Others

Wow!!!! Someone said time flies, isn’t it? At least it is true for me. I got married on Dec 11, 2008 and see it is already Dec 11, 2009. It is obvious that I learned many things in last 1 year and here is the time I should share with you all, who are married and who are not married. I am flying to Orlando tomorrow and I will continue to write from here while I am in the flight. Thanks to all those who wished me and those who are planning to wish me.

Give before you Ask for

We all demand/ask/ cry for everything before we give anything. The whole system doesn’t work that way, give all that you can and later demand/ask for your need. I know I have said this line in a broader form but I expect you to draw your line from here.

Patience

Some say I have no patience and few say I have lots but what I think, I hold my patience till a point if I decide not to hold it more then nothing can stop me from there. The duration of being patient has increased over last 1 year, how much that I don’t know.

Becoming more Dependent

Many times I have marked myself not getting off from my chair to get my drink, this makes me sure that I became more dependant these days by asking for help from her on silly things.

Vague Promises

I do make promises like everyone but unable to keep some of them because of several reasons, this makes me to ponder “am I making vague promises”. I don’t think so because I promise and I try my best to keep them. I always said in my college days that promises are made to be broken and here it is getting implemented on me.

Less of Cooking

When I was not married I used to cook at least twice a week and now it has become twice a month or so. Do I love cooking less? In some sense YES, in some sense NO also. I think I should cook at least 3-4 times a month.

Value of Relationship

You have always an option to go out of a relation when you are not married but in Hinduism we priest to stay married to the same lady forever and I strongly believe it because of one reason, I don’t agree with millions of things with my parents but I don’t go out and look for new parents who can agree with me on my views. I live with them happily forever so no one is perfect but we all can try to be one till the time we are live.

Understanding

This is simply bullshit for me. I remember my school days, there were fights, fun, stress but we lived together. All that I know is, if my wife can’t fight with me then I will fight with her, if she can’t make fun then I will make on her behalf, she will help me at my needs and I will help her when she needs me. This is called truly living together.

This is a post that I started writing 6 months back but never completed it, now I think this is complete. This will be a good post and a learning experience.

People lying excessively are normally called pathological liars, they can lie for any silly reason. What pathological liar means exactly, those who lie for no big reasons, lie spontaneously with big confidence and promise are known as pathological liars. There is no test designed to find such disorderness but if someone spends more time with the person can find that sooner or later. Now many questions come to mind, why it happens, how it happens, is there a medicine, how to find who is a pathological liar, how to stop chronic lying, etc.

Why One Lies Severely?

Many reasons are there to this question. One out of 100 of these cases a person might not be knowing that he/she is lying because of insomnia, anyone can have memory loss disease and bluntly lie because he/she don’t remember the past. Sometimes a person loves to live in the fantasy world and keeps on lying to make himself/herself happy. He/She gets addicted to lies and never feel like coming out. It is a kind of multiple personality and a mental disorderness that he/she never realizes. Few people are there who always lie to see others expression by coming up with such words so they do it without thinking that it is not an acceptable behavior. Some start lying fearing the front person and keep saying it until they find no other way out than coming up with the truth.

What You Can Do to Help The Person

Are you a blogger? Do you at least write content to be published online? If you are then you should know about various things that are important to drive traffic to your written page or article. SEO is very important in order to get some free traffic to your website through search engines. I also once wrote about how to install wordpress with all the basic SEOs in it.

Title tag of a page is very important and you should know how it should be used for the best. A title tag has lots of importance for various factors and one should learn about them. By knowing the importance of a webpage title tag you can increase your click trough, conversion, targeted traffic, etc. I just wrote about it on our company blog, read the article to learn more about the importance of a webpage title tag.

Do you define it? Have you ever thought what is doable in a year? There is no definition, people are there who almost don’t do anything and there are people who become world famous in 365 days only. Why am I writing this? Every year on August 24th I wish my friend on his birthday and write here about thing that I say him many times.

Everyone in this world is not as smart as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Sergey M. Brin who knows what they have to do in next 5 years. At least I can say at some point they even didn’t know what they will be doing in following 5 years, it is something they grew over the time. But they all must be scheduling their work ahead of time, if you start scheduling your work for a day then you will make it for a month. This is how you will start managing your time well and make some proper utilization of it.

How to Start Spending Your Time in a Constructive Way?

• List all the work/events/job that you need to get it done.
• If you know nothing then start creating work for yourself.
• Give an end date when you want to see them get completed, schedule a date that is more likely not possible to meet.
• Make some phases, divide the work into several parts.
• Start with the Part 1 and proceed to the end.

Remember no work is SMALL and no work is BIG, all are relative. If you need to do something then start it because nothing will be done if you never start it.

Aditya 2009/10/02 at 2:21 PM

vry truly said…

Do you wonder how the price of calls to India from US has gone down? I came to US in 2003 and rate per minute to call India was around 18-20 cents. I was a student that time and it was really hard for me to manage with such a rate. I was just able to call my parents and didn’t speak to my relatives, friends for months. I used to call my parents every Sunday for 5 minutes only. Yes, for 5 minutes only. You can ask me San why is it just 5 minutes, it is just a dollar man. Yes, I know it was a dollar but I had to think twice to buy a mc chicken for me. That was a kind of life then.

I know you are here either looking for PinlessWorld Review or looking for a cheaper calling service to India. I must say PinlessWorld is good but Raza is even BETTER. It gives me 1000 minutes to call India in $10 only. Including tax and everything it is 1.33 Cents per minute, I am using it for last 3 months and I have no complain against its service. Click here to register and try the service.

Today the rates went down like anything. Companies are selling it even in pennies per minute. Believe me even the STD (calls from one state to other) calls in India is more than what we pay here to call India. Isn’t it surprising? I remember when Reliance first came with the service for calling to India in just 13 cents then I thought what a life saver. Then it was Airtel and Tata to compete with it to get the rate down to just 2.5 cents or so. Wow, what a price to call India. Is it real, how can the rates go down to 3 cents in 6 years of time. I was really happy with the rates provided by these 3 major companies and never looked beyond to find any cheapest way to call India.

I was reading one of my friend’s blog and came to know about pinlessexpress.com, I couldn’t believe the rate it provides. It is just 1.8 cents a minute and it is not rounded to nearest cent, it goes up to Millicent. Remember if you see Sharukh khan holding a banner of 1 cent a minute doesn’t mean Airtel is providing the service of calling India in just 1 cent a minute. If you see the plan, it is just 600 minutes in $15 so it comes to 2.5 Cents a minute. Why should I pay 40% more to these branded companies like Reliance, Trueroots, Airtel when I get the same facilities in 30% cheaper from pinlessexpress.com. Well this is a new company that you never heard about but just to let you know this is a company promoted by pinlessworld (if you ever heard of this company). I trust pinless world as I used its service before and wrote a review as well. They got me the cheapest India calling plan for 2.2 cents and voice quality was excellent. Now they are promoting pinless express with even cheaper rate then what is the harm in trying it for $5 only? If you are looking for cheapest way to call India then trust me and try the service, if you find any problem then come back and let me know about it.

Are you wondering about the topic? You might be thinking what the hell San is talking about. I always thought about making some cheese that is good for Indian paneer curry but didn’t get enough time and interest. Finally I have done it and here is a guide on how to prepare paneer for Indian curry. You can also save money by not buying paneer from the market.

Before even learning the process one should know why he/she should prepare paneer at home when one can buy it from the market.

Here are some reasons:

1. It is fresh so it will be tastier.
2. Homemade paneer is cheap.
3. If you are living outside of India then it is hard to find such cheese in the market. All that you get is tofu.
4. You can make it hard/soft according to your requirements.
5. You can also use the extracted water to make some pure ghee.

Why I wanted to make this paneer at home? I got gallons of milk that was damn cheap like US$1.5 per gallon. I always wanted to learn more on making some Indian sweets at home that require lots of paneer. I also wanted to know the trick behind preparing cheese for Indian paneer curry.

What you require for curry suited paneer?

- Milk ( 2 lts / ½ Gallon)
- 2-3 lemons(depending on size) or vinegar

Put the milk to boil and add the lemon juice/vinegar when you see the milk bobbling for the first time. Let the milk to boil for some time, on needed add more lemon juice but do it before you leave the milk to boil for 4-5 minutes. After 5 minutes you will notice cheese is separated from water, to make them come together add some ice cubes and turn off the heater. Collect your paneer in a cotton and tie it hard. Later keep the paneer covered cotton under a bowl filled with water. The theory behind this is to extract remaining water from the paneer and make it hard. You can pick your own ways to extract the water but the best way is to keep something on the top of it that is really heavy. After 2 hours the paneer is ready to be cooked. I hope this helps you. I just spent $2 to make paneer that is worth of $8 and it is fresh as well. I will also write on various Indian sweets and paneer curries that I made along my wife from this extracted cheese.

What a hassle when you see the blue screen with lots of error messages that comes just after your Windows screen. I have a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop running with Windows XP Home, last time I saw it working fine while I was watching a bollywood movie before shutting down for some rest. I got some error before the laptop was completely turned off. I was tired enough to read those messages so I turned off by pushing the power switch. That’s it, I started getting the nightmares from the next day morning. I turned my laptop on when I left my bed, here is a screen that was waiting for me whole night with an error saying “Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: System32\Drivers\Ntfs.sys”.

What was my first move after seeing the error message?

What the heck is this? I have another Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop, I started typing in the error message in google to find some help. Wow, lots of help, let me try the first one from Microsoft. I followed the steps with lots of hassles, I kept going further until I saw a file not found in the desired location at step 6 from the article. Well, I want to patch the ntfs.sys but it is not located at the instructed location of the Windows recovery drive. This is strange, I got my first doubt that I might have crashed the hard drive. I restarted the machine to run chkdsk command in recovery console. It got me one lost or corrupted file, I ran it 3 times losing 6-8 hours to get it fixed but couldn’t get any success.

What to do when I can’t fix my ntfs.sys from the Windows XP CD or by running chkdsk command?

I was confused, I thought if I have a bad CD so started to look for the same file from my Windows Vista CD. I got some warnings as the OS is different here. I could see a window where it kind of showed my used space and free space from the hard drive. Now I have more free space than before, I am worried now and thought might have lost some data from My Documents and Desktop folder. Finally couldn’t get any help from the vista CD so got over it.

Now I thought to try windows repair option, I knew I might lose some of my data but I don’t know why I continued with that. Well, I started noticing some IO errors while repairing windows xp but there was only one option to click OK and kip going. It went through the installation process and started rebooting, it is a new blue screen with “STOP: c00021a {fatal system error}. The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly.” error.

Can Data Recovery Professionals Help me?

I thought to give up and started looking for help from professionals to recover my data first. I called my friends, looked in web to find some professionals that master on recovering data from crashed hard drive. One of my friends suggested to browse craigslist.org to find local professionals. He also said the data recovery service typically costs around $20-$50 if it is done through local data recovery professionals else geek squad will charge up to $300-$400. Hey, $400 for data recovery? Are you crazy? I can’t afford such amount so looked for some local experts and noticed the service charges were typically in a range of $40-$60 in Chicago land. I started calling them and write emails, looked for some reviews and had a lookup on their websites as well. Finally settled with Carlos from Semper Wi-Fi, his data recovery charge is $60 that includes pickup and drop. I tried to negotiate for $50 but he insisted to go with $60 as he gives home pickup and delivery service, seems to be a fair deal to me. He also quoted the service would take 2 hours only, though it went to 2 days, I was comfortable at it as I had no emergency.

Carlos dropped back the laptop hard drive in 2 days after recovering around 65GB of data, I insisted to retrieve My Documents and Desktop folder as I had the most important images at these places. He completed the job professionally sparing his valuable 2 hours at my home while transferring the data from his laptop to my external hard drive. It was really slow to transfer the data from his HP laptop to my iomega external hard drive but he was patient enough to complete the job. I recommend Carlos for any data recovery requirement and he is also qualified in giving several computer services, for details please check his website.

He also advised me to buy a new hard drive as there is very less likely I can repair or make a fresh windows install on it. We both tried fixing it for hours but failed to do so. I looked for the same Seagate ST9160821AS Momentus 5400.3 160GB SATA/150 5400RPM 8MB 2.5 Hard Drive and finally got the cheapest one from Amazon for $37.95, remember this is refurbished but I am happy with it. I just looked at it to grab the url and price seems to be bumped by $10 to $47.95. I was really lucky to buy the hard drive in lower price. I am still waiting to receive the laptop hard drive and I have to invest my time in making fresh installation for all my applications along the Operating System, I am planning to install Windows XP Professional this time.

New hard drive is originally sold by digitalet.com and use IMBACK coupon code to get 5% off if you decide to buy something from them.

Probably it is an end to all costly calls, voip got our family and relatives close at a low cost. In 2003 an call for a minute from USA to India using calling cards used to cost 20 Cents and direct services used to cost 35 – 100 cents depending on the service provider. Now in 2009 this rate has gone down to even pennies. I am not kidding Pinlessworld.com is providing reliable calls to india at a rate of 2.5 cents per minute. This is just Rs1.25 per minute when you call from USA to India, even cheaper than the STD calls in India.

I know you are here either looking for PinlessWorld Review or looking for a cheaper calling service to India. I must say PinlessWorld is good but Raza is even BETTER. It gives me 1000 minutes to call India in $10 only. Including tax and everything it is 1.33 Cents per minute, I am using it for last 3 months and I have no complain against its service. Click here to register and try the service.

I was surprised to see the cheapest india call rate on their website pinlessworld.com and I decided instantly to give a try after reading some good reviews/comments from blogs. I even noticed the smaller amount like $5 will be enough to register with pinlessworld.com, this was the key to attract me to become their customer. I was using trueroots.us to buy some minutes to call india but pinlessworld.com is giving me in cheaper price at same quality, then why not I use pinlessworld.com when it is charging me 35% of trueroots.us used to charge me.

If you are still using online india calling cards to call india for cheaper rates than this is the time to consider pinlessworld.com and change your thoughts. There are several benefits of using Pinlessworld.com to make long distance call to india, few are noted here.

Advantages of Calling India Using Pinlessworld.com

• A thing that I liked most is the rate per minute to call india, 2.5 cents, this is one among the cheapest rates available as of now.
• You can also recharge your account with smaller amount like $5 and including tax it comes to $5.35.
• It is a pinless service not like airtel that you have to call and enter your pin number every time.
• It has around 515 local access numbers (https://www.pinlessworld.com/view_accessnumbers.cfm) that you can use to call india, benefit of using these local access numbers is that you can use landlines and save from your cell phone daytime minutes. Not like toll free number when it gets busy then you are helpless and can’t call to your family, here if one is not working then you can use other numbers.
• They are not like others where companies call to you to activate your account, here at pinlessworld.com activate the account just after you register with them.
• Pinlessworld.com has a developed control panel where one can manage own’s account very easily, add numbers, recharge easily, view history, etc..

Disadvantages of Pinlessworld.com

I didn’t find any major issues but still noticed some minor ones that I want to share with all of you.

• You have to dial international code + country code + local code + phone number to reach your family and relatives, they are coming soon with hot numbers to call your favorite numbers pretty fast. Hopefully they will get that up and running very soon.
• I called customer care and it went to voice message, later I wrote them using their support ticket (https://www.pinlessworld.com/support.cfm) page and they got back really fast, I appreciate that.

If you are looking for some cheapest rates to call india from US then this is the one that you can try without worrying for a second. I already spoke to my friends, relatives and parents using this service for 10 times before writing this post so I can at least say it is worth to try for once. If you like their services then leave a comment here so that others can get benefited from it.

UPDATE: I just heard from Pinlessworld.com that they are still lowering the rate to 2.2 cents per minute from Mar 22, wow, what a deal. I will try my best to get a coupon for you guys so that you can enjoy the service more. 

Munish: I am using Pinless service from last 3-4 month. The voice is clear and sounds good. Other service tried to match its rate with Pinlessworld by offering short period time. Pinlessworld is evergreen there is no flactuation in the rate. Keep it up pinlessworld.

@Shweeta, let us know how it works in France. I always wonder about the services available in Europe to call India so I bet many visitors here might be on the same track so help them sharing your thoughts. 

I know this is a strange topic to write on as everyone online speaks about what and when to write, why it is “when not to write”? This is equally important but most of us never realize that we should be very much particular to the time when not to write a blog post. I have 5 most important reasons when one should not write a blog post, at least not to publish that immediately.

Over Emotional

Emotion is something where you should have your control on. There is hell lot of issues with the emotions so better you just keep your control over it. No doubt people will always try to play with your emotions knowingly or unknowingly but you should know that this is not the time to write anything. Take your time, don’t even create a page to write when you are passing this time. Time will pass and you might regret on writing the stuffs that you were not suppose to write, so let it go and write on things later when you are at your best.

Irritated

Irritation, this is something very much related with individual’s personality, people get irritated on silly things and there are people who even don’t get irritated on major issues. It is very related but you should never write or get closer to your blog when you are passing through some kind of irritation.

Highly Depressed

Depression is a major problem for Americans and there are lots of researches going on for improving people who are going through this phase of life. This could happen to anyone, for any reason so don’t write at all when you think or people say that you are depressed. Normally a person becomes very pessimistic during this period and the words coming out might not take the best of the shape.

Angry

People say that I am bit angry, am I? This is also a complex expression and many just get angry on silly things and people also don’t get angry on major problems. You should be careful and try not to write when you are annoyed, you can write but not make that post live until you get your nerves back.

Over Excited

We get excited many times and later find it not a worth to get that excited for, few things/plans are specially designed to deceive people so take your time to validate those things/issues before you write on them.

Remember, the words coming from you in terms of blog post will be read by many people so be careful before writing anything on your blog. I was going through one out of these 5 phases when I thought about this post, I was very interested to write something but wasn’t very sure about the time and matter so thought not to write that and created this topic.

If you are a regular visitor to my blog then you might be knowing I got married last month and came back to US leaving my wife back in India. I never knew about my wife before visiting India for a yearly vacation, the reason being I didn’t take the needed documents for processing my wife’s H4 visa. I had to come back for documents that my wife needed to submit to the officer in American Embassy for her H4 visa. After going to various web sites I made a checklist of things that I needed to send my wife for getting one H4 visa.

Here are the documents that anyone in India will need to submit while applying for H4 visa

• You need to deposit the application fees at HDFC Bank, for details on fees and bank visit www.vfs-usa.co.in. You need to keep the original receipt with you and carry it along all the docs to the embassy.
• You need to complete non-immigration visa application form DS-156. This will be done online after the required funds been deposited with HDFC Bank towards the Visa fees.
• You also need to complete Form DS-157 online, be attentive while filling this form. You can save these forms and review it later before you click the submit button. This process can be saved for 7 days.
• You will get an online appointment application letter at the end so carry a hard copy of that letter.
• You need to carry one photograph: 2 and 2 inches square (50 mm square). If you are going to Kokata American Consulate then visit to Bombay Studio to get
  a perfect picture for your visa. This Studio is next to the embassy office so you just need to reach 1 hour early to pick your snap with yourself. US consulates are very strict on photograph so better you carry the one with their guideline else you will have to visit them once more.
• Original marriage certificate is needed, there are two ways in India to get a marriage certificate, they are marriage registration, registered marriage.
  Registered marriage is applied upfront and date is scheduled after 30 days of your application, this is normally for couples those are not married and trying
  to get married. Marriage registrations is a process where you can get a certificate in a day, this is for couple who already got married with the social act and want to register their marriage with government.
• A Weeding photo album with clear close-up snaps with all the family members taken separately and some snaps from the marriage puja.
• Both side marriage invitation cards.
• Photocopy of H1B holder’s passport, take copies of the pages that are not blank, doesn’t need to copy whole book.
• A copy of approved petition I797 / form I-129 of H1B Visa holder
• H1B holder’s employment verification letter is also needed. Get one from the current employer.
• If current H1B holder is already working in US then need to produce 2 recent pay stubs.

marites toledo keegan: my husband is amirican,what document i prefer to the embassy…
we marry already…

Arpita Dey Says: August 29th, 2009 at 11:34 am

Hi,

I’m getting married in November, 2009. My fiance is working in the US. He is there since 4 years. I am residing in Gujarat, while my fiance’s family resides in Maharashtra. I am planning to get a social marriage conducted on 29th Nov and get a marriage registration done immediately the next day itself. My question is, is this certificate valid for my H4 Visa application or is court marriage a must?

I am confused simply because lots of people are giving us different opinions.

Do post your suggestions. It would help me a great deal in planning my transit to the US.

Thank a lot.

@Arpita You can get the certificate from the municipality office and that is called marriage registration, that means you are already married and just registering that with government of India. That is a valid one and i did the same for my marriage certificate. It works.

Anoop Says: September 9th, 2009 at 8:41 AM

Hi,

I’m getting married in Jan,2010. I will get around 4 weeks leave. Our plan is to fly back together after marriage. For this her interview should be scheduled within 3-4 days after marriage. Can I apply for VISA before marriage and go to the interview with the necessary documents? I can arrange to get the marriage certificate the next day itself. Let me know your thoughts.

@Anoop, I am confused. you said “Can I apply for VISA before marriage?”. Is that you mean if you can schedule a date before your marriage? You can’t schedule a date before your social marriage because you will be asked to show the mariage pictures. You can schedule a date anyday when you have the above documents to show the authority and prove them that you people are married, practically that will be after your social marriage. You can always schedule her interview date before 2-3 weeks of the expected date of the interview. Good Luck!!!!

Gaurav 2009/09/30 at 5:53 PM
hi!
im getting married Nov 23rd 2009. Want to bring my wife with me to US on H4 visa.
Q1. Is this a good time (i.e. today Sep 30 2009) for me to book a timeslot for the interview for sometime around Nov 25 or Nov 26th?
Q2. Can I accompany my wife in the interview?
Q3. Do I need to mention anywhere that I will be accompanying her during the interview?
Thanks much for your help.
Regards,
Gaurav
@Gaurav, Good luck for your marriage. US authorities don’t reject or select a visa based on time so any time will be good to book a date. The only thing you should remember that you need to have the above mentioned documents while approaching the interviewer. I think you can get the certificate in the meantime so go ahead and book a date, you can always reschedule it. I think you can’t accompany your wife, if you need to renew your visa then you both can schedule at the same time and go for it. I am not very sure on accompanying so better clarify it from experts. If you see any option where you can go for it with her then I am very sure you have to mention it somewhere before the interview.

Sriharsha 2009/10/01 at 2:21 PM

Hi San
Nice post and thanks for helping people like me
I am planning to get married in jan 2010 and planning to bring my wife with me. my question is i am on H1 and had valid visa until Sep 2010, recently i changed my company and got my visa approval but i did not have stamping with the new approval. so is it ok if my wife carry my latest approval and go for the stamping or do i need to get the stamping done before she go the stamping. please advice. can i receive the reply to my email id
Thanks in advance
@Sriharsha, Wish you a happy married life. I suggest you both go at the same time for the visa stamping. I just said that to Gaurav above.

@Priya (Oct 24th) – Yes, you can apply individually. My wife applied alone and I was in US that time. You need all the documents, not your husband at the interview. After you receive the H4 visa it is upto you to decide the date of journey, no hard rules.

@Priya (Nov 11th) – 1. If you go to local municipality office with all your documents after the marriage then you should get that in a day, it will be handy. At least I got that in a day in Orissa. 2. It depends, normally you will get it in 5-7 days but I will advise you not to buy your ticket before you have your passport with visa on it. Rather just book a ticket and carry the ternary to the consulate.

@Revant – Both go on the same date and slot. I think you need to go to the site or ask some experts on this but I know both can go together for the interview as my friends did in the past that I know at least.