Its been a loong day today. Was at work most of the day. Papa took the Corolla to get it serviced. Turns out the people at the dealership said that the tyre on the driver’s side was damaged from the inside and that it was so badly damaged that it was ready to burst any moment. It needed to be fixed right away and they asked for 300 bucks!!! Papa called me at work and I said this was the case. I remember last weekend, I was driving back to the apartment and the car bumped high in this huge pothole that I missed. Maybe it was caused by this! Now, I have a pretty new car and it has warranty on it, but the dealership said that since this was not a “defect” per se, they would not reimburse us. Finally after much khitpit, they agreed to discount 50 bucks! Bah! It was still superexpensive to get the tyre replaced! Papa had to stay there for FIVE hours to get it fixed!

Now, on the brighter side I got to drive papa’s car all day today! **beaming** Now there are a lot of differences in dad’s car and mine. It drives like its flowing water, it is spick and span no stray papers, receipts, or CDs, when you turn the player on you can hear bhajans, there are very few hindi film CDs, and even after using it for about the same time as mine, it still drives much better than my Crolla’. I guess thats how papa’s cars are always! Does not have to bear the brunt of rough, fast driving on highways.

Again, I have my best buddy, my Crolla’ with me. I think I am going to try to keep it with me for as long as I can! After all it did save my life in a bad bad wreck two years ago. Hopefully, no more surprise potholes will spring up and my buddy will not have to be ‘hospitalized’ again now Touch wood! : – )

Was on the pedo floor today and worked with two little kids!

Children these days are so defiant and want to do everything themselves. She walked out into the waiting room and called this child’s name out, J S! Little J was playing on a chair and as he was getting down, his mother tried to help him get down and was given a stern look by J — “Mommy, I can get down by myself!!!!”

Mommy: “Oh ok!”
Girl: Allright Mrs.S, we are going to take J to the room and take care of his teeth for him!
J: **taken aback** ” But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, I brush my teeth everyday! They are fine! I don’t want to take a look at them.
Mommy: Yes honey, but this young lady does.
j: I dont want to
Mommy: Oh yes you do!

Little J is about to cry.
The young lady, Ms.K, smiles at him, “okay J, lets sit you down in this supercool chair. Now if you let Ms. K look at your teeth, she will give you a price from a treasure box! See that treasure box right there, its got some goood goodies in there! So you want a sticker and a goody right?”

J:uh huh **still a little hesitant**

Ms. K sits him down in the chair.

J: what is THAT!
K: Its a fish shaped toothbrush.
J: why is it blue?
K: because you are a boy arent you, and we thought you would like this color.
J: I dont like it, i dont like the toothbrush, I dont like ANY blue toothbrushes.
K: what color did you want buddy?
J: I want pink!
k: okay we will get you pink!

Ms. K gets up and gets the pink one, she gathers some prophy paste and take a mirror and puts brings it close to J. J does an amazing 360 degree flip!

J: WHATS THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT~
K: J buddy, its only a mirror. here can you see your teeth in the mirror. Here, have a look and then I will look inside.
J: i dont like mirrors! They make me look ugly!

Ms. K wanted to laugh loud and give the chid a hug! Mommy is getting really annoyed at this point.
J will you SIT DOWN and listen to the lady!

J: but i dont like brushing, I dont like my teeth, i dont like this mirror.

Ms. K with some candid moves, plays with the controls of the chair and the chair starts moving. J is utterly surprised.

K: want a roller coaster ride!

It takes a good 5-10 mins of “roller coaster” playing with the chair when J is finally ready to have his exam and treatment done. Throughout the treatment, he talks to K like he is about to cry but never actually cries. At the end of it all, he takes the big goody from the treasure chest.

Ms.K: see that wansnt that bad was it? you did just fine and you got a goody!
J: Thats because i was a good boy, you wouldnt have done it if I , J hadnt been good!

The mommy starts apologizing profusely and before she can turn to him, he vanishes!

Aaaah kids! Gotta love em!

I remember a while ago when Deepak was looking at a list of songs on np.com. He said there was this girl who was absolute “deewani” and was compiling a song list for herself and Neeraj. DJ had left almost 100 songs on that list.
I became a silent reader of the blog since then. Later, I left a comment on Poonam’s saying that my story was very similar to hers.
Curious Poonam shot an email to me and I was very glad that she did! From there on, I became a regular at hers! Poonam was a big part and inspiration and a source of continuous encouragement when I was going through a very rough time two months ago. Having gone through the same she had all faith that things would work out. And things have worked out! Slowly but surely progressing.

On an even better note, things have turned absolutely beautifully for Neeraj and Poonam. They have had their share of obstacles being in a long distance relationship and have had to face a lot of adversities as well! But now, Neeraj is here in the US and in a month, both of them are getting engaged! An engagement party is on the cards!

I am so happy for the two of you and here is wishing both of you good luck in your life ahead. May the wedded bliss last for eternity.

And if Neeraj gets on the wrong side of the road again …hmmm err ummm..you drive Poonam

B and I send our love and best wishes your way

Once again, congratulations to the lovely couple.

I have decided to do atleast one dentall post a month from hereon. That doesn’t mean there will not be more than one. But atleast one.

Technology can be a boon sometimes, especially for healthcare. MRIs aid in early diagnosis of cancer, prothetic appliances help diabled individuals to move around with ease, hearing aids help people hear the sounds they would not hear otherwise, contact lenses free people of tagging a pair of glasses around all the time, and even better laser surgery frees you from corrective lenses altogether!

Needless to say, dentistry has had its fair share of technological advances. Ultrasonic instruments, digital intraoral images, and my topic of discussion here today – digital radiographs or “x-rays”.

If you have been to a dentist and she or he has ever taken radiographs of your teeth, you might have noticed them looking at a tiny square piece that looks like a photo negative of “x-ray”. That has advanced and dentists dont need to look at those tiny little things anymore. They take ages to process, expose the patient to way too much radiation, you have to be in a dark room to process it, they are too small to look at and if its come out a little dark, well too bad you cant do anything about it.

Latest radiographs out there are digital ones. Take a sensor (with a cover ofcourse). Place it in the patient’s mouth, press the button, place it in the processor and boom you have an image on your screen. Something that looks like this:

With these, you can enlarge them, enhance it by color, contrast, you do not have to carry them around, you can flip the image to look at it vertically, and you can reuse the same sensor over and over again.

I have processed the traditional films in a dark room and processed the sensors in a scanning machine, seen both the tiny films and the digital images. Best of all, latest radiograph sensors are high speed and do not need a lot of radiation exposure for these! You can set the exact amount of exposure you want for certain areas of the mouth. This digitization is not restricted to dentistry, doctors have been doing this now for years!

Little things like this excite me. Now, why would one care about x-rays at all?

Well, several things, a few of which I will mention here. If you have a cavity beginning to form, bone loss around the teeth, crooked teeth, some abnormality in the tooth, lesions at the tip of the root, if you want to see unerupted teeth, it can all be seen in these radiographs! It is all here!

Several kinds of “x-rays” are taken! My favourite is the panoramic where radiation is exposed all around a persons head to give a good image of their complete dentition where you can see all of them teeth! Something that looks like this:

In the picture above, the last four teeth (last one on each side) have not come out yet and if this person opened their mouth you would not even notice these four!But you can see them so clearly here! See that top left one, that is kinda pushing on the root of the tooth next to it, thats probably going to have to be pulled out once its erupts out of the gum. and see how perfectly aligned they are ;) all mine

Sorry people if this was so boring that you wanted to pull your teeth errrr hair out…but teeth are the one thing I am most passionate about!

I have been blogging for over a year now, and have blogged about every topic under the sun about this mundane chagrin called life. What I have mostly refrained from writing about is my personal opinions on politics, government and the works. Maybe I deemed myself too unintelligent to have an opinion of my own, or maybe I was a little too afraid to voice my stand for fear of criticism and having to defend my own views. I was maybe a little wary of this world of blogs for reasons I was not sure of.

Today, on one of my blog hopping sprees, I came across two very different and very interesting blogs.

I found the first link on Vidhi’s blog about brutalities on a non-suspecting law-abiding citizen in Bangalore. Nimish Adani writes that he was brutally beaten by railway officials in Bangalore as part of a heist by a group of people to make easy money off unsuspecting individuals. Read all about it here. Abuse of power does not come as a surprise to many of us who are aware of the corruption and politics that usually goes hand in hand with a government job. However, seldom are such abuses publicized, even less, blogged about. Adani had the courage to stand up for justice and the patience to do the rounds of dozens of offices before he was taken seriously. He had the network through which he sent out emails to everyone regarding his situation hoping to get media attention which would definitely speed up the process. He even blogged about it. In no time, he was being backed by a network of supporters from all around the globe. The media got a hang of it, forcing government officials to take immediate action. I commend Adani’s patience and courage.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as courageous, patient, or has as much will to stand up for justice against a system that does not make being at the recieveing end of justice any easy. The email messages Adani sent out played a major part in building a support group through which he did get in touch with several media personnel to highlight his plight and fight for justice.
Abuse of power calls for another post another day. Here, I am pondering over how effective and powerful cyberspace can be in our world today.

Another development that has had a powerful impact in blogsville recently is the controversy over IIPM’s advertising and supposed false claims about the institutions credentials. All I had to do was stumble upon the links at Sadik’s and Clueless‘s blog and voila, I was reading through and devouring page after page and comment after comment of this hullaballoo.

Here is a synopsis: Gaurav Sabnis linked an article by a magazine JAM evaluating IIPnM, its claims, and its credibility. Sabnis blogged about his personal opinion on what he thought about IIPnM. Apparently, IIPnM did not take that very kindly and issued him a “legal notice” via email of a possible lawsuit of Rs 125 crore and several conditions along with it. The situation gets even more interesting with Sabnis’s employer IBM being dragged into this. Sabnis resigned from his job because he wanted to stand by his principles.

Now, why do I care? Why did I sweat over this piece of controversy when I could have easily refrained from posting about it? Honestly, I could care less about what IIPnM claims or advertises because really, I was not aware that an IIPnM existed, or that there was a magazine JAM, or a blogger Gaurav Sabnis before I stumbled upon umpteen posts and blogs about this isssue.

What I do know is that Sabnis is a blogger. Everyone reading this right now is a blogger and has blogged about all and sundry, each voicing his/her opinion. Are we now supposed to shy away from what we think is right and wrong? Can I as a blogger be sued for criticizing an institution that I do not believe in? As a blogger, am I not entitled to my own personal point of view and freedom of speech? Lets say I am terribly upset about how a certain company’s government handles its affairs and I decide to blog about. Should I then be on my toes waiting for a legal notice to arrive from the government? Really, is it now illegal to articulate in words what I really think about something or someone on a blog? It is one thing to publish false stories as facts and another to publish one’s own opinions and views,

A blog by definition is anything from an online journal to a reflection of the bloggers personality and views.

I remember the recent volley of arguments and disagreements over the right choice for the Indian entry at the Oscars at Ashtrix’s blog. A lot of us frivolously voiced our likes and dislikes between Black and Paheli. Do we now need to be waiting for a notice from SLB or Amol Palekar for saying we did not like their movies or that we think they shouldn’t be the official entry to the Oscars?

What is even more disturbing is the way the institute handled this. The worst thing an educational institution can do is get caught in this kind of negative publicity. Rashmi Bansal (editor of JAM)’s blog has been inundated with lewd comments from supposed IIPM students and alumni. Now, I cannot comment on the veracity of IIPnM’s claims, and I may be biased towards the bloggers, but I do know that truth does not need justifications. If IIPnM is truly what it claims to be, why does it not come out in the open and really show the world what it is. Why did it not invite Gaurav Sabnis to its campus so that they could clear his misunderstanding if they thought he had any? I am sure Sabnis would have been happy to visit and re-comment and possibly revise his thoughts had there been anything different to say about IIPnM. Could this be how supposedly established institutions handle criticism?

As for my take on this, I think it takes a man of courage to quit his job in order to stand by his principles. The actual facts maybe completely skewed from my perception of the situation, and my knowledge of the story is only one-sided here. But I do know that if someone has an opinion about something, the person is fully entitled to it.

In my opinion, that is freedom of thought and speech.

Sabnis is also being backed by a huge network of friends, bloggers, and supporters. Updates on this at Desipundit.