Where do you think we were going? Right. We were heading to the Gateway of India in Mumbai. Another driver was taking me there, through the courtesy of hubby’s colleague, a very nice Indian man. I was about to finally see the landmark myself after all the reading and seeing it just in the papers and literatures. I was excited then. And why not? It was one of my wishes in life.

Frontier trivia the day:

in 2001, there are about 16.2% of the population in scheduled Castes. Scheduled tribe is 8.2%.

This is the lovely hotel lounge on the ground floor. I like its design and the elevated area. It was pretty nice. I had been used a bit being inside that I didn’t notice the smell of the overall atmosphere. I had just been down here for a few times, and sometimes to the hotel shop on the opposite direction but I didn’t buy anything other than postcards and stationeries that I still have until now. They were my precious remembrance.

Frontier trivia the day:

the total population sex ratio of Indian population is 1.064 males for every female, in 2006 estimate.

Meet Munjit, the driver. Opps, we can’t see him here. But you notice that indeed the vehicles in India are right-hand drive. Munjit was the company driver when I was there. He wears a white turban around his head. He was picking me up to hubby’s workplace for a visit and tour. Mumbai is very large and it would take us an average of an hour to get through our destination pass through the endless traffic and blowing of horns.

Frontier trivia the day:

India gained its independence in 15 August 1947 through the nonviolent resistance to British colonialism led by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The first time I heard about Alexa was through our anti-spyware program. It identifies a standard registry key included with Internet Explorer as “Data Miner” spyware, with little explanation, and offers to delete it. With the exponential trend and growth of the blogosphere today, Alexa surfaced again, here, as it is the most used base measure of web site traffic and rankings, the best known for operating a website that provides information on the web traffic to other websites. But is alexa a spyware?

According to Alexa it is not a spyware that generally collects your personal information for advertising purposes, and provides you with no value in return. Alexa collects information from users who have installed an “Alexa Toolbar,” allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links. The Alexa Toolbar is only installed when a user chooses to download it – it is not installed without your knowledge. The Toolbar is not hidden; it is prominently displayed at the top of the browser. In order to fill the Toolbar with relevant information, the URL of the page you’re on is transmitted to them and they return related information for that page. When the Alexa Toolbar is turned on, Alexa collects and stores the URLs you visit as your Toolbar requests data to display about these URLs from our servers. These URLs may include information about the Web pages that you view, the products you purchase online, and the data you enter in online forms and search fields. The Alexa Toolbar can be turned off at any time. Turning the Toolbar off prevents any information from being transmitted to them.

So how did my spyware found Alexa? Part of the reason is that there is a registry entry from Alexa built into every version of Internet Explorer by Microsoft (up to the XP Service Pack 2 release)–this registry key is associated with the Related Info Sidebar, accessed from the Tools menu in IE, the ‘Tools’/'Show Related Links’ menu item (and a corresponding toolbar button if you added it from the ‘Customize…’ link on the toolbar). When you request Related Information for a site, the URL of the site you are on is sent to Alexa’s servers, which in turn provide data about the site you are on at the time. If you use that feature, IE will contact the Alexa servers, via MSN, to obtain information about other web pages that seem to be related, open an Explorer Bar, and display those (plus adverts and whatnot). And due to a bug in IE (versions prior to IE6 on XP SP2), you might even transmit (potentially sensitive) URL information if you reload pages long after you close the Explorer Bar, about (even secure HTTPS/SSL) pages for which you didn’t request Related Links. But if you don’t use that menu or button, Alexa will not hear from you and no spying will take place. The extent of what Alexa “spies” is that someone in the world using Internet Explorer requested information on the specific URL.

Bill Gates leads Forbes rich list
Money, money, money, must be funny in a rich man’s world, ahhha,

1. Bill Gates – Microsoft co-founder has been ranked as the wealthiest person in America for the 14th year in a row. Forbes magazine put Gates’ fortune at $59bn.

2. Warren Buffet – investment guru in second place with a net worth of $52bn.3-4. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and software tycoon Larry Ellison remained at third and fourth place on Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans.

5-6. Google founders fifth. For the first time since 1989 there were no members of Walton family, which established Wal-Mart Stores, in the top 10. They were displaced by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who came in joint fifth place, with fortunes of $18.5bn apiece. Very high page rank indeed.

7. Investor Kirk Kerkorian was the biggest gainer on the list, his fortune rising by more than $9bn in the past year to $18bn, putting him in seventh place.

The collective net worth of the 400 billionaires totalled $1.54 trillion – more than Canada’s GDP.

The flat, rather lifeless shot of the buildings being built in Mumbai, which to my observation is blooming with many new high-rise constructions. This was on a trip with Munjit the driver. Well, India is pacing after China and I can clearly see their progress to industrialization.

Frontier trivia the day:

there are 22 official languages in India from its total of 1,652 languages including dialects.

Today I signed in to the favourite social networking site, mybloglog. It brought me to Yahoo, letting me sign in using my yahoo username! Obviously something is going on. It says “by merging MyBlogLog account with your Yahoo! account, … ” So maybe they just have some changes or upgrades, but until now I couldn’t log in. it seems, there is a bizarre error when they pushed the Yahoo! IDs live today. So better for their members if they restrict access to the site until they figure that one out. You notice it too?

So I guess my amended married name in my passport didn’t suffice, they have to have our married license to see my married name. It was just not in their list of requirements. Darn! This Netherlands Visa application is hassling us. I wish I could point it word by word in my papers that hubby’s company is responsible for me financially. Can’t they understand? Hubby’s company is flying all the rig managers and higher positions and their wives all for free! But it is okay, though we have been exchanging communications back and forth to make them understand; at least, it is already being processed.