Tag: Washington Post

Print Media.

I am in total agreement with that observation on all media. I rarely see television and my main exposure to media is the newspapers.

A news item shared on WhatsApp by a fellow 6 on 1 Friday blogger Padmum, gave me the idea for this week’s topic.

This story as it comes during the time when our state government has banned distribution of printed news papers by hand during the lockdown in our city, almost made me cry. I am addicted to a dose of five newspapers and the seven crossword puzzles that they contain every day for my forenoon occupation and only I know how I have been managing without them since the lockdown.  And, in all fairness my despair is more for the loss of the crossword puzzles than the news in those papers.

Unlike the West, where the print media is losing ground to Television and internet, in India, it is flourishing or should I say was flourishing thanks to a very news hungry populace deeply involved in our politics and sports.  Unfortunately however, while the headlines may contain the news, most content is opinion and the op-ed pages just reflect  the philosophy of the news paper, and for the English press in India, it is left wing and anti just about everything.

One therefore tries to see what the foreign press has to say and sadly, they are no better.  Here is a classic example of what a leading news paper from the land of two of my fellow bloggers here reports and why we are not particularly enamoured with them either.

The Militant Monk shown in the clip is Yogi Adityanath, the democratically elected Chief Minister of our largest state with a population ~25 million. He is an ascetic forced into politics thanks to years of misrule in his state of residence and very highly thought of by his constituency.  Contrast that with Baghdadi about whom I hardly need to explain.

The Washington Post is hardly alone and if I start to list the other news papers, my readers will get bored and leave the rest of the post unread.  I am sure that they know exactly what I mean.

This is my take on this week’s Friday 6 On 1 blog post topic. The other five bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Sanjana, Padmum,  Raju, Shackman and Conrad.  This week’s topic was suggested by Padmum. Please do go over to their respective blogs to see what they have to say on the topic. Thank you.

Gender Classifications.

From the Washington Post Style Invitational, in which it was postulated that English has male and female nouns, and readers were asked to assign a gender to nouns of their choice and to explain their reason.

Some of the best submissions:

Detective Novel — F. because it keeps you wondering what comes up next ! .

Swiss Army Knife — M. because even though it appears useful for a wide variety of work, it spends most of its time just opening bottles.

Kidneys — F. because they always go to the bathroom in pairs.

Penlight — M. because it can be turned on very easily, but isn’t very bright.

Hammer — M. because it hasn’t evolved much over the last 5,000 years but it’s handy to have around .

Tyre — M. because it goes bald and often is over-inflated.

Hot air balloon — M. because to get it to go anywhere you have to light a fire under it. And, of course, there’s a lot of hot air !

Shoe — M. because it is usually unpolished, with its tongue hanging out.

Copier –F. because once turned off, it takes a while to warm up. Also it is an effective reproductive device when the right buttons are pushed but it can wreak havoc when the wrong buttons are pushed.

Ziploc bags — M. because they hold everything in, but you can always see right through them !

Critic — F. What, this needs to be explained?!!!

Hourglass — F. because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom. 😀😀

Profit Based Healthcare.

'You're right, we did make a profit.'
‘You’re right, we did make a profit.’

What a topic to write on! One of my pet grouses is the modern medical profession’s obsession with profits rather than patient welfare and very obligingly, Shackman has suggested this week’s Friday LBC topic to enable me to let off some steam! You may find another blogger Pravin also writing on this subject.

To start with, for those who may be interested about the medical profession in India, there is a remarkable book written by a group of doctors exposing some of the malpractices prevalent, reading which is a hair raising experience. I have read this a few times to stress points in discussions with some friends and am quite shocked at this knowledge being quite well prevalent but more astonishingly accepted as a fact of life. This drives me to believe that one has to be very lucky to find ethical medical practitioners.

I will share with my readers two personal stories to give my take on the subject.

A very long time ago, both my replaced hip joints needed to be revised and the surgeon I had been recommended to perform the revisions recommended that I get them done at a famous hospital in our town. The first one went without incident and I was quite happy with the outcome. The second one done after just two months went off well but the recovery process from the surgery took a very peculiar route at the hospital. Doctors who had nothing to do with my case would visit me and make some general enquiries and disappear. It was at the time of settling the bill that I found that those visits were being billed to me and I simply refused to pay. When the administrator came to find out what had happened, I pointed out this to him asked him to check from my surgeon if these were called in for consultation by him. I told the administrator that I will not pay and he could do what he wanted and that I was perfectly willing to stay on in the hospital till the bill was brought for settlement without the additional charges. My surgeon who has since then become a personal friend also supported me and after much toing and froing, the bill was reduced. I paid and got discharged albeit later than I should have been.

Another revision became necessary after ten years and on my refusing to go the same hospital again, the same surgeon suggested that we arrange for it in another newer hospital where too he had accreditation and I readily agreed and it was a delightful experience.

I have written about the other incident with my frozen shoulder when I wrote about My Health.

If I had such unpleasant experiences, I have also had some very good experiences which too are brought out clearly in the two stories that I have shared above. There are many more concerning the experiences that I have had with my GP as well my late wife’s Cardiologist. I also had some very good experiences with specialists and another hospital where I had to take my late father. Moreover, I recently had a serious problem for which I had to consult a specialist who not only made home visits as an exception, but also was very fair in the charging of his fees and most importantly, he gave me a lot of confidence and in a very short time cured me too.

So, we do have the two ends of the spectrum operating here in India as is confirmed by others. While I have had experiences of both things like this report contents also happen here.

I am sure that Shackman has similar tales to tell having undergone some serious issues with medicine in the recent past. I also keep reading about some serious issues with the Pharma industry like this article in The Washington Post. There are a number of other horror stories about which my readers know and I look forward to comments on whether the both good and bad exists in their patches of green too.

I also look forward to seeing some appropriate music links from Shackman for this most unlikely topic for music!