Cats have 9 lives?

I was having lunch at my in-laws with my wife when I got a call from my sister that there was a cat stuck between the wooden fence and garage brick wall at my house.

My first reaction was ‘if the cat is stuck then get it out, or call RSPCA!”. I didn’t know what could I do to help, I have never been much of an animal lover. I was sure that we had some kind of government organization like RSPCA that looks after animals and rescues them when they are in need (at least that’s what they show on TV).

After noticing my lack of concern, my sister called the Wyndham Council to get some help for the cat. They said that they don’t deal with animal emergencies and that she should contact 000 (Triple Zero). My sister followed their advise and called 000 but the operator thought that it wasn’t really an emergency so she referred her to call RSPCA. Following the unsympathetic resposnce from 000, my sister called RSPCA, their response was that they can’t help in emergencies and referred her to call SES (State Emergency Services). The operator at SES agreed that this was an emergency and advised that they can be at the house in 45 mins to rescue the cat who was in pretty bad shape by now as her neck was stuck in between the garage brick wall and the wooden fence and breathing was getting harder and harder for her every second.

By this time, I was on my way home from the family lunch at my in-laws. When I got home, I saw my sister and parents outside the house, looking after the cat and trying their best to keep her alive until SES arrived. When I got to the scene, I realized that it wasn’t a cat but just a kitten who was only 3 or 4 weeks old.

The look in the kitten’s eyes was desperate, I have never an animal person but I couldn’t resist but fall in love. I started stroking her fur and tried to relax her. I asked my father to bring the toolbox to see if we can somehow rescue the kitten from the wooden fence but after a short inspection of the wooden frame and how the kitten was stuck in between; we decided to wait for SES (we were afraid we might end up hurting the kitten in the process).

While waiting for SES, we tried to feed the kitten as we didn’t know how long she might had been stuck there but the kitten was very weak and couldn’t drink the milk. I realized that even if SES came and rescued the kitten, she would need medical care as it had been raining for the last 2 days and we didnt know how long she had been stuck.

I asked my sister to look after the kitten until SES arrive and I went to Google ‘animal doctors’. In my search I found this page http://www.melbourneanimalrescue.org/

I clicked on the Contact Us page and called Melanie Dow to ask her if she can help us. She sounded like a person who truly loves animals. She have me her address and asked me to bring the kitten to her once we have her rescued and she will do her best to save the kitten.

The SES arrived in 45 mins as per the operator’s estimated time. They rescued the kitten by dismantling the wooden fence (my sister made a video which I will upload on Youtube and link it here in th next few days).

The kitten was finally out of the despair situation. The SES gave the kitten to me and I wrapped it in a towel and asked my wife to get some of my old jumpers so we can keep her warm. The kitten was shivering rigorously and I didn’t know what to do. The SES called the Wyndham Council to see if there was a wildlife ranger available who could provide medical attention to the kitten because we all knew that the kitten desperately needed medical care.

We waited for 10 minutes but we didn’t get a positive response form Wyndham Council so I decided to take the kitten to Melanie Dow from Melbourne Animal Rescue. I called her and she told me that she will be home in 45 mins.

While driving there, I kept on asking my wife if the kitten was alive and breathing. She kept on checking the kitten every 5 minutes to make sure she was fine. I had made up in my mind that if the kitten survives, I will adopt her and raise her. The desperate look for survival in the kitten’s eyes captured my heart and I kept on praying in my heart that she survives this ordeal.

We finally got to Melanie’s house and she showed the kind of urgency I was expecting from SES or other organizations that we had contacted. She checked the heartbeat of the kitten and told us that the heartbeat and blood pressure of the kitten was very low and in order to save her, we would have to get increase her body temperature. She rushed to the kitchen and brought a hot water bottle and kept it under the kitten.

I was worried, Melanie told me that the kitten didn’t have much chances to survive but she would try her best. She called a friend who was animal doctor and took the kitten to the hospital. I asked her if she needed any help or if there was anything we could do but she thanked me for my effort and rushed to the hospital. She promised to let me know if the kitten survived or not.

Me and my wife went home and I kept telling her that I just wanted the kitten to survive.

Two hours later, I got a call from Melanie and she told me that she had some bad news. The kitten didn’t survive.

She thanked me for my efforts again and told me that we did all we could do to help the kitten. At least the kitten didn’t die while in pain stuck between a fence.

This episode made me ask a few questions…

1) Is there a service provided by the government that responds to Animal Emergencies?

2) What is the role of RSPCA?

3) Shouldn’t the Police help in these situations?

A cat is said to have 9 lives but it hurts nevertheless every time you see a beautiful creature die.

My first blog from an iPad

I just typed in lines and lines of words and WordPress iPad app crashed when I tried to enter a pic…

So here I go again.

I bought an iPad app last week and now I am trying the WordPress iPad app. It seems like a mobile and convenient way to post blogs even when you are sitting in a park.

Why does anyone need a Facebook?

Where does facebook fit in our lives?

One of my friend recently went to India for a holiday and on his facebook page, he updated his status every 4 hours telling all his friends on facebook about the marvelous adventures he was having  in India. Every two days or so, he also updated his photo albums to show the latest pictures of his experiences. It was great logging onto facebook everynight and finding out what he was upto in India and commenting on his status updates and his pictures.

But then the holiday ended and he came back to Melbourne. I called him and we thought it would be nice to catch up for lunch. So, I woke up on a saturday morning, went to the gym, had breakfast and then got ready to head to the city to catch up with my friend.

We found a nice cafe and bought two cup of coffees and I told him to tell me all about his Indian adventures. He started telling me about his adventures and he also brought along some pictures from his trip. The problem was, I already knew everything about his adventures form his status updates and I had already seen the photos on his facebook albums. To be honest, I was bored for the entire lunch and coffee. I knew how his girlfriend fell on cow shit on the side of the road in Dehli and how little Indian street kids wanted to touch his skin because they had never seen a white person before in their lives.

This experience and others made me think aout what Facebook is really doing to our society?  Are we really more social when we are on facebook? Is being social means commenting ‘LOL’ or ‘LMAO’ on a friend’s status update? Does being social mean getting ‘likes’ on your status update or having 5000 friends on facebook but personally knowing only 45 of them? Is facebook a website that people use to find dates? I know quite a few friends that have met their partners on facebook or have hooked up with someone through facebook. Is facebook just another internet dating website or does it really help friendship? The movie ‘Social Network’ shows that originally facebook was a website for Harvard’s desperate male students to find dates online through their website.

Aristotle said friends must have eaten salt together and what he meant is there’s a sense that people have lived a significant part of their life together. They’ve sat down and shared meals and the ups and downs of life. Leading anthropologist Robin Dunbar says there’s a limit to how many close friends like this you can have and it’s probably between six and 12.

So really think about it? What has Facebook to offer? Did we not socially interact before facebook? Or has Facebook helped us in any way?

'Friends' didn't have Facebook. Ever wonder what the show might have been if they all had Facebook?

The beautiful Carlton Gardens – World Heritage Site

I went to Carlton Gardens for a walk in my lunch break and took some photographs from my Mobile. I am planning to go there on a Saturday with my dSLR to take some proper photos. Here are some of the photographs I took.

Osama Bin Laden died in 2001

Osama Bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda. A militant Islamist group responsible for the September 11 attacks on United States.

Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.

Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.

Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.

Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.

The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.

Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80′s.

Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.

Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.

“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.

“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.

“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.

“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.

“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.

Pieczenik said that the decision to launch the hoax now was made because Obama had reached a low with plummeting approval ratings and the fact that the birther issue was blowing up in his face.

“He had to prove that he was more than American….he had to be aggressive,” said Pieczenik, adding that the farce was also a way of isolating Pakistan as a retaliation for intense opposition to the Predator drone program, which has killed hundreds of Pakistanis.

“This is orchestrated, I mean when you have people sitting around and watching a sitcom, basically the operations center of the White House, and you have a president coming out almost zombie-like telling you they just killed Osama Bin Laden who was already dead nine years ago,” said Pieczenik, calling the episode, “the greatest falsehood I’ve ever heard, I mean it was absurd.”

Dismissing the government’s account of the assassination of Bin Laden as a “sick joke” on the American people, Pieczenik said, “They are so desperate to make Obama viable, to negate the fact that he may not have been born here, any questions about his background, any irregularities about his background, to make him look assertive….to re-elect this president so the American public can be duped once again.”

Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.

Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik.

During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name.

“They ran the attacks,” said Pieczenik, naming Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and Condoleezza Rice amongst others as having been directly involved.

“It was called a stand down, a false flag operation in order to mobilize the American public under false pretenses….it was told to me even by the general on the staff of Wolfowitz – I will go in front of a federal committee and swear on perjury who the name was of the individual so that we can break it open,” said Pieczenik, adding that he was “furious” and “knew it had happened”.

“I taught stand down and false flag operations at the national war college, I’ve taught it with all my operatives so I knew exactly what was done to the American public,” he added.

Pieczenik re-iterated that he was perfectly willing to reveal the name of the general who told him 9/11 was an inside job in a federal court, “so that we can unravel this thing legally, not with the stupid 9/11 Commission that was absurd.”

Pieczenik explained that he was not a liberal, a conservative or a tea party member, merely an American who is deeply concerned about the direction in which his country is heading.

Comparing Pakistan’s ODI Cricket Captains – Past and Present

Imran Khan is considered as Pakistan's most successful Cricket Captain.

Since I was ten, I have been completely mesmerized by Imran Khan’s leadership in the 1992 Cricket World Cup played in Australia. And since then, I have rated Imran Khan as the best ODI Captain that Pakistan Cricket Team ever had. I was just curious to know how Pakistan’s other ODI Cricket Captains did against each other. So I went into Cricinfo’s Statsguru and pulled out some statistics for some of Pakistan’s most popular ODI Captains. I not only chose their Win to Loss ratio but also how their personal performance was during their reign as ODI Captain.

Interestingly, Shoaib Malik has been Pakistan’s most successfull ODI Captain with a 67-33%% win ratio (Intikham Alam also had a 67%-33% win ratio but he played only 3 ODI matches as Captain). Shoaib Malik played a total of 36 ODIs as Captain and won 24 and lost 12. Why was Shoaib Malik removed as Pakistan’s ODI Captain? I fail to understand. Shoaib Malik was replaced by Younis Khan who had a 38%-62% win ratio (played 21 ODI matches as Captain, winning only 8 and loosing 13). Not only Shoaib Malik had a good win-loss ratio, his personal performance as a batsman and spin bowler had also been exceptional while he was Pakistan’s ODI Captain. He averaged at 43.75 in 36 matches and took 22 wickets, on the other hand, Younis Khan’s personal performance dropped while he was ODI Captain averaging at 22.04 in 21 matched (Younis Khan’s average when is not ODI Captain is 33.43 in 200 matches). Shoaib Malik’s batting average when is not ODI Captain is 32.21 in 156 matches. Some individuals excel under pressure and some don’t. Younis Khan is a great batsman and I have always enjoyed watching him bat but he is not a good Captain. A good Captain should lead from the front and for that their personal performace has to be good while captaining a team. Shahid Afridi’s when he is not ODI captain averages at 23.19 in batting and 34.73 in bowling compared to 26.67 in batting and 30.30 in bowling when he is ODI captain.

Captain Name	Matches Played	Won	Lost	Tied/ No Result	Win %	Loss %	Batting Avg.	Wickets	Bowling Avg.
Shahid Afridi	33	18	14	1	56%	44%	26.67	43	30.3
Younis Khan	21	8	13	0	38%	62%	22.04	n/a	n/a
Shoaib Malik	36	24	12	0	67%	33%	43.75	22	42.09
Inzamam-ul-Haq	90	52	34	4	60%	40%	43.89	n/a	n/a
Waqar Younis	62	37	23	2	62%	38%	8.95	97	24.29
Wasim Akram	109	66	41	2	62%	38%	17.64	158	22.63
Javed Miandad	62	26	33	3	44%	56%	40.12	n/a	n/a
Imran Khan	139	75	59	5	56%	44%	34.91	131	29.01

Shahid Afridi has played a total of 33 ODI matches as Captain, winning 18 and loosing 14.

Another interesting fact that I found was that Imran Khan’s win ratio was 56%-44% (he played a total 139 ODIs as Captain, winning 75 and loosing 59). Shahid Afridi currently has the same win ratio of 56%-44% (played a total of 33, winning 18 and loosing 14). One can easily argue that Imran Khan played an astounding 139 ODIs so his stats can not be compared to the rest of the ODI Captains unless they have played matches as much as he had as ODI Captain. The only other Captain that can be compared to Imran Khan is Wasim Akram who has played 109 ODIs as Captain with a win ratio of 62%-38% (played 109, winning 66 and loosing 41). But then Imran Khan brought home the 1992 Cricket World Cup and Wasim Akram’s team in 1999 failed miserably in the final at Lord’s in England.

For me, Imran Khan stands as the best ODI Captain that Pakistan Cricket Team has had so far. Statistics do not take into account the leadership, grace and charisma that Imran Khan used to potray both inside and outside the cricket field.

Imran Khan is Pakistan's only Captain that has won a World Cup.

Carlton Gardens

The beautiful Carlton Gardens in Melbourne.

Obama stop telling lies! You probably found Bin Laden’s grave.

President Obama probably won the next elections as soon as he announced that his administration killed Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden had probably died years ago and U.S just got confirmation now. They got information on where his grave was located (Abbottobad). So they went there to dig his body out and took it with them for DNA testing. Later they thought about cashing on this situation and telling the world they killed Osama bin laden. They didnt want this news to spread, so they disposed the body in sea. Americans all over the world started celebrating that American Soldiers finally killed Osama bin Laden. Obama probably won the next elections as soon as he announced that his administration killed Osama Bin Laden.

Back in 2002, Pakistan’s then president ‘Pervez Musharraf’ said that he thinks Osama bin Laden was most likely dead because Bin Laden had been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease. Musharraf said Pakistan knew bin Laden took two dialysis machines into Afghanistan and one was specifically for his own personal use.

Renal dialysis is something that really is reserved for patients in end-stage renal failure. That means their kidneys have just completely shut down. The most common cause of something like that would be something like diabetes and hypertension. Once that’s happened, if you’re separated from your dialysis machine and dialysis machines require electricity, they’re going to require clean water, they’re going to require a sterile setting — infection is a huge risk with that. If you don’t have all those things and a functioning dialysis machine, it’s unlikely that you’d survive beyond several days or a week at the most.

In July 2002, The US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson said that he thinks Osama bin Laden is “probably” dead.

In October 2002, the editor-in-chief of a London-based Arab news magazine published a will which was written in late 2001 by Osama bin Laden, and shows “he’s dying or he’s going to die soon.”

In 2007,  Al-Qaeda released a video of Bin Laden, that video was dismissed by the Bush administration as sick propaganda possibly designed to mask the fact the al-Qa’eda leader was already dead. “He could have made the video and then ordered that it be released in the event of his death,” said one White House aide.

What really does not make sense is the burial of Bin Laden at sea within 24 hours of declaring him dead. United States Government said that they wanted to respect Islamic traditions and thats why they buried his body within 24 hours. Firstly, burying a body in sea is not an Islamic tradition and secondly United States Government did not respect any Islamic traditions. If they had to respect Islamic traditions then burying a person in ground is more fundamental than burying him within 24 hours.  Sea burials according to Islamic tradition only take place when a person dies at sea away from land.

Many Islamic clerics have protested against the burial of  Bin Laden’s body at sea by saying that  ’it is not acceptable and it is almost a crime to throw the body of a Muslim man into the sea. The body of Bin Laden should have been handed over to his family to look for a country to bury him’.

The United States government knew that there would be criticism on burying him at sea but they probably had no other option. If there would had been a proper funeral for Bin Laden, then it would had been very hard to hide the fact that what they found in Abbottabad was Bin Laden’s grave.

Photography.

Here are some of my latest photographs. Leave a comment if you like them

Enchanting Sydney

Take me away with you

The clouds, the sky and the green

Remember me?

The sands of time

Magical Sydney

Canon AE-1

Found my father’s old SLR camera. Its a Canon AE-1 which is a 35 mm single-lens reflex (SLR) film camera. It has the capability of interchangeable lenses. It was manufactured by Canon Camera in Japan from April 1976 to 1984. It uses an electronically-controlled, electromagnet horizontal cloth focal plane shutter, with a speed range of 2 to 1/1000 second plus Bulb and flash X-sync of 1/60th second. The camera body is 87 mm tall, 141 mm wide, and 48 mm deep; it weighs 590 g. The AE-1 sold five million units, an unprecedented success in the SLR market. It was the first microprocessor CPU-equipped SLR.

I finally found the user manual for Cannon AE-1, download them from the following links.

Canon AE-1 User Manual Part-1

Canon AE-1 User Manual Part-2

Canon AE-1 sold 5 million units worldwide

Canon AE-1 was the first microprocessor CPU-equipped SLR