THE RED ARMY – MANCHESTER UNITED

In a country where everything comes to a complete halt when India is playing in a cricket match, it isn’t hard to believe that football is not as popular as cricket pool in the country for footballing talent in this nation. Most Indians don’t follow I-League and our FIFA ranking is an evidence to the present state of football. There are various clubs and fan bases of the top clubs in almost every part of the country. But Manchester United stands out arguably as the most popular club. Manchester United is considered one of the oldest and most consistent teams in the world. I don’t know how long you have been following football, but I happen to be an avid football fan and have been religiously following the sport for the past 13 years. This team which has seen players like George Best, Bobby Charlton, Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney and now David De Gea tells us why there is no other club that has matched the success till date.

But what makes them so popular? Apparently, Manchester United has seen it all. Disasters, debts, relegations and what not. But even after facing all these, they have believed and have always found a way back. Whatever they have achieved till now is something extraordinary. From the verge of shutting down after increasing debts to somehow fighting relegation and then from the unfortunate Munich air disaster in February 1958 to lift the team: defines the European Cup 10 years later, their story is something more than ordinary. Again from Sir Alex Ferguson taking charge to the famous Class Of 92, we have seen the lowest of lows, but this combination of being a fairytale football club has propelled Manchester United to become a household name in so many countries. Some instances that 1)February 6, 1958 -The Munich Air Disaster. 2) 1968 European Cup – Healing the scars of Munich 3) The Class of ’92 4) Treble-Winning 1999 Manchester United. It’s the debate every United fan has had over a pint of beer. But, if there is one thing Manchester United haven’t been short of in their extraordinary history, it’s great players.

Manchester United Supporters (***Photo credit: Manchester United Fan Club Mumbai)***

It is very difficult and perhaps unfair to pick one player or compare players across different eras and term one of them as the greatest.

In India, it has official fan bases in Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Kochi, Goa, Hyderabad, New Delhi. Statistically, the club has about 659 million adult fan base in the world out of 5 billion in the world.

GGMU

WHAT’S BEHIND THE FACEBOOK – DATA CENTRES?

All of us are connected to the virtual world using various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp etc. The power of social media is known to everyone. It just takes a matter of seconds that one on the other end of the world is able to know about the activities is happening all over the world.But has anyone ever tried to understand what is behind the mechanism? Or how the data is maintained and utilized of around 2.19, million monthly users? There needs to an extraordinary amount of designing and technology behind the whole process. So how big are the data centers?

Currently, Facebook has 10 data centers in the world namely Los Lunas, NM, Prineville, OR, Forest City, NC, Altoona, IA, Fort Worth, TX, New Albany, OH, Clonee, Ireland, Lulea, Sweden and Odense, Denmark. These data centers are huge in infrastructure measuring about 307,000 square feet. That’s actually more than the length of 2 football fields combined together. Everyday data of around 2.5 billion pieces of content and 500+ terabytes of data is generated by Facebook.Each data center has tens of thousands of computer servers, which are networked together and are also linked to the outside world through fiber optic cables. This goes like as every time an information is shared over Facebook, the servers in these data centers receive the information and distribute it to our friends. A lesser-known fact that it scans roughly 105 terabytes of data each half hour. That’s stupendous!

This doesn’t stop the billion dollar company to extend its frontier. Now, Facebook has also laid undersea cables across the Atlantic Ocean connecting Virginia, the USA to Bilbao, Spain. The cable has the capacity of transferring 160 TB of data per second which is an equivalent of streaming 71 million HD videos at the same time and 16 million times faster than an average home internet connection. This is truly technology at its best.

Many of us might have experienced sometimes when the facebook application is down. This affects the millions of customers at the same time. Just imagine the impact and the level of triaging required to bring back up the application. It takes hardly 2 hours to make the application is functional mode.

Trillions of data get queued at the same time, but it does not affect the data servers residing in the data centers as a whole.

The data centers are technologized in a such a way that it just takes on an average of 3 mins for the data security engineer to find the flaw in the exact data servers which is located in the facility.

Facebook is not keeping any limit to the data servers. It is ever growing to handle the demand of use of the virtual platform to connect to people.This has been estimated that they have around 200 petabytes of storage, growing by several terabytes a day.

This is actually beyond imagination how these are being maintained at such a level.

**Facebook Data Center in Richmond, VA**

MUMBAI – INDEED A CITY TO LIVE IN

“You can take a Boy out of Bombay, but you cannot take Bombay out of Boy”.

While I was positioned in Mumbai for my first job in mid-2015, little did I knew that this city will provide me with some beautiful moments which cannot be quantified. Going to an unknown city is indeed a matter of thought, one ponders. But little did I knew, I would be so much attached to the city. I had never seen this velocity of life. My corporate journey started in the City of Dreams.

However iconic Mumbai Local train displaces close to 3 lac people at a time. People who don’t prefer the rushy locals, take the autos and the bus public transport. And then you have endless Uber and Ola. One of the best bus services I had come across is “BEST”, the buses arrive at the designated bus stop and also there is dedicated Entry and Exit doors, which I have seen in other states too, but nowhere people followed it in a disciplined and amicable way. The roads T-shirt towers everywhere. Interestingly, the people are very down to Earth. People generally are very humble. You will find a lot amount of traffic everywhere. Slums wherever there are no towers. People are busy running all the time to make their ends meet.

The local trains are best to describe it. But the city has glamour. When you visit places like Bandra, Worli, Lower Parel, Colaba you feel the city has a lot of glamour and richness. My favorite location in the city is Marine Drive. No matter how many times you have visited the place earlier, it stills feels that same as the first visit. You can see the various class of people buzzing in that area, and still, find calmness and peace watching that sun setting down into the sea. I have come across the most beautiful sunset there. Then, of course, you can walk down till Nariman Point, sit there relax and walk. Its a joggers paradise to walk beside the view. You can’t buy that view at any cost. This is priceless.

I haven’t explored the city fully yet. But there is something with this city I have fallen for unknowingly. The lifestyle of this city is different from all the Indian cities out here. You have the richest of the richest and poorest of the poorest staying on either side of the road. One ought to hate in the first place, then gradually gets captivated by the love for the city.

People say once you have spent time living in Mumbai, you might not want to live elsewhere. Perfect moments are carved within yourself. It needs to be cherished well.

People speak about business, real estate, entrepreneurship, and nightlife. Without a second thought, I would prefer staying in Mumbai for this. You will always see real estate progressing and developing in areas in Mumbai. It gives me a reason to live. I lived my carefree days there.