DHIRAJ SHARMA's profile

DHIRAJ rated:

No Easy Day is taken from SEAL parlance "Easy day was yesterday".

This book was recently into the news coz of Pentagon trying to ascertain whether the author had disclosed classified information pertaining to Navy Seals and the Bin Laden operation in general (called Op. Naptune Spear). The author was however given a clean chit by the military authorities and the book is the outcome of that. The author took part in the Bin Laden operation but has adopted a pseudonym to conceal his identity.

Firstly out of the 350 odd pages only around 50 pages are devoted to the operation leading to Bin Laden getting killed in Abbotabad, Pakistan. The rest are devoted to the tough SEAL Training especially the one imparted to a select handpicked ones who are part of SEAL Team Six aka DEVGRU.

The hardships, the camaraderie, the tough training all build up to the grand finale when these heroes undertake a mission. And when these men are not on a mission they train and train and train.

During the actual raid on the Bin Laden compound many things went wrong and despite all the problems, the raid was still successful. That’s because everything that could have gone wrong was previously anticipated and contingency / back up plans were rehearsed multiple times.

The book offers a great insight into the mindsets of the elite and courageous people called Navy SEALS.

Definitely a worth read for those interested in SEAL Op which wiped out Bin Laden and SEAL training in general.

DHIRAJ rated:

I used to have a Casio 9FX Caculator during my college days as most of the other students had. There were two versions of the Casio calculator and the cover used to break by the time you moved to Second year. The richer ones among us used to sport the trendy ones from Texas Instruments. Come to think of it the Calculator was called Calci during those days. I am not sure whether the same slang persists now or not.

Anyway coming to the product the updated FX991MS model from Casio is the best of the lot. The cover is a slider type and can fit as top cover or can be used for support as bottom cover.

The calculator has got all the functions required to tackle all subjects of Engineering be it Maths, Theory of Machines, Heat and Mass Transfer, Thermodynamics, Fluid Machines, Machine Desgin et al...yes I am a Mechanical Enginner and I purchased this one for my brother in law who has recently joined an Engg College.

If you are an engineering student take an engineer's word and buy this calculator. Its the best of the lot and Flipkart is offering it at discounted rates. What else are you looking for ???

DHIRAJ rated:

If you are planning to buy an emergency light look no further.

What distinguishes this one from the other models available in the market is :

PROS
1) Uber cool design - The light is designed along the lines of old lanterns.
2) The illumination is quite good and sufficient to light up the whole room.
3) Easy to carry with cushioning handle.
4) Compact in size and can be stored anywhere.

CONS
1) As other reviewers have pointed out there is no LED to indicate when the battery gets fully charged. However its no big deal...you need to charge for 8 hrs initially and after that 2 to 3 hrs are sufficient.
2) You need to persuade your kids that this is not a toy as they will be quite keen to play with the light.

For those of you who want to save on electricity bill there is an option to charge the battery from sunlight (a separate pad comes along with this one).

What else are you looking for in an emergency light ?????

Go for it !!!!!!!!!

DHIRAJ rated:

I never expected any CEO to write a book about his company in such a lucid and flawless manner.
Howard Shultz left his high paying job at Xerox and joined Starbucks, opened El Giornale, took over Starbucks, sought venture capitalists in the market, opended stores outside Seattle and then all over US, brought in professionals into the business while at the same time retaining two very important core values, "Employees" and "The taste of Coffee".

Starbucks whole journey from humble beginings in a small Seattle Store to world leader in coffee is brought forth in this book. They faced pitfalls, market issues, financial problems but overcame all of this.
The values for which the compnay stands for are mentioned several times throughout the book.

A must have for anybody intent on becoming an enterpreneaur and taking his business forward in a professional way.
Before I pen off let me add a word of caution....this book will start you itching to have a taste of Starbucks Coffee...but you have to wait till they open operations in India.

Coffee being my favourite drink....I can hardly wait for a sip of Starbucks.

DHIRAJ rated:

The Philips Sandwitch maker is the best of its class. I intended to go for other brands (which were less than 1K) but changed my mind and opted for Philips make because of its brand name and positive reviews written on Flipkart.
Received the package yesterday thru Flipkart's excellent service, had sandwitches for dinner and here is my take:

PROS
1) Can accomodate 4 bread pieces (2 sandwhitches)
2) Touch handle is cool and really useful for opening/closing.
3) Non skid feet, i.e its not likely to tilt over that easily.
2) The sandwitches are grilled and cut to triangular shapes.
3) The sandwitches are not burnt at all and are crisp even at the edges. This is something which you may not find with other brands.
4) Takes less than a minute to grill the sandwitches to perfection while other brands take generally 1 to 3 minutes or even more.

CONS
1) Since the sandwitch maker is of white body colour you need to take extra care to keep it spotlessly clean.
2) Short cord length but doesn't make much difference, afterall you will be plugging and keeping it near the socket only.

If you are a bachelor looking for sandwitches for quick breakfast or a housewife keen in preparing tasty sandwitches for your family, look no further and buy this product.

Believe me, its every worth its price.

DHIRAJ rated:

I bought this book for one and only reason i.e Mainland China's food and food only.

Agreed that even while religiously following the ingredients, their quantity and method of preparation mentioned in any cook book you cannot expect them to turn out to be of the same standard as the master chefs/cookery authors would have prepared themselves.
Otherwise all of us would have become Sanjeev Kapoor, Tarla Dalal, Neeta Mehta et al.

Coming back to MC, IMHO MC is the best thing to happen for Chinese cuisine in India and I swear by the taste of their delicacies.

I frankly did not expect to preapare the dishes and generate a taste at par with MC but I definitely did not expect the book to contain only a handful of veg recepies.

The menu at MC restaurants has a ratio of 70/30 in terms of Non Veg/Veg food items. I was dying to try my favourite Veg ones they serve at their Veg Buffet but was initially surprised and later shocked to see that out of the 150 or so odd pages hardly 15 pages have been devoted to Veg dishes while the rest are all Non Veg.

So my dear vegetarins, please don't waste your time and money on buying the Mainland China cookbook...better take a trip to the local MC restaurant and relish the very best of authentic Chinese food.

It would have been better had this book been named as Mainland China Cookbook for Non Vegetarians.

Is Mr Anjan Chatterjee listening ???

DHIRAJ rated:

Trend Micro Security kit came free with my HP Laptop which I had purchased a year back. Needless to say I was keen on continuing with Trend Micro rather than shifting to a new antivirus such as McAfee, Norton etc and hence ordered this set from Flipkart after my last year's anti virus got expired.

Got the CD pack (with free backpack)few days back and here is my take.

PROS
1) Easy to load, simple steps.
2) Takes minumum amount of your hard drive space.
3) Removes/Uninstalls the earlier version on its own.
4) Pop up window is cool.
5) Has additional features like system tuner, parental control, and vault with remote file lock.

CONS
Nil

All in all a good antivirus.. available at discounted rates at Flipkart.. with a free backpack as well.....what else you are looking for !!!!!!!!

DHIRAJ rated:

I am sure this movie would have been declared a masterpiece had Ashutosh Gowarikar decided to make this a decade later.
The box office results of Swades made me wonder that somehow in the crap being churned out by Bollywood we have miserably failed to truly honour this gem of a movie.
The fact is that Swades deserves to be applauded as a sincere effort by Ashutosh Gowariker to show the real India, the India which resides in the villages.

Swades does has its noticeable flaws such as a weak script and storyline (if I may use the hackneyed word), lack of chemistry between SRK and Gayatri Joshi (who looks pretty in every scene) in fact in not a single scene they seem to be in love, a not so good music (only a couple of songs are real good), lack of sequencing, bad editing etc etc. In fact when you know what the end will be like then even a meandering storyline does not help you to be glued to your seat.

The good points - SRK in a totally deglamourised role, its the first time that he has not been portrayed as a martyr, a packaged product (as RGV called him once), he gives a subtle performance which is quite a change from his usual dialogue delivery style. Yes and there are some scenes which will move you to tears.

If you don't want to see Swades, at least see it for the sake of a poor village boy who sells drinking water for 25 paise at a railway station, I don't remember the station's name, after all how could I, how could anyone for that matter, aren't we all away from what is known as the real India, after all you can't cry over the miseries of the people whom you have not met, whose names you don't know. But believe me, after seeing Swades you would cry a bit.

As one reader had pointed out when this movie was released 'An honest film made with honest intentions is being criticiced for being honest". Period.

DHIRAJ rated:

I had seen this movie in theatre, liked it a lot and preordered its DVD on Flipkart which was delivered yesterday. Intended to see the DVD over the weekend but couldn’t resist myself and saw it yesterday evening itself.

Omi Kuarana (Kunal Kapoor) returns from UK to his native village in Punjab so as to pay a UK based don (Munish Makhija) from whom he had loaned some money (Pounds…Pounds as Makhija keeps on correcting Omi whenever he says ki tere paise lauta doonga). His intention is to learn the famed recipe of Chicken Khurana dish from his grandfather (Vinod Nagpal – Basesar of Hum Log) and earn some quick buck in the process.

Though Omi is welcomed back into the family with usual fervor but things have changed in the village since he left for UK shores around 10 years back, his grandfather has become senile and lost his memory, his childhood sweetheart Harman (Huma Qureshi) is engaged to his cousin and adding to the chaos is his chachi’s good for nothing brother Titu Mama (brilliantly played by Rajesh Sharma). Omi tries to generate the recipe at his grandfather’s dhabha with help of Harman.

How Omi comes to know about the secret recipe and wins his sweetheart back forms the crux of the story. In between you have doses of genuine Punjabi tadka full of fun, laughs and touching moments. The songs are hummable too. Those accustomed to life in Punjab’s villages or Punjabi culture in general would be able to relate better to LSTCK.

If you are tired of watching aimless movies with heavy duty stuff, big star cast, stupid storylines, jarring music and useless action then LSTCK is the perfect recipe for you. Its movies like this which make me retain my faith in the Hindi Film Industry.

DHIRAJ rated:

I was impressed by the Da Vinci Code, liked Angels and Demons and had high expectations from The Lost Symbol.
Sadly all my expectations fell flat on my face as I found the storyline of Lost Symbol to be insipid, predictable and boring.
Dan Brown uses the same writing style of his previous works...jet setting the protagonist from one end of the world to another and weaving in endless historical information in between.

I hardly ever leave a book midway but in this case I was left with no other option. I gave up reading when Dan Brown started giving a lecture on various architectural relics and their hidden messages while the protagonist is descending into the endless stairs of the basement of the Capitol Hill. If my memory serves me right he was started descending the stairs after 60 pages and was still descending even after 130 pages. I have infinite patience but not to the level Mr Brown expects his readers to keep.If you are interested in hidden symbols, their meanings, free masons et al I suggest you read "Holy Blood and Holy Grail".

I am not sure how the story ended and frankly I don't give a damn...some of my friends told me the ending was crass...I couldn't agree more with them.