Madras Christian College and DeepWoods 80s
Link: http://s93811629.onlinehome.us/
I was a student of this great institution during 1978-81. Did my Eng.Litt there. A fantastic campus, great ambience, top-of-the-line educational standards has made MCC retain its position as one of the top colleges in India for several decades now. There is something unique about Madras Christian College, and the bond it produces is seen strongly within the Alumni.
Sometime during September 1981, a friend who was my senior by one year wrote to me asking if I knew the whereabouts of her close pal, who was my classmate. I emailed her the details and she gave me the IDs of few ppl from my Class of 81. The fire started under my ass and I put up a small contact page on my server with email IDs of the Alumni I was in touch with. In a month, we had a neat banter going and I went ahead and built and hosted DeepWoods 80s.
I managed to collect a good bunch of images and content from the good 'ol days and soon people started landing up from across batches. Another good pal signed up for a 500MB space from a free offer and we migrated there. We posted on Alumni.net, Batchmates.com and other Alumni oriented sites and more ppl landed up. We now have something like 500+ pics (from 1887 to 2005),a Forum, Chat and a Graffitti Board apart from other MCC-Centric features.
The site also boasts of the Net's only Alumni store that sells non-institutional merchandise, meaning regular products like Tees, Music, Books etc. The online Trade Post is called Opposite the Cafe in nostalgia of the MCC Co-operative Stores that used to be opposite the students cafe.
I work on the site with a lil help from my friends. DeepWoods 80s just turned three and a dude from the '83 batch donated 500 MB of space on a very fast secure server. Planning to put in some Flash and rebuild the whole site.
If you are an student of MCC or know someone who was, tell them to land up. We are a motely gang and we love company....
Pets: Katrina's Other Victims
Lots was shown on TV about the sad situation at New Orleans. Most did not highlight the suffering the animals that lived there went through. I found this gallery on National Geographic.
I'm sure there are more stories and photos on the net.
Katrina, Mumbai and GWB
I dont know if anyone noticed, but there weren't as many blog posts as during the post-Tsunami period. I'm not talking about just the Indian Blogs, but the Intl. blogging circuit. Is it b'cos folks were repulsed at what they were seeing on TV rather than feeling a sense of sympathy?
I was about to post a comparison between the New Orleans and Mumbai scenario that's been doing the rounds through mail, but noticed that Joslin, my good pal has already posted it in his Blog - Top of the Word. So I left my comments there 
But lotsa folks are making a comparison between Mumbai rains and Katrina, and saying that the Indian official machinery was much faster in getting to where it mattered. 100% right. Mr. GWB's has fucked up again and there is no way he's this time gonna blame it on some poor sod in another country. I'll bet my ass that the erstwhile Dictator of Iraq, Mr. Hussein would have managed to get relief operations organised on a faster scale.
What people are not talking about is the speed at which our Govt acted immediately after the Tsunami, which covered a larger area and was a bigger disaster. I was in the thick of it working for a New Year rock show on ECR and I know that the cops, ministers and the officials reached the affected coastal areas immediately. The TN Govt did abosultely a wonderful job of controlling the panic, the law & order and the after-effects health issues. Not one house on the ECR, (or for that matter along the coast) was looted, though some of the fishermen living along the coastline are poor and could have used the opportunity. Just one example.
Like I said in Joslin's blog, GWB seems more interested in policing other countries than his own. What a bummer trip for the folks who elected for the second time a guy who takes more vacations than rock stars. May not be an apt thing to say while the innocent folks of New Orleans are still suffering, but it looks like they reaped what they sowed.