Speed Limits in India

It is a well known fact that the Speed limits for traffic in India is a hypothetical concept which only exists in principle. Everyone knows that and so did I. But sometimes if I chance upon a speed limit sign board somewhere, I am reminded of this hypothesis!

A few days back, on my way home from office, I got stuck in a heavy traffic jam. Naturally the traffic was moving at speeds lesser than that which a person walks at. With my radio plugged into my ears, I kept watching the vehicles and people around me. I was pitying the guy who had bought a brand new Audi A4 luxury car and was stuck in the same traffic jam as I was with my pulsar! At that snails pace, I happened to notice this small sign board on the left, which specified the various speed limits for the different categories of vehicles. Believe me, there were about 5-6 categories mentioned with their respective speed limits. And the size of the sign board had limited the size and hence the visibility of these figures. I was amused by the thought that, eventhough I was in a jam moving at < 10km/hr speed I was not able to read the speed limit values, how did the authorities expect people zooming off next to it to read those values and adhere to them!

Sadly the rules in India have got a new definition, of being breakable and bendable inherently.

Crazy Online advertisements...

Imagine a situation where you're sitting in the office in front of your computer. You're tired with your work and want a break. You think of catching up with some news and open up a news paper website like TimesOfIndia or Economictimes. You choose one of the articles that interest you and open it up. Now along with the article, there is a picture of a lady in bikini staring at you and making faces at you. Not that I am distracted by it, but I am more worried about what would anybody think of me to have opened a site with a picture of a bikini-clad lady. While what I am actually trying to read is a genuine article featured in the news paper.

A few days ago, I remember, I was browsing some website, while I was away from the laptop for a brief moment when suddenly some funny voice from the computer started shouting, laughing and giggling loudly, it turned out to be some ad on the top of the page with a lot of 'smilies' with these scary sounds!

Don't people think about these simple things before including these ads into their websites? I mean, what sense does it make to include a bikini-lady on a page that holds an article about Mutual Funds! While at one end there is Google who is coming out with context-based ads, which understand the nature of stuff you're reading and accordingly places ad on the pages, the other end of the spectrum are these brilliant souls who place totally irrelevant ads on unrelated pages! I didn't matter as long as it didn't affect our reading, but sometimes, in situations like the one explained above, I wish they were more sensible!