Since this site seems to be down frequently I created an account in Blogger. Created a blog there with the name navaneet. Pretty quickly found it is not very convenient to use. May be becuase I am used to the total freedom I have here. They dont have comments by default. You have to install it yourself and it will be stored externally. You cannot do preview easily. Blog editing is one place and publishing is in another domain, though that doesnt affect anything much. Blogger too can support unicode. But for the time being i think i will stay here instead of hunting around to find features of blogger. Hope this hosting lives longer.

I spent a lot of time changing the unicode editor Simredo3 to edit Tamil. I succeeded in adding transliteration for easy Tamil editing while it had earlier only typewriter format. But I wanted more to edit blogs in Tamil. So I decided applets are the way to go and converted the editor to an applet by removing most of the file access parts. I learned some interface with html forms and applet and made the applet to talk to the forms in this blogging tool.

After all that I was able to edit in Tamil directly on the website. It was cool. Later while browsing I found that there exists a blogger API which most of the blogging tools including this b2 support. When all blogging tools where trying to move to the desktop to make it easier I was going in the opposite direction. Why didnt I think of making the editor do the blogging directly. I was stupid. Hmm now I will try to change the editor to run on my PC and just update the blogs.

முற்றுப் புள்ளி எல்லாம் வைத்து கிட்டத்தட்ட ஒழுங்காக வேலை செய்யும் எடிட்டர் ரெடி. அவ்வப்போது சில bug தலை காட்டும். ஆனால் சமாளித்து எழுதி விடலாம். நான் எழுதியதை நான் தானே பொருத்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டும்.

If somebody comes from India to US one of the big differences he/she notices is going to hospitals. Almost the entire process will be new and strange to a person coming from India. In India normally you dont get an appointment to see a doctor. If you feel sick you just go to a hospital which is usually a single practioner and wait for your turn. Then see the doctor after not more than an hour’s wait, then pay the doctor either there or at a counter. Then take his prescription to a medical shop and buy yourself medicine.

Here if you fall sick before going to a hospital you first need to make an appointment with the doctor. You take the phone and call a nearby hospital, they will ask you which insurance you are on and then will say finally your appointment will be some time next month. You wont be laughing at this if you are here for some time.

Off course there are emergency admissions and I have also seen some walk-in centers.

Everything runs through insurance. If you dont have medical insurance and you want to get to a doctor major part of your pay check will disappear. I dont know who started this whether the insurance company or the doctors to have such an unpayable bill. If you have insurance and then goto a doctor you dont need to touch your money except for a small copayment.

I have seen medical insurance also slowly coming up in India. I hope that does not drive the cost up.