For Life, Welness and Money

There are several causes for getting diseases but the main reason is the kind of food we eat. Therefore it is very important to know about proper food and good eating habits. Food is of two kinds:-

1. ACIDIC FOOD - Food, which is Acidic in nature, tends to spoil the blood and cause disease.        

• Corn

• Meat

• Beans        

• Fish        

• Fowl        

• Most grains    

• Coffee       

• Plums        

• Prunes       

• Cranberries        

• Distilled water        

• Eggs        

• Liver and other organ meats        

• Gravy        

• Broth made from bones or other animal parts        

• Wine        

• Yogurt with active cultures        

• Buttermilk, including buttermilk pancakes and biscuits        

• Sour cream        

• Most fermented foods and aged cheeses        

• Some B vitamin supplements (or foods supplemented with B vitamins) can make your stomach more acid        

• Hydrochloric acid supplements        

• Digestive enzymes 

2. ALKALINE FOOD - Food, which is Alkaline in nature, produces blood and removes disease from the body.

• Bananas

• Chocolate

• Figs

• Mineral water

• Orange juice

• Potatoes

• Spinach

• Watermelon

• Dandelion Greens

It is not possible to avoid acidic food completely, it is better to restrict it to 25%. If acidic food is eaten frequently it takes longer time to digest the food. The digestive system has to work continuously without any rest to digest the food. Bio-energy level comes down bringing about lethargy and making the organs inactive. Large quantities of wastes mix with the blood, impeding the smooth flow of blood circulation in the body. Since the various organs of the body do not get sufficient blood, they give out signals in the form of pain. (Just as we feel hungry when the body requires food). This is what we call as DISEASE.

When we fall sick we do not find the main cause of sickness but instead resort to palliative medicines. We may get temporary relief by taking these medicines and reduce pain. But the wastes, diseases are not eliminated from the body. After some time the same wastes reappear in the same or different places and again cause diseases. Such diseases are called by different names by other schools of medicine.

But Naturopathy is the only treatment which completely eliminates the wastes and impurities and purifies blood. To achieve this  large amount of Alkalinity food to be given to the affected. This is what is called CHANGE OF FOOD HABIT.

Recent global melt down has certainly affected the world wide economy and when US could not be left untouched from it there have been a lot of hues and cries for future sustainability of Indian Economy. What’s the reality, should we get panic or we should look into detail aspects before coming to a conclusion. Let’s have a look on some important basics of India Economy: 

Sensex:  Sensex is the sensitive index of BSE (Bombay stock exchange) and NSE (National stock exchange). BSE has 30 listed companies and NSE has 50 listed companies. Although these companies have the maximum stake and influence as far as Indian Economy is concerned, still there are more than 500 mid cap and large cap companies in India which are not listed with either BSE or NSE main index. A huge number of small caps are still there. So getting panic just because of Sensex doesn’t make complete sense of understanding our economic trend. Moreover Indian investors are mainly emotionally driven rather than being analytical and that’s why we are still living in speculative mode and not in investing mode. 

Household savings: Household savings in India is close to 30% of total income which is one of the largest in world. Due to our house hold savings we survived during global crises of 1929-30. Huge black money with business men and over flowing accounts of Indians in Swiss bank (Indians have the largest share in total international deposit of Swiss bank) tells the story of never ending inflation and liquidity. 

Job Cuts: We have lost jobs in IT, Airlines, etc but as compared with the entire employed population this percentage is not large enough. Still the largest employers Indian Railways, SBI, ICICI (to name a few) are hiring people and currently they have plans to continue hiring for next 5 years. Remember employment is not the problem; there has been always a war any where in the world for survival of the best. 

Agriculture: Still agriculture is one of our economic indicators, which is not bad at all.  

Conclusion: Indian Economy is still stable and poised to grow continuously with a rate above than 7% a year which is a huge growth rate. I agree to the problems related with inflation, petrol prices and credit norms (going to be liberalized soon). Indian economy is also influenced by the political changes and with upcoming elections the out remains a bit worrisome but as it gets stabilized and over by another 5-6 months, every thing will be on track again. We also need to be careful in our spending and cost savings to cross this temporary draught. Over all we won’t starve due to current situation…

Stay Healthy and Fit 

People across world visit top medical practitioners, physiotherapists and take end number of pills to keep their body in shape and stay healthy and fit. But how many of them actually are successful in doing so, very few. We must know the reason. Reason is very simple; there is lack of commitment from our side. We stay dependent on others rather than making our efforts on staying healthy and fit. With changing times and development we have drastically changed dour life style from morning to the time we go to sleep. We call it development but we have certainly lost our health. Obesity, heart problems, strokes, joint pains, etc have become a very common occurrence now even among youngsters. 

So what we actually require to do so… 

Eating habit has a lot to do with this, as it’s very important. Have a balance of green vegetables, fibers, milk, oil, minerals, pulses and water in your diet. Increase the content of vegetables, salads and fruits in your daily diet. Increase the intake of water (avoid cold water), take at least 10-12 glasses a day. Make a habit of taking very light dinner and sleep for at least 6 hours daily. 

Exercise is very essential which most of us don’t do and changing life style has every scope of avoiding this. Burning extra calories is needed. Go for a walk of 10 KMs in week or you can play some games twice in a week or you can involve yourself in any other physical activity. 

Once the metabolic rate becomes increased, you will start burning calories faster even while doing small activities. This will also make you more active and energized always. 

Have a healthy life…

IDE ATA/Atapi Controllers History

I just got an idea to put this on the site, as I had a small discussion with one of my friend yesterday, although it’s not an interesting topic to all, but some techno savvy might find it really useful. 

ATA interface was developed in 1986 by 3 companies 

1. CDC (Control Data Corporation), also called Imprimis-A disk drive company

2. Western Digital-Major silicon company and

3. Compaq Computers

Initially this new interface was called IDE or ATA and being used by Compaq. Soon all major disk drive companies started making ATA/IDE drives. Today’s SCSI CAM standard developed by The Common Access Committee states the beginning and development of the interface. 

Let’s look at some major turn around thereafter. After few years in 1989 Seagate purchased Imprimis from CDC and in 1995 the same firm also purchased the Conner Peripherals. By the mid 1990s Western Digital had become a major disk drive supplier.ATA was originally designed for and worked only with hard disks and devices that could emulate them. The introduction of ATAPI (ATA Packet Interface) by a group called the Small Form Factor committee allowed ATA to be used for a variety of other devices that require functions beyond those necessary for hard disks. For example, any removable media device needs a “media eject” command, and a way for the host to determine whether the media is present, and these were not provided in the ATA protocol.The Small Form Factor committee approached this problem by defining ATAPI, the “ATA Packet Interface”. ATAPI is actually a protocol allowing the ATA interface to carry SCSI commands and responses; therefore all ATAPI devices are actually “speaking SCSI” other than at the electrical interface. In fact, some early ATAPI devices were simply SCSI devices with an ATA/ATAPI to SCSI protocol converter added on. The SCSI commands and responses are embedded in “packets” (hence “ATA Packet Interface”) for transmission on the ATA cable. This allows any device class for which a SCSI command set has been defined to be interfaced via ATA/ATAPI.ATAPI devices are also “speaking ATA”, as the ATA physical interface and protocol are still being used to send the packets. On the other hand, ATA hard drives and solid state drives do not use ATAPI.ATAPI devices include CD-ROM and DVD ROM drives, tape drives and large-capacity floppy drives such as the zip drive and Super Disk drive. Removable media devices other than CD and DVD drives are classified as ARMD (ATAPI Removable Media Device) and can appear as either a super-floppy (non-partitioned media) or a hard drive (partitioned media) to the operating system. The SCSI commands and responses used by each class of ATAPI device (CD-ROM, tape, etc.) are described in other documents or specifications specific to those device classes and are not within ATA/ATAPI or the T13 committee’s purview.

Various Standards of ATA/ATAPI 

ATA (also called ATA-1), ATA-2, ATA-3 and ATA/ATAPI-4, ATA/ATAPI-5, ATA/ATAPI-6 and ATA/ATAPI- 7 and then ATA-8 

ATA-1 and ATA-2 

ATA is the real standard for what is widely known as IDE. ATA-2 is the real standard for what is widely known as EIDE. Other names are just names used by different marketing companies. 

IDE was used by Conner Peripherals, Compaq and Western Digital starting back in 1986-1987. It continues to be widely used as the alternate name for ATA. 

EIDE was first used by Western Digital to hype a new line of disk drives back in 1993 or 1994. These were ATA-2 compatible drives that supported the new PIO modes 3 and 4 data transfer timings. Western Digital was trying to establish itself as a major disk drive supplier in those days. Western Digital continues to use EIDE to describe their products even though the ATA interface has progressed well beyond the capabilities of ATA-2. Western Digital just keeps redefining what they mean by EIDE! 

FASTATA and FASTATA-2 were used by Seagate and Quantum in marketing programs that were intended to counter the Western Digital EIDE marketing hype back in 1993 or 1994. It appears that by 1998 both Seagate and Quantum had stopped using these alternative names for ATA products. 

In 1999 some companies started to use ULTRA ATA to describe products that support the ATA/ATAPI-4 Ultra DMA 33 data transfer protocols. We will have to wait and see what cute name the disk drive marketing folks come up with to sell ATA/ATAPI-5’s Ultra DMA 66 data transfer protocols.  

These are all just alternative names for ATA used mostly by marketing departments to make it sound like they have a REALLY NEW AND IMPROVED product that is somehow different from the competition’s product. 

ATA-3 

ATA-3 introduces some new features of questionable value: SMART and Security. Note that ATA-3 does NOT introduce any new (faster) PIO or DMA data transfer modes (there is no such thing as PIO mode 5!). 

ATA/ATAPI-4 

The ATAPI command and reset protocols are new. Many old ATA commands and features are now obsolete, such as the Format Track and Read/Write Long commands. There is a new data transfer protocol named Ultra DMA that adds data integrity (via a CRC check) and much higher data transfer rates (up to 33MB/second). There is a command overlapping and command queuing protocol for ATA and ATAPI devices.  

ATA/ATAPI-5 

ATA/ATAPI-5 deletes a few old commands, adds a few new commands, changes the way a few commands operate. But the big thing in ATA/ATAPI-5 are the two new and faster Ultra DMA 66 data transfer modes.  

ATA/ATAPI-6 

ATA/ATAPI-6 includes another even faster Ultra DMA mode 5, also known as Ultra DMA 100. It also includes a method of increasing the number of LBA bits from 28 to 48 and increasing the Sector Count from 8 bits to 16 bits.  

ATA/ATAPI-7 

ATA/ATAPI-7 includes UltraDMA mode 6 also known as Ultra DMA 133, some new commands for use by digital video recorders, and the T13 version of Serial ATA (SATA). The ATA/ATAPI-7 document has been split into three volumes: one for the hard disk commands, one for the traditional parallel ATA interface and one for the SATA-1 interface. Unless you need documentation for a specific ATA/ATAPI-7 feature, avoid using ATA/ATAPI-7 - use ATA/ATAPI-6 or use ATA-8.  ATA-8 Featuring non-volatile cache to speed up critical OS files 

Attention all vehicle owners!

Under section 147 of Motor Vehicle Act, Government has clearly said after some recent hearings in Tamilnadu court on such cases, where pillion riders were died and their family members filled a claim and later on the same was rejected by the insurance company saying that the customer was a gratuitous one and they are not liable to pay for such claims. Thereafter the victim’s family went to the court and several rounds of hearing gae a firm verdict that no such cases should be entertained by insurance companies in future.

Our country witnesses a lot of such incidents and results contribute in huge number of deaths due to road accidents. Many of such fatal cases speaks about alcohal influence or some harmful drugs. Some times over time in some organizations also contribute to such happenings as most of these happenings occur in late nights.

If any of you are habitual of doing so, just stop now…it’s not only due to the recent verdict…because life is priceless, save it…

Here I am going to share with you a true success story of a common man. All it speaks about the value of dreams and dedications in life. 

The story starts when a boy was born in a small undeveloped town of
India. When he started going school his first dream was shattered of going to a modern state of the art school…some how he killed his desires of life and stayed in the poor family. His father was the only earning member of his family and that income was not sufficient to send him to big cities to join a good school. If you are not aware of the infrastructure situations in Indian small towns, let me tell you, people living there are deprived of proper electricity, good living houses, connecting roads, means of communications, education and health facilities. Still India has a rich pool of talents to represent the world wide organizations…

Any way just continuing with the story of that boy…when he started his college life, his father got voluntarily retired as he was working with Army. Now the family moved with more financial constraints. The boy was keen for his higher education but no body was there to boost his confidence or to give any kind of support. He always received negative motivation, pessimistic answers from his friends and family members, but he never quit and always took all such comments as options to challenge the limits in life. He went through bad phases of life, faced flood for months and lot of other political turmoil, but he wanted to ignore the hurdles and trends. He stood up from the crowd and went through the toughest tests to settle down with an excellent start in career with corporate.

It’s been 3 years since he started his career, now he is spending good time with his parents and wife. Meanwhile he has been elevated twice during his work assignments and handles a good responsibility in MNC. He will also set up his own export business after 2-3 years. All struggle and quest has turned out into positive into his life. He still remembers all past events, especially he had to live even without food while carrying out his projects with companies during his higher studies. His past has always made him tougher. He is a real Hero…

This story doesn’t speak of getting rich overnight, it tells about determination and thrust to achieve, no matters, what you are today, you will be a pioneer if you really want to do so. This is a very common example of successful transition in life. He didn’t turn out to become a Millionaire so far, but his glittering desire will make this started journey into billion dollar story some day…it’s all beginning.

There is a Spark in every one’s life which keeps the life enchanting with happenings. Spark comes from the inner soul and stays alive till we wan’t to set and achieve new goals periodically and enjoy each and every challenge comes throughout our journey. Now it’s really interesting to know that where does this spark come from…when we make innocent efforts without worrying about the end results yet thinking of completing the assignments, when we don’t make promises we make comittments, when we don’t make excuses we find solutions, when we accept our shortcomings and when we really wan’t to go higher and higher SPARK liberates in our psyche. It makes our mind and body restless till the time we finish the line and go beyond.

Life gives us a chance to learn at every stage form child hood to old age, one who takes all challenges as new opportunities to discover turns out as a winner. There is no word exists like failure, it’s a part of process called success. Never get influenced by hurdle, this is bridge to success and is an integral part of any quest.

There is a long list of great personalities who failed on several occassions but kept their spark alive and set their foot prints for other to follow. Remember, when you want to become successful you will, when you expect good things to happen with you it’ll happen, when you suspect something to harm you it’ll…this is what life is all about.

So, why to live in terror because some one else fails. Be a winner by thinking optimistically about current scenarios around.

Keep the spark alive and come out as a better individual…

Insurance Companies in
India 

Indian General Insurance Industry has a annual size of more than Rs 25,000 crores and comprises mainly two types of players:

1. Nationalized Companies
2. Private Players

Important Details of Nationalized General Insurance Players in
India:There are 4 nationalized general insurers in India and they are part of GIC (General Insurance Corporation of
India). GIC is also a national re insurer since December 2000. 

1. The Oriental Insurance Company Ltd 

Incorporated in 1947 in Bombay has its head office in
New Delhi, 23 Regional Offices and around 900 Branch Offices. The company has over 16000 employees and has done a business of over Rs 3800 crores in 2007-08Official Website: www.orientalinsurance.nic.in 

2. The New India Assurance Company Ltd 

Incorporated in 1919 in Mumbai was the first fully Indian Owned Insurance Company in
India. The number one company in India has a wide range of products and spread across
India through more than 1000 Branch Offices. Besides the company has strong presence in Afro-Asian region. It has done a business of over Rs. 5000 crores in 2007-08Official Website: www.newindia.co.in 

3. National Insurance Company Ltd 

Incorporated in 1906 in Kolkata has been one of the leading Insurance companies in
India for ages with more than 16000 employees and over 1000 Branches. The company has 180 policy offerings for all insurance seekers for all insurance needs and has a huge customer base of 10 million. In year 2007-08, it has done a business of over Rs. 3500 crores.Official Website: www.nationalinsuranceindia.com 

4. United India Insurance Company Ltd 

Since its inception in 1938 with its corporate office in Chennai, United India Insurance has been a pioneer in Indian Insurance Industry with more than 18000 employees and around 1300 Branches across the country. In 2007-08 the company has written a business of over Rs. 3000 crores.Official Website: www.uiic.co.in 

Snapshot of Private General Insurance Players in
India