (owner) felt the Floor Move
Man, Andy Warhol was right with his 
United Pilot with iPad
Recent Comments