Leicester Phone Number Scam Affects Me

I started getting a number of calls that started with 0116 and were of 11 digits each (including zero). I had missed them all but the last one on day one, because I had been away from the phone. The last time I picked up the phone, I heard the phone ringing at the other end, instead of someone speaking, as is supposed to happen when someone calls you. So someone had rigged the phone such that when I picked up the phone, it would ring somewhere and I would become the caller rather than the person whom someone had called. I also realized that the number was from abroad. That meant I would be billed heavily for the call as a caller, a call that I had no desire to respond to, to start with. I did all this thinking fast enough so that I disconnected the call after the first ring at the other end.
The next day I got a few more calls from the same initial digits in the numbers, though the last couple of digits were different. I rejected the calls. Then I did a Google search and found out the following information.

1. 0116 area code was for Leicester, UK.
2. One can buy these numbers, so that the recipient of the calls believes the caller is from Leicester, UK, while he could be anywhere in the world, where the calls would be diverted by the company who sold these numbers. Read more about it HERE. This company seems to be doing legitimate business, as far as I can see. But someone is probably using the service for other purposes.
3. There is new telephone scam, reported by Trading Standards officers, Leicester, UK. Read more about it HERE. The recipient is asked to pay money to stop getting these type of calls. It seems a number of people do that.
4. In the numbers I had received the calls from, only the last two digits were changing. So one will have to block only 20 numbers to stop getting calls from these spammers/fraudsters. I wish MTNL permitted blocking telephone numbers with a wildcard. Then all calls from Leicester, UK could be blocked at one go, using 0116*. Of course one could not do it if one had friends in Leicester, UK.

I hope this helps people out there, whom someone tries to trick as I was tricked. If I am wrong in my thinking anywhere, please email me and correct my thinking. Thanks.

Obesity Caricature

This post is about someone I don't know, who handled the outpatient case paper of one of my patients without letting her know about it. I had seen her some time ago. Besides her gynecological problem, she also had obesity. There was no reason for her obesity that could be found medically. The final diagnosis (besides the gynecological diagnosis) was overeating and not exercising. After prescribing her medication, I had advised her to reduce her weight by making adjustments in her diet and walking briskly for 30-45 minutes every day. An operation would be performed after she got investigated for fitness for receiving anesthesia. When she came back for follow-up, I looked at my previous notes. There was a word that I could not understand, though the handwriting was mine. It looked like this.

I just could not make out what had made me write the word 'BESITY'. After thinking about it for some time, it dawned on me that there was a sad face behind 'BESITY', which I had not drawn. A little more thinking showed that I had actually written the following word, and someone had modified it.

I must have been a little concerned about her obesity, anticipating wound breakdown after an abdominal surgery. So I had written that word in a rather large print. Someone had been tempted to modify that 'O'.
"Who wrote something on your case paper?" I asked her.
"No one" she said. "I had gone to my native place after seeing you, and seen a doctor there because I did not feel very well."
Tracking that doctor in her native place and pulling him up for being naughty was not an easy task. So I let it go. But I did wish that he had at least cured her if he had to mess up my clinical notes.

How To Fix Windows 8 - Open Letter to Mr Bill Gates

With humble apologies, Mr Bill Gates, I submit that Microsoft Corporation goofed up when creating Windows 8 start Up screen. I can understand that you might have thought that your initial users had grown as old as the company, and had developed problems of refraction, so that they would see big icons better than small menu items. But to put icons on the screen and ask the users to go through them to find the one they wanted was not a very good idea. I would not use the computer rather than sort through a lot of icons to find the one I wanted. I also can understand these users were getting nearer the time they would get Alzheimer's disease, and the best way to prevent it or at least postpone it would be to solve puzzles or engage in difficult mental activities. You must have meant well for them, if that was your intention. But to search for a way to shut down Windows 8 is not exactly a fun activity, especially if you have to do it with the same degree of difficulty every day. Your start up screen made me think of someone who used to keep his things very well organized, so that he could find them even in dark, until one day a child entered his room and messed up the whole thing so that he could not find anything. Do I need to say I was thinking of myself (not about my room and some child, but the start up screen and my icons and menus).

I would not have upgraded to Windows 8, because I knew this would have happened. But the civic body gave me a PC to work on, and it had Windows 8 as the operating system. After struggling to get used to it and failing miserably at it, I fixed up your Windows 8 so that it worked for me. Google search helped, but the need and efforts were my own. I made the following changes.

1. As soon as the PC booted and showed that start up screen, I pressed Windows+D. That showed me the old desktop.
2. I created a shortcut to the My Documents folder on the desktop.
3. I pressed Windows+E every time I needed the Windows Explorer (old trick, huh? God be praised that the old shortcuts worked in Windows 8 too).
4. I created a new folder on the desktop, called it 'Software' and made shortcuts in it to each software program that I needed from the 'Program Files' folder and 'Windows - System 32' folder. I included everything that used to come up after clicking on the start button in the past, including control panel and system tools. Whenever I needed to launch some software, I opened this folder and double clicked on the shortcut to the program I wanted. This was my substitute for the 'All Programs' of older versions of Windows.
5. I created a shortcut on the desktop for launching the login window for logging into the internet.
6. I created a new shortcut on the desktop, typed 'shutdown -s -t 0' in the space provided for its location and accepted the name 'Shutdown.exe' that Windows offered kindly. Then I pinned it to the task bar by dragging it to it. This was my substitute for the 'shutdown' button. I just had to click on it once and Windows shut down smoothly.

I wish someone had advised you to let the users choose between older desktop and newer start up screen when Windows was installed, or later if one got fed up with what you gave us to use. Considering your philanthropic nature, I believe someone misled you rather than you decided that you could decide what the users should have. I have written this post for others like me who want to fix Windows 8. Another reason for writing it is that your BingBot that crawls the net and indexes web pages (including mine) reads this page and someone there informs you what you might do with the next version of Windows. If you insist on continuing with what you have done with Windows 8, I will not upgrade to it. If the civic body forces me to use a PC with that version, I will fix it to my liking. If I am too old to make that effort, I will tell the civic body to get it fixed the way I want it, or convince the civic body to switch to Linux. That last one may sound like an empty threat to you. I don't blame you, because it probably is an empty threat. Many people say that convincing you will be far easier than convincing the civic body. Losing my business may not make any difference to your empire, but what if many others do the same?

Royalty In Halls of Academia

Once upon a time there was a Gurukul [गुरुकूल] (what is called a university in modern times) in Aryavat [आर्यावत]. The chief Guru [गुरु] (what is called a vice chancellor in modern times) was a famous Guru who was selected by the King from a handful of aspirants. This was a tenure post for 5 years, subject to reappointment if the King and his ministers were pleased by the Guru. This Guru was given a Rath [रथ] (what is called a car in modern times) for his daily commute. This Rath was no ordinary vehicle. It was special, like a sedan in modern times. The Guru was so pleased with his new status, that he got his Rath modified to his liking. This activity can be compared to renovation of residences given to ministers and such in modern times. Since the Rath belonged to the Gurukul, the Guru could not spend his own money on this renovation, and was forced to use the money in the treasury of the Gurukul. The original cost of the Rath was said to be 3000000 gold coins, and the cost of the renovation was said to be 3000000 gold coins too. A simple math shows the total cost to be 6000000 gold coins. Needless to say the Rath probably had special features like perhaps access to the Gurukul's database, the King's ear, GPS, wi-fi, SAT phone, nuclear weapons(?) or whatever. Perhaps it ran a few inches above ground, like the Rath of Udhishthir [युधिष्ठिर] in Mahabharata [महाभारत].
Once the Guru had to visit another province for an academic matter. There was a flying Rath service, which was paid for by the Gurukul, just like his own Rath was. Air travel was faster than more comfortable than that by road. So the Guru took the morning flight. But he was so used (what is called addicted in modern times) to his own Rath for travel by road, that he sent his Rath by road ahead of the flight, so that he was met at the airport by his driver in that Rath, who drove him to the place of that academic work, and drove him back to the airport after the work was over. Then the Guru took a flight back, while the driver went back by road. It is not known if he made it in time to receive the Guru at the home airport to drive him back to the Gurukul. If not, he might have been laid off and another driver might have been appointed.
The name of this Guru has been put down in Golden letters in the archives of the Gurukul for giving a Royal touch in this manner to the position of the chief Guru.
I came across this story while reading our Purana [पुराण] and have no personal knowledge of the identity of the said King, the said Guru, and the authenticity of the story. I personally do not believe this story, but I do admire the imagination of the storyteller. I have reproduced the story here so that my readers can see how fertile imagination can concoct stories which sound quite true.

Intern Who Thought Out Of The Box

One of the pleasures :-( of being the head of a department is having to sign the log books of interns. The other pleasures include having to sign other documents, but let us stick to the first one here. The health university has given this pleasurable activity to department heads. The pleasure comes in triplicate. There are three places where the head of the department has to sign, after the person under whom the intern has worked has signed. Of these signatures, one is on a completion certificate. The other two are on identical pages, of which one is probably retained by the department that runs the internship program. These two pages are not consecutive pages in the log book. For making the pleasurable activity a little tolerable, the interns put pieces of paper near the spine of the log book, marking those pages - book marks or tags. They are actually not so thoughtful. The clerk and peon in the departmental office make them do it, so that the head of department does not get irritated trying to find the right pages. Usually the interns do it properly. Sometimes they don't put any book marks. Sometimes they put them in wrong places. Sometimes the bookmarks fall off. I have been doing this work from 2001. Even when there are book marks, getting the right pages open is a bit of a hassle. If you don't believe me, sit with 20-25 notebooks, tag them, and try opening them. After 14 years of this work, I found an intern who thought out of the box.

She had taken a card measuring about 4" x 5". She had cut three sides of another rectangle in the middle of this card. Then she had folded this part out like a trapdoor. Then she had put the base marking the last page requiring my signature, the flap marking the second page requiring my signature, and had marked the first page with a separate piece of card. Opening those two pages somewhat near each other was a breeze. I remembered her as a student, sitting in the front row during lectures and paying attention to the lectures. When the peon took away the log books after I had signed them, I suddenly thought about congratulating her for this idea. Unfortunately she had already collected her log book in those few minutes and gone away. This batch of interns had finished their internship. I am unlikely to see them again, unless they come to our institute for postgraduate studies. Hence this post. I hope she reads this or someone who does tells her about it. I am sure this intern will do well in life, because how can one who can think original thoughts not do well?

The Student Who Remembered

This post is about a doctor who is a big name in endoscopic surgery today. He had some time before doing a case in a nearby hospital a few days ago. So he came to meet me, being my old student.
"I knew you would be in the OT" he said. "I took a chance that you would be free."
"Good to see you" I said. "You look prosperous."
"I am doing reasonably OK" he said modestly. Then we talked of a few things here and there. Before I had to leave to go into OT for another case, he said,
"Sir, I always tell all my students about my first laparoscopy in my student days. Ask him" he said, pointing towards his student who had come with him. The student smiled and nodded. I must have looked confused, because he proceeded to tell me about that case.
"She was a patient weighing 100 kg. It would have been a difficult case for a beginner. The Assistant Professor asked you if he should do it instead of letting me do it, since I could fail to do it successfully. You said, 'No. If we do not let him do this one, he will remain afraid of operating on obese patients all his life. I will assist him myself.' You assisted me, and I could get the laparoscope into the peritoneal cavity in the first attempt. I always remember that. You taught us all the basics and we are grateful."
I did not remember that story, but I did remember that principle as one that I had followed.
"I am glad you remembered and think well of me because of that" I said. "Thanks for remembering and also for reminding me."
Another colleague of mine was sitting there listening to us. After this fellow rushed away to do his case in the nearby hospital, I remarked to this colleague, "I honestly don't remember doing this, but the principle underlying it is one that I believed in and followed."
"We have so many students that we sometimes forget what we do in their training. But some things touch the sensitive ones, and they remember those things forever" the colleague said.
It was good to know that there were some people who remembered me for caring for their training.

Kalu The Hospital Cat

Our hospital is very stray animal friendly. Some of them behave as if they are pets. We used to have a lot of dogs awhile ago. Now they are fewer, though not by virtue of any measures taken by the administration. The administration is still friendly towards them, animal activists please note. Now the cats are in greater number. They keep having babies, and the babies are quite cute. One such cat, who is fondly called Kalu by those who have seen him, is such a resident cat. We could have called him our sitting cat, but he never sits anywhere for long. He keeps roaming the corridors, the wards, the pantries, and outside the building. His territory is quite wide. At one end it extends to the canteen. At the other end it extends to the new tower.

Kalu actually reigns over this territory. No other male cat ventures in his territory. Looking at his photograph above, you can make out he is a veteran of many a war. His right ear is stumpy, not due to a congenital malformation. His right eye is almost gone. His right foreleg was fractured some time ago, when he used to climb the steps not like normal cats, but all four feet on one step before proceeding to another step. Now he is healed. Rumor is that the dogs are less in number thanks to terror established by Kalu.

When Kalu goes through the antenatal ward, the pregnant women close their eyes, out of fear that their babies will be born as ugly as Kalu if they look at him. Such superstition! When babies in the pediatrics ward refuse to go to sleep, the mothers tell them, "go to sleep, baby, or Kalu will come." Then they go to sleep. When babies of visitors trouble Kalu's progeny by pulling their tails, Kalu arrives and just looks at them sternly out of his one and half eyes, and they behave.

When a visitor remarked that Kalu seemed to be a pet cat in the hospital, Kalu was angry. He just glared at the visitor, saying in his thought bubble (like Garfield does) 'I am not pet. These people around me are my pets." That visitor shut up immediately.

Powerpoint Slides in HTML Pages

Powerpoint slides cannot be put in web pages. Microsoft has put that facility in that software, but it does not work, or if at all, it works only in Internet Explorer, which is not used by a lot of people. Showing slides in a web browser can be useful when one has a wide readership on the internet. It is also useful when one does not carry one's laptop when going on a lecture tour, and is not sure if the venue will have Powerpoint. All computers have a web browser, and any web browser is OK for HTML slides, unlike Powerpoint, which will not show slides made in another software program. Makng HTML slides requires just a text editor, like Notepad, and some knowledge of HTML, CSS and Javascript. I have made such a presentation, which cannot be put on a blog post, because Blogger does not allow putting additional files like CSS and Javascript files along with the HTML file, and one has to upload them to another server and give its reference. You have to use the right and left arrow keys to move forward and backward in the presentation. You can put whatever that can be put on a web page in this presentation. I have put only text because this post is only to present the concept.

I have put that presentation on my website, and here is a link to it.

Click here to see HTML slides presentation.

What If They Know?

There are different types of wrong and evil doings. If we exclude what is done by fanatics who fully believe in whatever they do, we have a lot of things that people do despite knowing they are wrong. They do not stop because there is nothing to make them want to stop. I was thinking about this when I thought of something new. There were some options that I considered.

1. If one thinks "What if God knows what I am doing?", will one be deterred? Probably not. After all, God has been watching all the time, and has not punished one for the past wrongdoings. Who knows, there may not really be a day of reckoning. Why not continue to reap benefits of wrongdoing now?
2. What if one thinks "What if my parents know what I am doing?" This is likely to act as a deterrent. Most people do not think this thought when they indulge in wrongdoing. Only a very few believe their parents are old and do not understand the world. They would not be deterred by this thought.
3. If one thinks "What if my wife and my children know what I am doing?" This is less likely to work, because such people often are heads of their families and tend to make the wife and children shut up if they express their views on such matters.
4. If one thinks "What if my friends and neighbors know what I am doing?" This  might work as people often want friends and neighbors to think highly of them.

The one option I have not listed here is thinking "I know what I am doing is wrong or evil, and will I be at peace with myself after doing this?" I believe this is the only option that would truly work towards preventing all wrong and evil things. I do not mean to preach, and of course you are free to choose any option or none at all, assuming you are not a Saint and do no wrong at any time.

Evil Intention Beaten By Poverty

I came across a link to a portable graphics freeware that I thought would help me draw better digital images. I downloaded it. It worked. Then I found another link to the same software on the same page of Google search. The first one was less than 2 MB. The second one was 12 MB. I was naive enough to believe that bigger would be better. So I downloaded it too. On double clicking on it, it did nothing. So I double clicked on it again. Then it changed my home page to a page of its choice. It did this on Chrome, Firefox and Internet explorer together, after warning me that my Internet Explorer was outdated and I should upgrade it. I get upset when someone plays a dirty trick on me and changes my homepage. So I got upset and deleted the software. That would not restore the homepage, I knew. But at least I got the evil doer off my hard disk. Then I scanned the whole hard disk with Malwarebytes antimalware. It did not find any malware nor did it cure the problem.  Then I entered the settings of Chrome and Firefox, removed the link to the new homepage and gave a link to my old homepage. But when I shutdown the browsers and restarted them, the evil homepage was back. I struggled but it would not go away. I uninstalled Firefox, which I had kept as a standby browser. I wanted to uninstall and reinstall Chrome, but I did not have any other browser (except that outdated Internet Explorer which I did not want to use) to download Chrome. Then I had an idea. I removed the shortcut to Chrome from by quick-launch toolbar, and launched Chrome from the start menu instead. This time it did not launch the evil new homepage, but retained by original one. So the hacker had not only written a script to change the homepage on all web browsers, but also changed the properties of the shortcut to the browsers in the quick-launch toolbar. I hope this helps people get out of the changed homepage situation.
The funny thing was that the evil homepage that this software had set on my computer was not found anyway. The domain was for sale, because the original owner had not managed to renew it by paying required fee after the previous contract expired. All the evil efforts of the evil doer had gone down the drain, because of his poverty. I cannot punish him, because he has kept his identity hidden, as all cowards do. I would not try to punish him anyway, because I believe that God looks after us all, and controls the evil doers.

Oxygen Administration At 50%

Administration of oxygen used to be with a rubber catheter in past. A thin India rubber catheter would be attached to the oxygen tube, and the other end of the catheter would be passed into the patient's nose. It would pass into only one nostril, but the oxygen would reach the nasopharynx and then go down the trachea into the lungs when the patient breathed. The administration system evolved. Now oxygen is administered with a face mask or nasal prongs when the patient is breathing on her own.
We saw a patient in the waiting ward during our ward round. She was lying comfortably in bed, and was conscious and doing things on her own, including breathing. She was receiving oxygen through nasal prongs.

The curious thing about her oxygen administration was that only one of her nasal prongs was in a nostril, while the other one was outside the other nostril.
"This woman is receiving 50% oxygen" I said. "That coming out of the other prong is creating an oxygen-rich environment near her face."
One of the residents moved forward and corrected it. Nothing was said to the patient. I could have done it myself, but then the residents might not have noticed that something was amiss.
That tube has to be in both the nostrils for you to receive adequate oxygen" I told the patient before moving on.
The following are possible reasons for this curious phenomenon.

1. One prong accidentally came out.
2. The prongs were irritating the patient's nose, and she removed one to improve her personal comfort and kept the other one to honor the doctor's effort at treating her.
3. The patient believed it was just another gadget they used in the hospital, and had to be worn around the head, like a necklace is worn around the neck.
4. The patient might have seen or heard of oxygen-rich environment being used in some beauty parlor or something, to rejuvenate the skin. (I made this one up. There might not be anything like this. But it might happen, once someone reads this post and thinks it is a good gimmick.)

I did not try to find out, because I have found out that neither the patients nor the doctors give the right explanation. It does not matter that I did not find out, because I had seen it for the first time in so many years and statistically it is extremely unlikely that I will see it again. This post is just to make readers aware that they should be aware of things that can go wrong in patient management and they should be on the lookout for the unthinkable too.

Instruments Slideshow Beta

H I always wanted to have a slideshow on this blog. Google's Blogger does have a gadget called slideshow. I could not use it, because it required the images to be located in selected places, and I did not have an account there. The slides shown by Blogger in that gadget area were quite small too. Finally I worked out how to show them in the blog post itself. I call this one 'beta' because I have put only three images of one instrument there as a trial. It seems to have worked, but I have to see if it works on (other) computers, tablets, smart phones etc. I will ask colleagues, friends, students, and my readers if it works on their devices. If it works well on all devices, I will write all code required (a big bore, that one) and post about 90 images of instruments used in Gynecology and Obstetrics there. My book has all line diagrams of instruments. With 90 images, revision of instruments should be a breeze for the students, I hope.

Hibiscus Variations

One of our potted Hibiscus plants keeps flowering differently.

Textured petals, the usual ones being thin and smooth.

Another textured one on the right, smooth one on left for comparison.

Back view of the same ones..

Apparently four-petaled, two petals overlapping.

7th February 2019:

Our plant giving exclusively white flowers for years gave a pink one today - along with seven white ones. I think it was rather auspicious - today being 'Maghi Chaturthi' a day of religious importance for us, related to Lord Ganesha, who loves Hibiscus flowers.

13th February 2020

Flowers which bloomed on one plant on the same day. A. Flowers with multiple petals, B. Flowers with a single row of 5 petals, C. Flower with a single row of only three petals.

Flower with a petals attached to or a part of the stamen.

Ganesha in Hibiscus Flower

We have a Hibiscus plant that keeps on flowering anomalously. I will show some such flowers some other time. About a week ago it had a flower that was quite curious. It reminded me of a class IV employee in our hospital, who claims to be blessed enough to see Lord Ganesha in fruit and vegetables. One day he stopped me in the corridor of the hospital, pulled out his mobile phone, and showed me what he claimed was Lord Ganesha in one tomato and a brinjal he had purchased in the market. I was probably not as blessed as he was, and all I could see was a tomato and a brinjal of shapes different from the regular ones.
"Lord Ganesha is in everything around us, including us" I tried to tell him. He stopped me in between and talked about how fortunate he was to have God visit him in this way. I gave up, congratulated him, and went my way.
This fellow is not the only one who sees God in this way. A shopkeeper in front of our house once found the Lord in a tomato, and the entire neighborhood flocked to his shop to see. I wondered why the God visited these people and not others. The curious shape of our Hibiscus flower made me think of all that, because I was sure these people would surely see Lord Ganesha in that flower, especially when Hibiscus was considered the favorite flower of Lord Ganesha. I added a few black lines to the flower's photograph.

Despite my art, the flower does not look like Lord Ganesha to me. See if it does to you. Perhaps you may be blessed enough.

29-01-2020

In the same theme, someone saw Lord Ganesha in a tomato.